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"The world is going to hell, Monique."

"People have slipped into complacency, and here's what we're going to do about it," she says. "I've set the stage. Now we create the drama."

Every day with Lamont is drama.

She toys with her latte, looks around to see who's looking at her. "How do we attention? How do we take people who are jaded, desensitized, and make them care about crime? Care so much they decide to get involved at a grass-roots level? Can't be gangs, drugs, carjackings, robberies, burglaries. Why? Because people want a crime problem that's, let's be honest,' front-page news but happens to others, not to them."

"I wasn't aware people actually want a crime problem."

He notices a skinny young woman with kinky red hair loitering near a Japanese maple not far from them. Dressed like Raggedy Ann, right down to her striped stockings and clunky shoes. Saw her the other week, in downtown Cambridge, loitering around the courthouse, probably some petty crime like shoplifting.

"An unsolved sexual homicide," Lamont is saying. "April fourth, 1962, Watertown."

"I see. Not a cold case this time but a frozen one," he says, keeping his eye on Raggedy Ann. "I'm surprised you even know where Watertown is."

In Middlesex County, her jurisdiction-along with some sixty other modest municipalities she doesn't give a damn about.

"Four square miles, population thirty-five thousand, very diverse ethnic base," she says. "The perfect crime that just so happens to have been committed in the perfect microcosm for my initiative. The chief will partner you up with his lead detective& You know, the one who drives that monstrous scene truck. Oh, what is it the call her?

'"Stump."

"That's right. Because she's short and fat."

"She has a prosthesis, a below-the-knee amputation," he says.

"Cops can be so insensitive. I believe the two of you know each other, from the little grocery store around the corner from where she works a second job. So that's a good start. Helps to be friends with someone you're going to spend a lot of time with."

"It's an upscale gourmet shop, and it isn't just a second job, and we're not friends."

"You sound defensive. The two of you go out, maybe not get along? Because that could be a problem."

"Nothing personal between us, never even worked a case with her," Win says. "But I think you have, since Watertown has plenty of crime and she's been around as long as you have."

"Why? Has she talked about me."

"Usually we talk about cheese."

Lamont glances at her watch. "Let's go to the facts of the case. Janie Brolin."

"Never heard of her."

"British. She was blind, decided to spend a year in the States, chose Watertown, most likely because of Perkins, probably the most famous school for the blind in the world. Where Helen Keller went."

"Perkins wasn't located in Watertown back in the Helen Keller days. It was in Boston."

"And why would you know trivia like that?"

"Because I'm a trivial person. And obviously you've been planning this drama for a while. So why did you wait until the last minute to tell me about it?"

"This is very sensitive and must be handled very discreetly. Imagine being blind and realizing there's an intruder inside your apartment. That horror factor and something far more important. I think you're going to discover she very well may have been the Boston Strangler's first victim.

"You said early April 1962?" Win frowns. "His alleged first murder wasn't until two months later, in June."

"Doesn't mean he hadn't killed before, just that earlier cases weren't linked to him."

"How do you propose we prove the Janie Brolin murder-or the Strangler's other thirteen alleged murders, for that matter-was committed by him, when we still don't know who he was?"

"We have Alberto DeSalvo's DNA."

"No one's ever proved he was the Strangler, and more to the point, do we have DNA from the Janie Brolin as for comparison?"

"That's for you to find out."

He can tell by her demeanor there's no DNA and she damn well knows it. Why would there be, some forty-five years later? Back then, there was no such thing as forensic DNA or even a thought that there might be someday. So forget proving or disproving anything, as far as he's concerned.

"It's never too late for justice," Lamont pontificates-or Lamonticates, as he calls it. "It's time to unite citizens and police in fighting crime. To take back our neighborhoods, not just here but worldwide. "We're going to create a model that will be studied everywhere."

Raggedy Ann is sending text messages on her cell phone. What a whack job. Harvard Square's full of them. The other day, Win say some guy licking the sidewalk in front of the Coop.

"Obviously, nothing about this to the press until the case is solved. Then, of course, it comes from me. It's too hot for May," she complains, getting up from the picnic table. Watertown tomorrow morning, ten sharp, the chief's office."

She leaves her barely touched latte for him to dutifully toss in the trash.

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