HE DOOR TO the state’s attorney’s office in the Richard J. Daley Center on Washington Street was closed. Outside the office, the atmosphere was unusually hushed, and Paula Moscato, Gray Elliott’s secretary, was keeping it that way by frowning at anyone who approached her desk and then pressing her finger to her lips.

Inside the office, two assistant state’s attorneys were standing at the far wall, watching Gray Elliott prepare their prize witness in the investigation of the murder of William Wyatt. The witness was seated behind Gray’s desk in his comfortable swivel chair; in front of him was a pencil and a pad of paper containing a few phrases to prompt him during the phone call he was about to make, a call that was intended to lure Mitchell Wyatt back into Cook County’s jurisdiction.

The witness’s mother was seated in front of Gray’s desk, twisting a handkerchief in her lap, her beautiful face stricken with grief over the discovery of her husband’s body, her expression dazed as she watched her son lay a trap for her husband’s killer. Lily Reardon, one of the ASA’s observing the procedure, nodded her head toward Caroline Wyatt and whispered to her colleague, “Can you imagine what it must be like to realize your husband’s killer has been your houseguest since his death?”

Jeff Cervantes shook his head. “If Gray doesn’t get this over with pretty quick, she looks like she’s either going to pass out or be sick.”

Gray perched his hip on a corner of his desk. “Are you feeling all right, Billy?”

The handsome fourteen-year-old looked at him, swallowed, and nodded. He was tall, slim, and well-built for his age, and he wore his dark suit, white shirt, and patterned tie with the relaxed aura of a privileged, preppy kid who was as accustomed to wearing suits as jeans. In that respect, he was no different from what Gray had been at his age.

“Take another drink of water while I go over this one more time, okay?”

“Okay, Mr. Elliott.”

“Please, call me Gray. Do you think you’re up for this call?”

Despite the boy’s visible anxiety, he nodded; then he nodded again with more conviction. “He killed my father. I will do whatever it takes to get him here.”

“I know you will,” Gray remarked, smiling a little because at that moment, sitting behind Gray’s polished desk, in Gray’s executive chair, Billy exhibited both his father’s likability and Cecil’s steely resolve. “Okay, let’s run through it one more time. All you have to do is tell Mitchell that your father’s body has been discovered and his killer has confessed—”

“Got it.”

“Then you’ll tell him your grandfather and your mother have taken the news very badly, and you need him to come back here because you’re really, really scared.”

“Okay,” Billy said; then he added, with a twinge of touching ingenuousness, “I know I can do the last part, Gray, because I am—really, really scared.”

“Try to be as convincing as you can about all of it.”

“I will.”

Satisfied, Gray leaned across the desk to his telephone and pressed the intercom button. “Make the call, Paula.” Trying not to do anything to unnerve the fourteen-year-old more than he already was, Gray reached slowly behind him and flipped the switch on the tape recorder; then he glanced at his watch. It was one-thirty in St. Maarten, and according to Childress, Mitchell Wyatt was in his suite at the hotel.

IN AN EFFORT to make time pass more quickly and to distract himself from thoughts of the ordeal Kate was facing, Mitchell had phoned his New York office and asked his assistant to fax some documents that Stavros had asked him to go over.

When his cell phone rang, Mitchell continued reading the documents in his right hand and reached absently toward his cell phone on the coffee table with his left.

“Uncle Mitchell, it’s me. It’s Billy,” the boy clarified needlessly in a voice so shaken he was nearly stuttering.

“What’s wrong?” Mitchell asked, rising slowly to his feet in anticipation of very bad news.

“It’s my dad—”

Closing his eyes, Mitchell waited for what he’d known he would hear someday.

“They’ve f-found my dad’s body in a well out near the farm.”

“I’m so sorry,” Mitchell said hoarsely; then he opened his eyes and shook his head to clear it. “A well? He fell into a well?”

“No, he didn’t fall; he was murdered. He was shot in the chest.”

Afraid to say the wrong thing, Mitchell waited helplessly for the boy to say more. “Go on, Billy, I’m right here. I’m listening.”

“The Udalls’ caretaker shot him. He—he’s confessed. He’s a filthy old drunk, and he admitted everything to the police when they finally came down hard on him. That worthless old bastard—he shot my father! Please, Uncle Mitchell, can you come home? My mom is locked in her room, and I don’t know if she’s okay, and Grandpa Cecil—they’re taking him to the hospital with angina.”

“I’ll come home,” Mitchell promised.

“Tonight? Please say you’ll come tonight. I’m trying to be brave and be the man of the family, like Grandpa Cecil said I should do, until you got here to take care of things.” His voice broke, and Mitchell’s heart squeezed in sympathy. “Uncle Mitchell, I’m really scared for my mom. She has sleeping pills up there and she isn’t answering me.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Will you leave right away?”

Mitchell glanced at his watch. “I’ll leave here around five, that’s three your time. I should be there by eight.”

“Okay,” he said meekly. “Uncle Mitchell?”

“What, son?” Mitchell said.

“My dad really loved you. He said—said—that you made him proud to be a Wyatt.”

Mitchell swallowed over an unfamiliar constriction in his throat and stared out the windows. “Thank you for telling me that.”

In Chicago, Billy leaned back in Gray’s chair and grinned broadly at his mesmerized audience. “How did I do?” he asked, tapping his pencil on the yellow pad like a drumstick on a drum. “It was a bunch of bullshit, but I think it did the job, don’t you? I thought the way I improvised about the ‘old drunk’ had a nice touch.”

On the other side of the office, Lily Reardon suppressed a shiver and avoided meeting her colleague’s eyes.

“You’re amazing, Billy,” Gray said proudly, and stood up. “You are absolutely amazing.”