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“I know that. I don’t like it, either.”

“Then do something about it. At least make him promise he’ll back you the next time.”

“It doesn’t . . . work that way.”

“Why doesn’t it work that way?” She falls back against the booth cushion. “Sure it works that way. You said this guy’s more a politician than anything else. So make a deal with him. You’ll walk away this time if he promises to support you next time.”

I swipe up my menu, not because there’s any mystery about what I order but because she’s right, I should do something, but I probably won’t, and I don’t want to look her in the eye.

“You have options, you know,” she says, a hint of mischief to her voice.

I peek over the menu. “No, Vick.”

“You don’t even know what I was—”

“I have a pretty good idea,” I say, “and my answer is no.”

The waiter arrives with our drinks—water for me, pinot grigio for Vicky—and pretends he’s not eavesdropping on our conversation.

She picks up her glass and sips her wine.

“Tell me you heard me say no, Vick.”

Her eyes bulge. “I heard you, I heard you,” she says.

9

Friday, July 29, 2022

Maybe it’s best you went on vacation with your girlfriends to Paris for two weeks, Lauren, after we met for coffee. It gave me time to cool off, to think.

And here’s what I’m thinking: I don’t do things like this. I’m an ordinary guy with an ordinary marriage, working an ordinary job, living in an ordinary suburb, doing ordinary things. I don’t have affairs. I don’t have mistresses!

And it’s not too late to hit the brakes. Nothing’s happened yet. And who knows, maybe you’ll stop it—maybe you’ll be the one who gets cold feet.

But I know my reason. Vicky. Vicky Lanier Dobias, my bride of almost ten years. I know that, deep down, Vicky isn’t happy in our marriage, and she’d want me to be happy. She would. But she trusts me, and that trust means everything to her. I think I was the first man she ever trusted after that wreck of a childhood she had, and it helped her build a foundation of a life. If I tear that down, I’m not sure what will happen to her. I can’t do that to her.

No, I can’t do this. I have to stop this before it starts.

I’ll tell you in person, Lauren, when you return. And that will be that.

THE DAY AFTER HALLOWEEN

10

Jane

“Mary, Mother of God,” Sergeant Jane Burke whispers to herself as she stares at the body of Lauren Betancourt, dangling from a rope attached to the second-floor bannister. Her first homicide. The first homicide, as far as she knows, in the history of Grace Village.

Her partner, Sergeant Andy Tate, comes down the stairs carefully, avoiding the railing and boot and scuff marks on the individual stairs. “Chief call yet?”

“Any second.”

She’s been on the phone with the chief three times already over the last hour, since the cleaning lady entered the Betancourt house this morning and found Mrs. Betancourt dangling here. Jane was still at home, getting ready for work, when she got the call.

“Mr. Betancourt is on his way back now,” says Andy. “We’ll have an officer meet him at O’Hare.”

“Where was he again?” Jane asks.

“Naples. Golf trip with his sons.” Andy walks around the dead body like it’s a chandelier to avoid. “Not a bad alibi.”

Yeah, but if the husband’s involved, and if he has as much money as Jane is hearing he has, he wouldn’t do the dirty work himself.

“She was something,” Andy mumbles, looking her over. Even with the onset of rigor mortis, Jane agrees, Lauren Betancourt is gorgeous, slim and shapely with a delicate, sculpted face and silky blond hair. Her outfit, however garish it seems now in death, leaves little to the imagination: a formfitting leopard-print bodysuit—a cat costume for Halloween. Her eyes, wide open, look down on Jane, lips parted as if in mid-thought. Her lips are painted black, matching the whiskers painted on her face. She has an expensive manicure, black polish.

From the back side, nothing obvious to see, other than a dark stain between her legs. The loss of sphincter control is one of the many ugly accoutrements of death.

Jane’s phone buzzes in her AirPods. She whacks Andy and nods her head.

“Chief.”

“Okay, Janey, I’m in the car. I should be there in about three hours. First, is there press yet?”

“Not that I know of.” She looks out a window. No reporters yet, but the neighbors are out in full force, spilled onto their lawns or the street, in housecoats and slippers, some dressed for work; children with their backpacks headed off to school on a Tuesday morning, the first bell in ten minutes. The half dozen police cruisers would be enough on their own, but Jane imagines that word has filtered back to the neighbors now.

“Christ,” says the chief. “The first damn homicide ever, and I’m at a seminar in Indiana.”

Jane walks to the south door of the house, the kitchen door, because from everything they can tell thus far, it was not the point of entry or the site of the struggle. She wants to keep the crime scene as pristine as possible until Major Crimes brings its forensics unit.

She removes her shoe covers and walks outside, appreciating the fresh air. Andy follows her around the side of the house to the front, where the action occurred.

Grace Village, the day after Halloween. Remnants of smashed pumpkins, candy wrappers scattered in yards or stuck in the curb drains, plastic bags blowing about or clinging to the branches of naked trees.

The Village does a mean Halloween business, a mecca for kids from the west side of Chicago, from the other side of the Des Plaines River, even from Grace Park. Sometimes they take buses over here to the mansions, with the huge candy bars and elaborate decorations. The older teenagers come at the end of the four-hour window for trick-or-treating, hoping to clean up the remaining candy in the bowls, usually prompting calls from one of the more uptight residents.

Hundreds and hundreds of strangers roamed these streets last night, many in face paint or masks or disguises, on the one night of the year that it wouldn’t stand out. It’s going to make this investigation twice as hard.

You want to kill someone, Halloween’s not a bad night.

“I’ll walk you through what we know so far, Chief. It’s early.”

“I’m listening.”

“First, the window on the front of the house.”

Manicured shrubs along the façade of the house. A large window behind them. She walks along the grass and peeks over the shrubs.

Boot impressions in front of one of the windows. Good and deep, cemented in the dirt.

“We have deep boot impressions,” she says. “Looks like an adult boot. Our guess is adult size, maybe twelve, thirteen. We’ll have forensics do impressions and run ’em through the database.”

“Good.”

“It rained just a little yesterday afternoon, right before trick-or-treating started. That was a gift to us. The ground behind the shrubs was just soft enough to allow for impressions. Looks like he was standing there for a while.”