Company Man

88

Mulligans-never an apostrophe-was a diner on Bainbridge Road in Fenwick famous for its Bolognese sauce, the subject of a yellowed framed article from the Fenwick Free Press on the wall as you entered. The headline was typical of the paper’s dopey, punning style: “A Meaty Subject.” This was the place Nick used to go at three in the morning, after the junior and senior proms. Frank Mulligan was long gone. It was now owned by a guy who’d been a few years ahead of Nick and Eddie in high school, Johnny Frechette, who’d done three years in Ionia for drug trafficking.

Nick hadn’t been here in years, and he noticed that the place had a staleness to it. The Formica tables had a faint cloth pattern, faded to white in the areas where mugs and plates had banged and scraped against it. They were serving breakfast now, and the place smelled of coffee and maple syrup and bacon, all blended into a single aroma: Eau du Diner.

Eddie seemed to know the waitresses here. Probably he came here for breakfast a lot. They were seated in a corner, away from the window. Aside from a few people eating at the counter, the place was empty.

“You look like shit,” Eddie said.

“Thanks,” Nick said irritably. “You too.”

“Well, you’re not going to want to hear this.”

Nick held his breath. “What is it?”

“They ID’d the gun.”

The blood drained from Nick’s face. “You said you tossed it.”

“I did.”

“Then how could that be?”

The two fell silent as an overperfumed waitress arrived with a Silex carafe, and sloshed coffee into their thick white mugs.

“They got all kinds of tricky ballistics shit these days,” Eddie said.

“I don’t get what you’re telling me.” Nick took a hurried sip of his black coffee, scalding his tongue. Maybe he didn’t want to understand what Eddie seemed to be getting at.

“They matched the bullets with the gun.”

“They matched the bullets with what?” Nick was aware that his voice was a bit too loud, and he lowered it at once. “There’s no gun, right? You said it’s gone!”

“Yeah, well, apparently they don’t need a gun anymore.” Eddie popped open a couple of little half-and-half containers and tipped them into his mug, stirring until it turned an unappealing gray. “All’s they need is bullets, ’cause of the big new computer database, I forget what it’s called. They must have matched up the bullets in Stadler’s body with the ones from the scene years ago where I got the piece-how the hell do I know? My source didn’t get into details.”

“Who’s your source?”

Eddie ducked his head to the side. “Forget it.”

“You know this for a fact? You’re one-hundred-percent certain?”

“It’s a fact. Suck it up.”

“Jesus Christ, Eddie, you said everything was cool!” Nick’s voice cracked. “You said the gun wasn’t registered to you. You-you said you picked it up at a crime scene, and there was no record of it anywhere.”

Eddie’s normally confident expression had given way, disconcertingly, to a pallid, sweaty discomfort. “That’s what I thought. Sometimes shit gets out of your control, buddy boy.”

“I don’t believe this,” Nick said, his voice hoarse. “I don’t fucking believe it. What the hell do we do now?”

Eddie set down his coffee mug and gave Nick a stone-cold look. “We do absolutely nothing. We say nothing, admit nothing, we don’t say a fucking word. Are you getting this?”

“But if they-they know the gun I used was one you took-”

“They’re going to try to connect the dots, but they don’t have it nailed down. Maybe they can prove the ammo that killed Stadler came from that gun, but they can’t prove I took it. Everything they got is circumstantial. They got nada when they searched your house-that whole thing was a scare tactic. They got no witnesses, and they got a lot of little forensic shit, and now they got this gun, but in the end it’s all circumstantial. So all they can do now is scare you into talking, see. This is why I’m telling you about it. I want you to be prepared. I don’t want those jokers springing this on you and having you crumble, okay? You got to be a rock.” Eddie took a sip of coffee without moving his eyes from Nick’s.

“They can’t just arrest us? Maybe they don’t need us to talk.”

“No. If neither one of us says a damned thing, they’re not going to arrest.”

“You wouldn’t say anything, would you?” Nick whispered. “You’re not going to say anything, right?”

Eddie smiled a slow smile, and Nick got a shivery feeling. There was something almost sociopathic about Eddie, something dead in his eyes. “Now you’re starting to understand,” he said. “See, at the end of the day, Nick, they don’t give a shit about me. I’m just some small-time corporate security guy, a nobody. You’re the CEO everyone in this town despises. They’re not interested in putting my puny antlers on the wall. You’re the monster buck they’re hunting. You’re the fucking twelve-point rack, okay?”

Nick nodded slowly. The room was turning slowly around him.

“The only way this thing unravels,” Eddie said, “is if you talk. Maybe you decide to play Let’s Make a Deal with the cops. Try to strike your own separate deal-good for you, bad for me. This would be a huge, huge fucking mistake, Nick. Because I will hear about it. You have even the most preliminary, exploratory conversation with those jokers, and I will hear about it in a matter of seconds, Nick-count on it. Believe me, I’m wired into that place. And my lawyer will be in the DA’s office so fast it’ll make your head spin, with an offer they will fucking jump at.”

“Your…lawyer?” Nick croaked.

“See, Nick, let’s be clear what they got me for. It’s called ‘obstruction,’ and it’s no big deal. First offenders get maybe six months, if any time at all, but not me. Not when I agree to tell the whole story, testify truthfully in the grand jury and at the trial. They get a murderer, see. And what do I get out of it? A walk. Not even probation. It’s a sure thing, Nick.”

“But you wouldn’t do that, would you?” Nick said. He heard his own voice, and it seemed to be coming from very far away. “You’d never do that, right?”

“Only if you change the rules of the game, bud. Only if you talk. Though I gotta tell you, I shoulda done this on day one. Why I ever came over to help you that night, I don’t know. Goodness of my heart, I guess. Help an old buddy who’s in deep shit. I shoulda said, Sorry, not me, amigo, and just stayed in bed. Look what I get for being a nice guy. Very least, I should have shopped you long ago. Rolled over, made a deal. I don’t know why I didn’t. Anyway, what’s done is done, but let’s be crystal clear, I am not going down for this. You try to make a deal, you talk, and at that point I’m gonna do what’s in my own best interests.”

Nick couldn’t catch his breath. “I’m not going to talk,” he said.

Eddie gave him a sidelong glance, and he smiled as if he were enjoying this. “All you gotta do, Nicky, is hold it together, and we’re going to be just fine, you and me. Keep your fucking mouth shut, don’t panic, and we’ll ride this out.”

The waitress was back, wielding her glass carafe. “Freshen your coffee?” she said.

Neither Eddie nor Nick responded at first, and then Nick said slowly, not looking at her, “I think we’re okay.”

“That’s right,” Eddie said. “We’re okay. We’re just fine.”

89

The Fenwick Racquet Club wasn’t a place where much tennis was played, as far as Nick could tell. But for Henry Hutchens-Hutch, as he was always known-it had evidently become a home away from home. Hutch had been Stratton’s chief financial officer back when the position was called, less grandly, controller. He had served Old Man Devries for a quarter of a century, and when Nick took over, he helped prepare the financial statements for the sale to Fairfield. Did a good job of it too. His manner was unfailingly courtly, maybe a little formal. And when Nick had come to his office-that’s how he did it, in Hutch’s office, not his own-and told him that Fairfield wanted to replace him with one of their own, he didn’t utter a word of protest.

Nick had told him the truth about Fairfield. Still, they both knew that if Nick had seriously objected, Fairfield would have backed down. Nick hadn’t. Hutch was a highly competent old-school controller. But Fairfield was loaded up with high-powered financial engineers, ready to lecture you on the advantages of activity-based costing and economic-value-added accounting systems. They viewed Hutch as a green-eyeshades guy; he didn’t use words like “strategic.” Scott McNally was someone the people at Fairfield were comfortable with, and he was someone who could help Nick take Stratton to the next level. The next level-there was a time when Nick couldn’t get enough of that phrase; now the cliché had the stink of yesterday’s breakfast.

“Long time between drinks, Nick,” Hutch said as Nick joined him at a table inside the clubhouse. He lifted a martini glass, and smiled crookedly, but didn’t stand. “Join me?”

Hutch had the kind of ruddy complexion that looked like good health from a distance. Up close, Nick could see the alcohol-inflamed capillaries. Even his sweat seemed juniper-scented.

“It’s a little early for me,” Nick said. Christ, it wasn’t even noon yet.

“Well, of course,” Hutch said, with his Thurston Howell III purr. “You’re a working man. With an office to go to. And lots of employees who depend on you.” He drained the last drops of his drink, and signaled to the waiter for another.

“For the moment, anyway.”

Hutch clasped his hands together. “You must be riding high, though. Layoffs-everyone talks about the layoffs! They must be ecstatic in Boston. To think that my own humble self was to be the first of so many on the gallows. It’s kind of an honor, really.”

Nick blanched. “The company owes you a lot, Hutch. I’ve always been grateful to you, personally.”

“Oh please. Not everyone has the privilege of selling the rope to one’s own hangman.” Another drink was placed before him. “Thank you, Vinnie,” Hutch murmured. The waiter, a sixtyish man whose neck strained against the club-required red bowtie, nodded pleasantly.

“A tomato juice would be great,” Nick told him.

“You surprised a great many people, you know,” Hutch went on. He popped the cocktail olive into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “Have to keep my strength up,” he added with a wink.

“What happened has been hard for everyone. A lot of good people have been hurt. I’m very aware of that.”

“You misunderstand,” Hutch said. “I didn’t mean about the layoffs. I just meant that not everyone took you to be CEO material. A solid company man, absolutely. But not quite cut out for the corner office.”

“Well.” Nick looked around, taking in the fieldstone fireplace, the white tablecloths, the red patterned wall-to-wall carpet. “I guess Old Man Devries-”

“It had nothing to do with Milton,” Hutch said sharply. “If he’d wanted to, Milton could have named you president, or chief operating officer. One of those next-in-line positions. That’s the custom with a corporate heir apparent. He did not choose to do so.”

“Fair enough,” Nick said, trying not to bridle.

“He was fond of you. We all were. But when the issue came up, well…” Hutch peered into the watery depths of his cocktail. “Milton considered you a little callow. Too much of a big-man-on-campus type. Someone too concerned with being popular to be a real leader.” He looked up. “Thought you didn’t have the killer instinct. Now there’s one heck of an irony.”

Nick’s face was hot. “Being that you’re such a connoisseur of irony, you might enjoy this one.” He unzipped his black leather portfolio and presented Hutch with the contract that Eddie had taken from Scott’s e-mail.

“What is this?”

“You tell me.” If you’re not too drunk to make sense of it, Nick thought.

Hutch reached for his reading glasses, convex lenses with wire frames, and started paging through the document. A few times he tapped on the pages and gave a dry chuckle. “My, my,” he finally said. “I take it this isn’t your masterwork.”

“Not mine.”

“Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour: Stratton hath need of thee.” Hutch put his reading glasses away, and made tsk-tsking sounds. “Pacific Rim Investors,” he said, and then: “I can’t even pronounce this name-is it Malaysian? Good Lord.” He looked up, bleary-eyed. “So much for the match made in Heaven. Looks like your white knights came riding in from Boston only to sell Stratton down the Yangtze River.”

Nick explained what Stephanie Alstrom had told him about the real owner being the Chinese P.L.A.

“Oh, that’s rich,” Hutch said happily. “That’s really a thing of beauty. Though it’s not exactly sporting to put one over on the Communists like that these days, is it?”

“Put one over?”

“If these balance sheets are authentic, then Stratton’s doing marvelously well. But I have a suspicion they’re as phony as a glass apple.”

Lipstick on a pig, Nick thought.

“If I had access to your most recent P and L statements, and if I weren’t three sheets to the wind, and if I actually cared, I could give you a breakdown of this document that was so clear even you could understand it.” He took a swallow of his drink. “But even in my current condition, I can tell you that somebody’s been coloring outside the lines. For one thing, you’re taking your reserves against losses from your last profitable year and using it to cover over the new tide of red ink. That’s ‘cookie jar’ accounting, and we both know about that company that got caught doing it not so long ago and had to pay three billion dollars in damages to make it all better. It’s not nice to fool with your accrued liability.”

“What good is that?” Nick said. “Once the new owners find out the truth, they’ll hit Fairfield with a huge lawsuit.”

“Ah, but you see, that’s the beauty part, my boy. They can’t sue.”

“Why not?”

“There’s a clever non-litigation clause here,” Hutch said, tapping the paper. “Once the deal goes through, no lawsuits are permitted over any representations and warranties made herein, ya de ya de ya.”

“Why in the world would the buyers agree to that?”

“I think the answer is manifest,” Hutch said, looking up again. “It’s in the side agreement. Guaranteeing a seven-figure payout to someone, no doubt a Chinese government official with the ability to speed through the acquisition.”

“A bribe.”

“You put it so harshly, son. The Chinese have a wonderful tradition of giving red envelopes of hong bao-good-luck money-to start off the lunar new year right.”

“Ten million dollars is a lot of good-luck money for one man.”

“Indeed. But to grease a deal like this through the Chinese bureaucracy without endless quibbling-well, that’s quite a bargain, isn’t it?”

“It’s early for Chinese New Year, isn’t it?”

“Now you’re catching on. Unless you can think of some other reason why Stratton would be routing him his money to a numbered account in Macau. From where, I’ll wager, it was immediately transferred to another account at the Bank of Commerce of Labuan.”

“Labuan?”

“Labuan is an island off the coast of Malaysia. A speck of sand, and a great big offshore financial services industry. The bankers of Labuan make the Swiss seem gabby. Basically, it’s where Chinese kleptocrats like to sock away their ill-gotten gains.”

“I had no idea.”

“I’m sure they were counting on that. Good boys and girls don’t know about Labuan. And they certainly don’t wire money there.”

“Christ,” Nick said. “How many people are in on this thing?”

“Impossible to say, though it only takes two countersigners to execute it. One corporate officer-that would be your charming young CFO-and a managing partner from Fairfield. It does seem a little low-rent, the whole thing, but I suppose these are two young men in a hurry. There are a lot of people in a hurry these days. Sure you won’t join me in a drink?”

“Still waiting for my tomato juice,” Nick said. “Seems to be taking an awfully long time.”

“Oh dear,” Hutch said in a low voice. “I should have realized. Doubt it’s ever going to come, Vinnie being your waiter and all. I guess you must be used to this sort of thing.”

“What are you saying?”

Hutch glanced at the waiter and shrugged elaborately. “It’s just that you laid off his brother.”

90

Audrey tracked down Bugbee on his cell phone at the Burger Shack, the place he liked to go for lunch. He could barely hear her. In the background was a cacophony of laughter and clinking plates and bad rock music.

“When are you coming back?” she said several times.

“I’m on lunch.”

“I can tell that. But this is important.”

“What?”

“You’d better get over here.”

“I said it can wait.”

“No, it can’t,” she said.

“I’m at the Burger Shack for the next-”

“See you there,” she said, and she hung up before he could object.

Bugbee quickly got over his pique at having his lunch with the guys-three uniformed officers, all around his age-interrupted.

He excused himself, and he and Audrey found an empty booth.

“That’s it,” he said when Audrey told him about the weapon match. “We got ’em.”

“It’s still tenuous,” she said. “It’s circumstantial.”

He glared. There was a large splotch of ketchup on his hideous tie, which only improved its appearance. “The fuck are you waiting for-Nick Conover’s diary with a special entry for that night saying, I plugged the guy, me and Eddie?”

“We’re connecting dots that I don’t know if the prosecutor’s going to let us connect.”

“Connecting what fucking dots?” he spat out.

She briefly considered asking him to cut out the potty-mouth stuff, but now was not the time. “We know this suggests that Eddie Rinaldi and Nick Conover were behind it.”

“Tell me something I don’t know-”

“Will you shut up for a second, please?” It was worth saying just to see Bugbee’s stunned expression. “The gun that was used to kill Stadler was also used on a no-gun case that Eddie Rinaldi worked six years ago. But does that prove Rinaldi pocketed the gun back in Grand Rapids? The case is still full of holes.”

“Yeah? I don’t think so, and neither do you.”

“Our opinion isn’t the same thing as what’s going to convince the DA to prosecute. Especially in a capital case involving the CEO of a huge corporation and one of his top officers.”

“Tell you something-once we hook our boy Eddie up to a polygraph, he’ll crack.”

“He doesn’t have to submit to a polygraph.”

“If he’s facing a first-degree murder charge and life without parole, believe me, he’ll take it.” He leaned back in the booth, savoring the moment. “This is beautiful. Shit, this is beautiful.” He smiled, and she realized that this was the first time she’d seen him give a genuine smile of pleasure. It looked wrong on his face, didn’t come naturally, looked like a disturbance in the natural order of things. His cheeks creased deeply like heavily starched fabric.

“Conover won’t take a polygraph,” Audrey said. “Let’s face it, we still don’t know which one of them the shooter is,” Audrey said.

“Fuck it. Charge ’em both with first-degree murder, and sort it out later. Whoever comes to the window first gets the deal, that’s how it works.”

“I don’t know if we’re even going to get to that point, if we’ll get a prosecutor to write out a warrant.”

“So you go prosecutor-shopping. Come on. You know how the game works.”

“Noyce really frowns on that.”

“Screw Noyce. This is our case, I told you. Not his.”

“Still,” she said. “I don’t know. I don’t want to mess this up.”

Bugbee started counting on his left hand, starting with his thumb. “We got the soil match, we got the fucking erased surveillance tape, we got Conover’s alarm going off at two A.M., followed by the desperate cell phone call, we got Schizo Man with a history of attacks on the suspect, and now we got a gun match.” He held up five fingers triumphantly. “The fuck else you want? I say we run with it.”

“I want to pass this by Noyce first.”

“You want to run to Daddy?” He shook his head. “Haven’t you figured out that Noyce isn’t our friend?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Take a look. The closer we get to Stratton’s CEO, the harder Noyce’s been fighting us, right? He doesn’t want us taking on the big kahuna. Wouldn’t surprise me if he’s in Stratton’s pocket.”

“Come on.”

“I’m fucking serious. Something’s off about the way that guy’s taking their side.”

“He’s got to be cautious on a case this big.”

“This is way beyond cautious. You notice how when I searched Rinaldi’s condo, total surprise, and all of a sudden a couple of guns are missing from his rack, like someone gave him a heads-up?”

“Or maybe he dumped them after he or Conover murdered Stadler,” Audrey said. “Or Conover called him, told him a team was coming to search Conover’s house, and Eddie races home and disposes of the evidence.”

