"How long was he gone?"

"A week? Two weeks? I thought he was out for good, but then he turned up again, no explanation, and he's been the same as ever."

"The same?"

"Yeah. Quiet. Calm. Focused. Hard work, doing what he's told. Even when the actuarial side dried up."

"The-I'm sorry?" I say. "What?"

"The actuarial end. Late fall, early winter, you know, we stopped issuing policies entirely." He sees my questioning expression and smiles grimly. "I mean, Detective: would you like to buy life insurance right now?"

"I guess not."

"Right," he says, sniffs, drains his gla.s.s. "I guess not."

The lights flicker and Gompers looks up, mutters "come on," and a moment later they glow brightly again.

"Anyway, so then I've got Peter doing what everyone else is doing, which is inspecting claims, looking for false filings, dubious claims. It seems loony, but that's what our parent company, Variegated, is obsessed with these days: fraud prevention. It's all about protecting the bottom line. A lot of CEOs have cashed in their chips, you know, they're in Bermuda or Antigua or they're building bunkers. But not our guy. Between you and me, our guy thinks he's going to buy his way into heaven when the end comes. That's the impression I get."

I don't laugh. I tap the end of the pen on my book, trying to make sense of all the information, trying to build a timeline in my head.

"Do you think I might speak to her?

"To who?"

"The woman you mentioned." I glance down at my notes. "Theresa."

"Oh, she's long gone, Officer. She's in New Orleans now, I believe." Gompers inclines his head, and his voice peters down to a murmur. "A lot of the kids are going down there. My daughter, too, actually." He looks out the window again. "Anything else I can tell you?"

I stare down at the blue book, spiderwebbed with my crabbed handwriting. Well? What else can he tell me?

"What about friends? Did Mr. Zell have any friends?"

"Uh ..." Gompers tilts his head, sticks out his lower lip. "One. Or, I don't know what he was, I guess he was a friend. A guy, kind of a big fat guy, big arms. Once or twice last summer I saw Zell having lunch with him, around the corner at the Works."

"A large man, you said?"

"I said a big fat guy, but sure. I remember because, first of all, you'd never see Peter out to lunch, so that was unusual in itself. And second, Peter was such a small person, the two of them were kind of a sight, you know?"

"Did you get his name?"

"The big man? No. I didn't even talk to him."

I uncross and recross my legs, trying to think of the right questions, think of the things I'm supposed to ask, what else I need to know. "Sir, do you have any idea where Peter got the bruises?"

"What?"

"Under his eye?"

"Oh, yeah. Yeah, he said he fell down some stairs. A couple weeks ago, I think?"

"Fell down some stairs?"

"That's what he said."

"Okay."

I'm writing this down, and I'm starting to see the dim outlines of the course of my investigation, and I'm feeling these jolts of adrenaline shooting up my right leg, making it bounce a little bit where it's crossed over the left one.

"Last question, Mr. Gompers. Do you know if Mr. Zell had any enemies?"

Gompers rubs his jaw with the heel of his hand, his eyes swimming into focus. "Enemies, did you say? You're not thinking that someone killed the guy, are you?"

"Well. Maybe. Probably not." I flip closed my blue book and stand up. "May I see his works.p.a.ce, please?"

That sharp jolt of adrenaline that shot up my leg during the Gompers interview has now spread throughout my body, and it lingers, spreading up my veins, filling me with a strange kind of electric hunger.

I'm a policeman, the thing I've always wanted to be. For sixteen months I was a patrol officer, working almost exclusively on the overnight s.h.i.+ft, almost exclusively in Sector 1, cruising Loudon Road from the Walmart at one end to the overpa.s.s on the other. Sixteen months patrolling my four-and-a-half-mile stretch, back and forth, 8 p.m. to 4 a.m., breaking up fights, scattering drunks, rolling up panhandlers and schizophrenics in the Market Basket parking lot.

I loved it. Even last summer I loved it, when things got weird, new times, and then the fall, the work got steadily harder and steadily stranger and I loved it still.

