"Maybe. If I could figure out how he drowned 'em."
"This is a pretty sweet apartment, lieutenant. Pretty sure the plumbing works. Perp just filled up a bath and..."
Raymond's voice trailed away.
"Exactly. This apartment hasn't got a bath. Just a fancy-ass shower and a glass sink that'd crack the moment you forced a man's head in it."
Both men turned in the direction of the kitchen. But it was too small. Difficult to see anyone getting enough purchase to jam Amadi Okoro's head down the sink.
"Maybe he was already unconscious? Drugged?" Raymond cast a critical eye around the apartment. "There's no sign of a struggle. Not here, anyway. This place looks like a show home. And everything in here is bone dry except for the victims and..." Something caught the sergeant's eye. "Take a look up there."
Ethan followed a pointed finger toward the ceiling. Ragged parallel lines, stained brown in places, had been gouged out of the plaster, maybe an inch apart.
"What do you think caused that?" Raymond asked.
With a sinking feeling in his stomach, Ethan squatted down by the dead African. Gently, almost reverently, he lifted up Amadi Okoro's right hand. There was no doubt about it.
The man's shredded fingers had plaster under the nails.
Ethan looked critically at the man's neck. Amadi Okoro's skin might have been onyx black, but if he'd been hanged the marks would still have been easy to see. And there was nothing from the ceiling to hang him from: the light fixtures were the recessed kind, so there was no place to sling a rope, and there was no ceiling fan, no toppled ladder or chair. Nothing.
So...how had the man's fingers come into contact with the ceiling?
He wandered over to the window, watched the sailboats on the lake, white and gleaming in the sunlight. When he finally spoke it was more to himself than his colleague.
"What the fuck is going on here?"
TWO
Thursday the 3rd: 11:47 a.m. CDT
"How long have the Okoros lived in the building?" Ethan asked. He was standing in the lobby of the Almeida Building, his right foot tapping out an absent-minded rhythm on weathered terra-cotta.
Al Mills, the doorman, thought awhile before replying. He was a short, paunchy man, approaching the far end of middle age, with thinning gray hair and a uniform jacket that could never be buttoned. A weathered hand tugged at the lobe of his right ear.
"Couple of years, maybe. Nice enough family. He...was a bit stand- offish, but the lady was friendly, like."
"That'd be Jennifer Okoro?"
"Yeah."
"They all get on okay as far as you know?"
"Seemed to. But, hey: who knows what goes on behind closed doors, know what I'm saying?"
"Any arguments lately?"
"None that I saw."
"When did you last see them?"
"Me? Couple of days ago. He got back from school—he's a med student, see—I'm thinking around four-thirty. The mom came by with the kid maybe an hour later."
"A couple of days ago would be Tuesday?"
"Correct."
"And you never saw them after that?"
"Nope."
"Didn't pop out for a coffee or a sandwich, anything like that?"
"Not that I seen."