“Yeah, any of those are possible. Theoretically. Then you notice how Noyce is trying to make life difficult for you, jam up your schedule with other shit so you don’t have time to do this right? Look, Audrey, I don’t trust the guy.”

“He’s my friend, Roy,” she said softly.

“Oh, is he?” Bugbee said. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”

She didn’t reply.

91

Dorothy Devries’s mansion on Michigan Avenue in East Fenwick didn’t seem quite as big as Nick remembered it, but was possibly even darker. Outside, the gables and peaked eaves stopped just shy of Addams Family gothic. Inside, wooden floors were stained to a chocolate hue and partly covered with blood red Orientals. The furniture was either a dark mahogany or covered in a dark damask. She kept the curtains drawn, and he remembered her once saying something about how sunlight could bleach the fabrics. The moon glow of her pale skin was the brightest thing in the house.

“Did you say you wanted tea?” she asked, squinting at him. She sat almost motionless in a burgundy-clad Queen Anne’s chair. There was a chandelier above them, which she kept pointedly unlit.

“No thanks,” he said.

“But I’ve interrupted you,” she said. “Please go on.”

“Well, the basic situation is what I’ve described. You and I worked hard on the sale to Fairfield, and we did that because we wanted to preserve your father’s legacy. And your husband’s.”

“Legacy,” she repeated. In the gloom, he wasn’t sure whether her dress was charcoal gray or navy. “That’s a pretty word.”

“And a pretty big accomplishment,” he said. She seemed to brighten. “Harold Stratton created a company that did what it did as well as-or better than-any other, and he did it right here in Fenwick. And then your husband put Fenwick on the map, as far as corporate America was concerned.” Dorothy had had a glossy vanity biography of her husband, Milton, privately printed, copies distributed widely. Nick knew she always responded to the most unctuous praise of her father’s historical significance. “So the prospect of seeing Stratton bundled in brown paper and shipped to the Far East-well, I think he’d be appalled. I know I am. It isn’t right. It’s not right for Fenwick, and it’s not right for Stratton.”

Mrs. Devries blinked. “But you’re telling me all this for a reason.”

“Well, sure.”

“I’m all ears, Nicholas.” She used his full name as if he were a grade student, and a little small for all three syllables.

“You’re part owner of the company. You sit on the board. I thought if I could enlist your support, we might be able to present the case together to the others. That way, they’d see it wasn’t just about a manager trying to save his job. Because this deal-well, frankly, it would be a disaster. The Chinese aren’t interested in our manufacturing facilities. They’ve got their own. They’re going to gut Stratton, run a fire sale of the shop machines, and pass out walking papers to the remaining employees.”

“That puts things rather starkly.”

“It’s a stark situation.”

“Well, you do have a flair for the dramatic. That isn’t a criticism. But then you haven’t come here to consult, have you?”

“Sure I have.”

“Because I didn’t hear you ask me my opinion. I heard you telling me yours.”

“I just thought I should fill you in,” Nick said, perplexed. “See what you thought.” A pause. “I’m interested in getting your…help and guidance.”

A watery smile. “Is that right?” she said.

Nick looked at her, and his face started to prickle. Had she already known before I came here?

“I must say I’m a little taken aback to hear you make an argument that’s based on sentiment, as opposed to dollars and cents. Because, you see, I don’t recall your seeking my help or guidance when you decided to discontinue the Stratton Ultra line. Which was, of course, one of my husband’s proudest legacies.” In a quiet voice, she added, “Pretty word.”

Nick said nothing.

“And I don’t recall your seeking my help or guidance when you decided to lay off five thousand workers, dragging the Stratton name through the mud,” she went on. “And after Milton worked so hard to make it a byword for what was best about Fenwick. That was part of his legacy, too, Nicholas.”

“Dorothy, you voted to approve the layoffs.”

“Oh, as if I could stop that train in its tracks! But please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not complaining. We sold the firm. Almost all of it belongs to Fairfield Partners. And so we must be very businesslike about the whole thing.”

“With all respect, Dorothy, aren’t you bothered by the idea of Stratton being owned by-by the Chinese government? The Communist Chinese?”

Dorothy Devries shot him a wintry look. “Please. Coming from you? Business is business. My family made good money when we sold to Fairfield, and we stand to make quite a bit more when they sell it to this consortium.”

“But for God’s sake-?” He saw something in her face. “You knew all about it, didn’t you?”

She refused to reply. “Nicholas, I didn’t give you Milton’s job in order for you to dismantle his company, believe it or not. But you did. You cheesed it up with all that Office of the Future eyewash. You got rid of what was real, what was solid, and replaced it with gilt and papier mâchè. Milton would have been appalled. Though I suppose I really can’t judge you without judging myself, can I? I’m the one who gave you the keys to the corner office.”

“Yes,” Nick said, finally. “And why did you?”

Dorothy sat silent for a while. “As you might imagine,” she said with a drawn smile, “I’ve often asked myself the same thing.”

92

Audrey had promised to keep Noyce in the loop, that was the thing. Strictly speaking, she knew she had the right to go right to the prosecutor’s office and request an arrest warrant for Conover and Rinaldi without even telling Noyce. She knew that. But it wasn’t right to exclude him. It was a matter of courtesy to keep Noyce updated. She’d told him about the gun match as soon as she found out, and there was no reason to start keeping him in the dark now. It would infuriate him, but worse, it would hurt his feelings, and she wasn’t about to do that.

Music was playing softly in Noyce’s office as she entered. Audrey recognized Duke Ellington’s “Mood Indigo,” a trumpet solo.

“Is that Louis?” she asked.

Noyce nodded, absorbed. “Ellington and Armstrong recorded this in one take. Unbelievable.”

“Sure is.”

“The Duke was great at composing under deadline pressure, you know. The night before a recording date, he’s waiting for his mother to finish cooking dinner, and he goes to his piano, and in fifteen minutes he knocks off a piece he calls ‘Dreamy Blues.’ Next night his band plays it over the radio, broadcasting from the Cotton Club. Later he renames it ‘Mood Indigo.’” Noyce shook his head, waited for the song to end, and then clicked off the CD player. “What can I do you for?”

“I think we’ve got enough to arrest Conover and Rinaldi.”

Noyce’s eyes widened as she explained, then just as quickly narrowed. “Audrey, let me take you out for ice cream.”

“I’m trying not to eat-”

“Well, you can watch. I’ve been thinking about one of those chocolate-dipped strawberry sundaes at the Dairy Queen.”

Noyce tucked into a boat-sized dish of soft-serve vanilla ice cream smothered in syrupy strawberries, while Audrey tried to avert her eyes, because it looked too good, and her will was weak when it came to desserts, especially in the midafternoon.

“You don’t want your butt out there for false arrest, Aud,” he said, a strawberry smear at the side of his mouth. “You realize who you’re dealing with, don’t you?”

“You think Nicholas Conover’s all that powerful?”

“He’s a wealthy and powerful guy, but more to the point, he now works for a holding company in Boston that’s going to be intent on protecting their investment. And if that means suing the police department in the town of Fenwick, Michigan, they’ve got the resources to do it. That means they sue you. And us.”

“That could work the other way too,” she pointed out. Her stomach was growling, and her mouth kept filling with saliva. “The holding company could get nervous about having a CEO charged with first-degree murder and jettison him.”

Noyce didn’t look up from his ice cream. “You willing to take that chance?”

“If I have a genuine belief that Conover and Rinaldi were involved in a homicide, and I got a prosecutor to back me up on it, how is that false arrest?”

“It just means more of us in the soup. Plus, I can tell you, you’re not going to get a prosecutor to write a warrant unless he’s sure he can win the case. And I worry that we’re still thin on the ground here.”

“But look at what we’ve got, Jack-”

He looked up. “Well, let’s take a look at it, Aud. What’s your most damaging lead? The gun? So you’ve got Rinaldi on some case in Grand Rapids, and the same gun in that one turns up here.”

“Which is no coincidence. Rinaldi had a reputation as a bad cop.”

“Now, you’ve got to be careful there. That’s hearsay. Cops are always gossiping, stabbing each other in the back, you know that better than anyone.” He sighed. “No one’s going to let you run with that. If you want to say he took the gun, fine-but you don’t have any proof of that.”

“No, but-”

“Look at it through the eyes of a defense attorney. The same gun used in Grand Rapids turned up here? Well, you think that’s the first time a gun was used in Grand Rapids and here? Where do you think our drug dealers get their guns? Flint, Lansing, Detroit, Grand Rapids. They’ve got to come from somewhere.”

Audrey fell silent, watching him spoon the soft-serve, careful to catch a dollop of strawberry goo in each spoonful.

“Far more likely, in fact,” Noyce went on, “is that some shitbird in Fenwick bought a piece from some other shitbird in GR. Pardon my French, Audrey.”

“But the hydroseed stuff-the soil match-”

“That’s an awfully slender reed to hang a first-degree murder on, don’t you think?”

She felt increasingly desperate. “The cell phone call Conover lied about-”

“Again, maybe he really did get the day wrong. Audrey, I’m just being devil’s advocate here, okay?”

“But Conover’s own security system-the video for that night was erased, and we can prove it.”

“You can prove it was erased, or you can prove the tape recycled? There’s quite a difference.”

Noyce had clearly been talking to Kevin Lenehan. “You have a point,” she conceded.

“Then there’s the fact that both you and Bugbee canvassed Conover’s neighbors, and not one of them heard a shot that night.”

“Jack, you know how far apart the houses are in Fenwicke Estates? Plus, a three-eighty isn’t all that loud.”

“Audrey. You’ve got no blood, no weapon, no footprints, no witnesses. What do you have?”

“Motive and opportunity. A stalker with a history of violence and a handgun who was stalking the CEO of Stratton-”

“Unarmed, as far as we know.”

“Even worse for Conover if Stadler was unarmed.”

“And you yourself told me the guy had no prior history of violence. ‘Gentle as a lamb,’ wasn’t that the phrase you used? Audrey, listen. If you had a solid case against these guys, no one would be happier than me. I’d love to take ’em down for this murder, you kidding me? But I don’t want us to fuck it up. I don’t want us to go off half-cocked.”

“I know we have a case here,” she said.

“You know what you are? You’re an optimist, down deep.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Anyone who loves God the way you do’s got to be an optimist. But you see, here’s the sad truth. The longer you stay in this job, the harder it is to stay an optimist. Witnesses recant and the guilty go free and cases don’t get solved. Pessimism, cynicism-that’s the natural order. Audrey, did I ever tell you about the case I had when I was just starting out? Woman shot in the head standing in her front parlor, shifty cheating husband, we kept catching him lying about his alibis, which kept changing. The more we looked at him, the more we were convinced he was the shooter.”

“He wasn’t,” she said, impatient.

“You know why he kept lying about his alibi? Turned out he was in the sack with his sister-in-law at the time. This guy wouldn’t own up to the fact that he was cheating on his wife even when he was faced with a first-degree murder charge. He didn’t crack until just before the trial was scheduled, the bastard. And you know what it was killed the wife? Just a random, stray bullet through her open window, a street shooting gone bad. Wasn’t her lucky day. Or maybe that’s what you get for living in a bad neighborhood. What seemed so obvious to us turned out not to be true when we really dug into it.”

“I get it, Jack,” she said, watching him scrape the boat clean, pleased to see that his last spoonful contained equal portions of ice cream and strawberry. “But we’ve dug into it.”

“A crazy guy’s found in a Dumpster in the dog pound, with fake crack on him-I’m sorry, but you’ve got to go with a crack murder as your central hypothesis. Not some white-collar CEO with so much to lose. You know the old saying-in Texas, when you hear approaching hoofbeats, you don’t think zebra. You gotta think horses. And I think you’re going after a zebra here.”

“That’s not-”

“Oh, I know it would be a hell of a lot more intriguing to spot a zebra than a horse, but you’ve always got to consider the likelihoods. Because ultimately your time is limited. Who’s that woman who calls you every week?”

“Ethel Dorsey?”

“Tyrone’s her son, probably killed in a drug deal, right? How much time have you been putting in on that case?”

“I haven’t really had much time recently.”

“No, you haven’t. And if I know you, I’ll bet you feel that you’re letting Ethel Dorsey down.”

“I-” she faltered.

“You’re good, and you have the potential to be great. You can make a real difference. But think of how many other cases are clamoring for your attention. There’s only so many hours in the day, right?”

“I understand.” She was shaken; what he said made sense.

“There’s another case I want you to get involved in. Not instead of this one, but in addition to it. One that will really, I think, give you an opportunity to shine. Instead of just getting bogged down in this dog-pound murder. Now, Jensen’s got the Hernandez robbery trial on Monday, but he’s going on vacation, so I’d like you to handle it.”

“Isn’t Phelps the secondary on that? I only did one follow-up interview.”

“Phelps is on personal leave. I need you on this. And the prosecutor wants a pretrial conference on Friday.”

“Friday? That’s-that’s in two days!”

“You can do it. I know you can.”

She was befuddled and most of all depressed now. “You know,” she said in a small voice, “that looks good, what you had. What do I ask for?”

93

Marta came to the front hall, holding a dish towel in wet hands. No doubt she’d heard the little double beep of the alarm system when he opened the door. Somewhere in the background were peals of girlish laughter.

“Something wrong?” Nick asked her.

Marta shook her head. “Everything’s fine,” she said huffily, her tone implying the exact opposite.

“Is it Luke?”

Marta stiffened. “Miss Stadler invited herself over.”

“Oh,” Nick said. “That’s fine.”

Marta shrugged unhappily. It wasn’t fine with her.

“Is there a problem, then?” Nick asked. What was with this Mrs. Danvers act, anyway?

“It’s just getting hard to keep track of who’s in the family and who isn’t, these days.”

It was an invitation to a heavy conversation; Nick silently declined.

In the family room he found Cassie, in an oversized Stratton T-shirt and black jeans, sitting with Julia, who was wearing an outfit Nick hadn’t seen before, a turquoise velour tracksuit. Very J. Lo. The word “Juicy” ran across her butt.

He stood at the threshold and watched, unnoticed.

“There’s nothing dirty about it,” Cassie was saying.

“Dirty pillows!” Julia said, in silly mode. “Dirty pillows!”

“You get older, your body changes. Boys seem less yucky. You start to feel more private about your body. Everyone goes through it. It’s as natural as granola.”

Julia giggled at that, somehow anxious and pleased at the same time. “I hate granola,” she said.

“The main thing is, don’t feel it’s something you can’t talk about. Don’t feel it’s some weird, shameful thing, okay? Tits aren’t the end of the world. Zits, on the other hand…”

Another burst of giggles, less nervous and more high-spirited.

They were having The Talk. Relief washed over him, mixed with a little jealousy over the intimacy Cassie and Julia seemed to have developed. He’d mentioned to Cassie how much he was dreading the prospect of having the girl-stuff talk with his daughter: in his hands, it would probably have ended in some grisly level of mutual embarrassment. Marta, despite her tight jeans, was prim and embarrassed about talking about sex and had let Nick know that she most emphatically didn’t consider it her place to tell Julia about things like periods.

Cassie, though, was talking about it as if it were no big deal, and somehow making it no big deal. Something about her low, commonsensical voice was keeping everything real, down-to-earth, and comfortable. Or at least as comfortable as it could be for a giddy, giggly ten-year-old.

“Lot of things change, lot of things don’t,” Cassie told Julia. “Just remember, whatever happens to you, you’re always going to be your daddy’s little girl.”

Nick cleared his throat, then said to Julia, “Hey, baby.”

“Daddy!” She got up and received his hug.

“Where’s your brother?”

“He’s upstairs working.”

“Good to hear. And where’d you get this outfit?”

“Cassie bought it for me.”

“She did, huh?” A velour tracksuit? It even exposed her tummy. She was ten years old, for Christ’s sake.

Cassie looked up, shrugged sheepishly. “All the fifth-graders consider me their fashion guru,” she said.

When Julia had left to go to her room, Nick looked at Cassie and shrugged. “Thanks, by the way. I gather you were talking about girl stuff with her. Not easy for her old man to do.”

“She’s a sweet pea, Nick. The main thing is that she knows you’re always going to be her daddy, and you’re always going to love her.”

“Stay for dinner?”

“I can’t,” she said.

“Plans?”

“No. I just-you know, what’s that they say about guests and fish? They start stinking after-I forget how many days.”

“You think Julia considers you a guest? Or Luke?”

She couldn’t hide her smile. “You understand, don’t you?”

“Stay. Plus, I could use your take on what’s going on at work.”

“You’ve come to the right place,” she said. “The wisdom tooth of Fenwick, Michigan.”

He told her about his meeting with Dorothy Devries.

“Well, she’s not calling the shots anymore,” Cassie said. “You said Todd Muldaur is.”

“That’s the problem.”

“The question I always like to ask is: Who’s your daddy?”

“Yeah. You and Shaft.”

“So who’s Todd Muldaur’s daddy?”

A shrug. “Willard Osgood is the chairman of Fairfield Partners. But it sounds like he’s become an absentee father.”

“Willard Osgood-the guy with the thick glasses and all that folksy investment advice, right? I read that profile in Fortune you showed me. He’s the one you’ve got to go to.”

“For what? I don’t see the upside.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t Osgood really think of himself as a father figure? What you’re describing doesn’t sound like his style.”

“True,” Nick said. “But times change. The face of the future is probably Todd Muldaur.”

“See, that doesn’t add up to me. The way it’s all been kept under wraps-that’s not just about keeping the details away from you. Is it possible they’re trying to keep the details away from Daddy too?”

“Hmph. I hadn’t thought of that.”

“But it’s possible, right?”

“It’s possible, yes.”

“So maybe you should go right to Osgood.”

“And what if you’re wrong? What if he knows everything that’s going on?”

“Consider your options right now. The real question is, What if I’m right?”

94

Audrey’s e-mail icon was bouncing. It was a message from Kevin Lenehan. She opened it immediately, then practically ran to Forensic Services.

“Guess what?” he said.

“You got it. The video.”

“No fucking way. I told you, that’s so gone.”

“Then what?”

“This is cool. I noticed this code on here. It backs up to an FTP server on a preset schedule.”

“Can you explain that?”

“Sure. Certain archivable events, ranging from alarm inputs to motion-detector inputs, get automatically sent to an FTP server using the IP address that’s preprogrammed in here.”

“Kevin,” she said, mildly exasperated, “that really wasn’t much of an explanation, now, was it?”

“The eleven minutes of video you’re looking for? That we thought got totally erased? Well, it got erased on the box, here. But it also got sent over the Internet to Stratton’s LAN-sorry, the company’s computers. There’s a backup copy at Stratton. That clear enough?”

