Cahoon lived in Myers Park on Cherokee Place, and his splendid brick mansion was only partly lit up because its owner and his wife and youngest daughter had gone to bed. This did not deter Hammer in the least. She was about to do a decent thing for the CEO and great benefactor of the city. Hammer rang the doorbell, her fabric worn in places she had not known she had. She felt an emptiness, a loneliness that was frightening in its intensity. She could not bear to go home and walk past places Seth had sat, lain, walked, or rummaged through. She did not want to see remnants of a life no more. His favorite coffee mug. The Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream he’d never had a chance to eat. The antique sterling-silver letter opener he had given her the Christmas of 1972, still on the desk in her study.

Cahoon heard the bell from his master suite upstairs, where his view above sculpted boxwoods and old magnolia trees included his building encrusted with jewels and topped by a crown. He threw back fine monogrammed sheets, wondering who on earth would dare to drop by his home at this obscene hour. Cahoon went to the Aiphone on the wall and picked up the receiver. He was startled to see Chief Hammer on the video monitor.

“Judy?” he said.

“I know it’s late, Sol.” She looked into the camera and spoke over the intercom. “But I need to talk to you.”

“Is everything all right?” Alarmed, he thought of his children. He knew Rachael was in bed. But his two older sons could be anywhere.

“I’m afraid not,” Hammer told him.

Cahoon grabbed his robe from the bedpost and flung it around himself. His slippers patted along the endless antique Persian runner covering the stairs. His index finger danced over the burglar alarm keypad, turning off glass breakers, motion sensors, contacts in all windows and doors, and bypassing his vault and priceless art collection, which were in separate wings and on separate systems. He let Hammer in. Cahoon squinted in the glare of bright lights that blazed on whenever anything more than a foot tall moved within a six-foot radius of his house. Hammer did not look good. Cahoon could not imagine why the chief was out so early in the morning so soon after her husband’s sudden death.

“Please come in,” he said, wide awake now and more gentle than usual. “Can I get you a drink?”

She followed him into the great room, where he repaired to the bar. Hammer had been inside Cahoon’s mansion but once, at a splendid party complete with a string quartet and huge silver bowls filled with jumbo shrimp on ice. The CEO liked English antiques and collected old books with beautiful leather covers and marbled pages.

“Bourbon,” Hammer decided.

That sounded good to Cahoon, who was on a regimen of no fat, no alcohol, and no fun. He might have a double, straight up, no ice. He pulled the cork out of a bottle of Blanton’s Kentucky single barrel and didn’t bother with the monogrammed cocktail napkins his wife liked so much. He knew he needed to be medicated because Hammer wasn’t here to hand him good news. Dear Lord, don’t let anything bad have happened to either of the boys. Did a day go by when their father didn’t worry about their partying and flying through life in their sports cars or Kawasaki one-hundred horsepower Jet Skis?