The opening minutes had been brutal, the kids’ emotions over finally seeing their mother again, then the double-whammy as they heard the news of the fire. By the time they were an hour into it, though, Hardy realized that it was as normal a family meal as you could have in a homicide interrogation room. Vincent was sitting on Frannie’s lap, Rebecca was nonstop chatter about school stuff. They were all making plans about logistics, moving ahead, solving problems.

Eventually, Hardy got up and wandered out over to Glitsky’s office. Over the course of the morning, he’d been tangentially aware of activity in the main room, the odd homicide inspector moseying on in for Sunday duty, maybe to write up some reports.

Hardy stopped in Glitsky’s doorway. The lieutenant was at his desk, hunched over paperwork. He knocked and Glitsky looked up, and waved him in. ‘Budgets,’ he said, and threw his pencil down on the desk. ‘Utilization percentage. Field efficiency ratios. Unit integration coefficient. I’ve been filling out these things for five years and I still don’t know what a unit integration coefficient is.’

‘Give it an eighty-seven,’ Hardy said. ‘That’s usually good for a coefficient.’ He sat down across from the desk. ‘I wanted to thank you for bringing her up here,’ he said.

Glitsky nodded. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t have done it sooner. But with the crowds passing through here every other day of the week, somebody’d leak it to Sharron Pratt, who tells Marian Braun, who goes ballistic and takes it to Rigby. Then I’m fired and I hate it when that happens.’

‘Well, you did it today,’ Hardy said sincerely. ‘And I wanted to thank you.’

‘Thanks accepted.’ Glitsky leaned back, hooking his hands behind his head. ‘In other news, you’ll be delighted to hear that I’ve put Batavia and Coleman on alibis for the time of Griffin’s death.’ A short pause. ‘Also for early this morning. Maybe eliminate somebody.’

‘Maybe find somebody.’

‘Maybe that too. Also, I put in some calls – if Ron Beaumont used one of his credit cards, we know where he is.’

‘Or was.’

‘Close enough. Anyway, last thing is I took your glass to the lab, but nobody was on. It might be a day or two.’

‘Utilization coefficient difficulties?’ Hardy asked.

Glitsky shook his head in mock disgust. ‘I can’t teach you anything. It’s not utilization coefficient, it’s unit integration coefficient, but yeah, that’s probably it. Anyway, meanwhile I thought it was time I got a look at the crime scene myself. When the party’s over in there, I thought you might like to come along.’ He looked at his watch, made a gesture of apology, and lowered his voice. ‘Speaking of which…’

He still had the key to the penthouse, but Hardy couldn’t very well pull it out with Glitsky next to him. So they had to ring the building superintendent, David Glenn.

Glenn was in his early forties, handsome in a no-nonsense way. He wore a tonsure of buzz-cut blond hair around a lot of clean scalp. His body was trim and well defined in shorts and a Gold’s Gym T-shirt and he projected an easy and friendly can-do competence.

‘You guys getting any closer?’ he inquired as the elevator brought them up.

‘Any day now,’ Glitsky replied.

This seemed to satisfy Glenn somehow. ‘So it’s not Ron, after all?’

‘I didn’t say that,’ Glitsky replied.

‘Yeah, I read it was, but if you’re still looking…’

Glitsky was firm. ‘That’s where it is, Mr Glenn. We’re still looking. It might be Ron when we stop.’

‘No, I don’t think so. I hope not.’

‘Why not?’ Hardy put in.

Glenn shook his head. ‘Ah, you know.’

‘Nope.’ Hardy said, playing cop. ‘Why don’t you tell us?’

‘Well, most tenants here, I couldn’t pick ’em out of a lineup. They park down below underneath, ride the elevator to their places, I never see ‘em. Ron, I got to know a little, that’s all.’

The elevator door opened and they were on the small landing in front of the Beaumonts’ door, although the view today through the one window was a gray blanket. Glenn stepped out with them, pulled a key from the ring he was carrying, and fitted it to the door. ‘You get a take on people, that’s all.’

‘And Ron…?’

The key worked, but Glenn just stood there a minute, thinking about the question. ‘The guy’s a miracle with his kids. I suppose that’s it.’

‘A miracle?’ Glitsky asked. Hardy didn’t ask because he knew what was coming.

Glenn shrugged. ‘You guys got kids?’

Hardy answered. ‘A handful between us.’

‘All right, then you know. I’m divorced myself, but I got a couple, and even the good ones try the patience of a saint, am I right?’ He waited, then answered himself. ‘I’m right. But Ron? Every day out to school, every day pick ’em up. Weekends with soccer and horses and who knows what else, and I’ve never seen him lose his patience with them. I mean, me, I get mine twice a month and I’m biting their heads off. Couple of times, me and Ron would take all of them to the park or something, and I’m pulling my hair-‘ A smile, acknowledging the baldness. ’Ron’s just cool. Always.‘

‘What about with his wife?’ Glitsky asked. ‘The word is they were having problems.’

A nod. ‘Maybe. Maybe disagreeing, who doesn’t? But I don’t see Ron fighting. He’d walk away.’

‘Did Bree walk all over him, Mr Glenn?’ Hardy asked.

The superintendent hesitated. ‘I didn’t know her so well. She worked long hours. I’d almost never see her. Sometimes in the elevator…’ He stopped again.

Glitsky. ‘What?’

Glenn shrugged. ‘I got the impression she was like an absent-minded genius – you know what I mean? Real inside herself with all this brilliant stuff, and then like she’d forget what floor she lived on. Sometimes she’d be just sitting in the lobby, like she was trying to decide what floor to get off on.’ He shook his head. ‘Too smart, really. Unconnected.’

Hardy had a hunch. ‘To the kids, too?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know I ever saw her go out with them. She kind of had a life of her own, I think.’

Glitsky pushed it. ‘And yet you got the impression that she and Ron were happy together?’

‘I don’t know happy. But times you’d see them together, they were… comfortable, I guess.’ He shrugged. ‘A family, you know. Comfortable.’

‘Phil Canetta?’ Glitsky’s face betrayed no trace of recognition. ‘Can’t say it rings a bell.’

‘The guy you sent over from Central Station the first time I came here,’ Hardy explained.

But Glitsky was still shaking his head, perplexed. ‘I called the desk, that was all. Said they might want to dispatch a body to make sure you didn’t hurt yourself, or more likely that you didn’t hurt Ron Beaumont if he turned out to be home. Did this guy Canetta say he’d talked to me?’

Hardy hesitated. Even though Glitsky was his friend, this was not a casual moment. ‘Not really. I just assumed it.’

‘And you were both inside here?’ Glitsky didn’t like this one bit. ‘How did that special moment come about?’

‘The door was open.’

‘Open?’

Hardy made a face. ‘Picky, picky. You’re too literal sometimes. Anybody ever tell you that?’

If Hardy thought this was going to side-track Glitsky, he was mistaken. ‘Was the door open?’

A shrug. ‘It wasn’t locked. I knocked, tried the knob, it turned. I walked in.’

‘You walked in? Had Canetta arrived yet?’

‘No. That was later. But if you’re wondering, I had plenty of time to plant evidence or steal anything I wanted, neither of which I did. You’re just going to have to believe me. Now how about if we talk about something else?’

Glitsky sighed heavily. ‘Someday, you pull stuff like this, I’m not going to be able to help you – you know that?’

Hardy kept a straight face. ‘It’s a constant worry. But you wanted to come here today, and here we are inside, legally and all with your warrant. What did you want to see?’