For a walk in the suburban Seattle woods, Liddon Wallace wore Brioni loafers protected by rubber overshoes, gray wool slacks by Ermenegildo Zegna, a Mark Cross belt, a Geoffrey Beene shirt, an Armani sweater, a black leather jacket by Andrew Marc, and a Patek Philippe wristwatch.

The hard-packed dirt footpath proved easy to follow in spite of the mottling shadows and the mist. Dawn had come nearly an hour earlier. But fog veiled the face of the sun and allowed only this indirect light.

In the morning murk, the towering Douglas firs and hemlocks appeared to be black, and the ferns were more blue than green. Even the clusters of Pacific dogwoods, with their flurries of scarlet and gold leaves, blazed less than smoldered in the dripping gloom, and their enormous white flowers, which usually resembled clematis, now looked like dead birds in their branches.

After little more than three hundred yards, the footpath led out of the forest. Beyond lay the putting green at the eighteenth hole of the golf course.

An electric cart, used by groundskeepers, stood on the green. Even as Liddon Wallace came out of the trees, Rudy Neems, chief of the landscape-maintenance crew, took the eighteenth-hole flag from the cart and stood it in the cup.

Half surrounding the green and beyond it were three sand traps and then a fairway that sloped down to a water hazard. The first half of the fairway, beyond the water, faded into the mist, and the tee was far beyond sight. A narrow rough lay along each flank of the fairway, and behind both roughs the forest continued.

Rudy Neems stood by the grounds cart, watching Liddon approach. The landscaper was thirty-eight, stocky, with a blond mustache and thick hair that grew naturally in ringlets. Ironically, as a boy, he was often picked to play an angel in Christmas pageants.

“This weather sucks,” Liddon said.

Neems was soft-spoken to such a degree that even in the morning stillness, his voice didn’t carry far: “Good for the skin.”

Indeed, the groundskeeper had a superb complexion.

Liddon said, “So you reviewed the package.”

“Yes.”

“Do you have any questions?”

“No.”

“You see how it can be done?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’ll do it?”

“The money?”

Liddon handed him a manila envelope containing forty thousand in hundred-dollar bills. “Forty thousand more when it’s done.”

Neems didn’t bother to count the deposit. He dropped it in the cart and returned to Liddon another envelope that contained numerous photographs of his house in California, the floor plan, and detailed information about the security system.

“Plus expenses,” Neems reminded him.

“Yes, of course. Forty thousand more plus expenses. When are you flying there?”

“This afternoon.”

“As I told you, I’m only in Seattle on business until Wednesday noon. When will you do the job?”

“Tomorrow night.”

“Tuesday evening.”

“Yes.”

“Good. Excellent. I’ll be having drinks and dinner with a client from six o’clock till eleven or later.”

“Your wife looks nice,” Neems said.

“Yes, she does, she’s a beautiful woman, but I should never have married. I’m not the marrying kind.”

“I want her.”

“You want her? No. Not a good idea, Rudy. You were acquitted, but your DNA is still on file from the court-ordered blood sample, it’s still in the system, you don’t dare leave semen behind.”

“I won’t.”

Four years earlier, in California, Rudy stood trial for the murder of a fourteen-year-old girl. Liddon was his defense attorney.

“It’s too risky,” Liddon reasoned, “because I got you off in the Hardy case. They find your DNA, they’ll know I hired this done.”

He had not merely won a not-guilty verdict for Neems, but he had also made two straight-arrow police detectives appear so corrupt that they were ultimately fired from the force.

A network-TV news magazine did a two-hour feature on the case that brought Liddon millions in business. The camera loved him. He was a natural. Now and then he watched a DVD of the program just to remind himself of how good he looked.

“Judy didn’t have any.”

Judy was Judith Hardy, the fourteen-year-old who was kidnapped and raped.

Liddon said, “Didn’t have any what?”

“Any of my DNA.”

“She was largely dissolved by acid in a pit on the beach. The best forensic team wasn’t going to get anything from that body.”

“So I burn Kirsten.”

Kirsten was Liddon’s wife.

“Fill the bathtub with gasoline,” said Neems.

Looking past Rudy Neems, Liddon surveyed the foggy fairway. No one was in sight. The course didn’t open for at least another hour. Nevertheless, this was taking too long. To minimize the chance of their being seen together, they needed to meet in places as discreet as this and keep the meetings brief.

“Bathtub of gasoline?” Liddon said, boggled by the flamboyance.

“Sink her, burn her,” said Neems.

“I’ve got a lot of expensive art, antiques.”