It was in some ways a typical bachelor pad. Lots of guys are slobs and live in a mess of a place where a woman’s touch would have made it habitable. Casey was a thorough and meticulous cop and that had been the way he lived. This pad was neat as the proverbial pin, and whether he vacuumed and dusted himself or had a cleaning woman in, the result was a glimpse into the orderly mind of a top-notch investigator.

A Yuppie with a little dough would have salivated at the very thought of getting this place at twice the rent Shannon had been paying. Their interior decoration would have been far different, however—Casey had clearly furnished the place when he moved in a couple decades ago, raiding the showroom at J.C. Penney or Sears. The pictures on the walls were infrequent and were either hunting scenes or photos of his two grown children and four grandchildren. President Reagan’s picture beamed over a vintage wooden file cabinet.

This was a living room that got lived in, or it had been before the murder—TV with lounger opposite, a bookcase with bestsellers (The Fountainhead, Something of Value, Anatomy of a Murder), an old scarred-up desk consuming one corner. His phone was on it and a blotter, and a row of reference books; but no stacked papers or files or anything. I knelt for a look at the three desk drawers. No sign that any one of them had been pried open.

Pat was checking out the kitchen and I was tempted to go through that desk and those drawers, using a handkerchief so as not to leave prints; but that search was rightly Pat’s bailiwick—him and the lab boys.

He returned and I met him at the corpse.

“So,” I said, “how do you read this?”

His hat was on now, pushed back. “No sign of a struggle. No sign anything’s been gone through. Somebody wanted Casey dead. Simple as that.”

“Simple,” I said. “Some fucker just rolled his civil war cannon in and lit the fuse and aimed at your friend’s chest.”

He ignored that. “Casey knew the killer. A friend, maybe. Or at least an acquaintance.”

“Not necessarily.”

“Oh?”

“You can rule out a stranger, because Shannon let the person in, obviously at night, and they ended up across the room. So they spoke a while. I don’t think the killer was here long—no coffee cups or beer bottles in the kitchen?”

“None.”

I shrugged. “But that doesn’t rule out somebody he knew from a case he was working. Somebody who stopped by and said he had some info for Casey and got invited in.”

Pat twitched a frown. “And did that to him, somehow.”

“Yeah.”

“But Casey was retired.”

“Casey was still looking into something having to do with Vincent Colby. For some reason, that was the case that was eating at him enough that he couldn’t let it go. Couldn’t hang it up till he resolved the damn thing to his investigative mind’s satisfaction.”