“Yes.”
“What do you think?”
“About DeRosa’s death?”
“Yes.”
“No one should be murdered,” she said.
“Are you in danger?”
Hawk stood and walked to the window and looked out.
“Danger? Why would I be in danger?”
“Because I’m pretty sure DeRosa was killed to shut him up, and if he talked with you, they might feel they had to shut you up, too.”
“That’s absurd,” Ann Kiley said. “I was Jack’s attorney. Nothing more.”
I looked at Hawk. She saw me look and turned and looked at him, too. Hawk smiled.
“You fuck around with this,” Hawk said, “and they gonna kill you, too.”
She was tough, but it rocked her. Hawk saying it made it somehow more forceful. I have often wondered how he got that effect, and have concluded that it is because he doesn’t care. Doesn’t care if she believes him. Doesn’t care if they kill her, too. She was too contained to show it much, but there was a faint look of strain around her eyes and in the way her mouth compressed.
“I have no idea,” she said, “what either of you is talking about.”
There was a short knock on her office door, and it opened immediately and Bobby Kiley walked in. He closed the door behind him.
“I’d like to sit in,” he said to his daughter.
“I don’t think I need any help,” Ann Kiley said.
“I’ll sit in anyway,” Kiley said. “How are you, Spenser?”
“Fine, Bobby. Nice to see you.”
He walked over to Hawk and put out a hand.
“Bobby Kiley,” he said.
“Hawk.”
Kiley nodded and walked back to sit in a chair beside me. He was a handsome guy with white hair and one of those slightly hollow-cheeked Irish faces.
“What’s up?” he said.
“Bobby,” Ann said, “why are you here?”
“I know this guy.” He nodded at me. “I know somebody killed a guy we represent.”
“I can handle this myself,” Ann said.
Kiley shrugged and stayed where he was.
“You know Nathan Smith?” I said.
“Know of him,” Kiley said. “Know he was murdered.”
“I was hired by Cone Oakes to investigate his death,” I said.
Kiley nodded. Ann Kiley sat perfectly still. She looked like she was insulted by her father’s intervention. But she also didn’t look strained around the mouth and eyes anymore.
“Rita,” Kiley said.
“Yep.”
“Hell of a lawyer,” Kiley said.
“And when I started looking into the matter,” I said, “people started to die. A woman at Smith’s bank committed suicide. Smith’s broker was killed in a hit-and-run. A kid named Kevin McGonigle tried to kill me.”
“Heard about that,” Kiley said. “You got him first.”
“Then Jack DeRosa got shot and his girlfriend with him.”
“Our client,” Kiley said.
“Ann represented him.”
“And?”
“And that’s too many people dying in the same case.”
“I agree,” Kiley said. “So?”
“So Smith is on the board of a company named Soldiers Field Development, which had some of its employees following me after I started the case. We talked with them, and this morning we went out to talk with them again. They had packed up and left.”
