“But surely you were able to narrow the field down?”

“Yes. To some extent. It is not as if the people we were entertaining as suspects were naturally inclined to assist the police. We still hope that someone, somewhere, maybe in a jailhouse, or a bar, will let something slip and we will be able to focus our attention on one or two individuals. But until that happy time arrives, the murder of ex-detective Murphy remains an open case.”

“But you must have some leads…”

The chief investigator sighed, removed his feet from the desktop, and swung about.

“Did you know Mr. Murphy?”

“No.”

“He was not a particularly likable fellow,” he said, shaking his head. “He was the sort of person that walked some pretty narrow lines. Legally speaking, that is. One cannot be sure on which side this killing fell until one actually knows something about the murder. Beyond, of course, what the body told us, which, alas, was not much.”

“But something?”

“The killing had all the earmarks of a professional.”

The chief investigator stood up, walked behind me, and placed his index finger to the back of my head. “Pop. Pop. Two shots in the head. A twenty-five, probably silenced. Both slugs were soft-tipped bullets and significantly deformed upon removal, making an eventual match impossible. Then the body was dragged into an alleyway, pushed behind some garbage cans, and remained undiscovered until a garbage truck arrived the following morning. The person who shot him was someone with the expertise to catch Murphy unawares. Very little in the way of workable forensics. Not even an ejected shell casing, which lends further credence to the notion that this was someone well trained in killing, because they stopped and retrieved those before leaving. It rained the night he was killed, pretty hard, which further compromised the crime scene. No witnesses. No immediate leads. A very difficult case from the start, without someone helpfully pointing us in the right direction.”

He circled around and this time perched on a corner of his desk. He smiled with a slight barracuda look.

“What was this murder? Revenge? Payback for something in his past? Maybe it was simply a robbery. His wallet was cleaned out. But the credit cards were left behind. Curious that, right?” He paused. “And your own interest in this case? It stems from precisely what?”

“Murphy was peripherally involved in a case that I’m looking into.” I guarded my words carefully.

“An investigator spoke to every client he had. Someone took a look at every case he was working. Every case he’d ever worked. Which interests you?”

“Ashley Freeman,” I said cautiously.

The chief investigator shook his head. “That is most interesting. I wouldn’t think there is much of a story there. That was one of his smaller jobs. A couple of days invested, no more. And resolved, I think, sometime before the murder. No, the person who killed Murphy was connected to either one of the drug rings he helped put away when he was a cop, or one of the organized-crime types he was looking at in his private business. Or maybe one of the police officers who were engaged in messy divorces. All those are better suspects.”

I nodded.

“But, you know, the one thing that really intrigues me about the case?”

“What is that?” I asked.

“When we started looking under rocks and pulling back curtains, it seemed like everyone we spoke with was expecting us.”

“Expecting you? But why would that be unusual?”

The chief investigator smiled again. “Murphy tried to keep things very confidential. That is, after all, the nature of the business. He kept everything close to the vest. He was secretive; didn’t share much. Didn’t let anyone in on his business. The only person who had even the vaguest idea what he was up to on a day-to-day basis was his secretary. She did all his typing, billing, and filing.”

“She was unable to help you?”

“Clueless. Utterly clueless. But that wasn’t the issue.” He paused, eyeing me closely. “So how is it that all those people knew he was looking at them? Now, certainly some of the subjects he was engaged with were bound to have figured out in some way or another that he was snooping around their lives. But that would be the smaller percentage. Yet, somehow, that wasn’t the situation. I repeat: People knew. Everyone. When we showed up at their doors, they were waiting, alibis and excuses all intact. That’s wrong. One hundred percent wrong. And there lies the real question, does it not?”

I stood up.

“You want a real mystery story, Mr. Writer?” the chief investigator said as he shook my hand and returned to his side of the desk. “Well, answer that question for me.”

I kept my mouth shut. But in that moment, I knew the answer.

27

Hope hated the quiet.

She found herself walking across campus, attending the final practices of the season, getting ready for the winter, anxious. She was constantly on edge, but unable to get a grasp on her feelings. She would find herself pacing down the campus pathways as if in a hurry when she wasn’t. She would suddenly feel her throat parched, her lips dry, and her tongue thick, and she would gulp away at bottles of water. In the midst of conversation she would realize that she hadn’t heard much of what was said. She was distracted by fear, and as each day went by in benign silence, she imagined that much worse was happening somewhere.

She did not, for a single second, imagine that Michael O’Connell was out of their lives.

Scott, as best she could tell, had thrown himself wholeheartedly back into his teaching schedule. Sally had returned to her upcoming divorce settlements and house closings, with a certain smug satisfaction that she had figured things out and taken the necessary steps to bring the situation to a conclusion. And Hope and Sally had once again retreated into the cold-war détente that marked their relationship. Even the smallest of affections had dissipated. There was never a caress, a compliment, nor a laugh, and certainly not a touch inviting sex. It was almost as if they had become nuns, living under the same roof, occupying the same bed, but married to some ideal beyond them. Hope wondered whether Sally’s last months with Scott had been the same. Or had she kept up appearances, sleeping with him, faking passion, fixing meals, cleaning up, carrying on conversations, while all the time slipping away at odd hours to meet with Hope and telling her that that was where her heart truly lay?

In the distance, Hope could hear voices from the playing fields. Playoff time, she thought. One more game. Two to the semifinals. Three to the championship. She could barely concentrate on the challenges. Instead, she was caught up in some morass of feelings, about Ashley, about Michael O’Connell, about her mother, and mostly about Sally, where they mixed together in a stew of impossibility.

As she walked along, she remembered meeting Sally. Love, she thought, should always be so simple. Meet at an art gallery opening. Talk together. Tell a joke and hear each other’s laughter. Decide to have a drink. Then a meal. Then another meeting, this time in the middle of the day. And finally a small touch on the back of the hand, a whisper, a glance, and it fell together, just as Hope had known it would from the first minute.

Love, she thought. That was the word that Michael O’Connell used over and over, and one Hope hadn’t used in weeks. Perhaps months. Ashley had told her, He says he loves me. Hope knew that nothing he had done had anything to do with love.

She hunched her shoulders forward.

He was gone, she told herself.

Sally says he’s gone.

Scott says he’s gone.