need a case file."

"Yeah." The woman was chewing gum. Loudly.

Snap.

Amelia Sachs was in the file room at the 158th Precinct in Lower Manhattan, not far from the 118th. She gave the night-duty file clerk at the gray desk the number of the Sarkowski file. The woman typed on a computer keyboard, a staccato sound. A glance at the screen. "Don't have it."

"You sure?"

"Don't have it."

"Hm." Sachs gave a laugh. "Where do we think it's run off to?"

"Run off to?"

"It came here on the twenty-eighth or twenty-ninth of November from the One Three One house. It looked like it was requested from somebody here."

Snap.

"Well, it's, like not logged in. You sure it came here?"

"No, not one thousand percent. But —"

"One thousand?" the woman asked, chewing away. A pack of cigarettes sat next to her, ready to be scooped up in a hurry when she fled downstairs on her break or left for the night.

"Is there any scenario where it wouldn't've been logged?"

"Scenario?"

"Would a file always be logged in?"

"If it's for a specific detective it'd go directly to his office and he'd log it. You've gotta log it. It's a rule."

"If there was no recipient name on the request?"

"Then it'd come here." She nodded at a large basket holding a card that said Pending. "And whoever wanted it'd have to come down and pick it up. Then he'd log it in. Has to be logged in."

"But it wasn't."

"Has to be. Because otherwise, how do we know where it is?" She pointed to another sign. Log it!

Sachs prowled through the large basket.

"Like, you're not supposed to do that."

"But see my problem?"

A blink. The gum snapped.

"It came here. But you can't find it. So what do I do about that?"

"Submit a request. Somebody'll look for it."

"Is that really going to happen? Because I'm not sure it would." Sachs looked toward the file room. "I'll just take a look, you don't mind."

"Really, you can't."

"Just take a few minutes."

"You can't —"

Sachs walked past her and plunged into the stacks of files. The clerk muttered something Sachs couldn't hear.

All the files were organized by number and color-coded to indicate that they were open or closed or trial pending. Major Cases files had a special border on them. Red. Sachs found the recent files and, going through the numbers one by one, sure enough — the Sarkowski file wasn't there.

She paused, looking up the stacks, hands on her hips.

"Hi," a man's voice said.

She turned and found herself looking at a tall, gray-haired man in a white shirt and navy slacks. He had a military bearing about him and he was smiling. "You're —?"

"Detective Sachs."

"I'm DI Jefferies." A deputy inspector generally ran the precinct. She'd heard the name but knew nothing about him. Except that he was obviously a hard worker, since he was here, still on the job at this late hour.

"What can we do you for, Detective?"

"There was a file delivered here from the One Three One. About two weeks ago. I need it as part of an investigation."

He glanced at the file clerk who'd just dimed her out. She was standing in the hallway. "We don't have it, sir. I told her that."

"Are you sure it was sent here?"

Sachs said, "The log at the transferring house said it was."

"Was it logged?" Jefferies asked the clerk.

"No."

"Well, is it in the pending basket?"

"No."

"Come on into my office, Detective. I'll see what we can do."

Sachs ignored the clerk. She didn't want to give her the satisfaction.

Through the nondescript halls, turning corners here and there, not saying a word. Sachs struggling on her arthritic legs to keep up with the man's energetic pace.

Inspector Jefferies strode into his corner office, nodded at the chair across from his desk and closed the door, which had a large brass plaque on it. Halston P. Jefferies.

Sachs sat.

Jefferies suddenly leaned down, his face inches from hers. He slammed his fist onto the desk. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

Sachs reared back, feeling his hot, garlicky breath wash over her face: "I... What do you mean?" She swallowed the "sir" she'd nearly appended to the sentence.

"Where are you out of?"

"Where?"

"You fucking rookie, what's your house?"

Sachs couldn't speak for a moment, she was so shocked by the man's fury. "Technically I'm working Major Cases —"

"What the hell does 'technically' mean? Who're you working for?"

"I'm lead detective on this case. I'm supervised by Lon Sellitto. In MC. I —"

"You haven't been a detective —"

"I —"

"Don't you ever interrupt a superior officer. Ever. You understand me?"

Sachs bristled. She said nothing.

"Do you understand me?" he shouted.

"Perfectly."

"You haven't been a detective very long, have you?"

"No."

"I know that, because a real detective would've followed protocol. She would've come to the dep inspector and introduced herself and asked if it was all right to review a file. What you did... Were you about to interrupt me again?"

She had been. She said, "No."

"What you did was a personal insult to me." A fleck of spittle arced between them like a mortar round.

He paused. Would it be an interruption to talk now? She didn't care. "I had no intention of insulting you. I'm just running an investigation. I needed a file that's turned up missing."