Audrey smiled. “Can you get into the Stratton computers from here-on the Internet or something?”

“If I was that good, do you think I’d have a job like this?”

She shrugged.

“But get me into Stratton and I’ll know where to look.”

95

It was an hour drive to the Gerald R. Ford International Airport, then a five-hour flight to Logan Airport, a bustling place that seemed as populous as all of Fenwick. Nick made his way past a Legal Sea Foods restaurant, a WH-Smith bookstore, and a Brookstone gadget center before he reached the escalator to Ground Transportation. Among a flock of livery drivers, he caught the eye of an olive-skinned man in a blue blazer and gray slacks who was holding a card that read NICHOLAS CONVER. Close enough.

Fairfield Partners was the anchor tenant of a vast glass-and granite-faced building on Federal Street, in the heart of downtown Boston. Willard Osgood’s offices were on the thirty-seventh and thirty-eighth floors. The reception area was all dove-gray velvet and tropical woods, and Nick expected he’d be given plenty of time to study its details, cooling his heels in preparation for his audience with the Great Man. To his surprise, though, the strawberry blond receptionist told him to go right in. Nick wondered whether he was late. His watch told him that he was a few minutes early if anything.

As he walked through the glass door, Nick was immediately met by another blond woman, this one with red plastic-framed glasses. “Mr. Conover,” she said. “Your flight okay?”

“It was,” Nick said.

“Can I get you anything? Water, a soda, coffee?”

“I’m fine,” Nick said, striding to keep up with her power walk.

“I’m sorry Todd’s on the road. I’m sure he would have loved to say hi if he knew you were coming in.”

I’m sure he would have, Nick thought. “Well, you might want to check with Mr. Osgood before you tell Todd or anyone else that I was here.”

“Yes, sir,” she said quickly. “Of course.”

The offices of Fairfield Equity Partners were soaring and glass-walled, two floors combined into one. Along the walls, he noticed framed magazine covers featuring Willard Osgood-holding a fishing reel on the cover of Field & Stream, wearing a blue suit and yellow tie on Forbes. Osgood’s square, bespectacled face and pleased-yet-concerned expression were always identical, as if the head had been Photoshopped onto different models.

Finally, she gestured toward a tan leather sofa in what looked like a vast waiting area, and said, “Have a seat. I’ll leave you here.”

Nick craned his head around, took in the large glass desk and various fishing trophies on the wall. It took a moment before he figured out he was in Willard Osgood’s own office. He looked out the windows on two sides and could see the Boston Harbor in the distance, then some scrubby little islands beyond that.

Moments later, Willard Osgood himself strode in: the square, weathered face, the Coke-bottle glasses-he could have been peeled off one of those magazine covers. Nick stood up and realized that Osgood probably had an inch or two on him.

“Nick Conover,” Osgood said in a booming voice, giving him a friendly bump on the shoulder. “I hope you noticed what kind of chair I’ve got at my desk.” He pointed to the Stratton Symbiosis chair.

Nick grinned. “You liked it so much you bought the company.”

Osgood raised a shaggy eyebrow. “Did I make the right decision?”

“Hope you still like the chair. It’s still a good company.”

“Then what the hell are you doing here in Beantown?”

“I’m here to ask your help solving a problem.”

Osgood’s expression vacillated between amusement and perplexity. “Let me put that Stratton chair into service,” he said after a moment, walking over to his desk. Nick took a chair in front of it. “I always think better on my butt.”

Nick started right in. “As I recall, when you came to Fenwick, you told us that your favorite holding period is forever.”

“Ah,” Osgood said, seeming to understand. He blinked a few times, folded his hands on the desk, and then cleared his throat. “Nick, I think I also told you that my rule number one is, never lose money.”

Osgood knew Todd was selling the company, Nick now realized. So maybe Cassie was wrong. Did he know everything, though? “Which is a lesson that Todd Muldaur seems to have forgotten, if he ever learned it,” Nick said.

“Todd’s had a rough year,” Osgood came right back, sounding a little annoyed. “There are some mighty good explanations for that, though.”

“Yeah, well, ‘Explanations aren’t excuses,’ as you also like to say.”

Osgood smiled, exposing a blinding row of porcelain veneers. “I see the gospel spreads.”

“But I can’t help but wonder whether one of the explanations is that no one’s watching the shop. That’s what Todd seems to indicate, anyway. He says you’ve taken to spending a lot of time away from the office. That maybe you’ve gotten more interested in fly-fishing than in profit margins.”

Osgood’s smile almost reached his eyes. “I hope you don’t believe that.”

“I don’t know what to think.”

“What my lieutenants really mean by that, of course, is that my day has passed. They like to think that, because it means their day has arrived.” Osgood leaned back in his chair, but of course the Stratton Symbiosis chair, being ergonomic, wouldn’t let him tip all the way back like the older chairs would. “Tell you a story, but don’t repeat it, okay?”

Nick nodded.

“Couple years ago I took Todd down to Islamorada, Florida, for the annual migration of the tarpon. ’Course, he showed up with his brand-new Sage rod and his Abel reel, and he’s got a leather belt on, with a bonefish on the buckle.” He gave a hearty guffaw. “He’s a confident fellow-told me he’d done a lot of fly-fishing at some fancy lodge in Alaska, kind of place with gourmet meals and a sauna and the guide does everything for you except wipe your ass. So I graciously allowed him the bow and watched him flail for hours. Poor guy missed shot after shot, got more and more frustrated, his line kept getting wrapped, the flies hitting him on the backside.” He blinked a few times. “Finally I decided I’d had enough fun. I stood up, stripped out ninety feet of line. Soon as I spotted a school of fish approaching, I delivered the fly. The fish ate, and six and a half feet of silver king went airborne. You with me? One school of fish-one shot-one cast-and one fish brought to the side of the boat.”

“Okay,” Nick said, enjoying the tale but wondering what the point was.

“See, I don’t think Todd realized that the secret isn’t how pricey your equipment or how nice your Ex Officio slacks are. All that counts is bow time-just doing it over and over and over again. Takes years of practice. No substitute for it.”

“How do you cook tarpon?”

“Oh, heavens, no, you don’t eat it. That’s the beauty part. You release it. It’s all about the fight.”

“Huh,” Nick said. “Doesn’t sound like my kind of sport.”

“From what I understand, hockey’s all about the fight too. And you don’t even get a fish to show for it.”

“I guess that’s one way of looking at it.”

“But anyway, you’re right. Todd’s made some mistakes. A couple of bold gambles.”

“I believe the phrase ‘sucking wind’ might be more accurate.”

Osgood wasn’t amused. “I’m well aware of what’s happening,” he said brittlely.

“Are you? I wonder.” Nick leaned over and removed a file folder from his briefcase, then slid the folder across the desk. Osgood opened it, tipped his glasses up onto his forehead, and examined the documents. Nick noticed that the horizontal creases on Osgood’s forehead were equally spaced and straight, almost as if drawn with a ruler.

Osgood looked up for a moment. “I wish he hadn’t done things this way.”

“What way?”

“Keeping you out of the loop. It’s not the way I prefer. I like to be a straight shooter. Now I see why you’ve come to talk to me. I understand why you’re upset.”

“Oh, no,” Nick said quickly. “I totally understand why he didn’t want me to know. Hell, he knew how opposed I was-am-to a sale like this. Even though I don’t have the power to stop it, he was probably afraid I’d kick up a fuss, maybe even take it public. Better to just do the deal without me knowing, he figured, so that by the time I figured it out, it would be a fait accompli. It would be too late.”

“Something like that. But as I say, that’s not my way.”

“Todd needed a quick infusion of cash to help bail out the firm, after all his bad bets on semiconductors. And an IPO takes forever. I get it.”

“I told Todd you’re a reasonable man, Nick. He should have just leveled with you.”

“Maybe he should have leveled with you. Like telling you who the fairy godmother behind ‘Pacific Rim Investors’ really is. Though he probably figured that you, with your political beliefs, wouldn’t want to hear where the money comes from.” Nick paused. “The P.L.A.”

Osgood blinked owlishly.

“That’s the People’s Liberation Army,” Nick explained. “The Communist Chinese army.”

“I know who they are,” Osgood said curtly. “Wouldn’t have gotten to where I am without doing my homework.”

“You knew this?” Nick said.

“Good Lord, of course I knew it. There’s nothing illegal about it, my friend.”

“The Communist Chinese,” Nick persisted, hoping the incantation might jangle the old right-winger.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, this is office furniture. Not Patriot missiles or nuclear weapons or something. Desks and chairs and file cabinets. I hardly call that selling our enemy the rope they’re going to hang us with.”

“But have you actually looked at the numbers on Stratton that Todd provided Pacific Rim Investors?”

Osgood pushed the folder away from him. “I don’t micromanage. I don’t look over my partners’ shoulders. Nick, we’re both busy men-”

“You might want to. See, the balance sheet Todd gave them is a fraud. Prepared by my CFO, Scott McNally, who knows a thing or two about how to put lipstick on a pig.”

Another flash of the porcelain Chiclets. “Nick, maybe you’ve been in the Midwest a bit too long, but that Jimmy Stewart, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington bit’s not going to play here.”

“I’m not talking morality, Willard. I’m talking illegality.”

Osgood waved Nick away with an impatient hand. “There’s all kinds of ways of doing the books. Anyway, we’ve got a no-litigate clause, even if they do get buyer’s remorse.”

“You know about that too,” Nick said dully.

Osgood’s stare seemed to drill right through him. “Conover, you’re wasting your time and mine, trying to backtrack over everything. Horse is out of the barn. Gripe session’s over. Now, this it? We done here?” Osgood rose, pressing a button on his intercom. “Rosemary, could you show Mr. Conover out, please?”

But Nick remained in his seat. “I’m not done yet,” he said.

96

The Information Technology Director at the Stratton Corporation didn’t look like the computer type, Audrey thought. She was a tall, matronly woman named Carly Lindgren, who wore her beautiful and very long auburn hair knotted on top of her head. She wore a navy suit over an olive silk shell, a braided gold necklace and matching earrings.

Audrey had gotten an appointment with Mrs. Lindgren with a single phone call, telling her only it was “police business.” But once Audrey had presented the search warrant, she could see Mrs. Lindgren rear up like a cornered tigress. She examined it as if searching for flaws, though very few people knew what to look for, and in any case the warrant had been written carefully. It was as broad as Audrey could get the prosecutor to sign off on, even though all she really wanted was any archived video images on the Stratton network that came from Nicholas Conover’s home security system.

Mrs. Lindgren kept Audrey and Kevin Lenehan waiting in an outer office while she placed a flurry of panicked calls all the way up her reporting chain-the Chief Information Officer and the Chief Technology Officer, and Audrey lost track of who all, but there really was nothing Mrs. Lindgren could do.

After twenty minutes or so, Kevin was given a chair and a computer in an empty office. Audrey had nothing to do but watch. She looked around, saw a blue poster with white letters that said something about “The Stratton Family,” sort of a mission statement. The chairs they sat in were particularly comfortable; she noticed they were Stratton chairs. Nothing like this in Major Cases. Kevin put a CD in the computer and installed a program. He explained to her that it was viewer software he’d downloaded from the Web site of the company that made the digital video recorder in Conover’s home. This would allow them to view, and capture, the video images.

“You know where to look?” Audrey asked, worried.

“It was in the settings in the DVR,” replied Kevin. “The folder it was written to, the date and time and everything. No problema.”

Audrey felt a little tremble of anticipation, which she tried to tamp down, tried to reason herself out of. She was sure that the murder of Andrew Stadler would be on this eleven minutes of camera footage. If indeed there was a backup here.

How often in any homicide detective’s career could one hope to come across a piece of evidence like that? A digital image of a murder being committed? It was almost too much to hope for. She didn’t want to allow herself to hope for it, because the disappointment would be crushing.

“Anything I can do to help, Detective?”

She looked up, saw Eddie Rinaldi standing in the doorway, felt her heart do a flip-flop. From where she sat, that angle, Rinaldi seemed tall and broad and powerful. He wore a dark blazer and a black collarless shirt. He was smiling, and his eyes glittered malevolently.

“Mr. Rinaldi,” she said. Even when talking to murder suspects, she tended to be polite, but she refused to be cordial with this man. Something about him she really couldn’t stand. Maybe it was his air of knowingness, his cockiness, the feeling she got that he was enjoying the games he was playing with her.

“So you have a search warrant for the company’s network, that it?”

“You’re welcome to examine it.”

“No, no, no. I don’t doubt you dotted every i and crossed every t. You’re one thorough lady, I can tell.”

“Thank you.”

“Maybe thorough’s a polite way to say it. Obsessed, maybe? Looks like you’re still after my boss’s home security tape.”

“Oh, we have the recorder in our custody.” She considered telling him they knew the tape had been erased, just to see his reaction, but that would be giving him information he shouldn’t have.

Kevin muttered, “Almost there.”

Rinaldi glanced at Kevin curiously, as if he’d only just noticed him. Then he looked back at Audrey. He couldn’t have been more blasé.

“I still don’t get what you’re hoping to find,” Rinaldi said.

“I have a feeling you know,” Audrey said.

“You’re right. I do.”

“Oh?”

“Right. Couple of frames of some crazy old coot hobbling across my boss’s lawn in the middle of the night. But what’s that going to tell you, come right down to it?”

Audrey leaned over to the computer where Kevin was working. He tilted the monitor toward Audrey, who squinted, didn’t see any picture, and then saw the words “ERASED HERE TOO” on a document on the screen.

“Excellent,” Audrey said, nodding. “Good work.” She reached for the keyboard and typed out the words, “PLAY ALONG WITH ME.” Then she said, “Beautiful, Kevin. Can you improve the resolution just a bit?”

“Oh yeah,” he said. “Sure. I’ve got some great digital-imaging firmware that’ll eliminate the motion artifacts and reduce the dot crawl. A comb filter oughta separate the chrominance from the luminance. A little line doubling and some deinterlacing, and we got a nice clean image. No problem at all on this guy.”

Kevin tapped some more, and the document disappeared before Rinaldi had a chance to look for himself.

But that was the peculiar thing. Eddie Rinaldi never moved from where he stood, never bothered to peer at the monitor. He seemed utterly uninterested.

No, that wasn’t it, Audrey realized.

He was utterly confident. He knew what Kevin had just discovered, that the backup video had been deleted on the Stratton LAN, just as it had been deleted from Conover’s home security recorder.

And his confidence had just given him away.

97

Nick felt a tiny tremble in his hands. He put them in his lap so Osgood wouldn’t see. “Willard, don’t get me wrong. I have no interest in taking you on. I’d much rather work together with you on this. You want to save the funds Todd’s running, and I want to save the company. We both want to make money.”

Osgood slid his glasses back into place and gave Nick a steely stare as he stood behind his desk. He grunted.

“Now, I don’t know you,” Nick said, “but I can tell you’re not a gambler.” Nick noticed that the blond woman with the red glasses had slipped into the office to usher him out and was hovering in the background, waiting for her cue. He lowered his voice so that the woman couldn’t hear. “So when Scott McNally and Todd Muldaur funnel a ten-million-dollar bribe to a Chinese government official to make sure this deal happens, that’s where I think they’re crossing a line you don’t want to cross.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Osgood put his hands flat on the glass of his desk and leaned forward, intimidatingly.

“They’re putting your company at risk, doing that. Word always leaks out. And then your entire firm will be jeopardized.” Nick opened his arms wide. “All of this. Everything you’ve worked your whole life building. And I wonder whether you think it’s really worth taking such an enormous risk, when there’s another way to get what you want.”

“Rosemary,” Osgood barked. “Excuse us, please. We’ll be another few minutes.” When his secretary had left, he sat down again. “What the hell are you talking about, bribe?”

“Stratton Asia Ventures,” Nick said.

“I don’t know anything about that.”

Was he being straight? Or was he being careful? “It’s all right there in front of you-the last couple of pages in that pile. How do you think Todd was able to get this deal done in a month instead of a year? Call it a deal-sweetener or a kick-back or a bribe-whatever you call it, it’s a clear-cut violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. And it’s the kind of legal exposure that you can’t afford.”

The way Osgood yanked the folder back toward him, Nick realized that this really was news to the man. Osgood shoved his glasses back up on his forehead and hunched over the papers.

A few minutes later, he looked back up. His leathery face seemed to color. He looked thunderstruck. “Jesus,” he said. “Looks like you weren’t the only one kept out of the loop.”

“I had a feeling Todd wasn’t telling you everything,” Nick said.

“This is stupid, is what it is.”

“Desperate men sometimes do stupid things. Frankly, on some level I resent it. My company’s worth a hell of a lot more than what Pacific Rim Investors is paying for it. There’s no need to pay anyone off.”

“Goddamn it,” Osgood said.

“You may be great with tarpons, Willard, but I think what we’re dealing with here is a snakehead.”

Osgood seemed to be doing a slow burn. “I think my Yale boy just got hisself in over his head.”

“I guess he figured no one was watching the shop…”

Osgood’s pearly Chiclets looked more like a snarl than a smile. “From time to time, someone thinks they can pull one over on the old man. Maybe they’ve been reading too many Parade magazine profiles of me. But they always realize the error of their ways.”

Nick realized then how terrifying Willard Osgood could be once the cornpone mask fell away, a truly formidable opponent.

“A lot of people have been underestimating you too,” Osgood said. “I think I may be one of them. So tell me: What do you have in mind?”

98

“Daddy!” Julia ran up to Nick as he entered the house. “You’re back!”

“I’m back.” He set down his garment bag, lifted her up, felt a slight twinge in his lower back around the lumbar. Yikes. Can’t be picking her up anymore like she’s an infant. “How’s my baby?”

“Good.” Julia never said anything else. She was always good. School was always good. Everything was good.

“Where’s your brother?”

She shrugged. “Probably in his room? Do you know Marta just left a couple of hours ago for Barbados? She said she’s going to visit her family.”

“I know. I thought she needed some time off. Her trip to Barbados is a present from all of us. Where’s Cassie?” Cassie had happily agreed to come over to watch the kids.

“She’s here. She was just teaching me yoga.”

“Where is she?”

“In your study, maybe?”

Nick hesitated a moment. That again. But there was nothing to find there. He had to stop being so suspicious.

“She has a surprise for you,” Julia said with a mischievous smile, her big brown eyes wide. “But I can’t tell you what it is.”

“Can I guess?”

“No.”

“Not even one guess?”

“No!” she scolded. “It’s a surprise!”

“Okay. Don’t tell me. But I have a surprise for you.”

