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He felt at home in the law offices—or told himself he did. The thick Berber rug, the utterly new-looking desks and credenzas, the perfectly painted walls, even the artwork hit him as superimpressive.

The secretary who greeted him trembled when he showed his ID and told her to call everyone into the largest room they had, which turned out to be two conference rooms with the connecting wall folded back.

Some of them hurried in, some sidled in—he couldn't tell who belonged to what class of employee right off the bat except that the elder men were probably high up on the ladder. With the women, he guessed stilettos were the secretaries and scarves were the attorneys, but he knew he might be wrong. Some, it occurred to him, might be clients.

“Is this everyone?”

People looked around. “Tom?” someone said, and someone else said, “No, he's here.”

“Cassie?”

“She didn't come in today.”

A small ripple went through the room. They thought something. Then they banished the thought as too horrible. Then the thought returned.

“Pete? What about Pete?” A woman's voice had asked that.

“I'm here,” said a guy in a nice suit, hurrying in, fastening his belt. Everybody laughed.

“This guy has an old lady's bladder,” another man explained.

Then, when they were all gathered, Dolan made his announcement about the death of Cassie Price. One woman fainted. People collapsed—that is, they held on to desks, chairs, other people. He'd seen shock before, but he'd never seen it in posh surroundings, and there was something a little different about it, choreographed, like a big crowd scene in an opera. A tall handsome man took a chair and put his head in his hands.

An older man stepped forward. “I'm John Connolly. I'm the senior partner. This is my firm. You can speak with me.”

Dolan said evenly, “We need to speak with everyone. In turn. We'll set up a schedule. We'll ask that none of you leave today until we've finished. We need information, and we must ask for your cooperation. There are five of us. I can assure you we're very efficient.”

“It's already three o'clock,” said the man called Pete, the one who had hurried in from the men's room.

“I know. We'll go very fast.”

“Can we do our work?”

“Yes. Refrain from conversation about the murder.”

“Are you sure it wasn't random?”

“We're not sure of anything yet. This is strictly routine.”

Dolan took the ones who had worked most closely with Cassie Price: the other paralegals, the secretaries, and Pete—Peter Winkel, whose cases she researched—as well as the CEO, John Connolly.

Four juniors with him, Denman and Hurwitz, Harris and Wolf, had strict orders to take copious notes and to report to him before anyone was released.

Connolly. Dolan thought about the name. It had been in the news lately. Why? He tried to dredge up a memory.

The elder Connolly led him to a conference room and led the four others to small offices. Dolan asked for rosters of all employees, three copies, one for each room, so they could check off people as they talked to them.

He started with one of the paralegals, a plain young woman who looked uncomfortable in her jacket and heels, as if she had worn only jeans for ten years and now this terrible uniform constricted her. Would she opt out of courtroom duty and find some odd corner of the law that allowed her to work in jeans? Her name was Jessica Olmeda.

“You were friends with Cassie Price?”

“Yes. We went to lunch every day.”

“Did you talk about your personal lives?”

“Not so much.”

Dolan pricked up his ears. “Really? Why was that?”

“Well, everybody was nervous here about fitting in and being professional. We kind of keep a guard up.”

“Did she ever come in late?'

“Oh, no, early; she was almost always early.”

“Did she call in to you about today about not coming in?” Everyone in the firm was going to get that question.

“No. No, we had no idea.”

“What did you think when she didn't show up?”

“I didn't know what to think.”

“Did you think she'd turned it into a vacation day?”

“No, she wouldn't. She was all work. I thought maybe a parent was ill or something, like some emergency.”

“Did anybody speculate about it?”

“Just like you. You know—running ideas—did she take the day off, did she oversleep, did something happen in her family, is she sick?”

“Nobody called?”

“We did call. At around lunchtime and again at one or so.” She started to cry. “If we'd gone looking, would we have saved her?”

Time of death was not supposed to be revealed just yet. Dolan placed his hand over hers and said, “Don't think like that. Probably not.”

“It's just—”

“I know.”

“I can't get it through my head.”

“Tell me about her boyfriends. Whatever you know.”

“I don't have a name.”

“What do you have?”

“Just some guy she was seeing. I don't think they went out so much as just saw each other.”

“Why was that? It wasn't serious?”

“I don't know. I got the impression it was kind of serious for her. She said he was different. Not educated, not like her, but sweet.”

“But you don't have a name?”

“No.”

“Anything you know about him?”

She appeared to think about it. “No. It was like she didn't want to tell me but she did. Somehow.”

“Thank you very much. Would you just take a look at this list? Is all this contact information correct?”

She used her finger to scan the line. “Yes.”

None of the other paralegals or secretaries knew anything about the boyfriend, and they had little to add except some facts about Cassie's background. Cassie Price had been homeschooled up until halfway through her junior year, when she persuaded her parents that she should try the public school for the experience of it. After that, she went to Westminster, aced all the prelaw courses and exams, and got into Pitt, where she was supposed to start next year.

The single male intern, Brandon Marciano, said, “She had this thing about wanting to buy a house as soon as she got to town. She said the economy was going to bounce back up and she wanted a place to live that was all hers, no roommates, she was sure she wanted to stay and practice in the city, and she wanted the equity. She was very determined.”

“She sounds driven.”

“Yes. She was.”

“Did you know anything about who she dated?”

“No. Nothing.” The fellow blushed.

“You never dated her?'

“No. We went for coffee. I treated. That was it.”

“Did you ever ask her out?”

“Yes.”

“But?”

“She said no.”

“Did she say why?”

“She was polite. She said something about not right now, she was seeing someone occasionally and needed time to figure it out.”

“What did you think? Was it true?”

