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tired as I was. The situation with the Cabot woman and the confrontation with Robert had ground me down. I was still worried about Tracy Cabot. One thing I’d learned as an investigator was that a good share of the time your instinctive response to a situation was correct. And this whole thing just felt bad. Maybe very bad.
    When the women came back, Maddy said, ‘Mom wants to go home, Dad.’
    â€˜Of course, honey. Let’s go.’ He started toward Elise but her look stopped him. ‘We’ll see you later, Caitlin.’
    Their departure happened quickly, so quickly that he only had time to snap at me, ‘My brother knows a consultant who could start work tomorrow morning. You’d better keep that in mind.’
    As we watched them make their slow way through admirers, Caitlin said, ‘You must have really pissed him off.’
    â€˜I did.’
    â€˜That woman?’
    â€˜Uh-huh.’
    â€˜I warned him about her. He told me it wasn’t any of my business.’
    â€˜He told me that he’s never been alone with her.’
    â€˜Wow. You asked him that?’
    â€˜Yeah.’
    â€˜You believe him?’
    â€˜I want to,’ I said. ‘I really do.’

TWO
    I admit to being single-minded; selfish if you insist. My first thought seeing Tracy Cabot lying twisted on the floor four days after my run in with her was nothing as noble as a human life had been wasted. No, my first thought was
There goes the election.
I could justify this by saying that the party and thus the country needed this seat. That if one more representative of the Tea Party gets into the Senate the average American will grow ever closer to living in poverty. We will be on our way to oligarchy. So you could – could if you were being kind – see my first response as somewhat noble. But who would be that foolish?
    She was dressed in a red silk blouse, stylish jeans and three-inch black heels. She hadn’t come out here to go hiking.
    The wound hadn’t bled that much; somebody had hit her with something heavy on the right side of the head. Those dazzling eyes were dulled now and the mouth shaped in the form of an objection. Or curse. The most certain proof of death was the stench. It often is. From the looks of things, she’d been dead since last night.
    Very soon the room would be full of police personnel performing forensic investigations of various kinds. There would be a traffic jam of reporters’ cars and vans. For now these would all be local. But Chicago wasn’t far away and the networks would have people up here within two hours. The circus would be in town and within six hours press from foreign countries already posted here would be striding the midway.
    Sex. A senator. A murder. An international orgasm.
    I was careful not to touch anything, including her.
    The back porch was not only screened in but stuffed with plump comfortable furnishings, a dry bar and a corner packed with fishing gear. You could sit here and watch the sunset with all the melancholy sights and sounds of the dying day and share it like a prayer with your wife or lover. The best days of my marriage had been like that, that kind of shared peace and unspoken love.
    But as I stared at it now I remembered for the first time that on the other side of the hill, maybe six or seven miles away, was the Logan family mansion. Civilization was only ten minutes away.
    I looked for signs of a struggle and found one easily – a small bronze statue of Jack Kennedy. The upper portion was lurid with blood and hair.
    My eyes found her again.
    In most cases I would have wondered about her. Not as a character assassin paid by somebody to take down a damned dumb senator, but as a person, because behind the beauty and the expensive work – in natural light, without the heavy make-up, I could see that she’d had some done on her nose and cheeks – there had been a person of some kind. Somebody’s