But it wasn't a car bomb. Guiterrez had seen plenty of car-bomb footage on TV. They usually left a smoking axle. Maybe not where it should have been, but it always landed somewhere.

No cars had blown up. Guiterrez was positive of that.

As the wail of sirens started up, Guiterrez went from car to car, checking for dead and wounded, wondering what had blown up. What on earth had blown up? He should have seen it when he turned the corner. The corner had been ground zero. But try as he might, he couldn't remember anything sitting on that corner.

At least, nothing that stood out. And Tony Guiterrez prided himself on his powers of observation.

THE CHIEF OF DETECTIVES for Manhattan's bomb squad took him aside an hour later and asked, "What did you see?"

They were on ground zero. The crater on the corner still smoked lazily. Blood and glass lay everywhere. Building facades at all four corners showed scars.

Guiterrez was staring at the crater. It had disrupted the entire corner, flinging granite curbstones like bricks. One had been discovered on the smashed remains of a desk in a second-floor office on the other side of Thirty-fourth.

"There was something there... " he muttered.

"What?"

Guiterrez banged his forehead in frustration. "I don't know. Damn."

"A package?"

"No."

"A suspicious person?"

"Only the injured. Unless someone came out of a building. But he wouldn't have time to drop a bomb and get away intact."

The detective frowned at the crater. "Whatever blew up, it was big. Too big to carry. Too big to escape notice."

"I walked this beat every day for three years," Guiterrez was saying in frustration. "I know this corner. There was something there."

"Something out of the ordinary?"

"No," Guiterrez said dazedly. "Something that's always been there. I just can't remember what it was."