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himself, he smiled as he held out one hand for hers, asking, almost courtly, „May I?“
    Who knew that Heller was secretly a ladies’ man?
    She smiled, placing her veined and wrinkled hand in his, then watched absently as the head of Forensics did the grunt work of inking her index finger. Rolling it back and forth on a small white card, he said. „Sorry about the mess. Comes off easy enough. Taking prints is routine in a case like this.“
    „No, it isn’t,“ she said, contradicting him without any trace of rancor.
    „Okay, call it a formality.“ Heller gently continued to make the black impressions on his fingerprint cards. „Nothing to worry about, ma’am.“
    „Unless you’ve got a record.“ Riker smiled to let her know that he was not serious. And she smiled, not buying into that for one minute. He exhaled a blue cloud of cigarette smoke and stared at the window. He might have been innocently inquiring about the weather outside when he asked, „You never murdered anyone, did you, Nedda?“
    „Oh, don’t get me started, Detective. We’ll be here all night.“
    He liked sparring with this woman, and he was gradually losing his awe of her, though he had never been so close to a legend. If his father only knew who he was sitting with right now. And Granddad – how he wished that beloved old man had lived long enough to see this night.
    „We always fingerprint the householders,“ said Heller, as if she had never called this a lie and called it right. „You see, this is the way we eliminate – “
    „No,“ she said, still smiling. „There’s no need for elimination prints. You don’t care what he touched or we touched, not in a burglary with a dead suspect.“ She turned to Riker. „Sorry. I’ve watched entirely too much television.“
    Resignation was in her face when she turned his way. She knew why the cops had come to her door and why they had stayed so long.
    „Okay, you got us,“ said Riker. „We lied about the prints. But you can see why. We got problems here.“ He lit another cigarette and watched the smoke curl, wondering if he could turn her suspicions around. „Civilians have TV ideas about how this works, when a good taxpayer, like yourself, kills a criminal type – like our friend on the floor out there.“ Riker nodded in the direction of the crime scene down the hall, „You think the cops just show up as a courtesy. They take the dead body off your hands, maybe even clean up the mess for you. Then they write you an excuse note for a homicide.“
    He waved this idea away with one hand. „Naw. When we find a body with a pair of shears stuck in the chest, we call it unnatural death. Doesn’t matter if the victim is scum – and, believe me, this guy would have to do some social climbing before we could call him anything as grand as scum. But he still gets a full homicide investigation. Now first we had to figure out which cophouse owns the crime scene. If the perp came to rob you, then the case goes to Robbery Homicide Division. If not, then it could go to the West Side cops. They showed up first, and it’s their turf. And then there’s me and Mallory. We ‘re from Special Crimes Unit. We might get the case ‘cause we had a prior interest in the dead man.“
    „So how many detectives are fighting over the body?“
    „Only one left standing out there.“ Heller turned his eyes to the hallway. „The body belongs to Riker’s partner, Mallory.“
    „And I predicted that.“ Riker turned his face to Nedda’s. „She was the catching detective on your dead man’s three murders. Too bad we can’t turn up your ice pick.“ He watched Nedda Winter’s body relax as she slid back into a comfort zone, believing that she was merely suspected of homicide.
    „Yes, I see the problem,“ she said. „You have to be sure the pick belonged to him before you can close out the case. As I said, I’ve never had any use for an ice pick.“
    „Well, it’s a big house,“ said Riker.