*A few hours earlier, in another part of town*<br/><br/>The snow was pouring down, almost blocking Precinct 13 from view. These days it was officially called Zone 4 Regional Precinct House after the NYPD was restructed in the early 1980s, but none of the people working there called it anything else than Precinct 13. The house was located on the corner of Madison Avenue and 13th Street, just a few blocks away from the north end of Central Park.<br/>The precinct house is a two-story (plus basement), steel-frame building in a Romanesque Revival style. The<br/>lower floor has a red sandstone facade, with two large, arched windows on the west and south sides. Identical windows used to exist on the east side, but they were bricked over in 1977.<br/>Instead of red sandstone, the second floor of the precinct has a facade of red brick with gray brick accents. The windows are conventional rectangular windows without bars, and unlike the windows on the first floor, these actually open. Above the glass windows are tall, brick arches typical of the Romanesque style. On the second floor above the Madison Avenue entrance is a large circular window.<br/>The precinct house contains a small attic that houses the central air-conditioning system added in 1989, much to the relief of the officers.<br/>Large, arched doorways separate the windows on the west and south sides. These doorways are the public<br/>entrances to the station, one on Madison Avenue and one on 13th Street. Over each of these doorways is a stone archway upon which is engraved the department’s motto, To Protect and To Serve.<br/>A third entrance was added on the east wall in 1977, when the city tore down the buildings to the east of the<br/>precinct to add a gated and fenced parking lot for the officers. The windows on that side were bricked over when the offices on the first floor were renovated into holding cells on the south and locker rooms on the north wall. Unlike the two public entrances, the parking lot entrance is magnetically locked and requires a numeric code to open, though the desk sergeant can open the door remotely when someone buzzes in at the door.<br/>There is no door on the north side of the building. Instead, there are three arched windows that face on to a<br/>narrow alley the station shares with Bailey’s Irish Tavern, a favorite watering hole of off-duty officers. All the windows on the first floor have frosted glass and iron bars. The building is elevated about five feet above street level with stone steps leading up to each of the entrances. Only the 13th Street entrance has handicap access. On the corner of Madison and 13th stands a tall, green sign identifying the<br/>precinct house as a National Historical Landmark.<br/>To the east of the building, there is a parking lot capable of holding 15 squad cars and about 30 additional vehicles. Also, the spaces in front of the precinct house on the Madison and 13th Street sides are reserved for squad cars. The parking lot is surrounded by a wrought-iron fence and an electric gate that opens when officers enter a code.<br/>It was 8.30 PM, and hour and a half until Third Shift started. A lone figure stood outside the 13th Street entrance, looking up at the Precinct House. She huddled in the cold, wondering what her first posting after passing the detective exam would be like. She had heard about the 13th Precicnt, but never been there before. Some officers joked that it was cursed. She shivered, unable to tell even herself if it was due to the cold, or something else...