For the first time since Walker broke this nightmare to me, there is confidence in my voice, for there is one thing of which I am certain. “Potter wouldn’t commit suicide.”

“Nobody’s immune to depression.”

Coming from Coop, this is a truism.

“I knew him,” I say. “Trust me. He wouldn’t kill himself. He had too much to live for.”

“Maybe you didn’t know him as well as you think,” says Coop. “People like that project an image bigger than life itself. Sometimes they have a hard time living up to their own advance billing.” He’s picking up the pace. The guy with the pager and his cameraman are behind us, matching us stride for stride.

Coop’s voice softens a bit. “I know, right now you can’t accept it. Believe me. It’s possible. I’ve seen it too many times.” We’ve reached the coroner’s wagon at the curb. Coop opens the back, dumps his medical case inside, and clears an area for the gurney.

“Any chance they’d let me go up?”

“None,” he says. “DA’s handling this one himself.”

“Nelson?”

Coop nods. “The take-charge kid himself.”

“Why all the attention if it’s a suicide?”

He ignores me like he hasn’t heard the question. When he turns he looks directly at me. Cooper knows more than he’s saying.

“I was supposed to meet him tonight for dinner.”

“Potter?” he says.

I nod. “He wanted to talk to me.”

“What about?”

“Business,” I say. It’s a little white lie. I have no desire to dredge up memories of Sharon, not here, not now. I’ll tell Coop later, when we’re alone.

“He was headed back to Washington. I was going to take him to the airport.”

“When did you talk with him?”

“Last night,” I say.

Coop looks over my shoulder at Walker.

There is movement in the lobby of the Emerald Tower, a rush of television cameras to the glass doors. Four cops running interference exit ahead of the chrome gurney, a strapped-down sheet covering the black body bag. Two of Coop’s assistants set a brisk pace wheeling the gurney down the walkway, the minicam crews in pursuit. The guy behind us with his camera loses interest and joins the pack. There’s the precision click of metal as the collapsible legs go out from under the gurney and the load slides easily into the back of the dark coroner’s wagon.

Walker’s distracted.

Coop pulls me away several feet toward the front of the van.

“Can you keep it to yourself?” he says. I nod. “The feds are up there with Nelson, two FBI agents. What’s going on?”

“Ben was in line for an appointment,” I say.

Coop’s stare is intense, the kind that says, “What else?”

I fulfill his wish. “Supreme Court,” I say.

He whistles, low and slow, the tune dying on his lips, as this news settles on him. I can tell that Coop will perform this autopsy himself-and carefully.

‘Talia-Ben’s wife-is she up there?” I ask.

“They’re looking for her now. Tryin’ to notify her. There was no answer at the house when the cops called. They sent a patrol car by but there was nobody there.”

“I wonder how she’ll take it.”

Coop’s looking at me. I can’t tell if I detect just the slightest wrinkle of disapproval, like maybe he’s heard something-about Talia and me. But then he breaks his stare. My own guilt overreacting. I’m wearing this thing like some psychic scarlet letter. It died with Ben. I wonder how Talia will react-no doubt with more poise than I. Grace under pressure is her special gift.

“They’ll probably want to talk to you.”

“Who?” I ask.

“The cops.”

“Why?”

“You talked to Potter last night. You had a meeting scheduled with him tonight. Potter’s calendar,” he says. “Likely as not, your name’s in it.”

He’s right. I can expect a visit from the police.

Coop’s gaze fixes on the minicam crews, one of which closes on us as we speak. In the inert atmosphere of a city beginning to sleep, the attention of these scavengers of electronic gossip is drawn to anything that moves. Ben’s body is in the van, and at the moment my conversation with Cooper is the only visual drama available. As if we are dancing a slow tango, I maneuver my back to the lens.

“Was there a note?” I ask.

“Hmm?” He stares at me blankly.

“Did Ben leave a suicide note?”

“Not that I know of,” he says.

There was no note. Of this I can be sure. A suicide note is not something the cops withhold from their medical examiner.

“I assume there’ll be an autopsy.”

“Oh yes.” He says it with the seriousness of a village pastor asked if the damned go to hell. He looks at his watch. “It’s gonna be a long night.”

He moves around the front of the van. One of his assistants is in the driver’s seat. The other’s playing tailgunner, keeping the cameras away from the back of the vehicle.

“Coop.” He looks at me. “Thanks.”

He waves a hand in the air, like it’s nothing, just a little information to a friend.

“Eli. I’ll take you back now.”

A camera light flashes on. The wrinkled back of my suit coat is memorialized. It will fill at least a few seconds of Eye on Five-that grafting of entertainment and journalism that passes for news on the tube.

As Walker heads for the car, I stand alone on the sidewalk gazing after the coroner’s wagon, its amber lights receding into the night. In my mind I begin to conjure what possible motive could exist for a man the likes of Ben Potter to take his own life, his career on the ascent. I am left with a single disquieting thought, that despite what Cooper says, this was not a suicide.

CHAPTER 5

I’ve been dogging Harry Hinds for a block, and I finally catch him at the light across from the courthouse.

Harry turns to see me. A grim expression. “I’m sorry,” he says, “about Potter.” Harry’s looking at the large puffed ovals under my eyes. I’ve spent a sleepless night thinking about Ben.

The papers are filled with it this morning. The vending machines on the street are blaring large pictures of Potter in a happier time-banner headlines and little news. The presses were locked up when it happened. This was the best they could do.

“You look like shit,” he says. This is Harry Hinds, undiluted, straightforward.

I give him a shrug.

“What drags you out at this early hour?” he says.

“A pretrial with ‘the Coconut,’” I tell him.

Harry, it seems, is praying for a few dark courtrooms this day, banking on a shortage of judges to avoid a drunk-driving trial, a case in which he has no plausible defense. To Harry it is just another challenge.

The light changes. We cross the street and sidle up the steps past the modern bronze statue centered in the reflecting pool. Its fountain has long since ceased to work, the funding for its repairs no doubt siphoned by the county’s board of supes for some long-forgotten social program. Some art aficionado has hung a crude cardboard sign, written in Magic Marker, from the twisted sculpture:

SPEED KILLS

We make small talk. He tells me about his case, as is the compulsion of every lawyer. He has a sixty-year-old woman, well liked in the community, a school bus driver, the soul of discretion and honesty according to Harry. This paragon blew a.19 on the Breathalyzer-twice the legal limit of alcohol in her bloodstream-when the cops pulled her over late at night in the family car.

Harry’s bitching about the DA, who won’t reduce the charge to some unrelated offense so she can keep her bus driver’s certificate.

“A real tight ass,” he says.

This is Harry’s description of Duane Nelson, the district attorney. Nelson, who was appointed by the supervisors to fill a vacancy following Sam Jennings’s retirement a year ago, has been making serious noise about eliminating all plea bargains.

“If he has his way,” says Harry, “the county will end up building a dozen new jails and adding a thousand judges to the court. The local economy will collapse,” he says. “Half the working population will be serving perpetual jury duty and the other half will be behind bars.”