“Do you actually want me to come in, or will your ripping me a new one on the front porch satisfy as a visit so I can get back to the real world?”

“You actually call that garbage pit of a city the real world?”

“I’m sure you’ve been tied up the last two years, so I can understand you not bothering to come see me.”

“As though seeing you in prison would’ve been good for my mental health.”

“Right, sorry, I forgot the first rule of Dana, it’s all about you.”

“Get in here, Mason.”

She had lied to Roy Kingman. Her father hadn’t named her Mason. Her mother had. And she’d done it for a particularly odious reason. Chafing under the relatively small salary her husband drew as a prosecutor, she’d wanted him to turn to the defense side, where with his skill and reputation he could have commanded an income ten times what he earned on the public side. Thus, Mason Perry-Perry Mason-was her mother’s not-so-subtle constant reminder of what he would not give her.

“It’s Mace. You’d think after all these years you might get that little point.”

“I refuse to refer to you as a name of a weapon.”

It was probably a good thing, Mace thought as she trudged past her mother, that she could no longer carry a gun.

CHAPTER 22

ROY KINGMAN had skipped basketball that morning. He passed by Ned, who looked far more attentive than usual and even had the tie on his uniform tightened all the way to his fleshy neck. Ned gave him a jaunty two-finger salute and a confident dip of the chin as though to let Roy know that not a single murderer had slipped past him today.

You go, bro.

Roy took the elevator up to Shilling & Murdoch. The police were still there and Diane’s office and the kitchen were taped off while the cops and techs continued to do their thing. He had snatched conversations with several other lawyers. He had tried to play it cool with Mace, who’d obviously seen far more dead bodies than he had, but finding Diane like that had done a number on his head. He kept replaying that moment over and over until it felt like he couldn’t breathe.

He walked by Chester Ackerman’s office but the door was closed and the man’s secretary, who sat across from her boss’s office, told him the police were in there questioning the managing partner. Roy finally went to his office and closed the door. Settling behind his desk, he turned on his computer and started going through e-mails. The fifth one caught his eye. It was from Diane Tolliver. He glanced at the date sent. The previous Friday. The time stamp was a few minutes past ten. He hadn’t checked his work e-mails over the weekend because there had been nothing pressing going on. He had intended to do so on Monday morning, but then Diane’s body had tumbled out of the fridge. At the bottom of the e-mail were Diane’s initials, “DLT.”

The woman’s message was terse and cryptic, even for the Twitter generation.

We need to focus in on A-

Why hadn’t she finished the message? And why send it if it wasn’t finished?

It could be nothing, he knew. How many flubs had he committed with his keystrokes? If it had been important Diane would have e-mailed again with the full message, or else called him. He checked his cell phone. No messages from her. He brought up his recent phone call list just in case she had called but left no message. Nothing.

A-?

It didn’t ring any immediate bells for him. If it was referring to a client, it could be any number of them. He brought up the list on his screen and counted. Twenty-eight clients beginning with the letter A. And eleven of them were ones that he and Diane routinely worked on together. They repped several firms in the Middle East, so it was Al-this and Al-that. Another lawyer at the firm? There were nearly fifty here, with twenty-two more overseas. He knew all of the D.C. folks personally. Doing a quick count in his head, there were ten whose first or last names started with A. Alice, Adam, Abernathy, Aikens, Chester Ackerman.

The police, he knew, had already copied the computer files from Diane’s office, so they already had what he had just found. Still, should he call them and tell them what he’d just discovered?

Maybe they wouldn’t believe me.

For the first time Roy knew what his clients had felt like when he’d worked criminal defense. He left his office and took the elevator down, with the idea of simply going for a walk by the river to clear his head. On the fourth floor the doors opened and the sounds of power saws and hammers assailed him. He watched as an older man in slacks, short-sleeved white shirt, and a hard hat stepped on the elevator car.

The fourth floor had been gutted and was being built out for a new tenant. All the rest of the building’s occupants were counting down the days until completion, because the rehabbing was a very messy and noisy affair.

“How’s it coming?” he asked the man, who was holding a roll of construction drawings under one arm.

“Slower than we’d like. Too many problems.”

“Guys not showing up to work? Inspectors slow on the approval?”

“That and things going missing.”

“Missing? Like what?”

“Tools. Food. I thought this building was supposed to be secure.”

“Well, the uniform at the front desk is basically useless.”

“Heard about some lady lawyer getting killed here. Is it true?”

“Afraid so.”

CHAPTER 23

ROY HEADED ALONG the riverfront, stopping near one of the piers where a forty-foot cabin cruiser was docked. What would it be like, he wondered, to live on a boat and just keep going? Watch the sunset and grab a swim when he wanted? See the world? He’d seen his hometown, lived in D.C., Charlottesville. He’d visited lots of cities, but only to bounce basketballs on hardwood before heading on. He’d viewed the Atlantic and Pacific oceans at forty thousand feet. He’d seen Big Ben, and sand in the Middle East. That was about it.

He smelled him before he saw him.

He turned, his hand already reaching into his pocket.

“Hey, Captain.”

“Roy.” The man gave him a quick salute.

The Captain was in his late fifties and the same height as Roy. However, whereas Roy was lean, the Captain was built like a football lineman. He must’ve outweighed Roy by eighty pounds. It had once all been muscle, Roy was sure, but the streets had made a fatty transformation of the man’s once impressive physique. His belly was so swollen now that the bottom three buttons on the jacket could no longer be used. And his body listed heavily to the left, probably as did his spine. Eating crap out of Dumpsters and sleeping on cement did that to you.

Roy called him the Captain because of the marks on his jacket. From what he’d learned of the man’s history, the Captain had once been an Army Ranger and had distinguished himself in Vietnam. But after returning home things had not gone well. Alcohol and then drugs had ruined what should have been an honorable military career. Apparently the VA had tried to help him, but the Captain had eventually fallen through the cracks and into a life on the streets of the capital of the country he had once defended with his blood.

He’d been homeless for over a decade now. And each year his uniform grew more tattered and his skin more permanently stained by the elements, much in the same way that buildings became filthy. However, there was no one to come and give him a good power wash. Roy had first met him when he’d worked as a CJA. Before he’d settled on G-town, the Captain’s foraging range was wider and his manner more aggressive. He’d had a couple of assault charges, mostly for harassing tourists or office dwellers for money or food. Roy had defended him once, gotten him probation, and then tried to get him help, but the VA was swamped with needy soldiers from current wars, and the Captain had never been good about follow-up.