But Hardy’s blood was way up, his voice dripping sarcasm. ‘Oh yes, you forgot. You called the husband of a murdered woman who’d worked on your campaign, and it clean slipped your mind.’ He snapped at him, raised the gun. ‘You forgot that? I don’t believe you.’

‘It was only for an instant. By the time I realized I’d made a mistake, you were gone. So I called you last night.’

‘You called me last night? Although your focus, as you say, isn’t on Bree Beaumont, you’re telling me that in the final hours of this campaign, you called me at home, at night, to correct this insignificant detail?’

Valens swallowed.

‘Which, in any event, you know you can’t prove because my answering machine is a pile of ashes. Is that what you’re telling me?’

Valens shrugged. ‘No, but I-’

‘And while we’re at it here, Mr Valens, maybe you can tell me how you got my home number, which is unlisted.’ And here Hardy realized that one of the roundhouses he was throwing had finally scored. Valens cast his eyes around the room as though hoping to find an answer. None was forthcoming, and Hardy pressed at him. ‘Was it one of your campaign workers, maybe? The same guys who came by my house?’

‘No!’

‘No? What? Was it different guys?’

‘No. You’re twisting what I’m saying. I don’t have any guys. I didn’t do any of this.’

‘You didn’t call me? That’s your new story.’

‘No, I did do that. I admitted that.’

He had moved up to within a foot of Valens. Sweat had broken on the man’s face. It was all Hardy could do to not push him backwards over the chair and physically beat the truth out of him.

Hardy was in a genuine rage. He actually trembled with anger. ‘If you don’t say something I want to hear in the next five seconds, I’m going to shoot you in the face.’ He cocked the gun. ‘Give me one reason. Right now.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I want why you called Ron and why you didn’t tell me.’

Valens didn’t waste any time making something up. Backing away, he blurted it out. ‘Bree’s got some files that could hurt Damon’s campaign. Some reports, changing her position again.’

‘Back to MTBE?’

‘No, still against that.’

‘Then what was the change?’

‘She got religion. She’d decided that all additives were unnecessary. Ethanol, too.’

‘And that hurts Damon Kerry?’

‘It could if it got out, if Damon went that way.’ Valens held up a hand. ‘Look, I can’t… that gun…’

‘It won’t go off by itself.’ But Hardy uncocked it. ‘Bree hurting Damon Kerry,’ he said, getting back to where they were.

Valens drew a shaky breath. ‘Damon gets a lot of lift from talk radio because his message is so clear. Bree didn’t understand that most people aren’t scientists.’

‘So you’re saying Bree didn’t tell him this earlier?’ Hardy lowered the gun slightly. ‘Why not? I thought she was his consultant on this stuff.’

‘She thought it might adversely affect the campaign, as I just told you.’ Lowered or not, Valens couldn’t take his eyes off the weapon. ‘Then when she died…’

‘Was killed.’

‘OK, was killed. Well, frankly, after that I wanted to get my hands on that report so I could get rid of it.’

‘So Kerry wouldn’t ever see it?’

Valens hesitated. ‘That’s right.’

‘Because you didn’t want Kerry to know what Bree thought?’

A nod. ‘She was turning into a zealot. She was dangerous.’

‘And had to be eliminated?’

Valens didn’t approve of the word. ‘She had to be managed.’

‘And you did that? How?’

‘By convincing her to wait until after the election before she told Damon. He wouldn’t do anybody any good if he didn’t first get elected, and I made her understand that. She agreed to wait. It was only after she… was killed, that I realized Ron might inadvertently let the report leak, not knowing what it was, not seeing its importance. So I called him to ask if he’d give it to me.’ He pointed at the gun. ‘You know, you don’t need that thing. I’m telling the truth. The call to Ron was straightforward, really.’

Hardy’s shoulders sagged. The rush of adrenalin had worn him out and he realized that Valens was right. He stuffed the gun back into his belt and backed up to the desk, sitting on the corner of it. ‘It couldn’t have been that straightforward,’ he said. ‘You lied to me about it.’

‘If you remember, Kerry was there with us. I wanted to keep it from him until after the election.’

Hardy shook his head. ‘You weren’t ever going to show it to him, were you?’

‘Maybe not,’ Valens replied. ‘Maybe someday. But Bree’s conclusions weren’t really the issue – it was that she was the source of them and she had such an influence on Damon. I mean, everybody in the industry knows you can formulate gas with low emissions. You don’t need additives. So what? Except if Bree gets messianic and Kerry makes it his new war cry…’

‘Then he looks like a fool, or a pawn, for having supported ethanol for so long.’

Valens nodded. ‘That’s the simple answer, but it’s close enough. If he sees the report and knows it’s from Bree, he moves on it now, he makes it a campaign issue. That’s who Damon is. So he confuses his voters, he looks like he’s waffling, all of the above. I couldn’t let it happen.’

‘How about if I say that sounds like a reason to kill her? How about if she changed her mind and was going to tell him and you had to stop her?’

Valens had a good answer to that. ‘Then I wouldn’t have had to call Ron to get my hands on the report last week, would I? I would have searched the house and just taken it after I killed her.’ He glanced furtively at his watch, spoke now as if asking permission. ‘Look, I do have this breakfast with Damon. And I really did leave a message last night that I’d made a mistake – it wasn’t a lie – and I did call Ron.

‘As to why I remembered to call you, it was what you said. I knew it wasn’t insignificant at all, a call to a murdered woman’s husband. You were an attorney. It wasn’t brain surgery figuring you wouldn’t go away if you thought I was lying.’

Hardy hated that it had gotten to here, to some sort of belief in the basic truth of what Valens was telling him. But there was one last question. ‘So how’d you get my phone number?’

A nervous smile. ‘I called the office and asked if somebody could find it. When I got back here, I had a message.’

‘Just like that?’

Valens shrugged. ‘I say I want something, somebody usually finds out a way to make sure I get it. I don’t ask how. That’s how politics works.’

‘Or doesn’t,’ Hardy said.

She’s checked out to…‘

The jail’s uniformed desk sergeant squinted at the log. ‘Glitsky, homicide, next door.’

Hardy wondered about this new development as he walked in the bitter fog around the corner to the main entrance of the Hall. Frannie was signed out to Glitsky? How did that happen and what did it mean?

He’d stowed the gun in the trunk of his car so he wouldn’t have to confront the Hall’s metal detector. It remained a miserable morning. Hardy checked the time, surprised at how early it still was for all that had gone on. He wasn’t entirely certain he’d done the right thing by letting Valens go about his campaign business, but he couldn’t imagine that the man was going to disappear, at least not until the election. If some real evidence of wrongdoing by Valens turned up before then, Hardy would bring it to Abe’s attention, but in the meanwhile, he had more important things on his mind.

His house, his wife, his life.

The Hall’s familiar lobby – on weekdays a perennial throbbing and vulgar mass of disgruntled humanity – was empty this early, and his footfalls echoed. Knowing he’d have no patience with the elevator, he took the inside stairway to the fourth floor, then walked down the long hall to the homicide detail – an open room with fifteen back-to-back desks and several square columns poking about, floor to ceiling, seemingly at random.