"'Turned up missing.' What kind of thing is that to say? Either it's turned up or it's missing. If you're as sloppy with your investigating as you are with your language, I'm wondering if you didn't lose the file yourself and're trying to cover your ass by blaming us."

"The file was checked out of the One Three One and routed here."

"By who?" he snapped.

"That's the problem. That part of the log was blank."

"Were there any other files checked out that came here?" He sat on the edge of his desk and stared down at her.

Sachs frowned.

He continued. "Any files from anywhere else?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"Do you know what I do here?"

"I'm sorry?"

"What's my job at the One Five Eight?"

"Well, you're in charge of the precinct, I assume."

"You assume," he mocked. "I've known officers dead in the streets because they assumed. Shot down dead."

This was getting tedious. Sachs's eyes went cold and locked onto his. She had no trouble maintaining the gaze.

Jefferies hardly noticed. He snapped, "In addition to running the precinct — your brilliant deduction — I'm in charge of the manpower allocation committee for the entire department. I review thousands of files a year, I see what the trends are, determine what shifts we need to make in personnel to cover work load. I work hand in glove with the city and state to make sure we get what we need. You probably think that's a waste of time, don't you?"

"I don't —"

"Well, it's not, young lady. Those files are reviewed by me and they're returned... Now, what's this particular report you're so goddamn interested in?"

Suddenly she didn't want him to know. This whole scene was off. Logically, if he had something to hide, it was unlikely that he'd behave like such a prick. But, on the other hand, he might be acting this way to divert suspicion. She thought back. She'd given the clerk only the file number, not the name Sarkowski. Most likely the scatterbrain wouldn't remember the lengthy digit.

Sachs said calmly, "I'd prefer not to say."

He blinked. "You —?"

"I'm not going to tell you."

Jefferies nodded. He seemed calm. Then he leaned forward and slammed his hand down on the desk again. "You fucking have to tell me. I want the case name and I want it now."

"No."

"I'll see you're suspended for insubordination."

"You do what you have to, Inspector."

"You will tell me the name of the file. And you will tell me now."

"No, I won't."

"I'll call your supervisor." His voice was cracking. He was getting hysterical. Sachs actually wondered if he'd physically hurt her.

"He doesn't know about it."

"You're all the same," Jefferies said, a searing voice. "You think you get a gold shield, you know everything there is to know about being a cop. You're a kid, you're just a kid — and a wiseass one. You come to my precinct, accuse me of stealing files —"

"I didn't —"

"Insubordination — you insult me, you interrupt me. You don't have any idea what it's like to be a cop."

Sachs gazed at him placidly. She'd slipped into a different place — her personal cyclone cellar. She knew that there might be disastrous implications from this confrontation but at the moment he couldn't touch her. "I'm leaving now."

"You're in deep trouble, young lady. I remember your shield. Five eight eight five. Think I didn't? I'll see you busted down to Warrants. How'd you like to shuffle paper all day long? You do not come into a man's precinct and insult him!"

Sachs strode past him, flung the door open and hurried up the hall. Her hands started shaking, her breath was coming fast.

His voice, nearly a scream, followed her down the hall. "I'll remember your shield. I'll make some calls. If you ever come back to my precinct again, you will regret it. Young lady, did you hear me?"

U.S. Army Sergeant Lucy Richter locked the door of her old Greenwich Village co-op and headed into the bedroom, where she stripped off her dark green uniform, bristling with perfectly aligned bars and campaign ribbons. She wanted to toss the garment on the bed but, of course, she hung it carefully in the closet, the blouse too, and tucked her ID and security badges carefully in the breast pocket, where she always kept them. She then cleaned and polished her shoes before setting them carefully in a rack on the closet door.

A fast shower, then, wrapped in an old pink robe, she curled up on the shag rug on the bedroom floor and gazed out the window. Her eyes took in the buildings across Barrow Street, the lights flickering between the wind-blown trees and the moon, white in the black sky, above lower Manhattan. This was a familiar sight to her, comforting. She used to sit here, just like this, when she was a little girl.

Lucy had been out of the country for some time and was back home on leave. She'd finally gotten over the jet lag and the grogginess from a marathon sleepfest. Now, with her husband still at work, she was content to sit, look out the window and to think about the distant past, and the recent.

The future, too, of course. The hours we have yet to spend seem to obsess us far more than those we've already experienced, Lucy reflected.

She grew up in this very co-op, here in the most congenial of Manhattan neighborhoods. She loved the Village. And when her parents moved across town and became snowbirds they transferred the place to their twenty-two-year-old daughter. Three years later, the night her boyfriend had proposed to her, she'd said yes but with a qualification: They had to live here. He, of course, agreed.

She enjoyed her life in the neighborhood, hanging out with friends, working food service and office jobs (a college dropout, she was nonetheless always the sharpest and hardest worker among her peers). She liked the culture and the quirkiness of the city. Lucy would sit right here, looking out the window, south, at the imposing landscape of this imposing city, think about what she wanted to do with her life or think about nothing at all.

