The apartment had everything, too—hardwood floors, a separate foyer, a good-size living room, a full kitchen, a bathroom with windows (on the quiet north side of the building) and its one bedroom was damn near as big as the living room. One of a hundred-and-fifty apartments in a building built in 1929 (before the Crash), with a doorman and a laundry room, these digs had it all.

Everything but a living occupant.

Shannon was sitting on the floor with his head slumped, his back against the couch that had stopped his fall. He was in white blue-flecked pajamas under a maroon robe and wearing slippers; his chest looked sunken, a terrible blow of some kind having created a crater that sucked in the fabric of its garments, twisting the cloth like the striations of a spent bullet.

A big damn spent bullet.

But there was no firearm involved in this homicide. And for that ghastly indentation to have been the work of a fist, or even two fists, it would require an Andre-the-Giant-size killer.

When Pat, hat in hand, looming over the grisly corpse, said quietly, “Shit,” it was more like a prayer than a curse.

The windows were already up, to air out the smell of death, the job not yet done.

I said, “I didn’t know Casey as well as you, buddy. I mostly go back to when he was working with you ten, fifteen years ago. But I knew him enough to know he was a hell of a cop.”

“The best.” Pat gave me a hard look. “This one’s mine, Mike.”

“The case you mean? Or the kill?”

“Both.”

I shook my head. “No promises, pal. If I get my hands on who did this, I’ll take him out. You know I will.”

The gray-blue eyes were ice cold. “I’m asking you a favor on this one, Mike. This time it’s my friend some son of a bitch slaughtered. This is my Jack Williams.”

Jack had stepped in front of a Jap bayonet and it cost him an arm but saved my ass. Back here at home in the glorious post-war world, a cold-blooded murderer cut Jack down. And I had taken my revenge by way of delivering a slug in the killer’s belly, just the way Jack got it. It hadn’t been pretty and I still revisited it in my nightmares, but I could do it again. Easily.

“I’ll try, Pat. If I get there before you, I’ll save the bastard for you. But you’re not me. You don’t have the stomach for it that I do.”

“Oh, I won’t kill who did this,” he said. “With the death penalty gone, what I want is to watch him squirm in court, suffer public shame and humiliation, his every evil act dragged out and shoved in his face, then spend the rest of his sorry life behind bars, being some animal’s bitch.”

I shrugged. “To each his own.”

We had the place to ourselves for the moment. Two uniforms were in the hall on the door and the forensics team wasn’t there yet. I prowled the place, like I was walking point in the jungle.