But since making detective I've been befogged by a frustrating unnamable sensation, some dissatisfaction, a sense of bad luck, bad timing, where I got the job I've wanted and waited for my whole life and it's a disappointment to me, or I to it.

And now, today, here at last this electric feeling, tingling and fading at my pulse points, and I'm thinking holy moly, this might just be it. It really might be.

"So what are you looking for, anyway?"

It's an accusation more than a question. I turn from what I'm doing, which is sorting methodically through Peter Zell's desk drawers, and I see a bald woman in a black pencil skirt and white blouse. It's the woman I saw at the McDonald's, the one who approached the door of the restaurant and then turned away, melting back into the parking lot and out of sight. I recognize her pale complexion and deep black eyes, even though this morning she was wearing a bright red wool cap, and now she is hatless, her smooth white scalp reflecting the harsh overhead lights of Merrimack Life and Fire.

"I am looking for evidence, ma'am. A routine investigation. My name is Detective Henry Palace, from the Concord Police Department."

"Evidence of what, exactly?" she asks. The woman's nose is pierced, one nostril, a single understated golden stud. "Gompers said that Peter killed himself."

I don't answer, and she steps the rest of the way into the small airless office and watches me work. She's good-looking, this woman, small and strong-featured and poised, maybe twenty-four, twenty-five years old. I wonder what Peter Zell must have made of her.

"Well," she says, after thirty seconds or so. "Gompers said to find out if you need anything. Do you need anything?"

"No, thank you."

She's looking over and around me, at my fingers pawing through the dead man's drawers. "I'm sorry, what did you say you were looking for?"

"I don't know yet. An investigation's proper course cannot be mapped in advance. It follows each piece of information forward to the next one."

"Oh, yeah?" When the young woman raises her eyebrows, it creates delicate furrows on her forehead. "It sounds like you're quoting from a textbook or something."

"Huh." I keep my expression neutral. It is in fact a direct quote, from Farley and Leonard, Criminal Investigation, the introduction to chapter six.

"I actually do need something," I say, pointing to Zell's monitor, which is turned backward, facing the wall. "What's the deal with the computers here?"

"We've been all-paper since November," she says, shrugging. "There's this whole network system where our files here were shared with corporate and the different regional offices, but the network got incredibly slow and annoying, so the whole company is operating offline."

"Ah," I say, "okay." Internet service, as a whole, has been increasingly unreliable in the Merrimack Valley since late January; a switching point in southern Vermont was attacked by some kind of anarchist collective, motive unclear, and the resources haven't been found to repair it.

The woman is just standing there, looking at me. "So, I'm sorry-you're Mr. Gompers's executive a.s.sistant?"

"Please," she says, rolling her eyes. "Secretary."

"And what's your name?"

She pauses, just long enough to let me know she feels that she could, if she chose, keep the information to herself, and then says, "Eddes. Naomi Eddes."

Naomi Eddes. She is not, I am noticing, completely bald, not quite. Her scalp is gently feathered with a translucent blonde fuzz, which looks soft and smooth and lovely, like elegant carpeting for a doll's house.

"Do you mind if I ask you a few questions, Ms. Eddes?"

She doesn't answer, but neither does she leave the room; she just stands there regarding me steadily as I launch in. She's worked here for four years. Yes, Mr. Zell was already employed when she started. No, she did not know him well. She confirms Gompers's general portrait of Peter Zell's personality: quiet, hardworking, socially uncomfortable, although she uses the word maladroit, which I like. She recalls the incident on Halloween, when Peter lashed out at Theresa from Accounting, though she doesn't recall any subsequent weeklong absence from the office.

"But to be totally honest," she says, "I'm not sure I would have noticed him not being here. Like I said, we weren't that close." Her expression softens, and for a split second I would swear she's blinking back tears, but it's just a split second, and then her steady, impa.s.sive expression recomposes itself. "He was very nice, though. A really nice guy."

