8

It took a moment for Leo Sealy to wake and see where he was. His phone rang again. He snatched it up and looked at the screen. The caller’s number meant nothing to him, so he considered declining the call, but he couldn’t do that in the middle of a job. He pressed the green oval. “Hello?”

“Leo.” It was Mr. Conger. “There’s something wrong with your phone. It sounded like it rang four times, but then when you picked it up we didn’t get connected. Or maybe you should set it louder.”

“Yeah, the settings sometimes change when I carry it around in my pocket. Sorry.”

“Get one that doesn’t do that,” Mr. Conger said. “Or check that the ring is on before you set it down.”

Sealy sat up in bed. “I’ll be more careful.”

“You got Spengler last night, didn’t you?”

“I had to,” Sealy said. “I know that wasn’t the job, but the woman wasn’t at her condo, so I went to his house to see if she was staying there.”

“I can guess she wasn’t, since they only found one body. It’s all over the news. You got Benjamin Spengler.”

“Yeah. He fired and I fired. Now we’re both home, but I’m the only one taking phone calls.”

Mr. Conger chuckled. “I can’t tell you how good this is. I didn’t ask for this, but after it happened, I realized what I got. Ben Spengler was the big fish. This Justine is just some girl who was working for him. What I hired you for was to make sure everybody knew that when somebody messes with one of my crews, I don’t just shrug it off.”

Sealy felt uneasy. Mr. Conger sounded satisfied, but Sealy had yet to earn the second half of the money for killing the girl. That wasn’t small change. He said, “I’m still after the girl. I just had to get some sleep. I was up all night.”

“I understand. What you did last night bought us some time. The three guys who are sitting in cells right now are going to get asked about who they think did this to Spengler. That will tell them that I’m not forgetting about their dead friends, and I won’t forget about them either.”

“I’m glad that getting Spengler will help.”

“It will,” Mr. Conger said. “It already has.” Sealy heard a tightness in Mr. Conger’s voice that meant he was smiling. “When my guys hear about it, they’re going to think if I got Spengler, a guy with seventy bodyguards, I can get anybody. And I still want the girl. Happy hunting.”

“Thank you.”

Mr. Conger hung up, and Sealy wondered if Mr. Conger had heard his last words, but he knew Mr. Conger didn’t care what other people said. He cared what he said.

Sealy swung his legs off the bed, stood up, pulled the covers tight and tucked them in, folded the sheet over the blanket the width of his spread fingers, fluffed up his pillow, and gave the blanket one extra tightening tug so it was perfect and he wouldn’t be tempted to return to it. He showered, shaved, brushed his teeth, and dressed in clean clothes. He loaded his laundry into the washing machine, made sure it included the clothes he had worn last night, and started the wash. He had handled his revolver and fired his semi-auto pistol several times, so he had probably covered himself with powder residue and heavy metal traces. It occurred to him to add the running shoes he had been wearing, so he paused the machine and tossed them in too.

The next step was to get a look at Justine Poole, but he hadn’t found her yet, so he would have to try other approaches. He was fairly sure that the second name on the condominium and car ownerships had to be her mother. No doubt she had helped her with the down payments, and who else would do that? He opened his laptop and typed in the name Anna Kepka.

There was a long column of entries, each referring to someone with that name. The entries were in the hundreds, but few of them included a picture. Maybe one of them shared a resemblance with Justine Poole, but there was no way to know which one. None of them had the same address as Justine Poole, which seemed to bolster his view that she had just given her some money, and lived somewhere else—maybe with her second husband, Mr. Kepka. He couldn’t find a local address for any of them. By the time he had read each of the entries, he felt frustrated and tired of the search and eager to know if any news of Justine Poole had come up.

He turned on the television and scanned the morning news shows he’d recorded. There was footage of the house where he had killed Benjamin Spengler, now in bright sunlight and crawling with cops and forensics technicians. He watched and listened, but the television reporter knew nothing but the name and the company.

His conversation with Mr. Conger had focused his mind. He felt more eager about killing the woman now than he had before. He wanted to get back into the hunt.

