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had kept Tim Brodie, an elderly former homicide detective, on an annual retainer for decades to do occasional work as a private investigator for Hal. Evon had little use for private investigators, most of whom were wannabes and used-to-bes who didn’t know where the lines were and could get the company in trouble. Having Brodie spy on his business adversaries was typical of Hal’s impulsive and risky stunts.
    “Get somebody on this,” he directed Evon, “but don’t go far. I may need your help here.”
    As a boss, Hal Kronon, who had run ZP on his own since the death of his father, Zeus, twenty years ago, seemed to exist in a state of constant agitation. He could be by turns imperial, outraged or pleading, and always loud and opinionated. In every mood Hal required instant gratification from his employees. Evon was often baffled, therefore, by how fond she had become of him in the three years she’d been at ZP. For one thing, he had been astoundingly generous, making her far richer than a girl from Kaskia, Colorado, ever would have imagined possible. But mostly she liked Hal because he was so abject when he needed her help and so thoroughly appreciative afterward. Hal was one of those men who required plenty of women to take care of him, especially now that his mother, Hermione, was gone. There was Hal’s wife, Mina, funny and bossy, and pudgy like her husband, and ancient Aunt Teri, his father’s sister, who scared everyone a little bit. At work, Evon had become one of Hal’s principal confidants, frequently nodding for hours, and gently attempting to save him from himself.
    She went out to the hall to call her assistant VP who covered the Ohio Valley and told him to get up to Indianapolis and find somebody who could look for environmental contamination. Back inside, Mel Tooley, Hal’s lawyer, told her that the hearing had been delayed again, because Cass’s lawyer was still en route. Her boss had gone out to return a few calls. Mel was checking his handheld from a seat in one of the three rows of card chairs that had been set out for spectators, and Evon put herself down beside him. As a Bureau agent, Evon had known Mel mostly by reputation, which was as another scumbag defense lawyer, smart but basically deceitful. Through Hal, she’d seen Mel’s better side, but she still took him with a grain of salt. He looked ridiculous, for one thing, wearing suits too tight for his wide form and a shaggy toupee, which he must have adopted when Tom Jones was the rage. The mess of black curls fell all over his head, resembling the stuff he might sweep off the floor when he took his poodle to the groomer.
    She asked Mel for a better picture of what was supposed to happen this afternoon. Mel wrenched his eyes in passing anguish.
    “It’s just Hal being Hal,” he said. He explained that family members of homicide victims had a statutory right to demand a hearing before a convicted killer was released. There was no basis, however, to hold Cass Gianis any longer. He had done all but six months of good time on the twenty-five-year sentence imposed when he pled guilty, and the only way to keep him inside would be for a serious disciplinary infraction. Instead, Gianis had been a model prisoner.
    “Here,” said Mel, “take a look at his file. See if I missed something.” Mel handed over a heavy redwell folder and left to return a call of his own, while Evon sat there, turning the pages. An essential element of Cass’s original plea deal had apparently been incarceration in a minimum-security institution, treatment rarely accorded a murderer, and for which she assumed there had been hard bargaining. As a result, he had been in the Hillcrest Correctional Facility about seventy-five miles from the Tri-Cities for more than two decades, even turning down transfers to newer prisons where he could have had his own room. The forms he’d filled out stated that Hillcrest, despite its barracks, was a better location for his family,