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and Jillian Perry.
    Until her body turned up at Edgewater Park, two days later.
     
     
     

Chapter 4
     
     
    “I hope you weren’t planning on going home anytime soon,” the DNA analyst, Don Delgado, said to her at four o’clock that same Wednesday.
    “It’s always a bad sign when you begin conversations that way.”
    “You ain’t kidding. We got a dead kid.”
    Everyone in law enforcement cringed at those words, perhaps because it made them think of their own children, perhaps because even bad kids were still kids, perhaps because they saw too many of them. Like most of her responses, Theresa had learned to stifle this one. “Sure, I can use the overtime. Rachael will be picking out a college soon. When will the kid get here?”
    “They want us to go there. Apparently the circumstances are unusual.”
    She folded up the last of the murdered prostitute’s clothing and sealed the bag with red tape, adding her initials and the date. “Unusual how?”
    “He’s fifteen and he’s in the woods behind the zoo. That’s all I know.”
    “The woods, as in outside?”
    “It’s kind of hard to have a woods inside.”
    “And the temperature is?”
    “Five. Fahrenheit. And I didn’t wear my parka today either,” he added with deep gloom.
    She gathered up the sealed paper bags into one larger one, to store on the shelves of the trap room, puzzling over this statement. Usually only one person from the lab went to a crime scene—they lacked the manpower to work in teams. “Are you joining me? Who is this boy? Somebody…?” She hesitated at the word
important
. Every human was important. Unfortunately, some people would always be considered more important than others, and this remained as true in death as in life.
    “All I know is, he lived in the area.”
    Hardly rich, then. So why—the morning’s conversation with Leo came back to her. “It’s not the kid, it’s me, isn’t it? Leo is sending you along to make sure I don’t screw up.”
    Don rubbed his eyes, stood up, and said nothing, which probably meant that those had been Leo’s exact words. Don would never lie to her.
    “I can be ready in ten minutes,” she told him.
     
     
    Don parked the county station wagon on the side of Park Road, behind Frank’s worn Crown Vic, and Theresa pulled her crime scene kit from the backseat. The snowy expanse between the asphalt and the tree line had been reduced to a fractured mess of shoe prints and crime scene tape. One uniformed officer kept watch while the others huddled at the trees. Theresa wore a scarf, earmuffs, and two pairs of gloves, but the air wove through those items as if they were made of mesh. She complained as much to Don as they fought their way through the thick white blanket of frozen raindrops.
    “Yeah,” he said, panting, “but it’s a dry cold.”
    “All the DNA analysts in this country, and I get Henny Youngman.”
    “Who?”
    “You’re too young. Hey, cuz,” she greeted Frank, who waited for them under the boughs of a huge oak. “Do you know what my mother will say to you if I get frostbite?”
    “She’ll say you should have dressed warmer. Hi, Don. Okay, here it is: we got a fifteen-year-old white male, frozen pretty stiff, no signs of OD or violence. He lives right behind here on West Thirty-eighth”—Theresa turned to glance at the street of close-packed homes; even a coating of snow could not disguise the general untidiness—“and there’s sort of a path through here to the baseball park.”
    “Where’s the zoo?” Theresa asked, and realized she’d been hoping for a glimpse of the animals.
    “That way, on the other side of Fulton.” He gestured to his left. “So maybe this kid was heading for the baseball diamond, a popular hangout even in winter, or taking a walk. Either way, he’s pretty dead.”
    “Who found him?” Don asked.
    “His mother.”
    So many questions occurred to Theresa that she didn’t know which to ask first. “Wh—”
    Frank nodded at