‘Not really. We’ve photographed everything and looked under the covers. But what you see is pretty much how we found it.’

‘Were the doors locked when you got here?’ Marino asked.

‘Yeah. We had to break the glass out of the one in back.’

‘So there was no sign of forced entry whatsoever.’

‘Nothing. We found traces of coke downstairs on a mirror in the living room. But that could have been there for a while.’

‘What else have you found?’

‘A white silk handkerchief with some blood on it,’ said the detective, who was dressed in tweed, and chewing gum. ‘It was right there on the floor, about three feet from the bed. And looks like the shoelace used to tie the trash bag around Brown’s head came from a running shoe there in the closet.’ He paused. ‘I heard about Jakes.’

‘It’s real bad.’ Marino was distracted.

‘He wasn’t alive when …’

‘Nope. His chest was crushed.’

The detective stopped chewing.

‘Did you recover a weapon?’ I asked as I scanned the bed.

‘No. We’re definitely not dealing with a suicide.’

‘Yeah,’ said the other detective. ‘It’d be a little hard to commit suicide and then drive yourself to the morgue.’

The pillow was soaked with reddish-brown blood that had clotted and separated from serum at the margins. Blood dripped down the side of the mattress, but I saw none on the floor. I thought of the gunshot wound to Brown’s forehead. It was a quarter of an inch with a burned, lacerated and abraded margin. I had found smoke and soot in the wound and burned and unburned powder in the underlying tissue, bone and dura. The gunshot wound was contact, and the body had no other injuries that might indicate a defensive gesture or struggle.

‘I believe he was lying on his back in bed when he was shot,’ I said to Marino. ‘In fact, it’s almost as if he were asleep.’

He came closer to the bed. ‘Well, it’d be kind of hard to stick a gun between the eyes of somebody awake and not have them react.’

‘There’s no evidence he reacted at all. The wound is perfectly centered. The pistol was placed snugly against his skin and it doesn’t seem he moved.’

‘Maybe he was passed out,’ Marino said.

‘His blood alcohol was .16. He could have been passed out but not necessarily. We need to go over the room with the Luma-Lite to see if we find blood we might be missing,’ I said.

‘But it would appear he was moved from the bed directly into the body pouch.’ I showed Marino the drips on the side of the mattress. ‘If he had been carried very far, there would be more blood throughout the house.’

‘Right.’