“What are you talking about?”

“What if it comes down to his word against yours that you had nothing to do with the original crime?”

“We’re past that. We’re way past that. Don’t you think that just might have come out in the original trial?”

“How is the bank going to feel about you taking a meeting in secret with a convicted embezzler? Was the bank notified?”

“It’s none of their business!”

“It’s exactly their business. It’s none of your business, or shouldn’t be.”

She processed this and knew he was right, and this filled her with an added dread.

“I’ll talk to Danny,” Boldt said again.

She didn’t want Lou comparing notes with Danny Foreman, but any thought of containing this was long gone.

“Who else has access to I.T. the way you do?”

“That’s what Danny wants too.”

“I’m not Danny.”

“I do. Tony does, of course. Phillip-goes without saying.”

“Maintenance?” he asked. “Programmers?”

“A dozen or more for the UNIX system, sure. Not the AS/400s. Tony’s the only programmer we have who works with the AS/400s. Typically we outsource that work to IBM anyway. They’re their own worlds, the AS/400s.”

“So, in some ways, Tony LaRossa is more important to Hayes than you.”

“Except that David has a past with me. He thinks he can use it to his advantage. He’d have to strong-arm Tony or try to bribe him, and neither of those is even a remote possibility.”

“Either is a possibility,” Lou said. “These people drugged Danny. You said they pulled a couple fingernails off Hayes. They killed a dog. Threatened an old lady. What makes Tony LaRossa immune?”

“Okay,” she said. “So Tony’s in the picture as well. I’ll call him.”

“No,” Lou said sharply. “You’re discounting the possibility that Tony was involved from the beginning.”

“Tony? He’s my director of I.T.!” She said this but felt a worming sensation overcome her. “Tony? We barbecue with Tony and Beth. The twins-”

“… were an expensive adoption,” Boldt interrupted, finishing her sentence for her. “The failed in-vitros must have run in the tens of thousands. Where’d Tony get that kind of money?”

“He makes a good living.”

“He’s worth a look.”

“We all get favorable loan rates. Don’t lump Tony in with David Hayes. He’s not that kind of person.”

“And you are? Stay clear of Tony, Liz. Not a word until we’ve had a chance to run some background.”

“I didn’t come here to turn the investigation over to you, Lou. I came here to be honest with you, to include you.”

“Consider me now included.”

“Not like this.”

“What’d you expect? I’d let Danny run you?”

“No one’s running me.”

“Hayes is running you. Or trying to. Going to Danny before coming to me… How am I supposed to feel about that?”

She hadn’t considered his professional pride might be more wounded than his husband’s pride. Then, realizing the two were impossibly intertwined, she resigned herself to the fact that she’d botched the whole thing from the start. Without thinking, she asked, “Are you alright with this?”

“‘Conflicted,’ I think it’s called.” Sarcasm was misplaced in him, like a preacher swearing. “I obviously failed you as a husband. No matter how far in the past, that kills me. Your taking this to Danny before me also hurts and, I might add, makes it all the more difficult for us both. Unlike Danny, I put your safety first, the investigation second. Whether or not I can make that happen at this late date is anybody’s guess, but it has to happen because I am not exposing you to this guy again.”

“I won’t have his mother’s murder on my conscience, Lou. That might not make any sense to you, but I want you clear on this. I will be involved, at least to the extent David thinks I’m involved. I want to be cooperative, I want to work this out, yes, but as wife and husband, not informant and detective.”

“I can’t make any promises. At least not the one you’re asking for. I’ll need to make some calls.”

She felt a victim again, much as she had after the meeting with David. Lou had boxed her into something she’d not seen coming, and she deeply resented the way he felt it was his right to make decisions for her.

“I’ll try to do whatever you and Danny ask, Lou, but I will not be excluded from the decision-making process. You, or someone, is going to offer David a deal. I will bring him that deal, if necessary.”

“We’ll protect the mother if we can. Depending on where she lives.”

“California, somewhere.”

“That’s more problematic, but not impossible. As I said, I need to make some calls.”

She felt the principal had dismissed her, but she wasn’t done. “As far as I’m concerned, the worst thing that can happen is that we allow this to drive a wedge between us.”

“Which is why Danny and I are now in charge,” Lou said. “Because that’s not the worst. Truth be told, it doesn’t even come close.”

Alone now, Boldt wondered why her affair had to resurface, why Liz had to remind him that he should feel something more than his general sense of numbness allowed. Over the past six years, he’d figured out how to hide much of this behind a carefully erected wall. Now, despite all his emotional masonry, that wall had crumbled down around him. Around them both.

Boldt phoned Danny Foreman, prepared to feel impotent and the source of another’s unspoken amusement. Cuckolded. He lacked a cohesive strategy but knew time was of the essence. Danny would already be working angles that he, Boldt, had yet to see. To wait too long was to be completely excluded. Liz had put herself in the center of this, and now Boldt needed to extricate her as quickly as possible.

Foreman didn’t pick up at his office, nor did he answer his mobile. Boldt left a pair of messages, but he knew in advance that there was good reason for Foreman’s silence.

Danny Foreman was already hard at work, and Boldt was playing catch-up.

It was an unspoken rule in the Boldt home that police business not be discussed, and so the collision of these two worlds caused repeated violations, begun the previous morning with the discussion of Danny Foreman’s assault and continued now through the post-dinner kitchen cleanup. As Liz patrolled the table and countertops, Boldt parked himself in front of the sink and splashed his way through a pile of pots and dishes, most of which were on their way to the KitchenAid dishwasher to his right, a noisy, prehistoric contraption that needed replacement. The thing would outlive most dogs without ever failing, but its churning, swishing, and occasional grinding amounted to an invasion of privacy, as far as Boldt was concerned, so he didn’t turn it on when the time came. Instead, he eavesdropped on his son, Miles, practicing piano.

“It’s beautiful,” Liz said, finishing off a countertop with a damp sponge. He sensed in her the desire to reestablish their lives as normal.

“It’s astonishing,” Boldt said. “His age… and as little training as he has had.” He was wondering what came next and how he could work to separate Liz from the investigation.

“Chip off the old block,” Liz said. “Off the old bolt,” she corrected, amusing him. For a moment, even to him, they felt like husband and wife again.

“I don’t have a tenth of that kind of talent.”

“He got it listening to you. Watching you practice as much as you do.”

“I’d love to take credit for any of that, believe me. But that’s more your department… more divine intervention than learned behavior. He’s special.”

“You’re both special,” Liz said. “And Sarah, too.”

The wall phone rang, interrupting the few moments of distraction away from the case. With the chiming of those tones, both husband and wife went silent, caught in a pregnant pause of indecision as to who should answer, and who should listen in. Boldt had never loved the phone, considering evening phone solicitation a crime on the level of a felony, and now had no desire to ever hear it ring again.