“He got her sixty-six times with what the doc thinks was probably a machete or something like it. How’d you like the job of counting? I don’t know how they do that work. I swear it’s a worse job than the one I got.”

“All that blood.”

“Be grateful you’re seeing it in black and white. It was worse in color.”

“I can imagine.”

“He hit arteries. You do that, you get spurting, you get blood all over the room. I never saw so much blood.”

“He must have gotten blood all over himself.”

“No way to avoid it.”

“Then how did he get out of there without anybody noticing?”

“It was cold that night. Say he had a coat, he’d put that on over whatever else he was wearing.” He drew on his cigarette. “Or maybe he wasn’t wearing any clothes when he did the number on her. The hell, she was in her birthday suit, maybe he didn’t want to feel overdressed. Then all he’d have to do afterward was take a shower. There was a nice beautiful bathroom there and he had all the time in the world so why not use it?”

“Were the towels used?”

He looked at me. The gray eyes were still unreadable, but I sensed a little more respect in his manner. “I don’t remember any soiled towels,” he said.

“I don’t suppose they’re something you’d notice, not with a scene like that in the same room.”

“They ought to be inventoried, though.” He thumbed through the file. “You know what they do, they take pictures of everything, and everything that might turn out to be evidence gets bagged and labeled and inventoried. Then it goes down to the warehouse, and when it’s time to prepare a case nobody can find it.” He closed the file for a moment, leaned forward. “You want to hear something? Two, three weeks ago I get a call from my sister. She and her husband live over in Brooklyn. The Midwood section. You familiar with the area?”

“I used to be.”

“Well, it was probably nicer when you knew it. It’s not so bad. I mean, the whole city’s a cesspool, so it’s not so bad in comparison. Why she called, they came home and found out there’d been a burglary. Somebody broke in, took a portable teevee, a typewriter, some jewelry. She called me to find out how to report it, who to call and everything. First thing I asked her is has she got insurance. No, she says, they didn’t figure it was worth it. I told her to forget it. Don’t report it, I told her. You’d just be wasting your time.