But at some point, they left together. Why? They could have stayed the night either at a hotel or the man's place. He assumed that some other nights she would stay in the city after a late meeting – Jonas would not need to suspect anything.

But she was going home this night, which again seemed to make a restaurant more likely. Her car was parked under the building in the Rand and Jackman lot, so she had walked to wherever it was, meeting him there. She must have thought they had settled whatever it was. He was accompanying her as she walked back to get her car…

Had any policeman looked in her car?

Probably not. There would have been no reason to. From the first minutes, they'd had a suspect. No one was looking for a killer.

Glitsky had a city map out on the coffee table and was hunched over it. The sun was down behind the buildings now. He had switched on a couple of floor lamps and drawn a circle with Rand and Jackman in its center. There was a finite number of restaurants – and perhaps bars afterwards – in the circle from which to choose.

The fact that it had been a Sunday night would eliminate those few that closed on that day. More importantly, the others would have been far less crowded than on the other weekend nights. Ten days had passed since the shooting, it was true, but a waiter, a maltre d', someone would remember.

This was police work. It was way past time for him to get proactive here. If Cole hadn't killed Elaine, then someone else had, and there would be some positive trace of it. He would supply Hardy's three musketeers with a photograph of Elaine and between them, they should have no trouble covering every restaurant within the circle over the weekend. It would be a start.

Folding up his map, he walked into the kitchen to call Ridley Banks. When the young inspector had called Abe in the hospital on Wednesday, he'd sounded as though he'd begun to suspect that he'd made some kind of mistake with Cole Burgess. He still hadn't admitted any wrongdoing in his interrogation, but the door was open. Clearly, Banks understood that Cullen was tied to Cole in some way. Evidence at the scene of Cullen's death might bear upon Elaine's and if that were the case, Banks would be a critical source.

It was no surprise that he wasn't in, but Abe was sure he'd check his messages and get back to him in a matter of hours.

They stopped where the dark alley met the dark street. Did Elaine think she was about to be kissed? Certainly the killer was close beside her, one hand at the nape of her neck. He checked the street in either direction, the alley off to his left. The shot rang into Union Square on the cold night. Someone – a bellman at one of the hotels? – would have heard it.

Then he'd caught her. Brutally, cold-bloodedly taken her life, knowing he was going to do it at least since they'd left dinner, but walking along with her, perhaps chatting easily, ostensibly satisfied with whatever conclusion they'd reached. And then gently broken her fall.

Suddenly, another terrible conjecture, but so compelling it immediately felt like fact. He 'd apologized as he let her down! Glitsky could hear it, could hear the son of a bitch. 'I'm sorry, Elaine, but you made me do this.'

Outside, it was now dark. Glitsky was standing, leaning over, resting his weight on his hands on either side of the kitchen sink. His face, reflected in the window in front of him, had broken a light sheen of sweat. His jaw trembled, and the scar between his lips stood out fresh as a new wound.

'Dad? Dad?'

He hadn't heard them come up the steps or open the door. Turning on the water quickly, he filled his hands and threw it into his face. When they got to the kitchen, he was drying himself with a dish towel. 'Hey, guys,' he said easily. 'How'd it go?'

'All right, all right,' he said. 'I'll see if I can get the number.'

Hardy and Rita both showed up independently in the half hour after the boys arrived, and now the two men sat at the kitchen table while Rita put together a tuna fish casserole on the counter behind them. The boys were down in their 'wing', taking showers and watching television. And Abe finally conceded that he ought to try Ridley Banks at his home.

Sergeant Paul Thieu was manning the homicide detail and gave Glitsky the number he needed off the top of his head.

'Scary,' Glitsky said to Hardy. 'The guy knows everything.' He was punching at the phone, listening, leaving another message. 'Rid, it's Abe again. Still trying to reach you. Sorry to nag, but whenever you get any of these…' He left his own number, hung up, looked at Hardy. 'He's a bachelor. It's Friday night.'

'Swell,' Hardy said. 'I'm married. It's Friday night. Speaking of which, did you ever talk to Treya?'

'How's that connected to you being married and it being Friday night? But yeah, she called this morning, wanted to make sure I was avoiding the near occasion of stress.'

'Which, I notice, you're not.'

'Close enough.' End of subject. 'So what did you have her doing?'

'Directing the kids, mostly, but I also wanted to see if she had run into any files Elaine might have kept on Dash Logan.' To Glitsky, this was clearly an unexpected direction.

'Dash Logan? What about him?'

Hardy ran it down for him, including suitable disclaimers about how far-fetched it all was, how coincidental. 'But,' he ended hopefully, 'as Saul Westbrook told me just this morning, coincidences do happen.'

'It's not whether they happen,' Glitsky said, 'it's whether they mean anything. Who's Saul Westbrook?'

'Cullen Alsop's public defender, who knew nothing about Cullen's deal.'

Glitsky was still trying to find some thread. 'And he's somehow with Logan too?'

'No,' Hardy admitted.

'Then I'm officially confused.' Abe touched his head. 'Must be the drugs.'

Hardy tried to explain it again. When he finished, Glitsky was nodding as though it made sense. 'And you spent your whole day billing some client for this?'

'Most of it, yeah.'

Abe's voice was filled with admiration. 'I'm in the wrong field,' he said. Rita interrupted things, shooing them away so she could set the table for dinner, but as the two men went to the living room, Glitsky kept talking. 'So you're working on one case against Logan who is, after all, a lawyer like yourself. And another lawyer, your friend David Freeman, completely apart from you, has got another one. Right so far?' They sat on either end of the couch. Glitsky threw his map and notepad onto the coffee table, and continued. 'And Elaine, another lawyer, went to Logan's office on a completely different group of cases? And finally, the clincher – Cullen Alsop had a matchbox from Jupiter, a bar where Logan hangs out.'

'Right,' Hardy agreed. 'What does it clinch, though?'

Glitsky fixed him with an amused look. 'Remember last night when I said I was a horse's ass? I was wrong. That wasn't me. It was you.'

Hardy took the criticism in his stride. He lifted his shoulders. 'Still, I felt like I had to follow it up. Shake his tree a little. But nothing fell out. Not today anyway.'

No surprise there, Glitsky was thinking. But he'd gone galloping off after wisps of nothing himself. There was no point in tormenting his friend over it any further. 'Well, listen, tomorrow maybe we go a different direction. We might get luckier.' He picked up the map and his notes and went over some of his reasoning about Elaine's last evening. He was in the middle of it when Isaac came in and sat down.

Glitsky stopped and looked up at him. 'This is not strenuous,' he said. 'I'm allowed to think and talk.'

'Stressful.' Isaac wasn't budging. 'The doctor said stressful, not strenuous.'

'He's right,' Hardy said, standing up. 'Sorry, Ike. We just get to talking.'