“What is it?”

“How would you like to go to Hawaii?”

“What? No way!”

“Way. We’re leaving tomorrow night.”

“But what about school?”

“I’m taking you and Luke out of school for a few days, that’s all.”

“Hawaii! I don’t believe it! Maui?”

“Maui.”

“The same place as last time?”

“Same place. I even got us the exact same villa on the beach.”

Julia threw her arms around him, squeezing hard. “I want to do snorkeling again,” she said, “and take those hula lessons, and I want to make a lei, and this time I want to learn how to windsurf. Aren’t I old enough?”

“You’re old enough, sure.” Laura had been afraid to let her try, last time.

“Luke said he’d show me how. Are you going to scuba dive again?”

“I think I might have forgotten how.”

“What about surfing? Can I learn how to surf too?”

Nick laughed. “Are you going to have time for all these lessons?”

“Remember when I found that gecko in our room, and its tail broke off? Oh, wow, this is so awesome.”

Nick went to the kitchen to take the shortcut to his study, but he stopped at the threshold.

In place of the usual plastic draft sheets hanging down was some kind of paper barrier. He looked closer. Wrapping paper had been taped across the entrance, floor to ceiling and jamb to jamb. A wide blue ribbon crisscrossed it like a gift. The paper, he noticed, had little pictures of Superman all over it, cape flying.

“Even though you look more like Clark Kent right now.” Cassie’s voice. Her arms slid around his waist; she kissed the back of his neck.

“What’s this?”

He turned, gave her a hug and planted a big kiss on her mouth.

“You’ll see. How was Boston?”

“Let’s just say your instincts were right.”

Cassie nodded. The dark smudges were visible beneath her eyes again. She looked drawn, exhausted. “Well, you’ll get things back on track. You’ll see. It’s not too late.”

“We’ll see. Can I open my gift?”

She bowed her head, turned up an “After you” palm.

Nick punched a fist through the gift wrap. The kitchen was all lit up, every light on, dazzling. The granite-topped kitchen island was perfect, just as Laura had once sketched it for him.

“Jesus,” Nick said. He went in slowly, taking it all in, awed. He ran a hand over the island top. There was an overhang, enabling the whole family to sit around it. Exactly what Laura had wanted.

He felt its edge. “Bullnose?”

“Half bullnose.”

He turned to look at Cassie, saw the little pleased smile. “How the hell did you do this?”

“I didn’t do it myself, Nick. I mean, I may have inherited my dad’s mechanical ability, but I’m not that good. What I’m good at is getting what I want.” She shrugged modestly. “It really only took them one full day of work. But it took me a lot of begging and pleading to get them here to do it and finish it by the end of the day.”

“My God, you’re a miracle worker,” Nick said.

“Just like to finish what I start, that’s all. Or what your wife started.” She paused and then said in a small voice, “Nick, are you ever going to be able to talk about her death?”

He closed his eyes for a while before he spoke. He opened his eyes, took a breath. “I can try. Lucas had a swim meet. It was half past seven, but dark, you know? First week of December. It gets dark early. We were driving to Stratford, because the meet was in the high school there. We’re on Stratford-Hillsdale Road, which is what truckers sometimes use to connect to the interstate.”

Nick closed his eyes again. He was back in the car on that dark night, a nightmare he had relived only in dreams, and then in shards and fragments of time. He spoke in a low, expressionless monotone. “So there’s a tractor trailer heading the opposite way, and the guy driving it had had a couple of beers, and the road surface was icy. Laura was driving-she hated to drive at night, but I asked her to, because I had some calls to make on the cell phone. That was me-company man, always working. We were bickering over something, and Laura was upset, and she wasn’t paying attention to the road, see. She didn’t see the truck drifting into our lane, across those double yellow lines, until it was too late. She-she tried to turn the wheel, but she didn’t do it in time. The truck rammed into us.”

He opened his eyes. “Funny thing is, it didn’t seem like we were hit all that hard,” Nick went on. “It wasn’t like some horrible collision in the movies where everything goes black. It was a hard bump, like you might feel if you were playing bumper cars. Kind of a hollow crunch. I didn’t get whiplash. Never blacked out. Nothing like that. I turn to Laura and I’m yelling, ‘Can you believe that guy?’ And she doesn’t say anything. And I notice how the windshield is all spiderwebbed on her side. And there’s some pebbles of glass on her forehead. Something glistening in her hair. But there’s no blood, or hardly any. A fleck or two, maybe. She looked fine. Like she’d nodded off.”

“There was nothing you could have done,” Cassie breathed.

Nick only knew that his eyes were wet because his vision was blurred. “Except there were hundreds of things I could have done. Any one of them, and Laura would still be alive. You know, when we were leaving the house that night, Laura was about to make a phone call, and I made her hang up. I told her she was making us late. I told her it was ridiculous that she’d spent fifteen minutes putting on makeup and perfume for a goddamn swim meet. I told her that, for once, we weren’t going to be late. I told her I wanted to get a good seat in the stands so I could see what the hell was going on. Now, thing is, if she had made that phone call, we wouldn’t have been in an accident. If I hadn’t been in such a hurry, we would actually have arrived. And I didn’t have to make those goddamned phone calls in the car that night, for Christ’s sake. Like they couldn’t wait till the morning. I could have driven the car-I mean, look, I was the better driver, we both knew that, she hated driving. I shouldn’t have been arguing with her while she was behind the wheel. Oh, and here’s a sweet one. She wanted to take the Suburban. I said it would just be a pain to park. I insisted that we take the sedan. If we’d taken the Suburban, she might have survived the impact. And I’m just starting a long, long list. All kinds of things I could have done differently. The weeks after she died, I became the world’s leading expert on this subject. Had ’em all cross-tabulated in my mind. Should have been on Jeopardy! Thanks, Alex, I’ll take Vehicular Fatalities for a hundred.”

Cassie looked wan, ran her fingers through her hair. Nick wondered whether she was even listening to him. “Intracerebral hemorrhage,” he went on. “She died in the hospital the next day.”

“You’re a good person.”

“No,” Nick said. “But I wish I were.”

“You give so much.”

“You don’t know, Cassie. All right? You don’t know what I’ve taken, what I’ve done. You don’t know…”

“You’ve given me a family.”

And I’ve taken yours away. He looked at her for a long time. He felt foolish about how he’d suspected her secret intentions and worried that she’d been trying to dig up the truth about what had happened to her father.

Then again, he obviously wasn’t so good at sizing people up, he realized. He’d gotten Osgood wrong in all sorts of ways, and he’d gotten Scott wrong. Todd Muldaur-well, he had Todd’s number from the start, so no surprise there. Eddie? He wasn’t really surprised, when it came right down to it, that Eddie wouldn’t hesitate to kick the skates out from under him.

But Cassie. He hadn’t known just what to make of her, and maybe he still didn’t know her all that well. Maybe his overpowering guilt and her overpowering seductiveness made it hard for him to see her clearly. She was a little emotionally unstable, that was obvious. Bipolar and having your dad murdered-that was a fairly lethal combination.

And he wondered how she’d react when he came clean.

It made no difference to him whether Eddie would strike some kind of deal with the police or not. He’d leave Eddie to his own smarmy fate.

When he and the kids came back from Hawaii, he was going to tell her the truth. And then he’d tell Detective Rhimes the truth.

And there would be an arrest, he knew that. Because whether a DA decided it was self-defense or not, he had killed a man.

Back in Boston, after his meeting with Willard Osgood, he’d taken a cab over to Ropes & Gray, a big law firm where a friend of his worked as a criminal defense attorney. A really smart guy he knew from Michigan State. Nick had told him what had happened, the whole story.

The lawyer had blanched, of course. He told Nick he was in deep shit, there was no way around it. He said the best Nick could hope for was criminally negligent homicide, that if he were very lucky he might get only a couple of years in prison. But it might well be more-five, seven, even ten years, because there was also the matter of having moved the body-tampering with physical evidence. The lawyer said that if Nick wanted to go through with it, he’d get a local counsel and petition to try the case in Michigan pro hoc vice, whatever that meant. He’d arrange for Nick to surrender, and he’d try to negotiate a plea agreement with the DA in Fenwick. And he said he’d ask for a lot of money up front.

Whatever would happen to him, though, was the least of it. What was going to happen to his kids? Would Aunt Abby be willing to take care of them?

This was the worst thing of all, the thing that truly terrified him.

But he knew it was the right thing to do, at long last, however long it had taken him to come to his senses. It was like that dream he’d had recently, the one about the body in the basement wall that gave away its hiding place by oozing the fluids of decay. He couldn’t hold the horrible secret inside anymore.

So in a week or so, after his last vacation with the kids, he was going to tell Cassie the truth. He’d already begun to rehearse, in his head, how he’d tell her.

“What is it?” she said.

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and I’ve made some decisions.”

“Decisions about the company?”

“Not that, no. My life is about other things.”

An anxious look came over her. “Is this bad?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head.

“Is it bad for us?”

“No. It’s not about us, exactly.”

“‘Not about us, exactly’-what’s that supposed to mean?”

“We’ll talk when the time is right. Just not yet.”

She placed her hand on his. He took it in his hand, holding it gently. Hers was small and trembling; his was big and steady.

The hand that killed her father.

“Cass, we’re off tomorrow,” he said. “We’re going to Hawaii for a few days. I already got the tickets.”

“Hawaii?”

“Maui. Laura loved that place most of all. There’s this great resort Laura and I discovered before we had kids. We had our own villa, right on the beach, with its own pool-not that you needed it-and all you could see from it was the Pacific Ocean.”

“Sounds amazing.”

“Until Laura died, we used to take the family there every year. Our big splurge. Same villa every time, Laura made sure of it. I think of it as a time when we were completely happy, all of us. I remember last time we were there, Laura and I were in bed and she turned to me and she said she wanted to spray a fixative on the whole day and keep it forever.”

“God, it sounds beautiful, Nick.” A light seemed to flicker in her eyes. She looked almost serene.

“I called the travel agency we’d used, and-it felt like a miracle-they said that exact same villa’s available.”

“Are you sure you want to return to a place they associate so closely with Laura? It might be better to go somewhere new-you know, create new memories.”

“You may be right. I know it won’t be the same. It’ll be sad in some ways. But it’ll be a new start. A good thing-just going there as a family, being together again. And there isn’t going to be any pressure to talk, or work through ‘issues,’ or anything else. We’re just going to play on the beach and do stuff and eat pineapple and just be. It won’t be the same, but it’ll be something. And it’ll be something we can all remember when things change, because they’re going to change.”

“The kids can miss school, right? No big deal.”

“I already called the school, told them I’d be taking Julia and Lucas out of classes for a few days. Hell, I even picked up the tickets at the airport when I got in.” He pulled an envelope from his breast pocket, took out the tickets and held them up, fanning them like a winning hand of cards.

Cassie’s smile vanished. “Three tickets.” She pulled her hand away.

“Just family. Me and the kids. I don’t think we’ve ever done this. Just us three, heading off for a few days somewhere.”

“Just family,” Cassie repeated in a harsh whisper.

“I think it’s important for me to try to reconnect with the kids. I mean, you get along with them better than I do, which is great. But I’ve let my part in it slip-I’ve sort of delegated that to you, like I’m CEO of the family or something, and that’s not right. I’m their dad, whether I’m any good at it or not, and it’s my job to work on making us a family again.”

Cassie’s face was transfigured, weirdly tight as if every muscle in her face were clenched.

“Oh God, Cassie, I’m sorry,” Nick said, flushing, embarrassed by his own obliviousness. “You know how much you mean to us.”

Cassie’s eyelids fluttered oddly, and he could see the veins in her neck pulsing. It was as if she were struggling to contain herself-or maybe to contain something larger than herself.

He smiled ruefully. “Luke and Julia-they’re my direct reports, you know. And I don’t know when I’ll have the chance again.”

“Just family.” The sound of one heavy stone scraping against another.

“I think it’ll be really good for us, don’t you?”

“You want to get away.”

“Exactly.”

“You want to escape.” Her voice was an incantation.

“Pretty much.”

“From me.”

“What? Jesus, no! You’re taking this the wrong way. It isn’t about-”

“No.” She shook her head slowly. “No. No hiding place. There’s no hiding place down there.”

Adrenaline surged through Nick’s veins. “What did you say?”

An odd smile appeared on her face. “Isn’t that what the stalker spray-painted in the house? That’s what Julia told me.”

“Yeah,” Nick said. “Those very words.”

“I can read the writing on the wall, Nick.”

“Come on, Cassie, don’t be silly.”

“It’s like the book of Daniel, isn’t it? The king of Babylon throws a big drunken party and all of a sudden he sees a mysterious hand appear and start writing something strange and cryptic on the plaster wall, right? And the king’s scared out of his mind and he calls in the prophet Daniel who tells him the message means the king’s days are over, Babylon’s history, he’s going to be killed.” Her expression was glassy.

“Okay, you’re starting to creep me out.”

Suddenly her eyes focused, and she met his gaze. “Maybe I should be grateful. I was wrong, wrong about so many things. It’s humbling. Humbling to be put right. Just like with the Stroups. But so necessary. Listen, you do what you think is best. You do what’s best for family. There’s nothing more important than that.”

Nick held out his arms. “Cassie, come here.”

“I think I’d better go,” she said. “I think I’ve done enough, don’t you think?”

“Cassie, please,” Nick protested. “I don’t get it.”

“Because I can do a lot more.” Noiselessly, she walked out of the kitchen, her steps so fluid she could have been gliding. “I can do a lot more.”

“We’ll talk, Cassie,” said Nick. “When we get back.”

A final glance over her shoulders. “A lot more.”

99

Early Sunday morning, before church. Audrey sat in the kitchen with her coffee and her buttered toast while Leon slept. She was poring over the bills, wondering how they’d be able to keep up, now that Leon’s unemployment benefits were running out. Usually she paid off the entire credit-card balance each month, but she was going to have to start paying only the minimum balance due. She wondered too, whether they should drop to basic cable. She thought they should, though Leon would not be happy about losing the sports channels.

Her cell phone rang. A 616 number: Grand Rapids.

It was a Lieutenant Lawrence Pettigrew of the Grand Rapids police. The man who’d first talked to her about Edward Rinaldi. She’d placed several calls to him over the last few days and had all but given up on him. Noyce had made it clear that he didn’t want her asking around in GR about Rinaldi, but she had no choice in the matter.

“How can I help you, Detective?” Pettigrew said. “The kids are waiting for me to take them out for pancakes, so can we make this quick?”

The guy was no fan of Edward Rinaldi, so she knew that asking about Rinaldi again would be like pushing a button and watching the vitriol spew out. But she had no reason to expect that he’d know the specifics of a long-forgotten and, in fact, quite minor, drug case.

He didn’t. “Far as I’m concerned, Rinaldi’s gone and good riddance,” he said. “He wasn’t exactly a credit to the uniform.”

“Was he fired?”

“Squeezed out might be more accurate. But I were you, I wouldn’t be bad-mouthing Eddie Rinaldi over there in Fenwick.”

“He’s the security director of Stratton, is that what you mean?”

“Yeah, yeah, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Didn’t you say you’re in Major Cases?”

“That’s right.”

“Hell, you want to know chapter and verse on Eddie Rinaldi, you could ask Jack Noyce. But then again, maybe you shouldn’t.”

“I don’t think Sergeant Noyce knows all that much about Rinaldi.”

Pettigrew’s laugh was abrupt and percussive. “Noyce knows him like a book, sweetheart. Guarantee it. Jack was Eddie’s partner.”

Audrey’s scalp tightened.

“Sergeant Noyce?” she said, disbelieving.

“Partner in crime, I like to say. Don’t take this the wrong way, Detective-what’s your name again?”

“Rhimes.” Audrey shuddered.

“Like LeAnn Rimes, the singer?” He warbled, off-key, ‘How do I live…without you?’”

“Spelled differently, I believe.”

“Quite the babe, though, no matter how you spell it.”

“So I hear, yes. Noyce…Noyce was known to be dirty, is that what you’re telling me?”

“Hell, there’s a reason Jack got sent to Siberia, right?”

“Siberia?”

“No offense, sweetheart. But from where I sit, Fenwick is Siberia.”

“Noyce was…squeezed out too?”

“Peas in a pod, those guys. I got no idea who did more pilfering, but I’d say they both did pretty good. Works better in a team, so they’re each willing to look away. Eddie was more into the guns, and Jack was more into the home electronics and the stereo components and what have you, but they both loved the cash.”

“They both…” she started to say, but she lost the heart to go on.

“Oh, and Detective LeAnn?”

“Audrey.” She wanted to vomit, wanted to end the call and throw up and then wrap herself in a blanket and go back to sleep.

“Sweetheart, I were you, I wouldn’t use my name with Noyce. Guy’s a survivor, and he’ll wanna let bygones be bygones, know what I’m saying?”

She thanked him, pushed End, and then did exactly what she knew she would. She rushed to the bathroom and heaved the contents of her stomach, the acid from the coffee scalding her throat. Then she washed her face. All she wanted to do right now was to enrobe herself in the old blue blanket on the living room couch, but it was time for church.

100

The First Abyssinian Church of the New Covenant was a once-grand stone building that had slowly, over the years, gone to seed. The velvet pew cushions, badly in need of replacing, had been repaired in far too many places with duct tape. The place was always cold, summer or winter: something about the stone walls and floor, that plus the fact that the building fund was suffering, and it cost a fortune to heat the cavernous interior adequately.

Attendance was sparse this morning, as it was on most Sundays except Easter and Christmas. There were even a few white faces: a couple of regulars who seemed to find the sustenance here they didn’t get in the white congregations. LaTonya’s family wasn’t here, which was no surprise, since they came only a few times a year. Early in their marriage, Leon used to accompany Audrey here, until he announced it wasn’t for him. She didn’t even know whether he was sleeping late this morning or doing something else, whatever else he’d been doing.

Leon was only one of the reasons why her heart was heavy today. There was also Noyce. That news had punctured her. She felt betrayed by this man who’d been her friend and supporter and who hid from her his true nature. It sickened her.

But this discovery, as much as it shook her to the core, liberated her at the same time. She no longer had to agonize about betraying him, going behind his back, end-running him. She knew there was no choice, really. Whether Jack Noyce was in the Stratton Corporation’s pocket, had been leaking to his old partner details of the investigation-or was simply compromised, trapped, by what Rinaldi knew about him-he had been working to defeat her investigation. She thought back to the many talks she’d had with him about this case, the advice he’d dispensed so freely. The way he’d cautioned her to proceed carefully, telling her she didn’t have enough to arrest Conover and Rinaldi. And who would ever know what else he’d done to slow things up, block her progress? What resources had he quietly blocked? Whatever the truth was, she couldn’t tell Noyce that she and Bugbee were about to get an arrest warrant for the CEO and the security director of Stratton. Noyce had to be kept in the dark, or he’d surely notify Rinaldi and do everything in his power to halt the arrest.

