The Cold Moon

have a connection. That left hookers. Simple.”
    “That’s slick, don’t you think, Lincoln?” Cooper asked.
    Dance was surprised to see that the criminalist could shrug. He then said noncommitally, “Worked out well. We got some evidence it might’ve taken us a while to find.” His eyes went back to the board.
    “Linc, come on. We got his vehicle make. We wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been for her.” Sellitto said to Dance, “Don’t take it personal. He doesn’t trust witnesses.”
    Rhyme frowned at the detective. “It’s not a contest, Lon. Our goal is the truth, and my experience has been that the reliability of witnesses issomewhat less than that of physical evidence. That’s all. Nothing personal about it.”
    Dance nodded. “Funny you say that. I tell people in my lectures the same thing: that our main job as cops isn’t throwing bad guys in jail, it’s getting to the truth.” She too shrugged. “We just had a case in California—death row prisoner exonerated the day before his scheduled execution. A private eye friend of mine spent three years working for his lawyer to get to the bottom of what happened. He just wouldn’t accept that everything was what it seemed to be. The prisoner was thirteen hours away from dying and it turned out he was innocent. . . . If that PI hadn’t kept looking for the truth all those years, he’d be dead now.”
    Rhyme said, “And I know what happened. The defendant was convicted because of a witness’s perjured testimony, and DNA analysis freed him, right?”
    Dance turned. “No, actually there were no witnesses to the killing. The real killer planted fake physical evidence implicating him.”
    “How ’bout that,” said Sellitto and he and Amelia Sachs shared a smile. Rhyme glanced at them both coolly. “Well,” he said to Dance, “it’s fortunate that things worked out for the best. . . . Now I better get back to work.” His eyes returned to the whiteboard.
    Dance said good-bye to them all and pulled on her coat as Lon Sellitto showed her out. On the street Dance walked to the curb, where she plugged the iPod earbuds back in and clicked the unit on. This particular playlist contained folk rock, Irish and some kick-ass Rolling Stones (once at a concert she’d done a kinesic analysis of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards for her friends’ benefit).
    She was waving down a cab when she realized there was an odd, unsettled feeling within her. A moment passed before she recognized it. She was feeling a nagging sense of regret that her brief involvement in the Watchmaker case was now over.

    Joanne Harper was feeling good.
    The trim thirty-two-year-old was in the workshop a few blocks east of her retail flower store in SoHo. She was among her friends.
    That is to say, roses, cymbidium orchids, birds-of-paradise, lilies, heliconia, anthurium and red ginger.
    The workshop was a large ground-floor area in what had been a warehouse. It was drafty and cold and she kept most of the rooms dark to protect the flowers. Still, she loved it here, the coolness, the dim light, the smells of lilac and fertilizer. She was in the middle of Manhattan, yes, but it seemed more like a quiet forest.
    The woman added some more florist’s foam to the huge ceramic vase in front of her.
    Feeling good.
    For a couple of reasons: because she was working on a lucrative project that she had complete discretion to design.
    And because of the buzz from her date the previous night.
    With Kevin, who knew that angel trumpets needed exceptionally good drainage to thrive, and that creeping red sedum flowered in brilliant crimson all the way through September, and that Donn Clendenon whacked three over the wall to help the Mets beat Baltimore in 1969 (her father had captured two of the homers with his Kodak).
    Kevin the cute guy, Kevin with the dimple and grin. Sans present or past wives.
    Did it get any better than that?
    A shadow crossed the front window. She glanced up, but saw no one. This was a deserted stretch of east Spring Street and pedestrians were rare. She scanned the windows. Really ought to have Ramon clean them. Well, she’d wait till warmer weather.
    She continued assembling the vase, thinking again about Kevin. Would something work out between them?
    Maybe.
    Maybe not.
    Didn’t really matter (okay, sure it did, but a thirty-two-year-old SUW—single urban woman—had to take the didn’t-really-matter approach). But the important thing was she had fun with him.