Seeing her mother in her face. Seeing himself. In recent months, he'd told himself it was possible that if they came to know about each other, it wouldn't be baggage after all, but a source of something else – connection, maybe. He didn't know – he wasn't good at that stuff. But the feeling had been building and he'd come close to deciding that he would tell her, see where it took them.

The body was clad in an elegant overcoat, still buttoned to the neck. Blue or black in color, it looked expensive with its fur-trimmed collar, red satin lining. One black pump had come off her left foot and lay on its side, pathetically, in the gutter.

She was wearing black hosiery – and again, there was no sign that it had snarled or that the nylon had run when she'd gone down. Under the overcoat, Glitsky saw a couple of inches of what appeared to be a blue or black skirt with white pinstripes.

The lack of blood nagged. Glitsky stood, moved around to her back side, studying the pavement. Ridley was a step behind him and anticipated his question. He handed the lieutenant a ziploc bag which held an almost impossibly small handgun. 'One shot at the hairline in back, close contact, up into the brain. No exit wound.'

Glitsky opened the bag and looked inside, put his nose against the opening and smelled the cordite. He recognized the weapon as a North American Arms five-shot revolver, perhaps the smallest commercially-made weapon in America. It was most commonly worn as a belt buckle, out in the open, so small it did not seem possible that it could be a real gun. It weighed less than ten ounces and fitted easily in the palm of his hand. Ridley was going on with his descriptions and theories and Glitsky ached to tell him to shut up.

But he wasn't going to give anything away and he didn't trust himself to utter a word. Instead, he left it to his body language. Zipping up the plastic that held the gun, he gave it to Banks without comment, and moved off, hands in his pockets. The message was clear – Glitsky was concentrating, thinking, memorizing the scene. Disturb him at your peril.