“I don’t know. It wasn’t a state secret. We’d put out feelers to potential staffers, to see if they’d be interested in coming aboard, that kind of thing.”

I follow up. “Do you think Drake McKenney knew?”

“He knew,” Richard says without hesitation. “He actually chewed me out over it. He thinks being DA is his God-given right.”

“When was this?”

“Just last week.”

“What did he say?” Gabriel asks.

“I don’t remember his exact words . . . but it was along the lines of how he’d bury Lauren, and then he’d come after the mayor and me. Something like that, but with more profanity.”

This is enough to put Drake McKenney on the suspect list. Right alongside the man who just placed him there. But if it’s true that misery loves company, then it’s even truer for murder suspects.

“There’s something else, and this type of thing is always delicate,” Gabriel says. “Did you have any suspicion or knowledge that there might have been someone else in Lauren’s life?”

“Like . . . a lover or something like that?” Richard asks.

“Yes,” I say. “We’re asking because . . . well, she did leave the apartment after midnight. We thought it might have been to meet someone.”

He looks at me with contempt. As if he’s saying that I should know better than to ask such a question. He’d be better served keeping such thoughts to himself, however, because right now he looks as if he has murder on his mind.

I can’t deny that it frightens me to see Richard’s anger so raw. But I hold my ground. It’s critical that he commit to a position on this now. So I prod him.

“I know it’s hard for you to imagine, but whenever a spouse is murdered, that’s always the police’s first line of inquiry. Of course, we know that she wouldn’t have told you about an affair or anything like that. But we’re asking if you had reason to suspect. Was she out more than usual lately? Any changes in her demeanor toward you? That kind of thing.”

Richard processes what I’ve just said for a moment, and then I see it register in his eyes. Like a switch that’s been flipped. Men like him see the angles before the straight lines, and he’s just connected the dots. If he knew his wife was unfaithful, he had motive to kill her.

“No. Lauren would never do something like that. And it wasn’t that uncommon that when she couldn’t sleep, she’d go for a walk. I must have told her a million times it wasn’t safe so late, but she always reminded me that we lived on Park Avenue.”