Each time he lounged back in his chair he placed his hands behind his head and the arms of his shirt pulled up to expose a gold watch on his left wrist. Everything he wore appeared too expensive, something he couldn’t afford. Val wondered where he got the money to pay for it. She looked at the watch again. Her own gold watch, a Rolex, was the first thing she pawned when she needed money for a new furnace last fall.

“I don’t know much about Francine Donohue,” Stanley said. “She was quiet. Paid her rent on time. I don’t bother with the quiet people who keep to themselves. I have too many people in this complex always complaining about something. They make me run around, doing everything short of wiping their asses, and are still never happy because they want me to do more.”

“What about Jeanne Coleman?” Thomas asked.

“That woman was a nutcase who rarely came out of the house. What do they call that? A recluse?”

“Is her apartment also vacant?” Jack inquired.

“Yeah, hers is too.” There was something in Stanley’s voice that suggested that letting an apartment in which a psychopathic lunatic had viciously murdered a woman would be an impossible task, even in these projects where people didn’t bat an eyelid over other types of death. Drug or gang-related was socially acceptable; rumored serial killer was not.

“Can we see her place too?” Thomas asked.

Stanley shrugged his shoulders. “Sure.”

Gwen and Val chatted quietly on the walk to Jeanne’s apartment, mostly remarking on Stanley. Thomas and Jack were a few steps ahead of them. Val commented on how Stanley was opening up, letting his guard down. When they neared Jeanne’s building, he was speaking a little more freely about Francine. “I think he had a crush on her,” Gwen said.

When they finally arrived at the entrance, Val’s heart raced as Stanley opened the door to the residence that once belonged to Jeanne Coleman. There was a faint smell of paint in the air. Someone had attempted to erase what happened here. Nothing could bring this place back to life. As they entered Val noticed the place was desolate. Not a piece of furniture remained. No rugs covered the floors. As the group walked the floorboards creaked loudly and their voices echoed in the empty rooms.

Thomas started to make his way down the corridor. “Why is the bedroom door closed?” he asked Stanley.

The manager inhaled deeply before responding. “I shut it last time I was here. Kind of gave me the creeps thinking about what happened in there.”