Pratt nodded, as though Glitsky had confirmed something for her. She moved over to her desk, where the Russo file sat in its manila folder. ‘I’m going to bring this up with the mayor and the Board of Supervisors, Lieutenant. This police vendetta to discredit me, it has to stop.’

‘And why are we having this vendetta again?’ Glitsky asked. ‘I forget.’

‘Because I believe – and I’m right - that some of the things that you call crimes are simply not wrong, and I’m not going to prosecute them.’

‘I don’t call them crimes – the legislature does.’

Pratt was shaking her head. ‘I don’t care what’s on the books. The books are wrong. People are being hounded by you police, the city’s resources are being squandered by your harassment of prostitutes, casual marijuana users-’

‘Murderers?’

She leveled a finger at him. ‘That’s exactly my point. Based on the evidence I’ve seen here’ – the finger went down to the folder – ‘I don’t think Graham Russo is a murderer.’

‘You don’t think he killed his father?’

‘No, I do think he killed his father.’ She slapped her palm down on the desk. ‘Of course he killed his father, technically speaking,’ she said. ‘Do you think I’m stupid?’

Deciding it would be wiser to sidestep a direct answer to that, Glitsky took a beat, tilted his head, ladled on the sincerity. ‘Then I really am missing something here. What’s the problem with us arresting him if you think he did it?’

Sighing heavily, Pratt pulled her chair over and sat down. ‘What I’m saying, Lieutenant, is that though technically this could have been a homicide-’

Glitsky interrupted. ‘Strout called it a homicide,’ he said, ‘so it’s a homicide.’

But she was shaking her head. ‘Regardless of that, it wasn’t a murder.’

‘No? Then what was it?’

‘An assisted suicide.’

‘Which is illegal.’

‘But not wrong. In fact it was right. The boy did the humane thing and it was probably the most difficult decision of his life. And you want to try him for murder?’

‘No. I arrested him for breaking a law. That’s my job.’

‘That’s not true. Your job is to process warrants through this office. We make the decision as to whether we’re going to charge a crime.’ All the way back in her chair, she pointed again, up at him, eyes flashing. ‘You police knew this office would make that distinction. So you circumvented me. You’ve been doing this kind of thing ever since I came on here. Can it be that you really think I don’t see it?’

Glitsky stepped over to a grouping of wing chairs at the side of the room and pulled one around, sitting on it. He pointed at the file, adopted a conversational tone. ‘You said you read this. So I’m curious – how do you rule out murder?’

‘I start with the Constitution, Lieutenant, by presuming the man innocent.’ When he didn’t comment, she continued with her own perfectly plausible theory on Sal Russo’s death: it was a mercy killing.

‘So you’re saying that from now on, in cases like this the DA decides we don’t need a jury trial to get at the facts? And what do we call this, the mercy rule?’ Pratt glared at him – it was no use arguing legal theory with her. He decided to return to the evidence. ‘Okay, then, what about the money?’

‘His father gave it to him. He loved him. He was still estranged from his other children. Apparently they hated him. Why would he want them to share his money?’

‘Then why didn’t Graham just admit it? Why did he lie about everything we asked him?’

‘He was cornered. He didn’t see a way to get out, so he panicked. People do it all the time.’

‘All right. How about the trauma to the head?’

‘He could have fallen down and knocked his head anytime before he died.’

Glitsky fell silent. There were many other evidentiary points, but he knew that Pratt would have an explanation for how each of them fit her own theory. And, in fact, she might be right. The truth might be exactly what Pratt thought it was.

But Glitsky believed that it shouldn’t be her call. It should go to trial, to a jury. That was how the system worked.

The DA sat back in her chair, fingers at her lips. ‘You know… Abe… I would think you’d be a little more sensitive to this issue. Didn’t your wife suffer terribly?’

His scar tightened through his lips. ‘I didn’t kill my wife. I didn’t help kill her.’

She came forward in her chair. ‘I didn’t say that. But she must have been in great pain.’

Glitsky, too, was on the front six inches of his chair. ‘She was taking drugs. She said they helped. She wanted to live as long as she could. She didn’t want to die.’

‘But what if she had wanted to die, Abe? Wouldn’t you have helped her? Wouldn’t you have wanted to?’

‘Of course I would have wanted to. I probably would have.’

‘And yet you don’t believe that’s what happened here, with Graham Russo and his father? You think what he did was wrong.’

He hung his head. Arguing with Pratt was like trying to move a cloud by pushing on it. ‘No,’ he said with all the patience he could muster, ‘I think what he did was illegal.’

She must have thought she’d convinced him. She put her elbows on the desk and spread her palms as though releasing a little bird she had between them. ‘Then the law should be changed.’

David Freeman’s associates called his conference room the Solarium. Under a glass-and-steel enclosure, rubber trees, ficus, lemons proliferated. Visible through the forest, outside, was an enclosed and landscaped courtyard, and this added to the greenhouse feel.

Dismas Hardy sat under the foliage at an elliptical mahogany table with Michelle Tinker. Demure to the point of shyness, Michelle possessed what Hardy knew to be a brilliant legal mind – far more focused, he thought, than his own. Freeman kept her on because, even though she was tongue tied before juries, she had a seemingly boundless aptitude for work and minutiae. And that’s exactly what Hardy had told Freeman he needed after he’d come in this morning.

He was going to be working with Graham Russo, and that case was going to take some significant portion of the time he was now giving to Tryptech. Would Freeman mind letting him borrow a workhorse who would take off some of the Tryptech load? Freeman, not very convincing hiding his pleasure at Hardy’s decision to take the criminal case, had been glad to comply.

Michelle had both an accounting and a law degree. In her mid-thirties, she was married with no children. Once you got beyond the shyness, she was friendly and well spoken, totally professional. Hardy knew Dyson Brunei would get along well with her, and she jumped at the invitation to assist with Tryptech. The lawsuit was all numbers and paper – she’d never see a jury, possibly not even a judge.

It was nearly five o’clock and Hardy had been getting her up to speed for the better part of two hours, outlining the issues, trying to acquaint her with the players. If Michelle’s questions were any indication, she seemed to have absorbed most of it.

His files were in cardboard boxes that he’d carried with him down to the Solarium. Michelle was going to be reading them over the next several days. This was authorized full-time billing.

‘So what about your role?’

Hardy smiled. ‘I’ll keep my finger in, but I’ve got other commitments, and this thing has been eating up all my time – it’s way too much for one person to handle.’

‘But you’ll still be on it? I’m reporting to you, not David?’

Hardy nodded. ‘The buck still stops here.’

‘Where?’

They turned to see Freeman, just back from court, a sartorial mess as usual, standing in the doorway. ‘Where does the buck stop? With you? You stealing my associates?’

Hardy nodded. ‘As we discussed. Michelle’s going to help me out with Tryptech. She said she had the time.’