It was just after one o’clock when Ben Spengler’s brother and sister emerged from the elevator and walked into the Spengler-Nash office. Justine had never seen them before, but they looked like Spenglers. The man was tall and straight like Ben, but he had a flat stomach and thin arms, and that was not like his brother. Ben had always carried more weight—a bit of a rounded belly, probably from sitting in the office on the phone or in the car watching over a long succession of clients, all the time drinking coffee and eating snacks that came in shiny bags and turned his fingertips orange. He’d looked as though he had not been in full sunlight in years. The brother had an even tan, which looked good with his slightly overlong graying hair. The sister had hair that was between light blond and white. She was tall too, fashionably thin with ice-blue eyes and a mouth that seemed to have been pouting for decades.

Justine was at her own desk near Ben’s office, going through some of the fragmentary staffing plans Ben had left for this evening’s jobs and acknowledging some of the “Here I am” calls and texts from the people out on the day shift. She had been crying on and off for three hours, and now her throat hurt, but she had forced herself to feign a normal voice when she was talking to colleagues. She knew somebody had to go and greet the siblings, and she happened to be the only one who could see them at the moment. She kept the channel open and the radio hot on the desk, but took her phone with her as she stood up and walked to the threshold of Ben’s office.

She tried to manage an expression that showed sympathy, but she suspected it was closer to the grief she felt. “Hello,” she said. “Are you—”

The male sibling interrupted her. “I’m Walker Spengler, and this is my sister Evelyn Hawley. We’re Benjamin’s family.”

“I thought you must be. I’m terribly sorry for your loss. Ben was a great friend and teacher to all of us. We miss him so much already. I’m Justine Poole.” She held her right hand out.

Walker Spengler and Evelyn Hawley looked at each other, and then focused on her face. They didn’t seem to see her hand.

Justine extended the movement of her hand to sweep in the direction of the outer office. “Would you like to meet some of the other employees? We all loved and admired Ben so much, and I’m sure they’d like to meet you.”

Walker looked at his sister, then said, “Yes. I suppose this would be the time to start. Assemble the others in the outer office.”

“All right,” Justine said. She walked out across the big common office toward the hall that held the ready room and the communications room. She was thinking about Evelyn Hawley. She apparently preferred to make her brother the barrier between her and the distasteful world. Walker’s tone was imperious, but before he said anything he looked at his sister for—what? Permission, or possibly agreement. Justine guessed that Evelyn Hawley was in her late fifties, but she’d had some work done to the skin around her eyes, chin, and forehead. Justine had spent much of her working life protecting women, and most of the women who could afford to hire Spengler-Nash had endured the same repairs in their early fifties. The doctors must have been the best, but Justine wondered if there might have been accidental damage to some facial nerves or an off-target Botox injection, because Evelyn Hawley’s face was almost without expression.

Justine stuck her head into the ready room, where the dozen men and women who were about to leave for afternoon assignments had been making last-minute preparations and checking for updates on clients’ plans. She said, “Ben’s brother and sister are here, and they want to meet everyone in the main office.”

The group got up and headed for the glass-enclosed office that had always been Ben’s. Justine kept going to the communication room, where Lydia and Stephanie were monitoring the computers and phones and Mick was on the radio. When she gave them the same message, Stephanie stood up, but Lydia said, “I need a minute to forward everything to a front office phone.”

“You can use the extension for the phone on my desk,” Justine said. “It’s close enough to the front of the room so we’ll hear it.”

Mick turned a switch on his console, picked up a handheld radio, and joined the others as they hurried to the open bay, where the first group had gathered. They were all taking their turns shaking hands and saying the usual inadequate formulas of condolence.

When they were assembled, Walker Spengler said, “Thank you all for your kind words about our brother. We wanted to let you know who we are, and not leave everyone in a vacuum, wondering whether there was a future for Spengler-Nash. We’re going to retain the business our family has had since 1922—at least for now. For you that means keeping things on a business-as-usual basis in spite of disruptions. We’ll begin the search for a properly qualified person to replace our brother as soon as we can.” He glanced at the clock on the wall and then surveyed the group. The bodyguards among them were dressed in clothes intended to make them fit into a variety of activities, from afternoon parties to airline travel. “I can see you all have things to do, so I won’t delay you any longer.”