"Would you have characterized him as being depressed?"

"Depressed?" she says, smiling faintly, ironically. "Aren't we all depressed, Detective? Under the weight of all this unbearable immanence? Aren't you depressed?"

I don't answer, but I'm liking her phrase, all this unbearable immanence. Better than Gompers's "this craziness," better than McGully's "big meatball."

"And did you happen to notice, Ms. Eddes, what time Mr. Zell left the office yesterday, or with whom?"

"No," she says, her voice dipping down a half register, her chin pressing against her chest. "I did not notice what time he left the office yesterday, nor with whom."

I am thrown for a moment, and then by the time I realize that her sudden pseudoserious intonation is meant to tease me, she's continuing in her regular voice. "I left early myself, actually, at about three. We've got kind of a relaxed schedule these days. But Peter was definitely still here when I took off. I remember waving good-bye."

I have a sudden and vivid mental image of Peter Zell, three o'clock yesterday afternoon, watching his boss's beautiful and self-possessed secretary leave for the day. She gives him a friendly indifferent wave, and my man Zell nods nervously, hunched over his desk, pus.h.i.+ng his gla.s.ses up the bridge of his nose.

"And now, if you'll excuse me," says Naomi Eddes abruptly, "I have to go back to work."

"Sure," I say, nodding politely, thinking, I didn't ask you to come in. I didn't ask you to stay. "Oh, Ms. Eddes? One more thing. What were you doing at the McDonald's this morning, when the body was discovered?"

In my inexperienced estimation, this question fl.u.s.ters Ms. Eddes-she looks away, and a trace of a blush dances across her cheeks-but then she gathers herself and smiles and says, "What was I doing? I go there all the time."

"To the McDonald's on Main Street?"

"Almost every morning. Sure. For coffee."

"There's a lot of places closer to here, for coffee."

"They have good coffee."

"Then why didn't you come in?"

"Because-because I realized at the last minute that I had forgotten my wallet."

I fold my arms and draw myself up to full height. "Is that true, Ms. Eddes?"

She folds her own arms, mirrors my stance, looks up to meet my eyes. "Is it true that this is a routine investigation?"

And then I'm watching her walk away.

"It's the short fella you're asking about, is that correct?"

"Pardon me?"

The old security officer is exactly where I left him, his chair still swiveled to face the elevator bank, as if he's been frozen in this position, waiting, the whole time I was working upstairs.

"The fella who died. You said you were on a murder, up at Merrimack Life."

"I said I was investigating a suspicious death."

"That's fine. But it's the short fella? Little squirrelly? Spectacles?"

"Yes. His name was Peter Zell. Did you know him?"

"Nope. Except I knew everybody who worked in the building, to say h.e.l.lo to. You're a cop, you said?"

"A detective."

The old man's leathery face contorts itself for a split second into the distant sad cousin of a smile. "I was in the Air Force. Vietnam. For a while, when I got home, I used to want to be a cop."

"Hey," I say, offering up by rote the meaningless thing my father always used to say, when confronted with any kind of pessimism or resignation. "It's never too late."

"Well." The security officer coughs hoa.r.s.ely, adjusts his battered cap. "It is, though."

A moment pa.s.ses in the dreary lobby, and then the guard says, "So last night, the skinny guy, he got picked up after work by someone in a big red pickup truck."

"A pickup truck? Running gas?"

No one has gas, no one but cops and army. OPEC stopped exporting oil in early November, the Canadians followed suit a couple of weeks later, and that was it. The Department of Energy opened the Strategic Petroleum Reserve on January 15, along with strictly enforced price controls, and everybody had gas for about nine days, and then they didn't anymore.

"Not gas," says the guard. "Cooking oil, by the smell of it."

I nod, excited, take a step forward, smooth my mustache with the heel of one hand. "Did Mr. Zell get in the truck willingly or unwillingly?"

"Well, no one pushed him in there, if that's what you mean. And I didn't see any gun or anything."