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  “Almost nobody,” I said.

  “The crazed-killer thing still works,” Quirk said. “It happens.”

  “Husband checks out?”

  Quirk looked at me as if I’d asked him his sign.

  “How long you think I been doing this? Who do we think of first when a wife is killed?”

  “Cherchez la hubby,” I said.

  “Thank you,” Quirk said.

  “No problems between them?”

  “None that he’d mention.”

  “He doesn’t have a girlfriend?”

  “Says he doesn’t.”

  “She doesn’t have a boyfriend?”

  “Says she didn’t.”

  “You able to confirm that, as they say in the papers, independently?”

  “Cops aren’t independent,” Quirk said. “Hot dogs like yourself are independent.”

  “But you looked into it.”

  “Far as we could.”

  “How far is that?”

  Quirk shrugged.

  “These are powerful people,” Quirk said. “They have powerful friends. Everybody I ask says she was a candidate for sainthood. And he is a candidate for sainthood, and the kids are a couple of saintlettes. You push people like this only so far.”

  “Before what?”

  “Before the commissioner calls you.”

  “And tells you to desist?”

  “And tells me that unless I have hard evidence, I should not assume these people are lying.”

  “And you don’t have hard evidence.”

  “No.”

  “You think there’s something there?”

  Quirk shrugged.

  “That’s why you sent Tripp to me,” I said.

  “This wasn’t a Jamaican whore got smoked in some vacant lot, twenty miles from the Harvard Club,” Quirk said. “This is an upper-crust WASP broad got bludgeoned to death at one corner of Louisburg fucking Square for crissake. We got a U.S. Senator calling to follow up on our progress. I got a call from the Boston Archdiocese. Everybody says solve it, or leave it alone.”

  “Which isn’t the way to solve it,” I said.

  Again Quirk was silent.

  “The way to solve it is to muddle around in it and disrupt everybody’s lives and doubt everything everybody says and make a general pain in the ass of yourself.”

  Quirk nodded.

  “You can see why I thought of you,” he said.

  “So if Tripp doesn’t want this solved, why did he hire me?”

  “I think he wants it solved, but with his assumptions and on his terms,” Quirk said. “He thinks he can control you.”

  “Somebody ought to,” I said. “Any money to inherit?”

  “A small life insurance policy, probably covered the funeral.”

  “No mental illness?”

  “No.”

  “Kids?”

  “Son, Loudon, Junior, twenty-two, senior at Williams College. Daughter, Meredith, eighteen, freshman at Williams.”

  “They seem clean?”

  “American dream,” Quirk said. “Dean’s list for both of them. Son’s on the wrestling team, and the debating team. Daughter’s president of the drama club and a member of the student council, or whatever the fuck they call it at Williams.”

  “Any history on the kids that doesn’t jibe?”

  “Son had a few routine teenage scrapes. Nothing that matters. I’ll give you the file,” Quirk said.

  “You still got a guy on it?” I said.

  “Yeah, Lee Farrell,” Quirk said.

  “He’s new,” I said.

  “Yeah, and he’s gay.”

  “Young and gay,” I said.

  “I got no problem with it, long as he doesn’t kiss me. But command staff don’t like it much.”

  “So he gets the low-maintenance stuff.”

  “Yeah.”

  “He any good?”

  Quirk leaned back in his swivel chair and clasped his hands behind his back. The muscles in his upper arm swelled against the fabric of his jacket.

  “He might be,” Quirk said. “Hasn’t had a hell of a chance to prove it.”

  “Doesn’t get the choice assignments?”

  Quirk smiled without meaning anything by it.

  “They had to hire him, and they had to promote him. But they don’t have to use him.”

  “I’ll want to talk with Farrell.”

  “Sure,” Quirk said. “You and he will hit it right off.”

  Click here to see a list of more books by this author

  THE SPENSER NOVELS

  Sixkill

  Painted Ladies

  The Professional

  Rough Weather

  Now & Then

  Hundred-Dollar Baby

  School Days

  Cold Service

  Bad Business

  Back Story

  Widow’s Walk

  Potshot

  Hugger Mugger

  Hush Money

  Sudden Mischief

  Small Vices

  Chance

  Thin Air

  Walking Shadow

  Paper Doll

  Double Deuce

  Pastime

  Stardust

  Playmates

  Crimson Joy

  Pale Kings and Princes

  Taming a Sea-Horse

  A Catskill Eagle

  Valediction

  The Widening Gyre

  Ceremony

  A Savage Place

  Early Autumn

  Looking for Rachel Wallace

  The Judas Goat

  Promised Land

  Mortal Stakes

  God Save the Child

  The Godwulf Manuscript

  THE JESSE STONE NOVELS

  Split Image

  Night and Day

  Stranger in Paradise

  High Profile

  Sea Change

  Stone Cold

  Death in Paradise

  Trouble in Paradise

  Night Passage

  THE SUNNY RANDALL NOVELS

  Spare Change

  Blue Screen

  Melancholy Baby

  Shrink Rap

  Perish Twice

  Family Honor

  ALSO BY ROBERT B. PARKER

  Blue-Eyed Devil

  Brimstone

  Resolution

  Appaloosa

  A Triple Shot of Spenser

  Double Play

  Gunman’s Rhapsody

  All Our Yesterdays

  A Year at the Races (with Joan H. Parker)

  Perchance to Dream

  Poodle Springs (with Raymond Chandler)

  Love and Glory

  Wilderness

  Three Weeks in Spring (with Joan H. Parker)

  Training with Weights (with John R. Marsh)