“I don't know about that, but I knew she was brushing me off.”

Dolan smiled. “Did it make you bitter?”

“God no. If I'm not used to it by now, I'm not used to anything.”

Dolan thought for a moment, then extended his hand for a shake. He predicted a happy middle age for Brandon, who was likely to be grateful when love came his way, but he knew Brandon couldn't project himself into that future life just yet.

The CEO, John Connolly, was stiff, affronted by this negative attention coming to his firm. He gave the impression the young woman had been an unfortunate choice in that she had brought this on them. “I don't work closely with the paralegals,” he said briskly.

“Why do I think I've been hearing the name of your firm in the news? Have you been in the news?”

Connolly shook his head. “Not me. Not the firm. My son. He practices here. They're running him in the primaries for governor.”

“Ah. That's it.”

It was well before five when Dolan and the other detectives met to compare notes.

Ryan Harris and Harry Wolf were both young and clean-cut. They made quick detailed reports on the forty people they had talked to, people who had supposedly known Price peripherally or not at all.

Dolan turned to the next two.

Denman, originally from Georgia, was tall and fairly hefty. Dolan had run into him once at Home Depot wearing bib overalls, an image that stuck and that Dolan kept seeing through the inexpensive chinos and jackets Denman wore to work. He had the open face and manner of a country boy, all the more so in the mahogany surroundings. He still had a drawl. Hurwitz, as urban as they come, including the stains from fast-food lunches and the smell of cigarettes on him, was medium-sized in everything except his exaggerated facial features. His clothes were of a decent quality but well worn and in need of dry cleaning.

“Not much information to go on. I think the firm is going to come out clean,” Hurwitz said.

Harris and Wolf had the same impression.

Denman said, “These folks are truly shocked. I think they're broken up about her death. The girl doesn't seem to have enemies here. They keep wanting to ask questions, and I had to keep telling them that we ask the questions.”

Dolan liked to hear Denman talk.
Ah think
and
dudn't
.

“Who kept pumping you?”

“The younger member of the family in the firm. Michael.”

There were three Connollys on the roster, Dolan saw: the father, John, whom he'd interviewed; the elder son, Evan, who looked older than his years; and the younger one, Michael, who'd got all the good genes. Denman had had the two sons on his list of interviewees.

“What did he ask? This Connolly?”

“How did it happen, what did we know, who would do such a thing—all the usual questions.” He looked at his watch. “He has some kind of photo shoot. He tried to get out of it but that caused a big fuss, so in the end he wanted to know if he would make it.”

“What do you think?” Dolan asked.

Denman opined in a sweet drawl, “I think it's okay to release these folks. We can come back to any of them later, if the thing doesn't look random.”

Ah think. Dudn't.

“You?” he asked Hurwitz and the others.

“Ditto,” they said.

“Anything about a boyfriend?”

“No,” said Wolf and Harris.

Hurwitz said, “Nobody knew anything except they thought there might be one.”

“Hmmm, sure enough,” Dolan said. “I got a hint of it. The old meat and potatoes of a homicide.” He started to gather up his papers. “Oh. Anybody here in the offices who isn't on the rosters?”

Denman had one, a client. He showed the name.

Hurwitz had one, a party organizer who was going over district maps with the younger Connolly son.

That was it.

*   *   *

ELINOR CARRIED THE
bag of trash out to the back deck and to the shed below. On the grounds, four men were working to make each flower stand out as if sculpted. When they were finished there would not be a weed or a weak plant anywhere. Each hedge was already trimmed to look almost unreal, like those pictures of gardens in England. What a misuse of labor, Elinor thought, to make a hedge look like a horse or a church spire.

The photographers were coming
again
.

Yesterday the team that arrived had taken a few pictures and run some video, but then the head guy said they needed to extend the shoot. Mrs. Connolly looked like she was going to spit bricks, but the director told her husband they had to glamour up a bit because the whole shoot was costing a fortune and they had to get it right. “We want movie stars,” the director said.

So Mrs. Connolly had gone to have her hair done today as well as toenails and fingernails. She was more than okay looking, a teacher, sociology, at Duquesne. Yesterday she'd let her boys, the twins, play all day, feeling they should be photographed as they were, real. Today she caved in and scrubbed them.

Elinor nodded to the men working the grounds and went back inside. She knew every inch of this place, and she kept it clean as anybody's whistle. She set out the cheeses, napkins, wineglasses.

She had worked for one or another of the Connollys all her life. She was especially fond of Michael, but she found herself secretly hoping he didn't get elected governor because she liked her life as it was.

The twins came down the big stairs, looking miserably clean. “No fighting,” Elinor teased. “We don't want blood all over those clothes.”

“What are we supposed to do while we wait?”

“Watch TV?”

“I guess. Man, yesterday was bad enough.” They galumphed into the family room.

She took out of the refrigerator the foods the caterers had brought. The canapés in dough were hard and cold to the touch. Some were spinach filled. Others had crab and shrimp.

“This isn't enough food,” she told Mrs. Connolly. “I could have made something good.”

“I know, I know. They said we won't stop to eat. They said quick finger foods were okay.” Elinor had fed the twins a big late lunch so they wouldn't get hungry between six and nine. After that she had sandwiches ready for them.

Everything else was in order. Elinor wiped up the moist smears from the caterer's packaging.

Monica Connolly came down the stairs and into the kitchen, where she pulled out a chair but didn't sit. She looked pale. “My husband might be late. Something terrible happened at his office. He wanted to cancel, but that director, Jack Cain, said we couldn't. Said the photographers were paid for and we had to compartmentalize. How we're supposed to do that, I don't know.”

“What happened?”

“A college girl was killed.”

“How? A car?”