He walked to headquarters at Pemberton Square. It was a beautiful morning, cold but windless, the sky a bright band of steel and the air smelling of chimney smoke, melting snow, hot brick, and roast fowl.

He ran into Mark Denton coming along School Street. They smiled. They nodded. They walked up onto Beacon Hill together.

“Nervous?” Danny asked.

“A bit,” Mark said. “I left Emma and the kids home alone on Christmas morning, so it better be for something. How about you?”

“I choose not to think about it.”

“Wise.”

The front of headquarters was empty, no reporters on the steps. No one at all. They would have expected to see the mayor’s driver, at least, or Curtis’s.

“Around back,” Mark Denton said with an emphatic nod. “Everyone’s around back, probably already nipping from Christmas flasks.”

“That’s it,” Danny said.

They went through the front door and removed their hats and topcoats. They found a small man in a dark suit and red bow tie waiting for them, a slim valise on his lap. His eyes were too big for his small face and gave him a demeanor of perpetual surprise. He was no older than Danny, but his hairline had receded halfway up his head, and the exposed skin was still a bit pink, as if the balding had all occurred last night.

“Stuart Nichols, personal secretary to Commissioner Curtis. If you’ll follow me.”

He didn’t offer his hand or meet their eyes. He rose from the bench and climbed the wide marble stairs and they fell into place behind him.

“Merry Christmas,” Mark Denton said to his back.

Stuart Nichols looked quickly over his shoulder, then straight ahead.

Mark looked over at Danny. Danny shrugged.

“Merry Christmas to you, too,” Danny said.

“Why, thank you, Officer.” Denton barely suppressed a smile, reminding Danny of his and Connor’s days as altar boys. “And a Happy New Year to you, sir.”

Stuart Nichols was either oblivious or didn’t care. At the top of the stairs he led them down a corridor and then stopped outside a frosted glass door with the words BPD COMMISSIONER stenciled in gold leaf. He opened the door and led them into a small anteroom and went behind the desk and lifted the phone.

“They’re here, Commissioner. Yes, sir.”

He hung up the phone. “Take a seat, gentlemen.”

Mark and Danny sat on the leather couch across from the desk and Danny tried to ignore the feeling that something was askew. They sat there for five minutes as Nichols opened his valise, removed a leather-bound notebook, and jotted in it with a silver fountain pen, the nib scratching across the page.

“Is the mayor here yet?” Mark asked, but the phone rang.

Nichols picked it up, listened, and replaced it in the cradle. “He’ll see you now.”

He went back to his notebook and Danny and Mark stood facing the oak door that led into the office. Mark reached for the brass knob and turned it and Danny followed him over the threshold into Curtis’s office.