But here, at least, here she felt at peace and welcome and loved. Everyone said good morning, even people whose names she didn’t know, courtly gentlemen and polite young men and lovely young women and hovering mothers and sweet old white-haired women. Maxine Blake was dressed all in white, wearing an ornate hat that looked a little like an upside-down bucket with white tendrils coming out of it and encircling it like rings around a planet. She threw her arms around Audrey, pressing Audrey to her enormous bosom, bringing her into a cloud of perfume and warmth and love. “God is good,” Maxine said.

“All the time,” Audrey responded.

The service started a good twenty minutes late. “Colored people’s time,” the joke went. The choir, dressed in their magnificent red-and-white robes, marched down the aisle clapping and singing “It’s a Highway to Heaven,” and then they were joined by the electric organ and then the trumpet and drum and then Audrey joined in along with most everybody else. She’d always wanted to sing in the choir, but her voice was nothing special-though, as she’d noticed, some of the women in the choir had thin voices and tended to sing out of tune. Some had spectacular voices, it was true. The men mostly sang in a rumbling bass, but the tenor was more off-key than on.

Reverend Jamison started his sermon as he always did, by calling out, “God is good,” to which everyone responded: “All the time.” He said it again, and everyone responded again. His sermons were always heartfelt, usually inspired, and never went on too long. They weren’t particularly original, though. Audrey had heard he got them off the Internet from Baptist Web sites that posted sample sermons and notes. Once, confronted on his lack of originality, Reverend Jamison had said, “I milk a lot of cows, but I churn my own butter.” Audrey liked that.

Today he told the story of Joshua and the armies of Israel fighting the good fight, battling five of the kings of Canaan for the conquest of the promised land. About how the kings played right into Joshua’s hands by joining the battle together. About how it wasn’t the Lord who fought the battle, it was Israel. The five kings tried to hide in a cave, but Joshua ordered the cave sealed up. And after the battle had been won, Joshua brought the kings out of their cave, out of their hiding place, and humiliated them by ordering his princes to place their feet on the kings’ necks. Reverend Jamison talked about how there’s no hiding place. “We can’t hide from God,” he declared. “The only hiding place from God is Hell.”

That made her think, as it had so many times, about Nicholas Conover and the graffiti that had been repeatedly spray-painted on the interior walls of his house. No hiding place.

That could be frightening, as no doubt Conover found it to be. No hiding place: from what? From a faceless adversary, from a stalker? From his guilt, his sins?

But here in church, “no hiding place” was meant to be a stern yet hopeful admonition.

In his most orotund voice the reverend recited from Proverbs 28: “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.”

And she thought, because every single one of Reverend Jamison’s sermons was devised to mean something to each and every one in the congregation, about Nicholas Conover. The king hiding in his cave.

But no hiding place. Andrew Stadler had been right, hadn’t he?

Reverend Jamison cued the choir, which went right into a lively rendition of “No Hiding Place Down Here.” The soloist was Mabel Darnell, a large woman who sang and swayed like Aretha Franklin and Mahalia Jackson put together. The organist, Ike Robinson, was right up front, on display, not hidden the way the organist usually was in the other churches she’d seen. He was a white-haired, dark-skinned man of near eighty with expressive eyes and an endearing smile. He wore a white suit and looked like Count Basie, Audrey had always thought.

“I went to the rock to hide my face,” Mabel sang, clapping her hands, “but the rock cried out, ‘No hiding place!’”

Count Basie’s pudgy fingers ran up and down the keys, syncopating, making swinging jazz out of it, and the rest of the choir joined in at the rock and my face and cried out and no hiding place no hiding place no hiding place.

Audrey felt a thrill coursing through her body, a shiver that moved along her spine like an electric current.

And the instant the choir had finished, while the organ chords still resounded, Reverend Jamison’s voice boomed out, “My friends, none of us can hide from the Lord. ‘And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man’”-his voice rose steadily until the sound system squealed with feedback-“‘hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains.’” Now he dropped to a stage whisper: “‘And said to the mountains and rocks, fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?’”

He paused to let the congregation know that his sermon had concluded. Then he invited anyone in the congregation who wished to come up to the altar for a moment of personal prayer. Ike Robinson, no longer Count Basie, played softly as a dozen or so people got up from their pews and knelt at the altar rail, and all of a sudden Audrey felt moved to do it too, something she hadn’t done since her mother’s death. She went up there and knelt between Maxine Blake and her enormous rings-of-Saturn hat and another woman, Sylvia-something, whose husband had just died of complications from liver transplant surgery, leaving her with four small children.

Sylvia-something was going through a terrible, terrible time, and what did Audrey have to complain about, really? Her problems were small ones, but they filled her up, as small problems will until the big ones move in and elbow them aside.

She knew she had allowed her anger at Leon to fester inside her, and she recalled the words from Ephesians 4:26-27: “Let not the sun go down upon your anger: Neither give place to the devil.” And she knew it was time to let go of that anger and confront him once and for all.

She knew that her hurt and disappointment over Jack Noyce might never heal, but it would not get in the way of her doing the right thing.

She thought of that poor little daughter of Nicholas Conover, fumbling at the piano, that beautiful needy face. That little girl who had just lost her mother and was about to lose her father too.

And that was the most wrenching thing of all, knowing that she was about to orphan that little girl.

She began weeping, her shoulders heaving, the hot tears running down her cheeks, and someone was rubbing her shoulder and consoling her, and she felt loved.

Outside the church, in the gloomy daylight, she took her cell phone out of her purse and called Roy Bugbee.

101

The throaty growl of a car coming up the driveway.

Leon? No, Leon’s car didn’t sound that way. Out catting, Leon was. And on a Sunday. She felt a swell of resentment, of resolve.

She parted the sheer curtains in the front parlor. Bugbee.

His leering grin. “Finally decided to do it, eh?”

She invited him into the front parlor, where he took Leon’s chair and Audrey sat facing him on the couch. Bugbee’s foot jostled something, and a couple of brown glass bottles clattered.

He glanced down. “Hitting the sauce, Aud? Pressure getting too much for you?”

“I don’t even like the taste of beer,” she said, embarrassed. “So what’s up?”

“One complication.”

“Oh no.”

“A good complication. Our friend Eddie’s rolling over on Conover.”

“What does that mean, exactly?”

“He wants to deal.”

“How much did he tell you?”

“Not a fucking thing. Just that he might have some information of interest to us.”

“He’s got to show us the wares.”

“He wants a deal first. I’m betting he’s the coconspirator.”

She thought a moment. “What if he’s the shooter, not Conover?”

“Them’s the breaks. If he gives up Conover for aiding and abetting, we got ’em both.”

“He knows about the gun match.” Another car engine, had to be Leon.

“You tell him? I sure as hell didn’t.”

She shook her head and told him about the call from Grand Rapids.

“Fucking Noyce,” said Bugbee. “What’d I tell you?”

“What did you tell me?”

“I never liked him.”

“That’s because he doesn’t like you.”

“Touché. But not my point. Him and Eddie Rinaldi both have something on each other. Now looks like we have something on Noyce.”

“I don’t play that game,” Audrey said firmly.

“Christ,” said Bugbee. “The fuck is the point of being a church lady, time like this?”

“How about I put it in terms you might understand? You want to be up front and open with Noyce, I have no problem with that. But I’ll bet you he knows that we know.”

“You think?”

“He knows I’ve been talking to Grand Rapids. He knows I dig deep. Anyway, you want to play games with him later, I really don’t care. My heart breaks for him, but right now I’m just thinking about this case and how we make it work. My way is to ignore him, work around him, put through this arrest paperwork on the down low so he doesn’t have a chance to tell Rinaldi.”

Bugbee shrugged, accepting defeat.

“And I’ll tell you something else. I don’t want to make a deal with Rinaldi.”

“That’s fucked up,” Bugbee protested. “He’s our way in.”

“You’re the one who kept saying we have this case nailed, right? Why do you want to give up so easily?”

“It’s not giving up,” Bugbee said.

“It’s not, huh? I want to charge them both with open murder. That way we have maximum bargaining room. We sort it out later.”

“So now you think we’ve got it nailed, that it?”

“Just about. Tomorrow morning first thing, I’m going to talk to Stadler’s psychiatrist again.”

“A little late for that, don’t you think?”

“Not at all. It’ll strengthen our hand considerably with the prosecutor’s office if he’ll agree to testify that Stadler could be deranged, even dangerous. If we get that, we’ll get the arrest warrants for sure.”

“I thought he already refused to talk to you.”

“I’m not giving up.”

“You can’t force him.”

“No, but I can persuade him. Or try, at least.”

“You believe it?”

“Believe what?”

“Believe that Stadler was dangerous.”

“I don’t know what to believe. I think Conover and Rinaldi believed it. If we have the psychiatrist on board, we have motive. The slickest lawyer Nick Conover can find’s going to have a steep hill to climb on that one. And then we sure don’t need any deal with Eddie, understand?”

“Roll the dice, you mean?”

“Sometimes you have to,” she said.

“You don’t want to roast Noyce’s balls over a campfire like I do, huh?”

She shook her head. “I’m not angry. I’m…” She thought. “I’m disappointed. I’m sad.”

“You know something, I always thought you Jesus freaks were kidding, on some level. But I think you’re serious about all that do-the-right-thing stuff. About being good. Aren’t you?”

She laughed. “It’s not about being good, Roy. It’s about trying to be good. You think Jesus is some…” She searched for the word. “Some wimp? No. He was a real hard ass. He had to be.”

Bugbee smiled, his eyes crinkling. She tried to read his expression, wasn’t sure if she detected the tiniest glint of admiration. “Jesus the hard ass. I like that.”

“So when was the last time you went to church, Roy?”

“Oh, no. Don’t fucking start on me. Let’s get one thing clear. That’s not going to happen.” He paused. “Besides, sounds to me like Jesus’s got some work to do in your own household.”

Stung, Audrey didn’t reply.

“Sorry,” Bugbee said after a few seconds. “That was out of bounds.”

“That’s okay,” she said. “You may be right.”

102

A chill was in the air, the fall days tinged with the coming winter. The sky was steel gray and ominous, threatening to rain at any moment.

In the living room, however, where Audrey sat reading, it was warm almost to the point of stifling. After Bugbee left, she’d made a fire in the fireplace, the first of the season. The fatwood had caught right away, which pleased her, and now the logs crackled loudly, making her jump from time to time as she lingered over a passage that wouldn’t let go.

She opened the Bible to the book of Matthew and wept for the man who’d been her friend. She thought, too, about Leon, about how she’d have it out with him. Now she was all the more determined to somehow rise above anger and recrimination.

Noyce and Leon: they were nothing alike, but both were men with feet of clay. Leon was a lost man, but he was a man she loved. She knew how quick she was to judge others. Maybe it was time to learn forgiveness. That seemed to be the whole point of the parable of the unmerciful servant in the book of Matthew.

A king was owed a great sum of money by one of his servants and was about to sell the servant and his family in order to raise the money. But when the servant pleaded, his master took pity and forgave him his debt. Not long afterward, the servant met a fellow servant of the king’s who owed him some money, and what did he do? He grabbed the man by the throat and demanded payment. The king summoned the ingrate and said, “You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you besought me; and should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?”

A key jangled in the front door lock.

Leon. Back from wherever he went without telling her.

“Oh, hey, Shorty,” he said as he entered. “You made a fire. That’s nice.”

She nodded. “You’re out and about early.”

“Looks like it’s about to pour out there.”

“Where’d you go, Leon?”

He immediately looked away. “Gotta get out of the house sometimes. Good for me.”

“Come sit down in here. We need to talk.”

“Uh oh,” he said. “Those are words no guy ever wants to hear.” But he sat down anyway, in his favorite chair, looking supremely uncomfortable.

“This is not going to continue,” she said.

He nodded.

“Well?”

“Well what?” he said.

“I’ve been doing some reading in the Bible.”

“I see that. Old Testament or New?”

“Hmm?”

“As I recall from my churchgoing days, the Old Testament God’s a pretty judgmental sort.”

“None of us is perfect, baby. And the Bible tells us about when Jesus refused to condemn an adulterer who was about to be stoned to death.”

“Where’s this going?” Leon said.

“You going to tell me what you’re up to?”

“Ah,” he said with a low chuckle that began to grow. “Oh, yeah,” he said and his chuckle grew into an unrestrained guffaw. “My sister been putting crazy ideas in your head?”

“You going to explain yourself? Or is this going to be the last talk we ever have?”

“Oh, Shorty,” Leon said. He got up from his chair and sat down on the couch next to her, snuggling close. She was astonished, but she didn’t hug him back, just sat there, stiff and angry and confused. A bottle rolled around under the couch. She reached a hand down and grabbed it. A brown beer bottle. She held it up.

“Is it this, or is it a woman?” she said.

He was laughing, enjoying himself, and she grew steadily more furious. “It’s funny to you?”

“You’re some detective,” he finally said. “That’s root beer.”

“Oh, so it is,” she said, embarrassed.

“I haven’t had a drink in seventeen days. You haven’t noticed?”

“Is that true?”

“Forgiveness is Step Nine. I’m nowhere near that.”

“Step Nine?”

“The Eighth Step is to make a list of everyone I ever harmed and be willing to make amends to them. I should do that too. You know I was never good about lists.”

“You-how come you didn’t tell me you’re doing AA?”

Now it was his turn to look sheepish. “Maybe I wanted to make sure it would take.”

“Oh, baby,” she said, tears springing to her eyes. “I’m so proud of you.”

“Hey, Shorty, don’t go getting all proud yet. I still haven’t gotten past step three.”

“Which is what?”

“Hell if I know,” Leon said. He put a big callused hand on her face, brushed away her tears, and leaned in to kiss her, and this time she kissed him back. She’d almost forgotten what it was like, kissing her husband, but she was remembering now, and it was nice.

The two of them got up and went to the bedroom.

Outside it began to rain, but it was warm in their bed.

In the morning she would get up early and arrange the arrest warrants for Eddie Rinaldi and Nicholas Conover.

103

On her way to the prosecutor’s office, Audrey heard Noyce’s voice calling to her.

He was standing in the door to his office, waving her in.

She stopped for just a moment.

“Audrey,” he said, something different in his voice. “We need to talk.”

“I’m in a rush, Jack. I’m sorry.”

“What’s up?”

“I-I’d rather not say.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Audrey?”

“Excuse me, Jack. I’m sorry.”

He put out a hand, touched her shoulder. “Audrey,” he said, “I don’t know exactly what they told you about me, but…”

He knew. Of course he knew. She fixed him with a level gaze. “I’m listening,” she said.

Noyce took a breath, colored, and then said, “Fuck it. I don’t want your pity.” He turned and went into his office, and she hurried on.

Dr. Aaron Landis’s habitual sneer had become an incredulous scowl. “We’ve been over this, Detective. You’ve already asked me to breach Mr. Stadler’s confidentiality. If you somehow imagine that your persistence is going to make me reconsider-”

“I’m sure you’re aware what the Principles of Medical Ethics, published by the American Psychiatric Association, says about confidentiality.”

“Oh, please.”

“You’re permitted to release relevant confidential information about a patient under legal compulsion.”

“As I recall, it says ‘proper’ legal compulsion. Do you have a court order?”

“If that’ll make a difference to you, I’ll get one. But I’m appealing to you not as a law enforcement officer, but as a human being.”

“Not the same thing, I take it.”

She ignored this. “Ethically you have the right to testify about Andrew Stadler’s history, especially if you have any interest in helping bring his killer to justice.”

Landis’s eyelids drooped as if he were deep in thought. “What does one have to do with the other?”

“Well, you see, Dr. Landis, we’ve found Andrew Stadler’s killer.”

“And who might that be?” His phlegmatic tone, carefully calibrated, didn’t quite mask his natural curiosity.

“That I can’t tell you until he’s charged. But I’m going to ask you to take the stand and testify to the fact that Andrew Stadler was, at times, violent.”

“I won’t.”

“Don’t you understand what’s at stake, Dr. Landis?”

“I will not testify to that,” Landis said.

“If you refuse to speak for this man,” Audrey said, “his killer may not find justice. Doesn’t that make a difference to you?”

“You want me to testify that he had violent tendencies, and I’m not going to do that. I can’t. I can’t say what you want me to say-because it’s not true.”

“What do you mean?”

“I saw no violent inclinations whatever.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I didn’t tell you a thing.”

“Pardon me?”

“You didn’t hear any of this from me.” He scratched his chin. “Andrew Stadler was a sad, desperately afflicted man. A tormented man. But not a violent man.”

“Dr. Landis, the man who killed him held him responsible for a particularly sadistic attack, an evisceration of a dog, a family pet. In fact, a whole series of attacks on the suspect’s home. It’s the reason, we’re convinced, this man killed Stadler.”

Landis nodded, a glint of recognition in his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “That would make a certain sense.”

“It would?”

“If it were true, yes. But I can tell you with a high degree of certainty that Andrew Stadler never did these things.”

“Hold on a second. Last time we spoke, you talked about a pattern of sudden rages, brief psychotic episodes-”

“Indeed. I was describing a syndrome we call Borderline Personality Disorder.”

“All right, but you said a schizophrenic like Stadler could have this borderline disorder.”

“I’ve seen it, sure. But I wasn’t talking about Andrew Stadler.”

“Then who were you talking about, Doctor?”

He hesitated.

“Doctor, please!”

Ten minutes later, short of breath, Audrey raced out of County Medical, cell phone to her ear.

104

The special board meeting was set to start at 2 P.M., and by a quarter to, most of the invited participants had arrived in the narrow anteroom. Scott had come first, and he didn’t dance around the subject. Nick had a stack of unanswered phone messages from him, all from this morning. Marjorie had been instructed to keep him away from Nick’s home base.

“Don’t leave me in the dark here, Nick,” Scott said. Nick noticed he was wearing a brand-new shirt: white, narrow-point collar, looked like Armani, completely different from the frayed Oxford-cloth button-downs he usually wore. “Come on, Nick, I can’t read my lines if I don’t have a script, okay?”

“I thought we’d be spontaneous.”

