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didn’t have to work hard for her money. When Irene got ready to go, the john surprised her by telling her that she could stay in the room because he had to catch an early flight. She accepted the offer and immediately fell into a deep sleep.
    Irene never heard the door being jimmied and had no idea that there was someone else in the room until a gloved hand clamped across her mouth. Her eyes sprang open and she tried to sit up, but the muzzle of a gun pressed hard into the flesh of her forehead and forced her head deep into her pillow.
    “Scream and die. Answer my questions and live. Nod slowly if you understand me.”
    The feeble light cast by the flashing neon sign on the bar next door revealed that the speaker wore a ski mask. Irene nodded slowly and the gloved hand withdrew, leaving the sour taste of leather in her mouth.
    “Where is he?”
    “Gone,” she gasped in a voice hoarse with fear.
    “Say good-bye, bitch,” the intruder whispered. Irene heard the gun cock.
    “Please,” she begged. “I’m not his friend, I’m a pro. He was a pickup at the Mirage. He fucked me, he paid me, and he left. He said I could use the room for the night because he had an early flight. I swear that’s all I know.”
    “How long ago did he leave?”
    The prostitute’s eyes shifted to the clock radio on the nightstand.
    “Fifteen minutes. He just left.”
    Two cruel eyes studied Irene for what seemed an eternity. Then the gun withdrew.
    “Stay.”
    The intruder vanished though the door. Irene did not move for five minutes. Then she raced into the bathroom and threw up.
     
     
     

PART II
     
The Smoking Gun
     
     
     

FIVE
     
     
    The main entrance to Reed, Briggs, Stephens, Stottlemeyer and Compton was on the thirtieth floor of a modern, thirty-story office building in the middle of downtown Portland, but Reed, Briggs leased several other floors. A week after delivering the boxes of discovery to Aaron Flynn’s office, Daniel stepped out of the elevator on the twenty-seventh floor at 7:30 in the morning. This floor, where Daniel had his office, could only be entered by tapping in a code on a keypad that was attached to the wall next to one of two narrow glass panels that bracketed a locked door. Daniel started to reach for the keypad when he noticed what appeared to be some kind of microphone affixed to the wall above the keypad. Taped next to it was a sign that said:
     
REED, BRIGGS’S KEY ENTRY SYSTEM IS NOW VOICE-ACTIVATED. CLEARLY AND LOUDLY SAY YOUR NAME, THEN STATE “OPEN DOOR NOW.”
     
    On closer inspection Daniel could see that the “microphone” was really a round, metal cap from a juice bottle that had been taped to a small, plastic pencil sharpener. Both had been painted black. Daniel shook his head and tapped in his number. The lock clicked and he opened the door. As he expected, Joe Molinari was lurking behind a partition staring through the glass panel that gave him a view of the keypad.
    “You’re an asshole,” Daniel said.
    Molinari jerked him behind the partition just as Miranda Baker, a nineteen-year-old from the mailroom, approached the door.
    “Watch this,” Molinari said.
    Baker started to tap in her code when she noticed the sign. She hesitated, then said, “Miranda Baker. Open door now.” She tried the door, but it would not open. She looked puzzled. Molinari doubled over with laughter.
    “That’s not funny, Joe. She’s a good kid.”
    “Wait,” Molinari insisted, trying to stifle his laughter for fear that Baker would hear him. She repeated her name and the command. Molinari had tears in his eyes.
    “I’m going to let her in,” Daniel said just as Kate Ross, one of Reed, Briggs’s in-house investigators, got out of the elevator. Kate walked up to Miranda as she was saying her name for the third time and yanking on the doorknob. Kate took one look at the sign and ripped it, the pencil sharpener, and the bottle cap off of the wall.
    “Shit,” Joe swore.
    Kate said something