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years old, his blond hair was cropped to within a few millimeters of his scalp.
    â€˜My aunt don’t speak English too good,’ he explained. ‘She wants me to translate.’
    Across the room, the girl finally broke free of the relentless scales she’d been playing, her right hand dropping to her side while her left pounded out an equally relentless boogie-woogie.
    â€˜That’s my sister, Alena,’ the boy explained. ‘She’s getting ready for a talent contest. Little Miss New York. At Madison Square Garden.’
    I acknowledged his sister’s ambitions and talents with a short smile, then handed my victim’s photo to Jolanta Klaipeda. Almost without transition, her face brightened. This was not her dead daughter, not the baby she’d raised. It was someone else’s dead baby. I saw her look up at a crucifix on the wall to her right, watched her bless herself. Then she laughed, once, a bark of defiance, before addressing her nephew in Lithuanian. He listened attentively until she finished, then nodded.
    â€˜She says to tell you that this girl is not her daughter. She says that Nina is beautiful. She says that Nina is a rose and this is a cabbage.’

EIGHT
    I got up and out on the next morning in time to catch the tail end of the eight o’clock mass at St Stanislaus in Greenpoint. Afterward, I passed out a dozen fliers to the exiting parishioners before chatting up Father Korda, who stood by the church door. Charm was my weapon of choice in these encounters, humble petitioner my stance. I told the priest, and anyone else who cared to listen, that I had good reason to believe that my victim was a Polish immigrant who’d lived in the neighborhood. Helping her was helping one of their own. I told the same story to Polish storekeepers on both sides of Manhattan Avenue. Murdered innocent, Polish immigrant. Her family was out there somewhere, awaiting closure. Her killer was out there, too, maybe getting ready to kill someone else.
    Whenever possible, I tried to buy something. Breakfast at one diner, coffee and a buttered corn muffin at another. I had fifty copies of the flier printed at a card shop. I bought a package of light bulbs at a hardware store and a tube of toothpaste at a small pharmacy. At every moment, I projected an attitude of brotherly cooperation, one common humanity; we’re all in this together. My goal was to place my flier in the front window where it would be seen by pedestrians. I’d even brought my own tape.
    I was mostly successful, but the going was necessarily slow. Still, by Thursday, I’d covered Greenpoint thoroughly and was out to Maspeth, a Queens neighborhood a few miles to the southeast. I’d gotten two hits by then. Both were false alarms, but ones I’d had to check out. This was a pattern that continued through the week and into the weekend. There were a lot of Nina Klaipeda’s out there, women whose daughters bore not the faintest resemblance to Plain Jane Doe.
    On Thursday, Millard called me into his office to review the case. ‘Tough luck,’ he told me. ‘Your vic’s prints came back negative. And nobody’s reported her missing yet.’ When I shrugged in response, he leaned back in his chair. ‘So, whatta ya doin’? Tell me.’
    A case review, at this point, was routine, and ordinarily I’d have progress to report. But there was nothing here and when I described my daytime activities, the effort rang hollow.
    â€˜I’ve got two men out on vacation, Harry,’ Millard told me at the end. ‘You’re gonna have to pick up cases. C’mon guy.’
    Later that night, I took the bad news to a YMCA swimming pool on Twenty-Third Street. The pool was managed by a man named Conrad Stehle, who’d given me and a few other serious swimmers permission to use it late at night. Conrad had been my high school swimming coach, way back when I was a budding juvenile