“That’s absurd,” Ann Kiley said. “I was Jack’s attorney. Nothing more.”

I looked at Hawk. She saw me look and turned and looked at him, too. Hawk smiled.

“You fuck around with this,” Hawk said, “and they gonna kill you, too.”

She was tough, but it rocked her. Hawk saying it made it somehow more forceful. I have often wondered how he got that effect, and have concluded that it is because he doesn’t care. Doesn’t care if she believes him. Doesn’t care if they kill her, too. She was too contained to show it much, but there was a faint look of strain around her eyes and in the way her mouth compressed.

“I have no idea,” she said, “what either of you is talking about.”

There was a short knock on her office door, and it opened immediately and Bobby Kiley walked in. He closed the door behind him.

“I’d like to sit in,” he said to his daughter.

“I don’t think I need any help,” Ann Kiley said.

“I’ll sit in anyway,” Kiley said. “How are you, Spenser?”

“Fine, Bobby. Nice to see you.”

He walked over to Hawk and put out a hand.

“Bobby Kiley,” he said.

“Hawk.”

Kiley nodded and walked back to sit in a chair beside me. He was a handsome guy with white hair and one of those slightly hollow-cheeked Irish faces.

“What’s up?” he said.

“Bobby,” Ann said, “why are you here?”

“I know this guy.” He nodded at me. “I know somebody killed a guy we represent.”

“I can handle this myself,” Ann said.

Kiley shrugged and stayed where he was.

“You know Nathan Smith?” I said.

“Know of him,” Kiley said. “Know he was murdered.”

“I was hired by Cone Oakes to investigate his death,” I said.

Kiley nodded. Ann Kiley sat perfectly still. She looked like she was insulted by her father’s intervention. But she also didn’t look strained around the mouth and eyes anymore.

“Rita,” Kiley said.

“Yep.”

“Hell of a lawyer,” Kiley said.

“And when I started looking into the matter,” I said, “people started to die. A woman at Smith’s bank committed suicide. Smith’s broker was killed in a hit-and-run. A kid named Kevin McGonigle tried to kill me.”

“Heard about that,” Kiley said. “You got him first.”

“Then Jack DeRosa got shot and his girlfriend with him.”

“Our client,” Kiley said.

“Ann represented him.”

“And?”

“And that’s too many people dying in the same case.”

“I agree,” Kiley said. “So?”

“So Smith is on the board of a company named Soldiers Field Development, which had some of its employees following me after I started the case. We talked with them, and this morning we went out to talk with them again. They had packed up and left.”

“Suspicious,” Kiley said.

“There’s a guy who came in as Smith’s partner at the bank not too long before Smith was shot. Guy named Marvin Conroy.”

Kiley frowned a little. As if the name meant something.

“Marvin Conroy is an acquaintance of your daughter’s.”

Kiley glanced neutrally at Ann. “Yeah?”

“And Ann was representing DeRosa when he told us that Mary Smith hired him to kill her husband.”

“This is all very interesting,” Kiley said. “But I was hoping you might sort of get around to why you are here talking to my daughter.”

“This is the preeminent criminal law practice in the city. Maybe on the East Coast. What the hell are you doing with Jack DeRosa?”

“He was Ann’s client,” Kiley said. “Ask her.”

“That’s where we were when you came in,” I said.

Kiley smiled and didn’t say anything.

“So,” I said to Ann, “how’d you come to represent DeRosa?”

“I decline to discuss my clients with you,” she said.

“Tell me,” Kiley said.

“Bobby,” his daughter said, “I am not going to talk about this with these men.”

“I want to know, Ann.”

Father and daughter stared at each other. I stayed quiet. Hawk leaned placidly against the wall, looking at the view. Then Kiley shifted his gaze to me.

“There any connection between this guy Marvin Conroy and DeRosa?”

“Conroy was in the bank with Smith,” I said. “DeRosa was asked to kill Smith.”

“That’s hardly a connection,” Kiley said.

“Yet,” I said.

Kiley shifted his glance to Hawk. “I been in the criminal defense business for a long time,” Kiley said. “I know what he does.”

“And well,” I said.

“He watching your back?”

“Yes.”

“So this is serious business,” Kiley said, probably to himself more than to me. He pointed his chin at Ann Kiley. “You think she’s in danger?”

Ann said, “I’m not a she. My name is Ann.”

I nodded. “I think Ann’s in danger,” I said.

Kiley said, “What do you think, Ann?”

“I think it’s preposterous,” she said.

“No,” Kiley said. “I know this guy. He thinks you’re in danger, we need to take it seriously.”

“For God’s sake, Bobby-”

“And cut the Bobby shit, for the moment. It’s fine while we’re colleagues, but I’m also your father, and I want to know what the fuck is going on. How come we represented Jack DeRosa?”

Ann Kiley’s face got very tight, and colorless. Her jaw clamped, but do what she would, she couldn’t stop it. She began to cry. She stood and walked to the window and stood beside Hawk and looked out. Her shoulders shook, though not very much. In the quiet room we could hear the stifled sound of her fight for control. Bobby Kiley didn’t move. Hawk looked at me. I looked at Hawk. We decided that quiet was the way to go.

After a time Ann turned from the window. She had stopped crying, but her eyes were red and her face was stiff. She leaned her hips against the window ledge and folded her arms and looked straight at her father.

“I’m having an affair with Marvin Conroy,” she said.

Kiley nodded. Ann Kiley took in a long slow breath with a hint of vibrato.

“It’s a serious affair,” she said.

Kiley nodded again. Ann tightened her folded arms as if she were hugging herself in a cold place.

“He asked me to help him,” she said. “He was in trouble.”

Nobody said anything. The phone rang on Ann Kiley’s desk. Bobby Kiley picked it up and said, “No calls,” and hung up.

“He asked me if I could find him someone to pretend something. He said I was a criminal lawyer, and I should be able to find someone.”

“And you found DeRosa,” Bobby Kiley said.

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I was doing my annual pro bono, for the public defender’s office, as required by the firm, and I drew DeRosa, some sort of auto theft, I believe.”

“So when Conroy wanted a mug you remembered DeRosa.”

Kiley appeared calm. He seemed entirely focused on the questions he was asking and the answers he was getting.

“And Marvin asked me to be DeRosa’s lawyer, this time, too, to see that he stayed on message.”

“The message being?”

“That Mary Smith had approached him to kill her husband.”

“Which was not true,” Kiley said.

“No. I don’t believe it was.”

Kiley sat back in his chair. Hawk and I remained where we were.

Ann Kiley said, “Daddy.”

Kiley stood and went to her and opened his arms and she fell against him and began to cry. As he hugged her, he looked at me.

“We can talk later,” he said.

“You will need security for her,” I said.

“I know,” Kiley said. “I can arrange that.”

“There’s more I need to know,” I said.

“She’s got nothing else to say,” Kiley said.

“I think she does,” I said.

“Doesn’t matter what you think,” Kiley said.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

It was Sunday. I was drinking coffee with my right hand and driving with my left. Pearl was asleep in the backseat, and Susan was beside me drinking coffee from a big paper cup which she held in both hands. We were on the road to Newburyport, and we had chosen to take the old Route 1, through the slow rural landscape north of Boston.