But then came that September day and she watched it all, the flames, the smoke, then the horrible absence.

Lucy continued her routine, more or less content, and waited for the anger and hurt to go away, the emptiness to fill. But they never did. And so the skinny girl who was a Democrat and liked Seinfeld and baked her own bread with organic flour walked out the front door of this co-op, took the Broadway train uptown to Times Square and enlisted in the army.

Something, she'd explained to her husband, Bob, she had to do. He'd kissed her forehead, held her hard and didn't try to talk her out of it. (For two reasons. First, a former Navy SEAL, he thought the military experience was important for everyone. And second, he believed Lucy had an unerring sense of doing the right thing.)

Basic training in dusty Texas, then she shipped out and went overseas — Bob went with her for some of the time, his boss at the delivery company being particularly patriotic — while they rented out the co-op for a year. She learned German, how to drive every type of truck that existed, and a fact about herself: that she had an innate gift for organization. She was given the job of managing fuelers, the men and women who got petroleum products and other vital supplies where they were needed.

Gasoline and diesel fuel win wars; empty tanks lose them. That's been the rule of warfare for one hundred years.

Then one day her lieutenant came to her and told her two things. One, she was being promoted from corporal to sergeant. Two, she was being sent to school to learn Arabic.

Bob returned to the States and Lucy lugged her gear to a C130 and flew off to the land of bitter fog.

Be careful what you ask for...

Lucy Richter had gone from America — a country with a changed landscape — to a place with none. Her life became desert vistas, searing heat from a hovering sun and a dozen different kinds of sand — some of it abrasive grit that scarred your skin, some fine as talcum that worked its way into every square inch of existence. Her job took on a new gravity. If a truck runs out of fuel on a trip from Berlin to Cologne, you ring up a supply vehicle. If it happens in a combat zone, people die.

And she made sure it never happened.

Hours and hours of juggling tankers and ammunition trucks and the occasional oddity — like playing cowgirl to wrangle sheep into transport trucks, part of an impromptu, voluntary mission to get food to a small village that had been without supplies for weeks.

Sheep... What a hoot!

And now she was back in a land with a skyline, no livestock outside of delis or Food Emporium counters, no sand, no burning sun... no bitter fog.

Very different from her life overseas.

Lucy Richter, though, was hardly a woman at peace. Which is why she was now staring south, looking for answers in the Great Emptiness of the changed landscape.

Yes or no...

The phone rang. She jumped at the sound. She'd been doing this a lot lately — at every sudden noise. Phone, slamming door, backfire.

Chill... She picked up the handset. "Hello?"

"Hey, girl." It was a good friend of hers from the neighborhood.

"Claire."

"What's happening?"

"Just chilling."

"Hey, what time zone're you in?"

"God only knows."

"Bob home?"

"Nope. Working late."

"Good, meet me for cheesecake."

"Only cheesecake?" Lucy asked pointedly.

"White Russians?"

"You're in the ballpark. Let's do it."

They picked a late-night restaurant nearby and hung up.

With a last look at the black empty southern sky, Lucy rose, pulled on sweats, a ski jacket and hat and left the co-op. She clopped down the dim stairway to the first floor.

She stopped, blinking in surprise as a figure startled her.

"Hey, Lucy," the man said. Smelling of camphor and cigarettes, the superintendent — he'd been old when she grew up here — was carrying bound newspapers out to the sidewalk. Outweighing him by thirty pounds and six inches taller, Lucy grabbed two of the bundles from him.

"No," he protested.

"Mr. Giradello, I have to stay in shape."

"Ah, in shape? You're stronger than my son."

Outside, the cold stung her nose and mouth. She loved the sensation.

"I saw you in your uniform tonight. You get that award?"

"This Thursday. It was just the rehearsal today. And it's not an award. A commendation."

"'S the difference?"

"Good question. I don't really know. I think you win an award. A commendation they give you instead of a pay hike." She piled the trash at the curb.

"Your parents're proud." A statement, not a question.

"They sure are."

"Say hi for me."

"I will. Okay, I'm freezing, Mr. Giradello. Gotta go. You take care."

"Night."

Lucy started up the sidewalk. She noticed a dark blue Buick parked across the street. Two men were inside. The one in the passenger seat glanced at her and then down. He lifted and drank a soda thirstily. Lucy thought: Who'd be having a cold drink in weather like this? She herself was looking forward to an Irish coffee, boiling hot and with a double dose of Bushmills. Whipped cream too, of course.

She then glanced down at the sidewalk, stopped suddenly and changed course. Amused, Lucy Richter reflected that patches of slick ice were probably the only danger she hadn't been exposed to in the past eighteen months.