The woman's body was found in the early morning, on a bench in a New York City playground. She was clean, her hair neatly arranged and her makeup carefully applied. But other things were very wrong - like the tattoo and piercings, clearly new. The clothes, decades out of date. The fatal wound hidden beneath a ribbon around her neck. And the note: Bad Mommy, written in crayon as if by a child. Eve Dallas turns to the department's top profiler, who confirms what seems obvious to Eve: they're dealing with a killer whose childhood involved some sort of trauma - a situation Eve is all too familiar with herself. Yet the clues suggest a perpetrator who'd be roughly 60 years old, and there are no records of old crimes with a similar MO. What was the trigger that apparently reopened such an old wound and sent someone over the edge? When Eve discovers that other young women - who physically resemble the first victim - have vanished, the clock starts ticking louder. But to solve this case she will need to find her way into a hidden place of dim light and concrete, into the distant past and into the cold depths of a shattered mind.