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“As is your affectionate sarcasm, Hatcher.”

“Well, between your discovery of the cell phone and my trip to see the super, we’re pretty much tied for who found the parents’ phone number first. You want to call, or should I do it?”

“You mind?”

“Yeah, no problem. You all right?” Ellie could tell that whatever had caused Rogan to snap earlier at Officer Colombo still had him in a mood.

Before Rogan could answer, they heard the loud crackle of a police radio in the living room outside of the bedroom.

“Colombo, it’s Eng. You still Code 11?”

“Copy. Did you see me walk out of the building? Yeah, I’m still here.”

“We got a problem downstairs.”

Ellie poked her head out of the bedroom to better hear the exchange between Officer Colombo and the man she presumed was his partner posted in the building’s lobby.

“I’ve got a Mr. and Mrs. Gunther here—first names Jonas and Patricia. I’ve explained that we are controlling access to the fourth floor because of a police inquiry right now, but they say their daughter lives in 4C? They’re getting pretty animated.”

Ellie made out another male voice on the radio, this one in the background. And considerably angry. Something about owning the apartment. About how they couldn’t ban him from entering his own property. About how this better not have anything to do with their daughter. In that final sentence, despite his vocal force, Ellie heard more desperation than anger.

“Megan’s parents are in the lobby,” she said to Rogan.

He looked at the bloodstains smeared across the white cotton bedspread, the pale wood floors, and the back of the bedroom door. “No way they can walk into this.”

“I’ll go down,” she offered. “Colombo, tell your partner to grow a pair. He’ll be pulling tunnel watch duty for the next year if he lets those people up here.”

The mother’s eyes.

As soon as Ellie locked eyes with Patricia Gunther, she was certain that the woman already knew what was coming. She knew her entire life was about to change. She knew she was going to learn that her daughter was dead.

Ellie quickly looked away toward the dignified but surprisingly brawny man standing beside the woman. His long face was somber, his brow furrowed. He was worried. Worried and sad. And royally pissed off. But he didn’t know. Not yet. Not like his wife.

“Mr. and Mrs. Gunther?”

“That’s right,” the man said. Next to him, his wife’s head fell forward as she cried out.

“I’m Ellie Hatcher. I’m a detective with the New York City Police Department. We’ve responded to an act of violence in your daughter’s apartment.”

As she delivered the news—two girls, one critical, one who didn’t make it (their daughter, according to the super)—Ellie tried to recite the facts in just the right way. No false melodrama. Enough compassion not to appear cold.

When she was finished, she turned away to allow them a moment of privacy. She went so far as to close her eyes when she spotted their embrace in the reflection of the lobby’s glass door—the strong, tall father crying into his wife’s hair, the mom sobbing against her husband’s chest. She blocked out the sound of their cries by evaluating her own performance.

She had done her best, but she nevertheless knew that Jonas and Patricia Gunther would always remember this scene—Ellie in her black turtleneck and slim gray skirt, this antiseptic lobby with its reproduced abstract art and fake marble floors, Officer Eng posed awkwardly outside the elevators with his hands clasped behind him—as the very worst kind of collision between the impersonal and the intimate.

Once the Gunthers were ready to talk, Ellie borrowed Andrei Gorsky’s office on the second floor. Before the couple was even seated in the two metal folding chairs crammed between the superintendent’s desk and the wall, Mr. Gunther made no secret about where he placed the blame for his daughter’s death.

“This is your people’s fault. We tried to tell you. Just yesterday. We begged you for help.”

“Who, Mr. Gunther? You begged who for help?”

“You. The police. There must at least be some kind of report. We were there for nearly an hour.”

Patricia placed a calming hand on her husband’s forearm. “She doesn’t know what you’re talking about, Jonas. She’ll understand better if we just explain it to her.”

“Fine. You explain to her what we tried to tell them yesterday, while our daughter could still be protected.”

“We went to a precinct yesterday. On Tenth Street.”

“The Sixth Precinct,” Ellie clarified.

“Right. The Sixth. We spoke with a Sergeant Martinez. Our daughter was being stalked on a Web site. It’s called Campus Juice dot com. They told us they’d already talked to the district attorney, and they couldn’t do anything about it.”

“Megan was terrified,” Jonas added. “Whoever was posting that…filth, knew her schedule. He said he was watching her. And you people wouldn’t do anything.”

“The sergeant said they’d had complaints about the site before,” Patricia explained. “Some kind of First Amendment thing that the police couldn’t touch.”

“It was threatening. It was stalking. What are the police for if they—”

“I am very sorry, Mr. Gunther. I’m not going to defend what took place yesterday because I simply don’t know anything about it. I take your word on what occurred, and God knows you’re entitled to be furious right now and forever. But the faster I can figure out who we should be talking to now about what happened in your daughter’s apartment, the sooner I can give you some answers.”

Jonas nodded sternly. “Campus Juice dot com. I assume that today, unlike yesterday, you will be able to make the Web site tell you who was harassing Megan.”

Ellie wrote down the name of the Web site.

“Wait,” Patricia said. “I still have the printouts we showed the sergeant.”

She opened a large brown leather shoulder bag, removed a thin stack of folded white paper, and handed it to Ellie. Ellie skimmed the pages.

“We will definitely contact the Web site to track down whoever wrote these things about your daughter. But did Megan have a sense of who the author might be?”

Jonas shook his head. Patricia quickly followed suit, but Ellie noticed the short pause.

“Mrs. Gunther? Were you going to say something?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head once again. “Megan didn’t have any enemies.”

“Sometimes we have enemies we don’t think of in that way. A boyfriend, maybe? An ex? I noticed she was wearing a heart-shaped pendant.”

“Our daughter was premed,” Jonas said. “She was focused on school.”

Patricia said nothing.

“I see. Because, you know, if there was anyone, anything, you can think of—no matter how far-fetched—it could prevent us from wasting time chasing down false leads. You never know…even someone who was just a friend might have noticed something unusual. It could really help.”

“There was a boy,” Patricia said. Her husband turned quickly in surprise but said nothing. “His name was Keith. I don’t know all the details, but he wanted more from Megan than she was in a position to give. He was clingy, I guess you could say. Last I heard, Megan broke it off a few months ago.”

“Did he give her any trouble about that?” Ellie asked.

“Not that I know of. But, you know, before the breakup, it was on and off, here and there. Megan didn’t tell me much, but I could see she was stressed. I was worried it would get in the way of school, so I was relieved when she finally cut the cord.”

Ellie recalled what the superintendent had said about seeing a guy with a pierced lip accompany Megan to and from her apartment.