“I’m not coming from anyplace and I’m not going anywhere. I did a piece of work and I was paid in full. The client’s dead and I didn’t have anything to do with that and it doesn’t have anything to do with me. You say you had nothing to do with her death. Maybe that’s true and maybe it isn’t. I don’t know and I don’t have to know and I don’t honestly give a damn. That’s between you and the police. I’m not the police.”

“You used to be.”

“But I’m not anymore. I’m not the police and I’m not the dead girl’s brother and I’m not some avenging angel with a flaming sword. You think it matters to me who killed Kim Dakkinen? You think I give a damn?”

“Yes.”

I looked at him.

He said, “Yes, I think it matters to you. I think you care who killed her. That’s why I’m here.” He smiled gently. “See,” he said, “what I want is to hire you, Mr. Matthew Scudder. I want you to find out who killed her.”

I took a while before I believed he was serious. Then I did what I could to talk him out of it. If there was any kind of trail leading to Kim’s killer, I told him, the police had the best chance of finding and following it. They had the authority and the manpower and the talent and the connections and the skills. I had none of the above.

“You’re forgetting something,” he said.

“Oh?”

“They won’t be looking. Far as they’re concerned, they already know who killed her. They got no evidence so they can’t do anything with it, but that’s their excuse not to kill themselves trying. They’ll say, ‘Well, we know Chance killed her but we can’t prove it so let’s work on something else.’ God knows they got plenty other things to work on. And if they did work on it, all they’d be looking for is some way to hang it onto me. They wouldn’t even look to see if there’s somebody else on earth with a reason for wanting her dead.”

“Like who?”

“That’s what you would be looking to find out.”

“Why?”

“For money,” he said, and smiled again. “I wasn’t asking you to work for free. I have a lot of money coming in, all of it cash. I can pay a good fee.”