The best way for me to figure out the route would be walking through the house myself.

A few phone calls later, I had the assistant director’s approval and the senator’s invitation: “My son wasn’t suicidal,” he told me. “I have no idea why he did this to himself. Anything I can do to figure out what happened here, I’m glad to do it.”

“Thank you, Senator. I’d like to have a look around tonight, if possible.”

“Of course.”

I gave him a time, and he gave me the address.

“I’ll be here,” he said.

So that was all earlier today before I managed to slip away to work with Tessa on her driving. Now, I paused at the gated entrance to the senator’s estate, showed my credentials to the guard posted out front, and then pulled forward onto the circular drive that terminated beside the residence’s grand and sweeping front porch.

4

Senator Murray was waiting for me.

Despite the time of day, he still had on a tie, now loosened around his neck. Though lean and good-looking, he had the weary eyes of an old man. They seemed foreign and out of place on his forty-eight-year-old face. Grief might not scar the skin, but it leaves its marks all the same. And it doesn’t always take its time doing so.

Some people recover; many never do, and their eyes are changed forever.

Senator Murray shook my hand firmly. “What can I do to help you, Agent Bowers?”

“First of all, let me say how sorry I am about your loss. My sincerest condolences.”

“Thank you.”

I wasn’t exactly sure how to follow up on that—I never am—and a moment passed before he led us out of the silence. “So tonight, what do you have in mind?”

“Yes. If I can have access to the footage from the security cameras, that would be most helpful. In fact, if you could walk through the house using different routes while I watch the feed, that might work out even better.”

A brisk nod. “Follow me. We can pull up the footage from the television in my office.”

Jon had been the senator’s only child and the house already felt lonely and way too vacant.

The office was a study in mahogany—from the matching bookshelves lined with thick law volumes to the broad desk and elegant end table. On his desk, the inbox had only four or five sheets of paper in it. The pencil holder, desk calendar, family photograph, and iMac were all positioned with careful precision, forming a semicircle that kept everything within easy reach.

Nothing in the office was out of place, except the conspicuously missing executive chair that’d been replaced with a kitchen chair that now sat behind his desk.