Number Twelve is an urban legend in 2060 New York City. The hot club in the 1960s, it is now reported to be haunted…and cursed. Lieutenant Eve Dallas is called there to investigate the apparent murder of Radcliff Hopkins, its new owner and the grandson of the man who made Number Twelve a cultural icon. Several bullets from a banned gun end his dream of returning the building to its former glory.
Eve Dallas is one tough cop. She's got no problem dealing with a holiday reveler in a red suit who plunges thirty-seven stories and gives new meaning to the term "sidewalk Santa." But when she gets back to the station and Trudy Lombard shows up, it's all Eve can do to hold it together. Instantly, she's plunged back into the past, to the days when she was a vulnerable, traumatized girl - trapped in foster care with the twisted woman who now sits in front of her, smiling.
A pioneer of modern reconstructive and cosmetic surgery, Dr. Wilfred B. Icove, is found dead in his office-murdered in a chillingly efficient manner: one swift stab to the heart. Struck by the immaculate condition of the crime scene, Dallas suspects a professional killing. Security disks show a stunningly beautiful woman calmly entering and leaving the building-the good doctor's final appointment.
The members of the Swisher family were murdered in their beds with brutal, military precision. The state-of-the-art security was breached, and the killers used night-vision equipment to find their way through the cozy, middle-class house. Clearly, Dallas is dealing with pros. It seems the only mistake they made was to overlook the nine-year-old girl cowering in the darkened kitchen. Now Nixie Swisher is an orphan-and the sole eyewitness to a seemingly inexplicable crime.
The summer had been long hot and bloody. Fall, with its cooler temperatures was coming. Maybe people wouldn't be as inclined to kill each other. But she doubted it.' Eve Dallas' latest homicide case is a particularly vicious case. A young mother, Elisa Maplewood, is found raped and strangled in the park, her body naked but for what appears to be a red ribbon tied around her neck. As Eve starts investigating Elisa's friends and relations, an offer of help comes from an unlikely source. The only reason Eve agrees to meet with psychic Celina Sanchez is that she is a friend of a friend.
