The Silent Girl

took our breath away, too,” said Jane.
    The woman was a Caucasian in her early thirties, slim and athletic, dressed all in black in a hoodie sweatshirt and leggings. The body was in full rigor mortis. She lay on her back, face staring up at the sky, as though she’d stretched out to admire the stars. Her hair, a rich auburn, was gathered at the nape of her neck in a simple ponytail. Her skin was pale and flawless and she had a model’s jutting cheekbones, faintly Slavic. But it was the wound that Maura focused on, a slash so deep that it divided skin and muscle and cartilage, severing the lumen of the trachea and exposing the pearly surface ofthe cervical spine. The arterial gush that had resulted was powerful enough to spray blood in a shockingly wide radius that left splatters across the curtain of sheets hanging on a nearby clothesline.
    “The amputated hand fell in the alley right below,” said Jane. “So did the Heckler and Koch. My guess is, her fingerprints are on the grip. And we’re gonna find gunshot residue on that hand.”
    Maura tore her gaze away from the neck and focused on the right wrist, which had been cleanly divided, and she tried to picture what sort of instrument could have so efficiently slashed through cartilage and bone. It had to be appallingly sharp, wielded without hesitation. She imagined the slash of the blade and the hand falling away, tumbling over the roof’s edge. Imagined that same blade slicing across that slender neck.
    Shuddering, she rose to her feet and stared down from the roof at the police officers standing at the far end of Knapp Street, holding back onlookers. The crowd looked twice as large as it had only moments before, and the day was still early. The curious, ever relentless, can always smell blood.
    “Are you sure you really want to be here, Maura?” Jane asked quietly.
    Maura turned to her. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
    “I’m just wondering if it’s too soon for you to be back in rotation. I know it’s been a tough week for you, with the trial and all.” Jane paused. “It’s not looking too good for Graff right now.”
    “It shouldn’t look good. He killed a man.”
    “And that man killed a cop. A good cop, who had a wife and kids. I have to admit, I might’ve lost it, too.”
    “Please, Jane. Don’t tell me you’re defending Officer Graff.”
    “I worked with Graff, and you couldn’t ask for a better man to watch your back. You do know what happens to cops who end up in prison, don’t you?”
    “I shouldn’t have to defend myself on this. I’ve gotten enough hate mail about it. Don’t you join in the chorus.”
    “I’m just saying, it’s a sensitive time right now. We all respectGraff, and we can understand how he lost it that night. A cop killer’s dead, and maybe that’s a kind of justice all its own.”
    “It’s not my job to deliver justice. I just deliver the facts.”
    Jane’s laugh was biting. “Yeah, you’re all about the facts, aren’t you?”
    Maura turned and looked across the rooftop at the criminalists scouring the scene.
Let it roll off and focus on your job. You’re here to speak for this dead woman, and no one else
. “What was she doing on this roof?” she asked.
    Jane looked down at the body. “No idea.”
    “Do we know how she gained access?”
    “Could’ve been a fire escape or a stairwell. Once you’re on one roof, you can access all the roofs on this block, from Harrison Avenue to Knapp Street. She could have entered any of these buildings. Or been dropped from a helicopter, for that matter. No one we’ve spoken to remembers seeing her last night. And we know it happened last night. When we found her, rigor mortis was just starting to set in.”
    Maura focused on the victim again, and frowned at her clothes. “It’s strange, how she’s dressed all in black.”
    “Goes with everything, as they say.”
    “ID?”
    “No ID. All we found in her pockets was three hundred bucks and a Honda car key. We’re searching the area for the vehicle.” Jane shook her head. “Too bad she didn’t drive a Yugo. This is like looking for a needle in a whole damn haystack of Hondas.”
    Maura replaced the sheet, and the gaping wound vanished once more beneath plastic. “Where is the hand?”
    “It’s already bagged.”
    “Are you sure it belongs to this body?”
    Jane gave a startled laugh. “What are the odds it doesn’t?”
    “I never make assumptions. You know that.” She