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often.”
    “You already have a married lover,” said Ramirez.

SEVEN
    Clare Adams opened Miles O’Malley’s office door a sliver, just enough to put her head through. “There’s a woman here to see you, Chief.”
    “Who is it?” O’Malley crinkled his forehead. “I don’t have an appointment in my schedule. I’m meeting the mayor in half an hour to talk about the free needle exchange and how the hell we’re going to manage the public outcry about it. ‘Not in my backyard.’ Bloody people. Whose backyard should it be in?”
    Adams lowered her voice to a whisper. “Her name is June Kelly. She’s quite insistent. I asked her what it was about, but she won’t tell me. She says she needs to talk to you, and that she has to go right to the top or they’ll cover it up.”
    “Who are ‘they’?”
    “Not sure. But I think you should talk to her.” She slowly mouthed the words “or she’ll never leave.”
    “Great. The first conspiracy of 2007. Is she a wing nut?”
    His assistant smiled. “She seems coherent enough. But emotional. And very angry.”
    O’Malley followed Adams into the reception area. A small woman in her late sixties or early seventies sat beside an evenolder man with a kindly face who appeared terribly embarrassed. Probably her husband, O’Malley guessed from the wedding ring and his look of long suffering. She’d been crying, eyes puffy and black tracks of makeup down her cheeks. She seemed vaguely familiar. And Clare was right, the woman was almost rigid with anger.
    “Mrs. Kelly? What can I do for you? Please, come in.” O’Malley motioned to the husband to join her, but he shook his head.
    “I’ll wait here, thanks,” the man said, rolling his eyes. His expression made it clear he’d heard quite enough of his wife’s tirade.
    “That man murdered my daughter,” the woman said loudly as she got up to follow O’Malley. “And none of you people are doing a goddamn thing about it. Walter, you need to go plug the meter. Wait in the car for me. If you don’t, these bastards will give us a ticket.”
    Her husband got up wearily and made his way to the elevators.
    As O’Malley moved to shut the door, he turned to his secretary, raising his eyebrows. It was a prearranged look to let Clare know she should call him in a few minutes and pretend he had an emergency to deal with.
    “Murder’s a pretty serious allegation,” he said, offering Mrs. Kelly a chair. “Perhaps you can tell me what you’re talking about.”
    “Mike Ellis is what I’m talking about.”
    O’Malley sat down. That’s why he recognized her: from the service. Michael’s mother-in-law.
    “I’m terribly sorry for your loss, Mrs. Kelly. I met your daughter several times at social events. She was a lovely woman. What makes you think her husband had anything to do with her death?”
    “I don’t know how he did it, but he did it alright. My daughter had an affair. He found out about it. She was terrified he was going to kill her. She found things on his computer. Links towebsites about how to slip poison into someone’s food without them knowing.”
    The police chief leaned back in his chair. “They were having marital problems?”
    “Did you hear what I just said? He planned to kill her. I’d call that having marital problems.”
    O’Malley wasn’t surprised to hear that Hillary Ellis might have had an affair. Police work was wretchedly hard at the best of times. Policemen worked long hours, saw terrible things, drank far too much. The divorce rate was sky-high, significantly higher than the fifty percent failure rate for civilians. And with shift work, affairs were endemic.
    Michael Ellis had almost been destroyed by the accident. If his wife had found comfort in the arms of another man, O’Malley could hardly be critical. Yet Michael had never raised an eyebrow when other men ogled his gorgeous wife. He didn’t seem to care in the least what she wore or how much she flaunted her sexuality.