The group began to disperse and he and his sister exchanged a look. “Oh, Miss Poole. Can we talk for a minute?”

She stood still. “Of course.”

He and his sister went into Ben’s office and Justine followed. Walker paused to close the door behind them while Evelyn sat behind Ben’s desk, her hands folded in front of her. Walker stepped to the end of the desk and remained standing with his arms folded across his chest.

Justine waited.

Evelyn looked up at Justine.

“Justine,” she said. “May I use your first name?”

“Sure,” Justine said. She didn’t say, “I’d like you to,” because it implied a level of friendliness, and nothing about this felt friendly.

“As you must know, we’ve spent the better part of the past twelve hours learning all about what happened to our brother Benjamin.” Her forehead remained an empty, unreadable surface, but she was able to make her eyebrows lift slightly as she stared into Justine’s eyes.

She went on. “It’s a tragic story. Everybody has lost. I don’t pretend to know what your relationship with our brother was. I’m sure you sincerely miss him and feel grateful that he went to such an extreme as to lose his own life in an effort to divert your enemies away from you after your shooting.”

“He was a special person,” Justine said. She resisted the impulse to correct Evelyn. She had seen Ben be heroic a dozen times. The fact that she had risked her life to back up Ben this time didn’t change who Ben was. Explaining the nuances and complications of the bodyguard business to a woman like this was probably impossible and would have been pointless. And yes, Ben had probably gotten killed because the killer had been looking for Justine.

Evelyn said, “You’ll be getting a substantial payment as soon as the technicalities are taken care of. There will be papers to sign first, of course. Lawyers insist on that.”

“Papers? What papers?”

“Well, you and Benjamin were close. You’re an attractive younger woman. You will have to agree not to file any lawsuits against his estate or the family company.”

“Why would I do that?”

“A common law relationship, or damages for his pressuring or coercing you. In your profession I’m sure you’ve protected people who have been sued, and you know the sort of thing.”

“We didn’t have that kind of relationship,” Justine said.

“I’m relieved for you when I hear that. It spares you so much pain,” Evelyn said. She looked up at Walker, a silent communication passing between them. “Legal is preparing a standard NDA, to assure our clients that their privacy is protected, as well as any company proprietary information. The lawyers will be calling you to a brief meeting. Once you sign the papers you can go home with your severance check.”

Justine stood staring at them for a second. “Don’t do this.”

Walker and Evelyn exchanged another glance. Evelyn tried to assume an expression of motherly concern. “Surely you understand that we have a responsibility that we never wanted or asked for. Your continued presence here puts our employees at risk—exactly the same risk that our brother faced. How can we expect them to take that on?”

Justine said, “I’m asking you not to fire me.”

“We don’t want to fire you. That’s why we’re presenting you with this alternative. You get to walk away with a generous severance package and tell outsiders anything you want—that you’re taking time to mourn Benjamin, that you’re rethinking your future goals, that you’re going back to school. Then you become silent. It will be a couple of years before people realize you must have decided not to come back. It’s a very gentle, quiet process.”

Justine said, “The police are still investigating what happened at the Pinskys’ house. What I did was the only thing possible, but when two people get shot it’s a very big thing, and the authorities need time to learn everything about it. If I’m suddenly no longer with Spengler-Nash, no matter what we say, the police will interpret this as a termination. They, and I, think of a professional bodyguard protecting a client with a gun as a regrettable but legal act—protecting others is one form of self-defense—but any shooting can easily slide from self-defense to manslaughter. If I get fired, it will mean to them that I must have done something wrong. They can even decline to make a determination, which means this could hang over me forever.”

Evelyn’s gaze was bright and piercing, and it looked to Justine as though she was pleased. She said, “Well, then. This is another very strong reason to be mindful about the way your departure is handled.”

Walker took his cue. “Speaking of departures, I’m sorry, but we really have to be on the move now. We’ve got a meeting with the funeral director.” He assumed a sad half-smile. “You understand.”

As Evelyn stood and followed Walker to the door, she said, “Before you leave, please don’t forget to be sure your contact information is up to date. The lawyers will need to reach you for the papers and so on.”