“Spontaneous,” Scott repeated. “Spontaneous combustion. Spontaneous abortion. Spontaneous aortic aneurysm.” He shook his head. “I don’t like that word ‘spontaneous.’”

Nick cocked his head. “We’re trying something new, here,” he said, deliberately cryptic.

“I just want to help, Nick.” There was a sullen look in his lilac-rimmed eyes.

“I’m counting on it,” Nick said. “In fact, could you get me a Diet Coke? No ice if it’s already cold.”

Scott looked like he was about to say something when Davis Eilers-khakis and a white polo shirt beneath a blue blazer-slung an arm around Scott’s shoulder and took him away.

“So where’s the agenda?” Todd Muldaur asked Nick, as the anteroom started to grow crowded. “Dan, Davis, and I flew here on the Fairfield corporate jet together, and guess what-none of us got an agenda.”

“Oh, there’s an agenda,” Nick said with a smile. “It’s just not printed.”

“I never heard of that. Special board meeting but no written agenda?” He exchanged glances with Dan Finegold. “Hope this isn’t one of those panic moves,” he said to Nick with what was meant to be a look of kindly concern in his too-blue eyes.

Finegold gave Nick an upper-bicep squeeze. “Slow and steady, right?”

“How’s the brewery?” Nick asked him.

“Couldn’t be better,” Finegold said. “On the brewing end, at least. Micro’s a crowded category right now.”

Nick dropped his voice confidingly. “Truth is, Rolling Rock’s more my speed. I like a beer I can see through.” He scanned the room until he saw Scott McNally, huddled in a corner with Davis Eilers. Nick didn’t need to hear them talk to work out that Eilers was trying to get the lowdown from Scott. Scott’s response was evident from a series of nervous shrugs and headshakes.

Now Todd took Nick by the elbow, and spoke to him in a low, tense voice. “Pretty short notice, don’t you think?”

“The chairman of the board has the power to convene an extraordinary session of the board,” Nick said blandly.

“But what’s the goddamned agenda?”

Nick grinned, didn’t answer. “Funny, I was remembering what you said about turtles and turtle soup.”

Todd shrugged. “Dan and I didn’t mind canceling our other appointments, but, hey, there’s a Yankees-Red Sox game tonight. We both had to give away our tickets. So I hope it’s going to be worth our while, huh?”

“Definitely. Count on it. We weren’t able to rustle up that good coffee, though. You’ll have to overlook a few things.”

“We’re getting used to that,” said Todd with a grin that snapped shut an instant later. “Just hope you know what you’re doing.” He craned his head and exchanged a long glance with Scott.

Nick noticed Dorothy Devries making her entrance. She was wearing a royal blue skirt suit, with big clown-suit buttons. Her mouth was pursed and she was fingering her silver brooch with a clawlike hand. Nick waved to her from across the room, a big hearty gesture that she returned with a refrigerator smile.

Nick continued to shake hands, and make welcoming noises, until he noticed that Eddie Rinaldi had entered the room. Eddie sidled up to him with a look of impatience. “Guess what? Your fucking alarm went off again.”

Nick groaned. “I can’t-can you handle it?”

Eddie nodded. “Gas leak.”

“Gas leak?”

“Alarm company called, then they called back, said a ‘Mrs. Conover’ told them she’s handling it, but I think I should check it out. Unless you got married without telling me.”

Nick, distracted, shook his head. “And Marta’s out of the country.”

“Your girlfriend?”

“She’s not there. The kids should be home by now, though.”

Eddie put a hand on Nick’s shoulder. “I’ll head over there. You don’t fuck around with a gas leak.” He took an amused look around the room before sidling off.

“Well, why don’t we go sit down?” Nick said. His words were addressed to Todd but were loud enough to count as instructions to the room.

A couple of minutes later, everyone had taken a seat around the oversized mahogany table in the boardroom. Scott was playing with his plasma screen, raising it and lowering it nervously, like a kid with a Transformer Action Figure.

Nick didn’t sit at his usual spot at the head of the table. He left that chair empty and took the seat next to it. He nodded at Stephanie Alstrom, who wore her usual look of arid unease. She rested her hands on a thick file folder.

“I want to start with some very good news,” Nick said. “Atlas McKenzie is in. They signed this morning.”

“Why, that’s tremendous, Nick,” Todd said. “Good going! You talk them off the ledge yourself?”

“Wish I could take the credit,” Nick said. “Willard Osgood had to get on the horn himself.”

“Really,” Todd said, coolly. “That’s an unusual tactic.”

“He volunteered,” Nick said. “I didn’t twist his arm.”

“Did he? I guess he likes to show that he can land a big one from time to time.” Todd’s expression hovered between amusement and condescension. “They don’t make ’em like that anymore.”

“I’ll say.” Nick pressed an intercom button and spoke to Marjorie. “Marjorie, I think we’re all ready here. Could you let our visitor know?” Looking up, he went on, “Now, I didn’t convene this extraordinary session to crow about good news. There are some serious issues we’ve got in front of us, which have to do with the future of this company.” He paused for a moment. “A number of you have urged me to take a hard look at manufacturing costs. I’ve been resistant, and maybe I’ve been too resistant. Looking forward, now, we have decided to start diversifying our manufacturing base. Stratton is going to contract out the manufacturing for our low-cost Stratton/Basics lines. We’re currently in negotiation with a number of overseas manufacturers, including some strong candidates in China. It’s a move that will ensure we’ll continue to be competitive in the most price-sensitive part of our market.”

Dorothy Devries’s expression was almost a smirk. Todd and Scott both looked confused, as if they were on a train that had gone one stop past their destination.

“We’ve reached a different decision about the higher-end lines, which are at the core of our brand identity,” Nick went on. “These we’ll continue to manufacture right here in Fenwick.”

“I’m sorry to step in,” Todd said, clearing his throat. “But you’re referring to ‘we,’ and I don’t know who you mean by that. Are you talking about your full management team? Because a lot of us are inclined to think that it’s too late in the day for half measures.”

“I’m aware of this.” In a louder voice, he said, “As some of you here know and some of you don’t know-and until recently, I was among those who didn’t know-certain parties representing Fairfield have been negotiating to sell the Stratton brand to a consortium called Pacific Rim Investors, which controls a large Shenzhen-based manufacturer of office furniture, Shenyang Industries.”

Nick didn’t know whether he had been expecting gasps or cries of astonishment, but there weren’t any. Just the sound of shuffling papers and cleared throats.

Todd looked smug. “May I say a few words?”

“Absolutely,” Nick said.

Todd turned slightly, addressing the other members of the board. “First, I want to apologize to the CEO of this company for keeping him out of the loop on the deal. We at Fairfield have been taking a long, hard look at the numbers, and, frankly, we see an opportunity here, one we cannot afford to pass up. Stratton has entered into a crisis phase. Nick Conover-and I want to commend him for his candor-has made it very clear, every step of the way, that there are certain options he just can’t accept. Well, we respect his views. And we certainly respect his excellent work on behalf of the company. But this is a case where management cannot be given the final word.” A beat. “The greatest praise I can give any manager is to say that he does his work with passion.” He turned to face Nick. “That’s certainly true of you, Nick. But when a firm reaches a critical inflection point, there are hard choices to be made-and they need to be made with dispassion.”

He leaned back in his black Stratton chair, looking sleeker by the moment. “That’s the thing about being in a crisis zone,” he said, hardly bothering to conceal his self-satisfaction. “It’s what everyone at McKinsey gets drummed into their heads from day one. The Chinese word for ‘crisis’ combines the characters for ‘danger’ and ‘opportunity.’”

“No doubt,” Nick said breezily. “And the Chinese word for ‘outsourcing’ combines the characters for ‘lost’ and ‘jobs.’”

“We owe you a lot,” Todd said in a lordly tone. “Don’t think we’re not grateful. I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say that we appreciate all you’ve given to Stratton. It’s just that the time has come to move on.”

“I know you’d like to speak for everyone. But maybe some of us prefer to speak for themselves.” Nick stood up, nodding at the tall bespectacled man who had just let himself into the room.

Willard Osgood.

105

The central monitoring station for Fenwicke Estates also serviced three other gated communities in and around Fenwick, including Safe Harbor, Whitewood Farms, and Catamount Acres. It was a low-slung windowless building located in an anonymous area of strip malls and fast-food restaurants. It could have been a warehouse. It was surrounded by chain-link fencing and was unmarked except for a street number. Audrey knew this was for security reasons. Out back were two hulking emergency diesel generators.

When in doubt, get a warrant. You couldn’t count on people to be cooperative, even in an emergency, so she’d called in for a search warrant, had it faxed over to the central monitoring station, to the attention of the facility’s general manager. Police headquarters had all that information on file.

The assistant operations manager, Bryan Mundy, was a man in a wheelchair who was as cooperative as could be, as it turned out. He was also extremely voluble, which was annoying, but she nodded and smiled pleasantly, silently urging him to hurry. She pretended to be interested, but not too interested.

As he led her through a maze of cubicles where women, mostly, sat in front of computers wearing headsets, he maneuvered his chair deftly and boasted about how they also monitored fire alarms for quite a few businesses and residences in the area. He talked about how they were connected via secure Internet protocol to the many cameras and guard booths they monitored. About how they did live remote viewing of all cameras via a Web browser. Rolling through another area where other people, mostly men, were watching video feed on computer monitors, he talked proudly, and in endless detail, about the digital watermark on the video files that provided authentication using something called an MD5 algorithm that ensured the image had not been altered.

Audrey didn’t understand but stored away the fact that Bryan Mundy would be a good resource when the case went to trial.

He told her that he’d considered a job in law enforcement too, but preferred the pay of the private sector.

“Events up to thirty days ago are stored right here,” he said as they entered another area, which was crowded with large racks of computer servers and storage media. “You’re in luck. Anything older than that gets sent off to secure storage.”

She gave him the date she was interested in viewing, and he hooked up the black disk-array box, inside of which were several hard drives containing digital video backups. He located for her the video file from between noon and 6 P.M. on the day that Nicholas Conover’s family dog had been killed. She’d gotten the date and time from the uniform division. He showed her how to identify the files by camera number, but she told him she didn’t know what camera it was she was looking for. Any camera located along Fenwicke Estates’ perimeter fencing whose motion sensing might have been triggered during that time period.

Anyone, she thought, who had slipped into, or out of, Fenwicke Estates in the time surrounding the slaughter of Conover’s dog.

“Lot of interest in this disk, huh?” Bryan Mundy said. “Log says that the security director of the Stratton Corporation came in here a while back and made some video caps off of it.”

“Do you have a record of which video frames he copied?

Mundy shook his head and poked at his teeth absently with an orange wooden plaque stick. “He said he worked for Nicholas Conover, the CEO of Stratton. Wanted to know if we had any perimeter video near the Conover house, but no dice. Conover’s house is apparently a good ways from the fence.”

It didn’t take her long to find a tall, gawky figure in a flapping coat, wearing heavy-framed glasses, approaching the fence, captured on camera 17.

“That’s what he wanted too, the security director.”

Yes. That’s how he and Conover came to believe it was Stadler who had eviscerated the dog.

But she could see from the way Stadler was craning his neck and squinting, his body language, that he was following someone. He wasn’t looking behind, not afraid that he might have been followed. He was definitely following someone.

She knew who he was following. Dr. Landis’s speculations made a terrible and clear sense.

“Can this rewind slowly?” she asked.

“Doesn’t really rewind per se,” he said, smacking his lips around the plaque stick.

“How do I view earlier images, then?”

“Like this,” he said, and he pointed and double-clicked the mouse.

“Let’s go back, I don’t know, fifteen minutes and go from there.”

“You know which cameras you want?”

“No, unfortunately. Any one of them for fifteen minutes before this guy appears.”

He set it up for her and sat back as she moved through the images. His curiosity had gotten the better of his politeness; he sat there and watched as if he had nothing better to do.

Fortunately there weren’t too many images to go through, since the recording was triggered by motion.

Seven minutes before Andrew Stadler had climbed the fence around Fenwicke Estates, scrambling like he was in hot pursuit, she found another figure. This one was smaller, wearing a leather jacket, moving nimbly and with great purpose.

Dr. Landis’s words: Stadler would go off his meds periodically. His wife was unable to stay married to the man, understandably, and she abandoned her child, then took her away from her father a few years later-a psychic wound from which the child might have recovered had she not had an inherited genetic predisposition.

As the leather-jacketed figure approached the wrought-iron fence, it turned its face to the camera, almost as if posing. A smile.

The figure’s face was now distinct.

Cassie Stadler.

Helen Stadler, Dr. Landis had corrected Audrey.

She changed her name to Cassie some time in adolescence. She thought it was a more interesting name. Maybe she liked the association with Cassandra, the Greek heroine endowed with the gift of prophecy whom no one heeded.

She had been the one who had repeatedly broken into Nicholas Conover’s house to spray ominous and threatening graffiti. The timing now made it clear that Cassie had been the one who had killed the Conovers’ dog.

Not her father, who had followed her to Conover’s house, just as he’d probably followed her many times before.

Knowing that his daughter was disturbed.

Andrew Stadler knew Cassie was afflicted with this disorder, talked about it with Dr. Landis obsessively, blamed himself.

With unsteady hands she picked up her cell phone and called Dr. Landis. His answering machine came on. After the beep, she began speaking.

“Dr. Landis, it’s Detective Rhimes, and it’s urgent that I speak with you at once.”

Dr. Landis picked up the phone.

“You told me Helen Stadler was obsessed with the notion of the family she never had,” Audrey said without giving her name. “Families she could never be a part of, families that excluded her.”

“Yes, yes,” the psychiatrist cut in, “what of it?”

“Dr. Landis, you mentioned a family that lived across the street from the Stadlers where Cass-Helen used to play all the time when she was growing up. A little girl she considered her best friend-she used to spend all of her time over there until they became annoyed and asked her to leave?”

“Yes.” Dr. Landis’s voice was grave.

“Andrew Stadler was questioned years ago in connection with a tragic house fire across the street in which an entire family, the Stroups, died. He apparently did some repair work for them. Was this-?”

“Yes. Andrew said his daughter had his mechanical ability, and he’d taught her how to fix all sorts of things, and one night after they’d asked her to stop coming over she slipped into their house through the bulkhead doors, opened the gas line, and lit a match on her way out.”

“Dear God. She was never charged.”

“I was quite sure this was simply a fantasy of Andrew’s, a manifestation of his paranoid fixation on his daughter. In any case, who would suspect a twelve-year-old girl? The authorities thought it was Andrew, but his alibi apparently held up under questioning. Something similar happened, you know, at Carnegie Mellon University during Helen’s freshman year there. Andrew told me that his daughter belonged to a sorority, and she was quite obsessed with them as a surrogate family of sorts. Much later, he said, he heard about the terrible gas explosion in the sorority house in which eighteen women perished. This was the same night that Helen drove home from Pittsburgh, quite upset that one of her sorority sisters had said something to make her feel rejected.”

“I-I have to go, Doctor,” she said, ending the call.

Bryan Mundy had rolled up to her in his wheelchair and was signaling to her. “Talk about coincidences,” he said. “We were talking about Conover’s house, and what do you know? We just got an alert on that system, maybe ten, fifteen minutes ago.”

“An alert?”

“No, not a burglar alarm or anything. Combustible gas detector. Probably a gas leak. But the homeowner said she’s got it under control.”

“She?”

“Mrs. Conover.”

“There is no Mrs. Conover,” Audrey said, heart knocking.

Mundy shrugged. “That’s how she identified herself,” he said, but Audrey was already running toward the door.

106

Todd immediately sprang to his feet, followed by Eilers and Finegold. Their faces were wreathed in anxious cordiality.

“Mind if I join you?” Osgood asked gruffly.

“Willard,” Todd said, “I had no idea you were coming.” He turned to Nick. “You see? The personal touch-some people never lose it.”

Osgood ignored him as he took the empty seat at the head of the board table.

“There isn’t going to be any sale,” Nick said. “The sale is wrong for Stratton, and wrong for Fairfield. We too have looked at the numbers-and by ‘we,’ I mean Willard and I-and that’s our considered assessment.”

“May I speak?” Todd said.

“We’re talking about an opportunity here,” Scott said. “Not something that’s going to knock twice.”

“An opportunity?” Nick asked. “Or a danger?” He paused, and turned to Stephanie Alstrom. “Stephanie, a few words? I know I haven’t given you enough time to prepare a PowerPoint presentation, but maybe you can do it the old-fashioned way.”

Stephanie Alstrom started sorting through the stapled sheaths in her file, making three separate stacks next to her. “Here’s the principal tort and criminal case law governing the salient issues, starting with federal statutes,” she began in her most juiceless tone. “There’s the Bribery of Foreign Officials Act of 1999, part No. 43, and the International Anti-Bribery and Fair Competition Act of 1998, and-oh heavens-the antifraud provisions of the securities laws, Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5. And, though I haven’t read through the case law properly yet, there’s Section 13(b)(5) of the Exchange Act and Rule 13b2-1, to deal with.” She was sounding increasingly flustered. “And, of course, Sections 13(a) and 13(b)(2)(A) of the Exchange Act, and Rules 12b-20 and 13a too. But also there’s-”

“I think we get the picture,” Nick said smoothly.

“Pretty much what Dino Panetta told me back in Boston,” Osgood rumbled.

“That is ridiculous,” Todd said. Blood was returning to his face. Too much blood. “These are completely unfounded allegations that I dispute-”

“Todd?” Osgood’s craggy face formed a scowl. “It’s one thing if you want to go fly-fishing with your private parts for bait, but you do not put the partnership at risk. Question I was asking myself last night was, Where did I go wrong? Then this morning, I had the answer. I didn’t go wrong. You went wrong. You ignored company policy and made a huge bet on microchips, way more than you should have, and the entire firm almost went belly-up as a result. Then you figured you could save your ass, and ours, by doing a quick-and-dirty sale. A nice big pile of dough, and who cares how you got it. Well, not like this.” He struck the table, stressing each word. “Not. Like. This.” His eyes flashed behind his Coke-bottle glasses. “Because you’ve put Fairfield Equity Partners in a potentially ruinous legal situation. We could have brown-suited lawyers from the SEC camped out on Federal Street for the next five years, combing through our files with a jeweler’s loupe. You wanted to land a big fish-and you didn’t care if you rammed the boat through a goddamned barrier reef to do it.”

“I think you’re blowing this out of proportion,” Todd said, wheedling. “Fairfield is in no danger.”

“Damned right,” Osgood replied. “Fairfield Equity Partners is completely in the clear.”

“Good,” Todd said uncertainly.

