For CYRUS R. VANCE, Jr., District Attorney, New York County, whose wisdom, vision, integrity, courage, loyalty, and gift for friendship inspire me

“IS that you with the broad, Detective?” the fire captain shouted at Mike Chapman in the darkness of a frigid March night. “Keep her back there, across the street.”

“Got that, Coop? Stay put.” Mike left me in the middle of the double-wide roadway, wedged between unmarked police cars and bright red fire trucks as he charged in behind the huddle of uniformed cops on the sidewalk on the far side of the street.

I took my own blue-and-gold badge out of my pocket — no one would stop to read that the small print beneath my name said Assistant District Attorney, not NYPD — and flapped it over the breast pocket of my ski jacket, slinking between rowdy onlookers to get within inches of Mike.

“Alexandra Cooper. Special Victims,” I said to one of the firemen. His scowl softened and he nodded to let me pass.

Chaos had enveloped the corner of 114th Street and Seventh Avenue. Flames still danced around something that lay on the portico of a stately old church, teasing the water that spouted from steady-stream nozzles the firemen aimed at it. Emergency Service Unit cops wielded axes to try to break open the locks on the wrought-iron gate that guarded the front steps, and a growing herd of neighborhood rubberneckers crowded the first responders who were trying to get the job done.

I was on the tips of my toes, hoping to catch a glimpse of what was burning. Amidst blackened fragments of some kind of fabric and the occasional glitter of embers atop that, I could make out something white — almost flesh-colored. The shape of a human arm, maybe, but that thought was too awful to imagine.