"Everyone's saying it was a fall," the patrolman told me at the door. "Terrible accident."

"Everyone's wrong," I said, and went in.

The rain had been going since the body turned up, and by now it felt personal. It came off the harbor in sheets, ran down the third-floor glass where Ellice Weld had gone out onto her own flagstone patio. Sixty-one years old, four charity boards, a face the society pages loved. Now a shape under a tarp three stories down, neck wrong, one shoe still up here by the window she went through. The ME on scene was calling it a fall. The assistant who found her was still crying in a squad car. Rich people's deaths get talked about in a careful voice, and the whole house was using it.

I crouched by the window and looked at what didn't fit.

The desk was too neat. Papers squared on one side, paperweight squared on the other, the way you arrange a room when you want it to look like nobody touched it. The latch had scratch marks on the inside of the frame, fresh ones, bright metal under the paint. And down on the patio under that tarp, a woman who'd fallen three stories had a bruise on her forearm, four marks and a thumb, shaped like she'd raised it against someone before she went over.

Falls don't make that bruise. Falls don't scratch a window latch from the inside. People do both.

I was photographing the latch when the door opened behind me. No knock.

"Detective."

I knew who it was before I turned. The room got quieter, the way a room does when something dangerous walks into it and decides to be still.

Conal Orell filled the doorway without crowding it. Dark grey, no tie, greying at the temples, still in a way most people never manage, a man who'd decided exactly how much of himself to show you and shown you that much. Forty-four, give or take. Tired only around the eyes.

I knew the name before I knew the face. Everybody in Mercy Harbor knew the name. Orell money, Orell foundation, the man who ran the dead woman's fortune and half the old fortunes on this hill. His name was last in Ellice Weld's calendar, the Tuesday before she died, her money manager and her oldest business tie. He was the closest living person to a woman who'd just gone out a window, and the only one with a reason to want her quiet. Which made him mine. The suspect, before I'd asked him a single question. I hadn't sent for him. He'd come anyway.

"You're early," I said. "I haven't called anyone."

"I heard there was a death." He stepped in, unhurried, and let the door swing shut behind him. He stood in front of it. Which meant the door was his now. "She was my client. I assumed someone would want to speak to me. I'd rather it be the one who's good at it."

"Flattery."

"Observation." He looked at the squared desk, the scratched latch, the camera in my hand. "You haven't taken a single photograph of the body. You've taken nine of this room. You're not working a fall."

Most people in a dead woman's study can't stop looking at the chalk where the dead woman isn't. He hadn't looked at the patio once.

"Sit down, Mr. Orell," I said.

He sat. Not in front of the desk like a man being questioned. To the side, angled, where he could see the door he'd just made his. There was a bourbon glass on the side table, Ellice's, half an inch left in it. He picked it up, turned it once in the light, set it down a hand's width from where it had been. Right hand. Easy. The way you move a thing in your own house.

"Where were you Tuesday night," I said.

"Home. Alone after nine-thirty." The gate log would say so too, when it came. I'd learn later that a gate log only proves a gate, not a man.

"That's convenient for you."

"It's the opposite. Nobody to confirm it." He didn't lean forward to sell me on it. That was the thing. Innocent people lean in. They want you to believe them so badly you can taste it. Let me explain. They explain for an hour.

Conal Orell sat back and let me come to him, like the truth was a thing I'd have to walk all the way over to fetch myself.

"You don't seem worried," I said.

"Should I be?"

"A woman's dead. Her last meeting was you."

"Her last meeting in her calendar was me." He let that small correction land. "She kept two calendars, Detective. So do most people with money worth killing them for. You'll want the other one."

I'd been working him for ten minutes and he'd just handed me a thread, calm, like a man passing the salt. I didn't know yet if it was help or misdirection. With him I never got the tell. Everyone gives you a tell. He gave me a temperature, and the temperature was the cold-clean of glass.

"You're not afraid of me," he said. Not a question.

"Should I be?"

"Everyone is. Two patrolmen out there talked to me like I might bite. Your captain shook my hand like it was on loan." His attention came back off the door and onto me, and stayed a half-second past where it should have. "You looked at me like I was the least interesting thing in the room and asked me a question built to make me lie. I'd like to know what's wrong with you, that you're the only one in the building not handling me carefully."

"Professional disinterest."

"Liar," he said. Quiet. Almost kind.

And my pulse did a thing I didn't authorize. I clocked it. I filed it under deal with later and didn't deal with it.

I had one question left. The one I'd been circling the whole time, the only one that mattered. Did you do it. Ask it flat, watch his hands, watch the still go stiller. I'd done it a thousand times across a thousand tables. It's the easiest question I know.

I stood instead. Buttoned my coat.

"Your gate log," I said. "Tonight. And the second calendar."

He rose when I did. Crossed to the door, opened it for me, and as he reached past my shoulder the scent came with him. Bourbon. Wet wool. And under both, faint, where you'd never smell it unless you were trained to, something like gun oil.

A man who carries. A detail I didn't want and took anyway.

On his way out he stopped at the desk and signed the consent for my files without my asking. Right hand. Set the pen down square.

I had the question loaded. Did you do it. The lamp warm on one side of his face, the dark harbor cold on the other, guilty or framed, half-lit, take your pick. I didn't ask it. I wanted to want him for one more minute before I had to find out if he'd done it, and I knew exactly how broken that was, and I wanted it anyway.

He stopped in the doorway. Looked back at me like he'd heard the whole thing I hadn't said.

"Ask it, Detective. Whatever you've been managing for an hour. I'd rather hear it from you than read it in the paper."