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looking down. “I noticed your husband had a bedroom apart from yours.” She raised her eyes and looked directly at Sarah. “Why?”
    “My husband snored loudly and often worked late, so he used the bedroom downstairs near his study, and I the one upstairs on the opposite side. We had the same arrangement in our three-bedroom DC apartment, which also had two downstairs bedrooms, one he used as a study, I used the one upstairs.”
    “Do you still have the apartment?”
    “No. After Sergeant Suggs concluded suicide, the police released their hold—or whatever they call it—on the apartment. The manager had a new tenant waiting. I called Goodwill to donate the furniture.”
    “How do we contact your son?” Jack asked.
    “Donny’s information is on my statement, including his cell number. The best place to catch him is at his disgraceful Gentlemen’s Club, although I cannot imagine a gentleman going there. Christopher and I desperately tried to stop him from opening that loathsome place. It’s on M Street, just west of Foggy Bottom.”
    Jack stepped in close and held Sarah’s frail shoulders. “You won’t hear from us for a few days while we get organized. Call us if you think of anything else or just wanna talk. Okay?”
    She circled his arm with her own, grasping it as one might a steadying pole on a bus. “You both have been so kind.”
    Sarah escorted them to the side door from her sun porch. After touching the knob she let her hand slide off and turned back. “Nora, a few minutes ago I was less than forthright. You deserve the truth.” She stepped closer. “While Christopher did snore and work late, we did not—” She looked away, toward her rose garden. “We were no longer romantic with each other. I am afraid Christopher found me a bit prudish, probably with cause. I will go to my grave regretting I failed to deal with it. I am sorry I lied to you.”
    “I know that wasn’t easy.” Nora smiled. “Thank you for your honesty.”
    Jack put his hand in front of Nora just before they stepped beyond the cover of Sarah’s house—more a slowing than a stop. She paused while he looked left and right. It was an old habit born during a covert operation when, had it not been for a young Kurdish fighter, Jack would have walked right into the beginning of a firefight between Kurdish forces and Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard. Since then he had habitually looked both ways when he came to corners. Street corners, corners of houses, store aisles, it didn’t matter. Before stepping into the open, he looked.
    A dark coupe was parked at the curb several houses to their right. The startled driver exhaled a large gray billow of cigar smoke against the side window, gunned his engine, and sped away before the smoke cleared enough for Jack to get a good look.
    In the street where that car had been parked, Jack found a spent wooden match snapped in two, a habit suggestive of an older driver, one not concerned with fashion.

Chapter 7
     
    Jack was sitting at his desk early Wednesday morning reading newspaper stories that largely sounded like the ones he read every day: politicians blaming the other party rather than solving the nation’s problems, or politicians entangled in some kind of personal scandal.
    He gladly put the paper aside when he heard the front door opening. He got up and looked out to see DC’s chief of police, the lanky Harry Mandrake. The chief’s eyebrows were bushy and set farther apart than his eyes. Jack could not recall ever seeing anyone else with that particular facial feature.
    “Hello, Chief.”
    “I thought you might be an early riser,” Mandrake said. “Can we talk?”
    Jack motioned for him to come on back to his office. “How do you take your coffee?”
    “Black’s fine.”
    While Jack poured, the chief settled into one of the oxblood leather chairs and lifted off his service cap. “I ran into Nora at the supermarket last night. She mentioned you had picked up a case that