Mickey recalls a school outing when she was eleven and Kacey was nine. They went with their classmates to a performance of The Nutcracker. The children come from a poor neighborhood and feel completely out of place among the middle-class families attending the theater. Mickey is impressed by the Academy of Music and the make-believe world onstage.

When Kacey and the others start a ruckus that disturbs the other theatergoers, the group is ejected at intermission. Mickey says, “Kacey was like this, always: doing what she shouldn’t do, demanding a rebuke, daring the adults in her life to come down harder and harder on her, testing the limits of their anger” (57).

Mickey is irritated by Lafferty’s dismissive attitude toward the prostitutes of Kensington and tells Ahearn that she doesn’t want to be partnered with him anymore. Until her regular partner, Truman Dawes, returns from sick leave, she decides to work solo. One morning at roll call, a detective from Homicide, Davis Nguyen, tells the patrol officers that two girls have been strangled in Kensington, and the Jane Doe that Mickey discovered might be the third victim of a serial killer.

After hearing this news, Mickey is concerned about her sister and decides to check up on Kacey.