"Really nothing? At all?"

Glitsky indicated the folder of D'Amiens's stuff he'd brought up with him. "You're welcome to look at all the fascinating details, but I wouldn't get my hopes up."

"I won't. But if it's any consolation, maybe I won't need it."

"For your client, maybe not. But there's still the murders. And whoever did them is still walking around on the street."

"Yeah, but there's a lot of that, Abe. It happens."

"Granted, but that's no reason to accept it." The words came out perhaps more harshly than he'd intended. "I don't mean…" Glitsky let the phrase hang, then laid Hardy's three darts on the polished surface of the desk. "I'm going home," he said. "I'm done in."

Hardy knew lawyers who couldn't get to sleep until nearly dawn for the duration of their trials, others who crashed after dinner and woke up at three thirty in the morning. The one constant seemed to be the disruption of sleep patterns. For his own edification and amusement, Hardy played it both ways, which tended to wreak havoc on his life and psyche. Two days ago, up at five a.m., asleep at one a.m. Then, this morning, Glitsky's call again around five. Now here he was at his office, no dinner inside him, eight p.m. He'd called home an hour ago and told them he would be late. Don't wait up.

Hardy had been going through the D'Amiens folder Glitsky had delivered. The precise relevance of all this continued to be elusive, although Hardy couldn't escape the same conclusion that Glitsky had reached. It may not have been what killed D'Amiens and Hanover, but some other intrigue was definitely going on in her life. Blackmail, extortion, money laundering. Something. He'd been surprised enough to learn about the siphoned money, but even the smaller details rankled. He hadn't known that she'd kept up her rent on the place on Eleventh Avenue, for example. Not that it mattered, but still… or why she would have lied about her employment. The fact that she'd written the Leymar checks out of her own account.

If any kind of significance came to attach itself to these details, and so far none did, he'd have to try to find out from Catherine. Maybe she knew how Missy and

Paul had specifically connected. There had to have been a mutual friend or acquaintance. Hardy didn't believe Paul had just picked Missy up somewhere, although, of course, that was also a possibility. Maybe Missy had in fact set her sights on Paul, just as his ex-wife and children suspected, for his wealth and standing.

The galling thing was that he didn't even know why he was continuing with the exercise. Studying numbers, going over the monthly statements page by agonizing page. Deposits, withdrawals, deposits, withdrawals. At one point he looked up and said aloud, "Who cares?" But he kept up the routine. Halfway through, he made himself a double shot of espresso and brought it back to his desk.

No word at all yet from Wes Farrell.

When he finished he checked his watch again and saw that it was nearly nine. He stood and closed the folder, leaving it on the center of his blotter. All that work, like so much of trial preparation, to no avail. The worst thing about it, he thought, was that you very rarely knew what you'd need, so you had to know everything.

Cricking his back, he brought his coffee cup over to the sink, then crossed to the door and opened it. He vaguely remembered a knock on that door in the past hour or so, one of the associates telling him she was leaving, he was the last one left in the building if he wanted to set the alarm on the way out.

In the lobby, dim pinpoints of ceiling lights kept the place from being completely dark, but it was still a far cry from the bright bustling business environment it assumed during the day. Off to his right, through its immense windows, the Solarium's plants and ferns and trees cast strange, shape-shifting shadows that seemed to move, which made no sense in the empty space. Hardy had once had some bad luck in the supposedly empty office, and now curious, he walked over and opened the door to the room. A small bird-sparrows got in through the side door from time to time-swooped down out of one of the trees and landed in the center of the conference table, where it eyed him with a distant curiosity.

Hardy flicked on the lights and walked around the outside of the room. At the door that led out to the small patch of ground that held the memorial bench they'd installed in honor of David Freeman, he stopped and turned. The sparrow was still watching him, too. Hardy opened the door all the way and went outside.

The sides of buildings rose on three sides around him. The "memorial garden" existed thirty-six feet above the Sutter Street sidewalk, with a grilled fence along the parapet on the open side. Hardy sat down on the Freeman bench. It was very still here, and quite dark, with only the barest of muffled sounds coming up from the city below.

He let his burning eyes go closed. His breathing slowed. The passage of time ceased.

And then, suddenly, wide awake, he sat up straight, hyperaware of the silence and emptiness around him. He brought his right hand up to his forehead, whispering,

"Wait." Staring unseeing for another several seconds into the open space in front of him, his head pitched slightly to the side, he sat as if turned to stone. He dared not move, afraid that the still-evanescent thought might vanish with as little warning as it had arrived. He looked at it from one angle, then another, trying to dislodge the force of it. There was the fact itself, and then, far more important, there was what it meant. What it had to mean.

What it could mean nothing else but.

When it appeared that the idea had set-unnoticed by Hardy, the sparrow had flown out to the bench, then off into the night-he went back inside, closing the door behind him. Back at his desk, he hesitated one more moment before opening the folder again.

It was still there, the fact that had finally penetrated. The only significant detail in the mass of minutiae. Just where it had been before, and not a mirage at all.

₃₀

"It's not a trick question, Your Honor." Hardy was in Braun's chamber first thing in the morning, on three hours of sleep, and was aware that a bit of testiness had found its way into his voice. It didn't bother him too much. "I'm trying to accommodate my witnesses, some of whom, Mr. Rosen might admit, have lives outside of the courtroom. If they are not going to be needed until tomorrow or even next week, I'd like to let them go home or back to their jobs."

"Reasonable enough, Mr. Rosen," Braun said. "Let's answer Mr. Hardy's question, shall we? Is Theresa Hanover your last witness?"

"I don't know how long she'll be on the stand, Your Honor," Rosen said.

"Then it'll be a surprise for all of us. What's your problem here?"

"No problem, Your Honor. I like to keep my options open."

Hardy knew that Braun was not a fan of sarcasm, and so tried with some success to keep the irony in his tone to an acceptable level. "If he changes his mind and calls another witness, Your Honor, you have my word I won't appeal."

Braun's reaction showed that he'd come close, but after the quick squint at him, she directed her words to Rosen. "Defense counsel will not hold you to your statement here, all right? Now, barring last-minute decisions that you'll have every right to make, do the people currently plan to rest after Theresa Hanover's testimony is complete?"

"Yes, Your Honor."

"Thank you. That wasn't so hard, now, was it?" But she didn't wait for him to answer. Instead, she said, "Mr. Hardy, you've got your witnesses here, I take it."

"Yes, Your Honor."

"Good, then…" She started to rise from her couch, pulling her robes around her.