His normally ruddy face was pale as a bedsheet. Lines Lee had never noticed before crisscrossed his forehead like errant railroad tracks, and his blue eyes were rimmed with red. If Elena Krieger had fallen victim to the killer, it would be worse than a tragedy—it was nothing less than a disaster. The death of a cop in the line of duty—any cop—always received lavish amounts of media attention in New York, which could be as claustrophobic as a fishbowl when it came to the relationship between the press and the police. But Krieger—that was as bad as it got. A woman, a foreigner, and an undercover agent—and a glamorous, beautiful woman to boot—working on a high-profile case of a serial offender. It was sure to set off a media frenzy. In a city weary with the aftermath of the greatest tragedy in its long history, a story like this would serve as a welcome distraction. All of this had occurred to Lee on his way up on the subway, and he knew that Chuck Morton realized it, too. And it was Morton who would have to answer for it all—to the media, to the police brass, and most painfully, to every cop underneath him.
