‘But I’m not accusing the oil companies of-’

‘And that what’s makes it so brilliant!’ Valens knew that his candidate could see this clearly, so why did he have to keep explaining it? ‘Damon, you’re Mr Clean. But your worthy opponent, who favors pumping MTBE until more research can be done? Guess what? He looks like he’s with the oil interests-’

‘Which he is.’

Lord! Valens couldn’t get over Kerry’s fascination with the literal truth. ‘Yes, of course he is, but what matters for you is that we couldn’t buy the radio time they’re giving us. If we get them thinking about Ron Beaumont as a villain, it all gets diluted.’

‘I don’t know, Al. I wish they would come up with some villain, some suspect. Somebody to take the heat off.’

‘Take the heat off who?’

‘Who do you think, Al? Me.’

‘What about you?’

‘And Bree.’

‘You had a professional relationship. What’s to talk?’

Kerry gave him a look. ‘This would be a bad time for somebody to find out, though, wouldn’t it? She’s back in the news, the story’s no longer dead, reporters start digging.’

‘And find nothing. Do you hear me? You have to relax. They find nothing.’

The limo had pulled to a stop. Kerry hated to keep his crowd waiting. He needed to get out and press the flesh, keep connected to his voters. He reached for the door handle. ‘All right, Al, I hear you. I hear you.’

Abe Glitsky lay awake, trying to ignore the television noise in the next room. His housekeeper/nanny Rita loved the TV as much as Glitsky hated it. She’d been living with them now for almost five years and was a treasure, especially with Orel. Abe needed her so badly he knew he would tolerate much worse in her than an unfortunate taste for popular dreck.

Still, tonight, with Frannie Hardy in jail and an unsolved high-profile murder starting to get renewed media attention, the inanities soothed like a buzz saw. Finally, he pulled off the covers and sat up.

Five minutes later, fully dressed, he was out of the house, walking down Lake Street on his way to where he’d parked his city-issue car about six blocks away – the closest parking space he could find.

He was telling himself that maybe it wasn’t the television after all. What had gotten him up and moving was the sudden bolt that Frannie and his unsolved, high-profile murder were one and the same case. Not that he hadn’t known it before, but he’d been viewing them as more or less separate problems, and suddenly it struck him that maybe they weren’t.

One other thing was certain – he hadn’t woken her up. From the looks of her eyes, she hadn’t slept yet in her cell.

‘Abe. Hi…?’ A quick look around the walls of the interview room although there was no place anybody could hide. Glass block and light-green stucco. The question was all over her face – where was her husband? What was Abe doing here by himself in the middle of the night?

The door closed behind her and she took a little half-step hop, jumping out of the way of something, the sound. Then a pitiful smile, embarrassed. ‘I’m not good at this.’

Abe was standing close. ‘Who is?’ He came up and put his arms around her for a second. She felt almost dangerously insubstantial, all tiny bones. He pulled back and looked at her, swimming in the orange jail jumpsuit. ‘Are you eating?’

She shrugged, no answer. ‘Is Dismas coming in? Is he out there?’

‘No, it’s just me, checking on how you’re holding up.’

Frannie crossed her arms, the ghost of her old self trying to appear, a dance in her eyes. ‘No, checking on how I’m holding up was last time, before you went home. This is something else.’

The scar stretched between Glitsky’s lips. His own beaming smile. His head bobbed appreciatively. ‘You should be the lawyer.’

‘I’ll pass, thanks.’ Boosting herself on to the table, she looked up at him. ‘So what is it? The deal?’

Glitsky’s brow furrowed. ‘What deal?’

‘It’s not that? I thought they must have come and asked you-’

‘I don’t know any deal. What deal? Who offered you a deal?’

‘Scott Randall, that bastard. He wasn’t here an hour ago. Doesn’t understand why I don’t feel all warm and fuzzy about him, like he really didn’t get it.’ She was watching Glitsky’s face. ‘You really haven’t heard about this?’

‘Nothing. What did he want?’

‘He wants Ron.’

‘And how was he going to get that from you?’

‘He said he’d drop the contempt charge and stop worrying about the secret. I wouldn’t have to tell that to the grand jury.’

‘In return for what?’

‘For where Ron was. He thought I’d know where he was.’

‘But you don’t, right?’

Frannie was studying the wall over his shoulder.

‘Right?’ Abe repeated, but he already knew. ‘Damn it,’ – the rare profanity came out with slow deliberation – ‘what are you doing, Frannie? I’ve been on your side up to now, trying to get you out of here, because I have known and loved you for years, and I know you’re not involved in any murder. Am I at least right on that?’

She nodded, met his eyes. ‘I swear to you, Abe.’

He sighed heavily, perhaps reassured. ‘All right, then. What else did Mr Randall want?’

‘Just that. He wanted to get his hands on Ron and question him. He said he knew that’s where the answer was. With Ron.’

‘And where is that?’

Sitting on the edge of the table, Frannie hung her head and swung her feet back and forth like a child. Finally, she looked back up. ‘Abe, he left the house and she was alive. When he came back she was dead. Somebody killed her.’

Glitsky started to respond, but she put her hand on his arm, stopping him. ‘I know, I know. You told me, remember? The time of death. Technically, he could have done it before he left to take the kids to school.’

‘I like that eye-roll thing you do.’

‘Come on, can you picture it? Ron takes the kids down to the car, then says to himself, “Hey, here’s an opportune moment. I think I’ll just nip back upstairs, kill my wife, throw her off the balcony to make it look like a suicide, clean up the glass from whatever convenient murder weapon I find up there…” ’

She was shaking her head. ‘Please. I was with him that morning, and he was fine. He was normal. We just had a cup of coffee and kvetched about life, about children. You know how you do. You’ve had kids.’

‘Still do.’

‘You know what I mean. School age. Little guys.’

Glitsky nodded. ‘OK, but he told you a secret so important that you’re here in jail?’

‘No, he didn’t, Abe.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean not that morning. That morning was nothing.’

‘But Scott Randall gave me the impression-’

‘I know. And now everybody assumes Ron told me something that morning. I’m telling you that’s not what happened. I don’t even remember if we mentioned Bree at all, not on that day.’

‘Then why are you here?’

‘Because I wouldn’t tell what Ron told me.’

‘Which had nothing to do with Bree’s murder, so far as you know?’

‘That’s what I said on the stand.’ Frannie had been admonished that revealing anything about what happened inside the grand jury room was a separate contempt of court. At this point, she couldn’t have cared less. ‘I said I didn’t know. I didn’t think so, but I wasn’t sure.’ Finally, she pushed off the table and got back to her feet. ‘But I’m telling you, Abe, listen to me.’ She had grabbed at his arms, the sleeves of his leather jacket. ‘It doesn’t matter even if he did have an incredible, compelling reason to kill her, which he didn’t. And forget that he’s just not the kind of person who would ever, ever kill anybody. Forget that. The point is that even if he wanted to, he couldn’t have done it. He wasn ’t there. Why is this so hard for everybody to understand?‘

Glitsky the cop almost found himself believing her, for the practical reason that what she said, particularly about the timing of the murder, made sense. If Ron Beaumont had killed his wife in the morning before taking the kids to school, while they were still hanging around or even waiting in the car, and managed to hide it from them, he had to admit that had been one hell of a party trick. Not that he couldn’t have done it – and Abe had only recently argued that it was in fact possible – except that in the real world, possible didn’t mean likely.