“That’s right,” Osgood said. “Because the partnership did the responsible thing. Demonstrated it wasn’t party to the misdeeds. As soon as the errant behavior came to our attention, we severed our relations with the principals-former principals, not to put too fine a point on it, and took all possible measures to separate ourselves from the malefactors. Including the commencement of legal action against Todd Erickson Muldaur. You violated the gross misconduct clause of your agreement with the Partnership, which means, as I’m sure you know, that your share reverts to the general equity fund.”

“You’re joking,” Todd said, blinking as if there was a bit of grit lodged behind one of his blue contact lenses. “I’ve got all my money invested in Fairfield. You can’t just declare-”

“You signed the same agreement we all did. Now we’re activating the provision. Only way to show the feds we’re serious. You can contest it-I’m sure you will. But I think you’ll find most high-powered lawyers are going to want to see a hefty chunk of their fee up front. And we’ve already filed for a separate tort claim against you and your coconspirator, Mr. McNally, for a hundred and ten million dollars. We’ve requested that the judge place the funds we’re trying to recover in escrow, pending legal resolution, and we’ve received indications that he intends to do so.”

Scott’s face looked like a plaster death mask. He tugged robotically at a lock of hair at his temple. As Nick listened to Osgood, he found himself staring out the window at the charred buffalo grass. It no longer looked like a lifeless black carpet anymore, he noticed. The new grass had begun to grow back. Tiny green blades were now peeking through the black.

“That’s insane!” Todd spoke with a squeaky groan, a crowbar pulling out a long nail. “You can’t do that. I will not be treated this way, Willard. I’m owed some basic respect. I am a full-fledged partner at Fairfield, of eight years’ standing. I’m not some…some goddamn catfish you can play catch-and-release with.”

Osgood turned to Nick. “He’s got a point. You wouldn’t want to mix him up with a catfish. You see, one’s a bottom-feeding, scum-sucking scavenger…”

“And the other’s a fish,” Nick said. “Got it. And one more bit of business.” He looked around the table. “Now that Stratton’s future is secure, I’m hereby submitting my resignation.”

Osgood turned to face him, stunned. “What? Oh, Christ.”

“I’m about to face a legal…situation…which I don’t want to drag my company through.”

The men and women around the boardroom table seemed as astonished as Osgood was. Stephanie Alstrom began shaking her head.

But Nick stood up and shook Osgood’s hand firmly. “Stratton’s been through enough. When we make the announcement, we’ll just say that Mr. Conover resigned ‘in order to spend more time with his family.’” He gave a little wink. “Which has the added virtue of being true. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

He got up and strode confidently out of the room, and for the first time in a long while he felt a palpable sense of relief.

Marjorie was crying as she watched him gather up his framed family pictures. Her phone was ringing nonstop, but she was ignoring it.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “I think you owe me an explanation.”

“You’re right. I do.” He reached down to the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out the rubber-banded stack of Post-it notes in Laura’s handwriting. “But first, could you find me a box?”

She turned and, as she passed her desk, she picked up the phone. A few seconds later, Marge looked around the partition, looking grim. “Nick, there’s some kind of emergency at your house.”

“Eddie’s handling it.”

“Well, the thing is-that was a woman named Cathy or Cassie, calling from your house. I didn’t get the name-she was speaking fast, sounding panicked. She said you’ve got to get over there as fast as you can. I don’t have a good feeling about this.”

Nick dropped the picture frames onto his desk and broke into a run.

107

On his way to the parking lot he called home, let it ring.

No answer, which was strange. Cassie had just called from there-and what the hell was she doing there anyway? Plus, both kids should have gotten home from school by now to do their last-minute packing, both of them excited about the trip. Even, in his grudging way, Lucas, or so Nick thought.

But the phone rang and rang and the voice mail kept coming on.

Okay, so Lucas often didn’t answer the home phone, let the voice mail get it, but Julia always answered. She loved the phone. And Cassie-she’d just called. Weird.

No answer.

Lucas’s cell? He didn’t remember the number, too many numbers in his head and this one he didn’t call all that often. He hit the green call button on his phone, which pulled up the last ten or whatever calls he’d dialed.

There it was, LUCAS CELL. Had Marjorie programmed that in? Probably. He hit SEND as he ran through the parking lot, a couple of employees waving hello, but he didn’t have time for niceties.

Come on, damn it, answer the fucking phone. Told you if you don’t answer the cell, I take it away, that’s the deal.

A couple of rings and then his son’s recorded voice, adolescent-buzzy in timbre, curt and full of attitude in just a few words.

Hey, it’s Luke, what up? Leave a message.

A beep, then a female voice: Please leave your message after the tone. Press One to send a numeric page-

Nick ended the call, heart drumming and not from the run. He fumbled for the Suburban’s key-fob thing, pressed it to unlock just as he reached the car door.

Roaring out of the parking lot, he tried Eddie’s cell.

No answer.

“She’s not here,” Bugbee said. The cellular signal began to fade…“Patrol units, but no Cassie Stadler at her house.”

“She’s at Conover’s,” Audrey said. “Gas leak.”

“Huh?”

“I’m heading over there now. You too. Right away. Notify the fire department.”

“You know she’s there?”

“She answered the phone when the alarm monitoring service called. Get over there, Roy. Right now.”

“Why?” Bugbee said.

“Just do it. And bring backup.” She ended the call so he didn’t have a chance to argue.

Gas leak. The Stroups, her neighbors when she was twelve.

She lit a match on the way out.

Her sorority house at Carnegie Mellon when she was a freshman.

Eighteen young women perished.

The families she desperately wanted to be part of. Who all rejected her.

Then Audrey called Nicholas Conover’s office at the Stratton Corporation, but she was told he wasn’t there.

Tell him it’s urgent, she said. It’s a matter of safety. His house.

The secretary’s voice lost its hard edge. “He’s on his way over there, officer.”

The alarm company?

Nick didn’t even remember the name.

A gas leak? He tried to imagine what that was all about-something goes wrong in the house, the kids smell gas, maybe they’re smart about it and get the hell out of the house, that’s why the house phone line went unanswered-but what about Lucas’s cell?

Say he left it inside in the rush to get out. Sure, that was all.

But Eddie?

Guy lived with a cell phone planted to his ear. Why the hell would he not answer either?

Twelve minutes he could be at the gates of Fenwicke Estates. Assuming he caught the lights right. He gunned it, then slowed just a bit, keeping it no more then ten miles an hour over the speed limit. An overzealous cop could pull him over, slow things way down even if Nick told him it was an emergency. Ask for my license and registration, maybe decide to take his fucking time about it once he caught the name.

He drove the whole way in a mental tunnel of concentration, barely aware of the traffic around him, thinking only of getting to the house. Kept hitting REDIAL for Eddie’s cell, but no answer.

A moment of relief as he pulled up to the gatehouse. No emergency vehicles here, no fire trucks or whatever, probably no big deal.

A gas leak is not the same thing as a fire, of course.

Could the kids and Eddie and Cassie all have been overcome by gas fumes, maybe that’s why they couldn’t answer? He had no idea if natural gas did that.

“Hi, Mr. Conover,” said Jorge, behind the bulletproof glass in the booth.

“Emergency, Jorge,” Nick called out.

“Your security director, Mr. Rinaldi, he came through here already.”

“How long ago?”

“Let me check the log-”

“Forget it. Open the gate, Jorge.”

“It’s opening, Mr. Conover.”

And so it was, glacially slow. Inching open.

“Can you speed it up?” Nick said.

Jorge smiled apologetically, shrugged. “You know this gate, I’m sorry. Also your friend came by.”

“My friend?”

“Miss Stadler? She came by too. Hour ago, I think.”

Did the kids call Cassie to come over? he wondered. Why didn’t they call me? They know how to reach me. More comfortable calling Cassie, that it?

“Goddammit,” Nick shouted in frustration. “Speed this fucking thing up.”

“I can’t do that, Mr. Conover, I’m sorry.”

Nick floored it, the Suburban lurching forward, hitting the solid iron bars of the gate, a crunch of metal that he knew wasn’t the gate. Even the goddamned Suburban is a fucking tin can, crumples like a wad of aluminum foil. Front-end work. Fuck it.

It didn’t budge the gate, which continued its stately pace, oblivious, arrogant, taking its goddamned fucking time.

Jorge’s eyes widened. Finally the gate was open just enough, Nick calculated, to get through. He gunned it again, the squeal of metal against metal as the car scraped against the gate but got through, just barely.

SPEED LIMIT 20, the sign said.

Fuck it.

No fire trucks on the street or along the driveway. No police cars either.

Maybe this was nothing. He was overreacting, no emergency at all, no gas leak at all, a false alarm.

No. A false alarm, there would have been an answer, one of the calls he’d made.

Gas leak for real. Eddie came by, got the kids out of there and Cassie too, saved them all, thank God for that traitorous bastard, a bastard but my bastard, maybe turned out to be a real friend after all, maybe I owe him an apology.

Eddie’s GTO in the driveway, parked behind the van. Cassie’s red VW convertible too. It didn’t compute. Cassie came over, Eddie too, both of their cars here, the van here too. That meant no one drove the kids away, thus the kids are still here and Eddie and Cassie too, so what the hell, then?

He raced up the stone path to the house, noticed all the windows were closed, the house sealed tight as if they were already out of there, on vacation, and as he approached the front door he smelled rotten eggs.

The gas smell.

It was for real. It was strong too, if he could smell it out here. Very strong. That odorant they add to natural gas so you know if there’s a leak.

Front door was locked, which was a little strange if everyone had just run out of there, but he didn’t linger on that, totally single-minded. He grabbed his key ring, got the door open.

Dark in here.

He yelled out, “Hello? Anyone here?”

No answer.

The rotten-egg smell was overpowering. More like skunk, maybe. A wall of odor, sharp as a knife, nauseating.

“Hello?”

Faint noises now. Thumping? From upstairs? He couldn’t tell, the house was so solid. He entered the kitchen, but no one there either.

Distant bumping sounds, but then footsteps nearby, and Cassie appeared, walking slowly, looking worn out, a wreck.

“Cass,” he said. “Thank God you’re here. Where are the kids?”

She kept approaching, one hand behind her back, slowly, almost hesitant. Her eyes sleepy, not looking at him, her stare distant.

“Cass?”

“Yeah,” she said at last. “Thank God I’m here.” Flat, almost affectless.

He heard a high-pitched mechanical beeping coming from somewhere. What the hell was that?

“Where is everyone?”

“They’re safe,” she said, but something in her tone seemed off, as if she wasn’t sure.

“Where’s Eddie?”

A beat. “He’s…safe too.” She drew out the words.

He stepped toward her to give her a hug, but she stepped backward, shook her head.

“No,” she said.

“Cassie?”

He felt the twang of fear even before his brain could make sense of it.

“You’ve got to get out of here. We’ve got to open some windows, call the fire department. Jesus, this is incredibly dangerous, this stuff is unbelievably combustible. Where are Luke and Julia?”

The high beeping was getting faster, higher in pitch, and Nick realized the source was a device on the kitchen counter he’d seen before, a small yellow box with flexible metal tubing coming out of it. What was it, and what was it doing there?

“I’m glad you came home, Nick.” Her eyes were smudged, looking like black holes. They darted from side to side. “I knew you would, though. Daddy protects his family. You’re a good daddy. Not like my daddy. He never protected me.”

“Cassie,” he said, “what is it? You look so frightened.”

She nodded. “I’m terrified.”

He felt his skin go cold and goosefleshy. He saw it in her eyes, that same absent look he’d seen before, as if she’d gone somewhere else where no one could reach her. “Cassie,” he said in a gentle and firm tone, hollow inside, “where are my children?”

“I’m terrified of me, Nick. And you should be too.”

With her left hand she reached into the pocket of her denim shirt and pulled out an object that he recognized as Lucas’s Zippo lighter. The lighter decorated with a skull crawling with spiders and surrounded by spider webs, a real stoner lighter. She flipped the top off, one-handed, and her thumb touched the flint wheel.

“No!” Nick shouted. “What are you doing, are you crazy?”

“Come on, Nick, you know I am. Can’t you read the writing on the wall?” She began singing softly, “Oh, I ran to the rock to hide my face, the rock cried out ‘No hiding place.’”

“Where are they, Cassie?”

The electronic beeping, rising all the while in pitch, had now become a steady high squeal, almost ear-piercing. He realized where he’d seen that yellow box before: in the basement, placed there by the gas company serviceman. A combustible gas detector. Supposed to warn you about gas leaks. Beeping got higher and faster as the concentration of gas in the air increased. A steady squeal meant dangerous amounts of gas. Combustible levels. Someone had taken the device upstairs from the basement, and he now knew who.

“I told you, they’re safe,” she said in a flat voice, and her other hand, the one she’d been keeping behind her back, came around to the front now, gripping the huge carbon-steel Henckels carving knife from the kitchen knife rack.

Heart thumping a million miles a minute now. Oh sweet Jesus, she’s out of her mind. Dear God, help me.

“Cassie,” he said, moving closer, his arms outspread to give her a hug, but she raised the knife and pointed it at him, and with her left hand she held up the lighter, thumb on the wheel, and said, “Not another step, Nick.”

The guard’s face appeared behind the tempered glass of the security booth at the entrance to the Fenwicke Estates.

His voice squawked through the intercom. “Yes?”

She flashed her police badge. “Police emergency,” she said.

The guard looked at it through the glass and immediately activated the security gate.

“Jesus, Cassie, please don’t-”

“Oh, I really don’t like this part,” she said, and at that instant he noticed the red slick on the knife blade, still wet.

108

The high wrought-iron gate began to open, but so slowly, so agonizingly slowly. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and finally she said, “Please, speed this up. There’s no time to waste.”

“Sorry, I can’t make it go any faster,” the guard said. “That’s as fast as it goes. I’m sorry.”

“Put the knife down, Cassie,” Nick said, all forced calm, voice soft and wheedling.

“When I’m done with my work, Nick. I’m very tired. I just want to finish. It has to end.”

“Your work,” Nick said numbly. “Please, Cassie. What have you done with them?” Fear rose in him like a flood tide.

Please God no not the kids no oh Jesus Christ no.

“Who?” she said.

No please not that dear God not the kids.

“My…family.”

“Oh, they’re safe, Nick. Like a family should be. Safe. Protected.”

“Please, Cassie,” he whispered, a catch in his throat, hot tears in his eyes. “Where are my kids?”

“Safe, Nick.”

“Cassie, please tell me they’re…” He stopped, couldn’t say alive, couldn’t allow himself to think the word, even, because its opposite was unendurable.

She cocked her head. “You can’t hear them? Banging away? They’re locked up nice and safe in the basement. You can hear it, I know you can.”

And he could, now that she pointed it out, hear a distant thumping. The basement door? He almost gasped in relief, his knees buckling. She’d locked them in the basement. They were alive down there.

Where the gas was coming from.

“Where’s Eddie?” he managed to say.

Oh God please if Eddie’s down there he’ll get them out, he’ll figure out a way, he can bust through a locked door, pick it. Fucking windowless basement. Vent grates are too small to climb out of. But he’ll figure it out.

She shook her head. “He’s not down there. I never trusted him either.” She waggled the lighter, the skull leering at him.

“Don’t do it, Cassie. You’ll kill us all. Please don’t do it, Cassie.”

She kept waggling the lighter back and forth, back and forth, her thumb at the flint wheel. “I didn’t ask him to come. I told you to come. Eddie’s not family.”

His eyes frantically scanned the kitchen, then stopped when he saw a shape on the lawn outside the kitchen doors. Through the glass of the French doors he recognized Eddie’s body.

He saw the blood-darkened front of Eddie’s pale shirt.

The contorted position. The unnatural splay of the limbs.

He knew, and it was all he could do to keep from screaming.

Audrey couldn’t stand how slowly the gate was opening, almost deliberately so, as if the residents of the Fenwicke Estates were never in a hurry, because haste was unseemly.

Move it! she screamed in her mind.

She gripped the steering wheel, tapping at the gas pedal.

Faster!

She knew what was going to happen, what the poor demented soul was doing, as she’d done before. Somehow Cassie Stadler had gotten into the Conover house-well, that couldn’t have been too hard, right? She and Conover had become intimate; maybe she had a key-and something had happened to set her off, make her feel rejected. Cassie Stadler was a borderline personality, Dr. Landis had said, with a dangerous psychotic component. An obsession with family, with inclusion, and rejection always propelled her into a towering irrational rage.

Cassie Stadler was going to incinerate the Conover home.

Audrey prayed that the children weren’t home. It was early in the afternoon-maybe they were still in school. Maybe the house was empty. The worst that could happen, then, was that the house would be destroyed.

Maybe no one was home. She prayed that was so.

“Put down the lighter, baby,” Nick said, voice silky, all the fake affection he could summon. “Is this about Maui? Because I didn’t invite you?”

Fuck the knife. He’d lunge at her, grab it.

The lighter? All that took was a flick of her Bic. Could happen by accident. That he’d have to be careful of.

“Why should you invite me on a family trip, Nick? I mean, it’s just for family, right? I’m not family.”

He understood. He realized that he didn’t know her, had never known her, that he’d seen in her only what he wanted to see.

She’d said as much, hadn’t she? “We don’t see things as they are,” she’d said once, quoting someone. “We see things as we are.”

But he knew enough about her to understand what she was saying now.

Audrey could smell the natural gas as soon as she got out of the car.

She saw all the other vehicles in the driveway, two of them belonging to Nicholas Conover, the other she didn’t recognize. Not Bugbee’s. He was all the way across town. It would take him a while. She hoped he knew to get here fast, sirens and lights on.

Her instinct told her not to go in the front door. She had to obey her instinct, times like this.

She took out the pistol from her shoulder holster under her jacket and began walking across the wide expanse of lawn, so very green, heading toward the back of the house where she could enter unnoticed.

She chose the right side of the house, where she remembered the kitchen was. As she rounded the house she noticed a figure standing in the kitchen, a small slender figure, and she knew it was Cassie Stadler.

And then she saw the body sprawled on the lawn.

Running now, low to the ground, she approached the body.

A terrible bloody mess. Sweet Jesus. It was Edward Rinaldi, and it looked as if he’d been disemboweled.

His eyes open, staring, one hand curled by his abdomen, the other outstretched toward the kitchen. Blood-soaked beige knit shirt crisscrossed with slashes as if from a knife.

Most of his shirt front dark with blood, which pooled on the green lawn.

She dropped to her knees to feel for a pulse.

She wasn’t sure.

If there was a pulse, it was so slow she couldn’t detect it. Maybe there was a pulse. Maybe not.

