brick, and timber behind facades of terracotta. The warehouses and old manufacturing plants were once headquarters for some of the country's great industrial powers: Goodyear and Montgomery Ward, Swift and Libby. Developers had resurrected the structures, renovating them and turning the once onerous area of canals, railroad tracks, and braying animal pens into a nostalgic and historic office park.
The Delaney building was six storeys tall and occupied a quarter of a block near Ashland. The brass plaque beside the entrance road simply: DELANEY ENTERPRISES, INC., FOUNDED 1961.
The executive offices were on the sixth floor and were reminiscent of the offices that had been there a hundred years before. As Shock Johnson stepped off the lift, he looked out on a vast open space sectioned off into mahogany and glass squares. With the exception of Delaney's office suite and the three vice presidents' offices that adjoined it, which occupied one full side of the large rectangle, all the other offices lacked both privacy and personality. Johnson thought for a moment of Dickens: he could almost see the ghost of Uriah Heep sitting atop a high stool in the corner, appraising the room to make sure everyone kept busy. The executive secretary, Edith Stoddard, was dressed to mourn in a stern, shin-length black dress. She wore very little make-up; her hair was cut in a bob reminiscent of the Thirties and was streaked with grey. She was a pleasant though harsh-looking woman; her face was drawn and she looked tired.
'I've arranged for you to use three VP suites,' she said, motioning to them with her hand. 'You got the list of employees?'
'Yes, ma'am, thank you,' Johnson answered.
'We have very hurriedly called a board of directors meeting,' she said. 'I'll be tied up for an hour or two.'
'Are you on the board?' Johnson asked.
'I'm the secretary,' she said.
Three teams of detectives were assigned to the VP offices. The forty-two secretaries, sales managers, and superintendents had been divided into three lists. Each of the interrogation teams had its list of fourteen subjects. Johnson and his partner for the day, an acerbic and misanthropic homicide detective named Si Irving, took the middle office. Irving was a box of a man, half a foot shorter than his boss, with wisps of black hair streaking an otherwise bald head. He was an excellent detective but was from the old school. As he had once told Johnson, 'Catch 'em, gut 'em, and fry 'em, that's my motto.' They suffered through a half-dozen dull men and women, none of whom would say an unkind word about 'Mr D.' and none of whom knew anything. Shock Johnson was leaning back in a swivel chair, his feet propped up on an open desk drawer, when Miranda Stewart entered the room. She was a striking woman, zaftig and blonde, wearing a smartly tailored red business suit and a black silk shirt. Her hair was tied back with a white ribbon. Johnson perked up. Irving appraised her through doleful eyes.
'Miss Miranda Stewart?' Johnson said, putting his feet back on the floor and sitting up at the desk.
'Yes,' she said.
'Please have a seat. I'm Captain Johnson of the Chicago PD and this is Simon Irving, a member of the homicide division.'
She smiled at sat down, a composed, friendly woman in her mid-thirties who seemed self-assured and perfectly at ease. She crossed her legs demurely and pulled her skirt down. It almost covered her knees.
'I want to point out that this is an informal interview,' Johnson said. 'By that I mean you will not be sworn and this session will not be transcribed, although we will be taking notes. However, if at some point in this interview we feel the necessity of reading you your rights, we will give you the opportunity to contact an attorney. This is standard operating procedure in a situation like this and we tell everyone the same thing before we start, so I don't want you to feel that bringing that up, about reading you your rights, is in any way a threat. Okay?'
'Okay,' she said in a sultry voice. She seemed to be looking forward to the experience or perhaps the attention.
'What is your full name?'
'Miranda Duff Stewart.'
'Where do you live?'
'At 3212 Wabash. Apartment 3A.'
'Are you married, Ms Stewart?'
'No. Divorced, 1990.'
'How long have you lived at that address?'
'Since 1990. Three years.'
'And how long have you worked at Delaney Enterprises?'
'Eighteen months.'
'What did you do before you came here?'
'I was the secretary to Don Weber, the vice president of Trumbell
