“In your phone message you mentioned the obvious places to look? The first place I checked was the smoke alarm in the living room, because I know what the inside of a smoke alarm is supposed to look like. And I found something that clearly doesn’t belong there. Not much bigger than a pack of matches with a fine wire sticking out of the end. Figured it was some kind of aerial.”

“Was there anything resembling a lens?”

“No.”

“It could be as small as half a grain of—”

“No, believe me, no lens. I thought about that, and I checked.”

“Okay,” said Gurney, absorbing the significance of this. The absence of video capability meant that the device wasn’t part of the police’s promised surveillance equipment. To identify an intruder, you planted a camera, not an audio bug. “Then you checked the other smoke alarms?”

“One in every room, and every one of them has one of those things in it.”

“Where are you calling from?”

“Outside. On the sidewalk.”

“Good thinking. Am I getting the impression you have more to tell me?”

“Did you know there’s an access panel that leads to the apartment upstairs?”

“No. But I’m not surprised. Where is it?”

“In the laundry alcove off the kitchen.”

Gurney recalled the kitchen and the laundry area as both having a ceiling pattern of large squares formed by intersecting strips of decorative molding—ideal for concealing a movable panel.

“What on earth prompted you to—”

“Check the ceilings? Kim told me sometimes she hears noises at night, creaking, other creepy little sounds. And she told me about all that other odd shit—things being moved, things missing and reappearing, the bloodstains—even though she’d had her locks changed. Plus the fact that the apartment upstairs is supposed to be vacant. So when you put all that together …”

“Very good,” said Gurney, impressed. “You figured the most likely access to her apartment would be through the ceiling?”

“And the most likely ceiling would be the one with the panel moldings.”

“Then what?”

“Then I got a ladder from the basement and started pressing on each square until I found one that felt a little different, had a different kind of give. I got a knife and loosened the molding around it, enough to see that there were cut lines underneath. I didn’t go any further. If you didn’t want me to move the bugs, I didn’t think you’d want me to move the panel. Besides, it was secured from the other side, and I’d have to break it to get through it, which I didn’t want to do, not knowing what might be up there.”

Gurney noted the eagerness of the chase in his son’s voice, tempered with barely enough caution. “You’ve had a busy afternoon.”

“Got to catch the bad guys. What’s the next step?”