She touched his carotid artery and felt nothing, and she knew for certain the man was dead.

Nothing she could do for him. She set down her pistol, took out her cell phone, got Bugbee on the first ring.

“Alert the ME,” she said. “And body conveyance.”

She was frightened as she’d never been frightened before, and she’d been through some horrific crime scenes. She got up and ran around to the back of the house.

“God, I wasn’t even thinking,” Nick said, shaking his head. “I was in such a rush to just get the kids out of town, get us on a vacation, I really fucked that up. I mean, I really blew it.”

“Don’t, Nick,” she said, but he saw something flicker in her eyes, as if maybe she wanted to believe.

“No, seriously, I mean, how could it be a true family vacation without you? You’ve become such an important part of the family, babe, you know that? If I hadn’t been so distracted with everything that’s been going on at work, I-”

“Don’t, Nick,” she said a little louder, her voice still petulant. “Please.”

“We can still be a family, Cass. I’d like that. Wouldn’t you like that?”

Her eyes glistened with tears. “Oh, Nick, I’ve been through this before, you know. I recognize the pattern.”

“The pattern?” Heart thwacking, because he saw that faint glint of hopefulness in her eyes go dark like the last winking of a dying fire.

“The first signs. It’s always the same. They take you in and make you feel like a part of everything and then something always happens. There’s like a line you can never cross. A brick wall. It’s like the Stroups.”

“The Stroups?”

“One day, no reason, they say I can’t keep coming over, I’m spending too much time over there. Lines are drawn. They’re family, you’re not. Maybe that’s the way it has to be. But I know I can’t go through it again. It’s too much.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, baby,” Nick said. “It’s not too late. We can still be a family.”

“Sometimes a world has to come to an end. So new ones can come into being.”

The electronic squeal, steady, earsplitting.

Audrey considered, then rejected, entering through the French doors that led into the kitchen. No. She’d have to approach with some stealth. She raced to the next set of French doors, but they were locked too. Was there no basement entrance, bulkhead doors or whatever?

There didn’t seem to be.

A hissing sound drew her to the far side of the house near the pool fence. She saw pipes-gas pipes, she realized. Some kind of metal objects were lying on the ground next to the pipe stand, and a crescent wrench. Valves or something. They’d been removed, and maybe that was why the hissing was so loud, like the flow had been turned up full, maybe.

The gas pipes had to lead into the basement, she knew, because that was always where they went.

Over the hissing she could hear a shout. It was coming from a grate about twenty feet away.

She ran to the grate, put her face against it, the skunky, metallic smell of gas nauseating her. “Hello?” she called out.

“Down here! We’re down here!” An adolescent male voice. Conover’s son?

“Who is it?” Audrey said.

“Lucas. And my sister. She’s got us locked in here.”

“Who does?”

“That crazy bitch. Cassie.”

“Where’s your dad?”

“I don’t know-just, shit, will you help us? We’re going to fucking die down here!”

“Stay calm,” Audrey said, though calm was the one thing she didn’t feel. “Listen, Lucas. Help me out. You can help me, okay?”

“Who’re you?”

“I’m Detective Rhimes. Listen to me. How’s your sister doing?”

“She’s-she’s scared, what the fuck do you think?”

“Julia, right? Julia, can you hear me?”

A small, frightened voice. “Yes.”

“Are you getting enough oxygen?”

“What?”

“Stand over here by this grate, sweetheart. Make sure you get enough air from the outside. You’ll be okay.”

“Okay,” the girl said.

“Now, Lucas, is there a pilot light down there?”

“A pilot light?”

“Are you near the water heater? There’s usually a pilot light going on the water heater, and if that ignites the cloud of gas, the whole house is going to blow. You’ve got to turn it off.”

“There’s no pilot light.” His voice was faint, distant, as if he’d gone to check. “No pilot light. She must have put it out so the gas wouldn’t ignite too early.”

Smart kid, she thought. “All right. Is there a shutoff for the gas line? It would be on the wall where the gas pipes enter.”

“I see it.”

“You see the shutoff?”

Footsteps. “No. I don’t see a shutoff.”

She sighed, tried to think. “Are any of the doors to the house open?”

“I-I don’t know, how would I know?” the boy replied.

“I think they’re all locked. Is there a key hidden somewhere outside, like under a rock or something?”

She heard a jingling, and a small steel key ring poked up through the slats in the grate. “Use mine,” the boy said.

Thumping from the basement, frantic, the noises reassuring because they were alive. Now in the few seconds of stillness Nick could faintly hear Lucas’s voice yelling. They were alive. And desperate to get out of there.

“I’m going to call United right now,” Nick said. “I’ll get you on our flight no matter what it costs. First class if you want it, but you probably want to sit with us in business class.” He thought, Don’t pick up the phone, even as a pretense. The phone could ignite the gas. He remembered reading somewhere about a woman who had a gas leak and she picked up the phone and called 911, and an electric arc from the phone circuit sparked and the house exploded. “The kids would love that. You know they would, baby.”

“Please, Nick.” She toyed with the lighter, and in her other hand the knife dangled at her side.

He could leap at her, hurl her to the ground, if he did it carefully, chose the right moment.

“I know you now,” she said in a monotone. “I can see right through you.”

Quietly, quietly, Audrey turned the key in the back-door lock, and then pushed the door open.

A tone sounded. The alarm system’s entry alert.

It had just announced her arrival.

The skunk stench was overpowering in here.

She walked slowly, orienting herself. She didn’t remember the layout of the house well, but then she could hear voices, female and male, and she knew which way to go.

Was the unhinged woman holding Conover hostage? If she was, then the sound of Audrey entering might attract her attention, unnerve her, maybe make her do something rash. The wrench, the gas pipes-it told Audrey that Cassie Stadler, it had to be her, had opened the pipes in order to fill the house with gas just as she’d done in other houses before.

All she’d have to do would be to strike a match and the house would explode, killing herself and the children in the basement and Audrey too. But why hadn’t she done it yet?

Audrey had an idea now.

Cassie Stadler was filling the house with gas, had been for a while. Maybe she was just waiting for the entire house to fill up. So she could get the biggest bang possible.

Yes. That’s what she was waiting for.

The children. That was the first thing. She had to free them.

A pounding on a door somewhere nearby told her where to go. A door in the hall. She heard the kids, or maybe it was just Lucas, pounding and pounding.

Swiftly she turned the deadbolt with a loud, satisfying click, and she pulled the door open. The boy tumbled out, sprawled to the floor.

“Hush,” Audrey whispered. “Where’s your sister?”

“Right here,” said Lucas, and the girl came streaking out, weeping, her face red.

“Go!” Audrey whispered. “Both of you.” She pointed to the open door. “Run!”

“Where’s Dad?” Julia cried. “Where is he?”

“He’s all right,” Audrey said, not knowing what else to say. She had to get them out of here. “Go!”

Julia took right off, pushed open the screen door and began running across the lawn, but Lucas didn’t move. He looked at her.

“Don’t fire that gun,” he said. “That’ll set it off.”

“I know,” she said.

“What was that?” said Cassie.

“What?”

“That sound. The alarm. Someone just came in the house.”

“I didn’t hear it.”

Cassie turned slowly, looked from one entrance to the other, all the while flicking her eyes back to Nick, making sure he didn’t advance toward her.

“You know,” she said, her eyes trained on him, “it’s funny, the way I went through stages of thinking about you. First I saw you as the destroyer of families. You sure destroyed my dad’s life when you fired him, so I had to let you know you weren’t any safer than anyone else.”

“The graffiti,” Nick said, realizing. “‘No hiding place.’”

“But then I got to know you a little better, and I thought I’d been wrong, I decided you were a good man. But I know better now. Sometimes you gotta trust your first impressions.”

“Put the lighter down, Cassie. You don’t want to do this. Let’s talk, let’s figure things out.”

“You know what fooled me? When I saw what a good daddy you were.”

“Please, Cassie.”

Behind her was the entrance that led to the back hallway. He became aware of a slight change in the light, a shadow. A movement.

A figure slowly approaching.

Nick knew enough not to break eye contact with Cassie. He looked into her red-rimmed eyes, while in his peripheral vision he could make out a woman moving stealthily along the wall, advancing toward the kitchen.

It was the police detective, Audrey Rhimes.

Don’t break eye contact. He forced himself to look into Cassie’s desperate heavy-lidded eyes, bottomless pools of anguish and madness.

“Not like my daddy. He was scared of me, he followed me everywhere, wouldn’t leave me alone, but he’d never do for me what you did for your kids.”

“He loved you, Cass, you know that.” His voice was shaking a little.

Keep your eyes on Cassie.

Detective Rhimes was advancing ever so slowly.

“You were so scared that night. I could see it from where I was standing, in the woods. I could hear it. The way you told him, ‘Freeze,’ and, ‘One more step, and I shoot!’” She shook her head. “I don’t know what they told you about him, but I can just imagine. Schizophrenic, right? You thought he was the one who killed your dog. You didn’t know he was just trying to hand you a note saying he was innocent, right? You thought he was pulling out a gun. So you did the right thing, the brave thing. You protected your family. You protected your kids. You squeezed the trigger and you shot him down, and you did what a dad should do. You protected your family.”

Oh, Christ. I took her father away from her and she knew it all along. Before we met, she knew it.

I took her family, and now she’s going to take mine.

A terrible chill ran through his body.

She nodded, raised her left hand, the lighter hand, and Nick flinched, but she only rubbed her left forearm against her nose, sniffling. “Yeah, I was there that night, Nick. I was there first. He was following me, always following me. He knew I was paying another visit to your house. I saw you, Nick.”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Detective Rhimes inch ahead, closer, closer, but he didn’t dare shift his eyes even a millimeter.

“He just kept coming at you and coming at you, didn’t he? And no matter how much you told him to stop he kept coming because he really didn’t understand.” Her voice deepened, in an eerie imitation of her father’s voice: “Never-safe! Never-safe!” She shook her head. “I’ll never forget the look on your face afterward. I’ve never seen a man look so frightened. And so sad.”

“Cassie, I-God, I’m so, so sorry, I don’t know what else to say. I’m going to face up to what I’ve done. I’m going to answer for it.”

“Sorry? Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m not mad. Don’t apologize. It was beautiful, what you did. You were protecting your family.”

“Cassie, please…”

“Of course you had to do it. Oh, don’t I know it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful. It was a liberation, you know. It freed me. My daddy was in a prison of his own mind, but I was a prisoner, too, until you freed me. And then I met you and I saw what a strong man you were. A good man, I thought. You needed a wife, and your kids needed a mommy, and we could all be a family.”

“We can still be a family.”

She shook her head, knife dangling at one side, toying with the lighter in the other. A rueful smile. “No, Nick. I know how these things work. I’ve been through it time and time again, and I just”-her voice cracked, her face got small and wrinkled, and she began to really cry now-“I just can’t go through it again. I’m tired. I can’t do it again. Once the door slams shut you can’t open it again. It’s never the same. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” Nick said, moving closer, wearing an expression of gentle empathy.

“Stop, Nick,” she said, holding up the lighter warningly as she stepped back. “No closer.”

“Things can change, Cassie. In a good way.”

Tears were streaming down her face now from her smudged eyes. “No,” she said. “It’s time,” and Nick could hear the rasp of her thumb on the flint wheel.

109

Audrey listened closely as she advanced toward the kitchen. She could hear everything the two said, and it was strange how insignificant, all of a sudden, it was to have Nicholas Conover’s guilt confirmed from his own mouth.

She thought of that passage from Matthew, the parable of the unmerciful servant. She thought of the sign taped to her computer monitor that said, “Remember: We work for God.”

She understood what she had to do about Nicholas Conover. The weapon that had killed Andrew Stadler had been stolen years earlier by Eddie Rinaldi, who now lay dead on the lawn.

You can’t convict a dead man.

Things would be sorted out later.

But for now she had to stop Cassie Stadler.

The problem was that this situation fit no pattern she had ever trained for. She slid along the wall, felt it cold against her cheek. Gripped the smooth paint of the doorframe molding.

Did Conover know she was there?

She thought he did.

She could hear the steady high-pitched tone, and she saw where it was coming from. It was a combustible gas detector, which measured the concentration of gas in the air. The steady tone meant that the gas in the air had reached optimal combustibility-she forgot the exact percentages, but she knew it was a range on either side of ten percent. Cassie Stadler was waiting until the air up here had reached the most dangerous concentration of propane gas, no less and no more.

You must always think several steps ahead, she told herself. What if, as she stole up on Cassie, relying on the element of surprise to take her down barehanded, she startled the woman, causing her to strike the lighter?

That had to be avoided at all costs.

She slid past the hall table, careful not to jar it and thus knock the alabaster lamp to the floor. Finally, she entered the room, and she didn’t know what she was going to do next.

She listened hard, and she thought.

The flint didn’t spark on her first try. Cassie frowned, tears coursing down her cheeks.

The gas detector shrilled, and meanwhile she sang softly in her lovely, lilting voice: “Oh, the rock cried out, I’m burning too-I want to go to Heaven the same as you.”

“Cassie, don’t do it.”

“This was your decision. You made this happen.”

“I made a mistake.”

She looked above Nick’s shoulder, saw something. “Luke?” she said.

“Cassie,” Lucas said, walking across the kitchen straight toward her.

“Luke,” Nick said. “Get out of here.”

“What are you doing here, Luke?” Cassie said. “I told you and Julia to stay in the basement.”

Audrey Rhimes had somehow gotten into the house through the back door; that was the alert tone sounding, she knew to unlock the basement, let the kids out. But where was Julia?

Lucas must have taken the back corridor around, through the family room to the kitchen’s other entrance.

“You locked us in,” Lucas said, coming right up to her, standing to one side of her. “I know you didn’t mean to. But I found the spare key.”

What the hell was he doing? “Luke, please,” Nick said.

But Lucas was ignoring his father. “Cassie,” he said, touching her shoulder, “remember that poem you helped me with-that guy Robert Frost?” He smiled, warm and winning and appealing. “‘Hired Hand’ or ‘Hired Man’ or whatever it was called.”

Cassie didn’t move Lucas’s hand off her shoulder, Nick noticed. She turned to look at him, her expression seeming to soften just a bit, he thought.

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in,” Cassie said, her voice hollow.

Lucas nodded.

His eyes slid toward Nick’s for just a fraction of a second.

Nick saw it.

Lucas wasn’t ignoring him at all. He was signaling to his father.

“Remember what you told me?” Lucas said. His luminous blue eyes held hers. “There’s nothing more important than family. You said that’s what it’s all about, finally, in the end. That’s what makes us human.”

“Lucas,” Cassie said, and there was a slight shift in her tone, and at that instant Nick dove at her to knock her to the ground-

– but Cassie spun, snakelike, off to one side, the speed of a jungle animal, all lithe arms and legs. He slammed against her, knocking the knife out of her hand, but she managed to sidestep him. The knife went clattering across the tile.

She sprang to her feet and held the lighter aloft, displaying it for both men to admire, and she said, “You Conover men. What am I going to do with you?” She made a strange grimace. “I think it’s time. We have to go now. A world must come to an end.”

A sudden movement from behind Cassie.

Must hold her attention.

“Cassie,” Nick said. “Look at me.”

Her opaque eyes locked with his.

“I’m not hiding anymore, Cass. Look in my eyes and you can see it. I’m not hiding.”

Her face was radiant, flushed and gleaming, more beautiful at that moment than Nick had ever seen her before. She was transfigured. A remarkable serenity had settled over her features as she thumbed the flint wheel.

And something flew out of the background and smashed down upon her head, the white alabaster lamp, and as the stone cracked into her skull, Cassie crumpled to the floor with an Unnnnh sound as the lighter skittered under the refrigerator.

An eerie burbling sound escaped her lips.

Audrey Rhimes’s face was streaked with sweat. She looked down at the lamp still in her hand, apparently stunned by what she’d just done.

Nick stared in shock. Mixed with the powerful gas smell he could detect the faint scent of Cassie’s patchouli perfume.

“Run!” she shouted. “Get out of here now!”

“Where’s Julia?” Nick said as he started toward the exit.

“She’s outside somewhere,” Lucas said.

“Go!” Audrey screamed. “Anything-the slightest spark-can set this gas off. We’ve all got to get out of here immediately and let the fire department clear the house. Now!”

Lucas vaulted ahead of Nick, crashing against the front screen door before he managed to get it open, then held it open for Audrey and his father.

Julia was standing on the front lawn alongside the driveway, a good distance away.

Nick raced to her, grabbed her and hoisted her up to his shoulder, and kept on running, Lucas and Audrey close behind. They all stopped at the edge of the property just as Nick heard the loud wail of sirens.

“Look!” said Lucas, pointing back toward the house, and Nick immediately saw what he was indicating. It was Cassie, standing unsteadily at the window, watching them, a cigarette dangling out of her mouth.

“No!” Nick shouted, but he knew she couldn’t hear him and wasn’t listening anyway.

There was a blinding flash, and in the next instant, the house erupted in a massive brilliant fireball.

The ground shook, and fire engulfed the house almost instantly, entirely, throwing up a great column of sparks and billowing gray smoke, and seconds later the windows popped and the glass in the French doors shattered as the door frames and the window frames flew into the air, and then the flames began to plume out of every orifice, blackening the stone walls and chimneys, lighting up the clouded sky a terrible orange, and waves of heat came after them, searing their faces as they ran. Julia shrieked, and Nick held her tight, as they all ran down the long driveway.

Nick didn’t stop until they had reached the road, when, winded by carrying his daughter, he had to stop. He turned back to look at the house, but all he could see now were the plumes of fire and smoke. The sirens of the fire trucks had gotten no louder, no closer. Nick knew they’d been halted at the security gate.

There would be very little left for the fire department to salvage.

He squeezed Julia harder as he said to Audrey Rhimes, “Before I come in to…face charges…I’d like to take a little vacation with my kids. Just a few days together. Is that possible, you think?”

Detective Rhimes stared at him. Their eyes locked. Her face was impassive, unreadable.

After what seemed an endless pause, she nodded. “That should be okay.”

Nick looked at the blaze for a moment, and then turned to thank her, but she had already started walking down the driveway toward the police car that was just pulling in ahead of a convoy of fire trucks. The blond detective was behind the wheel.

He felt something clutch his elbow, a trembling needy grip, and he saw it was Lucas. Together, dazed and speechless, they watched the inferno for another few minutes. Though the afternoon was overcast and gray, the fire blazed so brightly that it illuminated the sky a dusky orange, the color of sunrise.