“I want to look inside all of them,” he heard himself say. His voice was strained. He continued to take in his surroundings. Searching for a clue.

“Huh? You can’t do that!”

“It can’t hurt to look, can it?”

She followed close behind as he opened door after door. Thom’s room was sparsely decorated and had a video-game console. Emma’s looked like a bomb had gone off: makeup, clothing, and schoolbooks everywhere. A guest room with a queen-size bed. A black-and-white bathroom, so big that the one at his parents’ house would fit inside it four times over. It didn’t have a washing machine—he found that in a separate room, behind a door with a sign saying “Laundry.” Sara’s parents slept at the very end of the hall, it seemed. He flicked the light switch on.

“Wow,” whispered Naomi.

The room was spacious and impressive, with a high, white, beamed ceiling that tapered to a point—you could see the ridge of the roof. On the right was a large bed with a chic quilt. There was a patchwork rug on the floor, and on the left stood a few smaller items of furniture beneath an overhanging wall. He walked through the room, poking through the contents, unsure what he was searching for. Had Werner run up here, into this room? Had the shots been fired in here? A good deal of time had passed between the men running upstairs and the gunshots ringing out. They could have been anywhere in the house by then. The kitchen, the living room, the garage . . .

“Should we go to Sara’s room?” Naomi insisted.

He pretended not to hear and pushed the closet open.

“What are you doing?”

Men’s clothes. Suit jackets, shirts, arranged by color. He crouched down. Drawers full of socks and underwear. To the left of the dresser was a safe with a keypad. The panel was black and the size of a large shoebox. Ralf feverishly tapped in a few obvious codes—0000, the postal code, 1234—but nothing happened.

“Ralf? This is messed up, Ralf. We shouldn’t be in here.” She sounded panicky, but he barely noticed.

Was this where Werner kept his cash? And the gun that killed Brian?

“Stop it!”

He grabbed the safe and tried to lift it. The metal block didn’t budge. It was anchored to the floor.

“Are you trying to rob Sara’s family or something? You’re crazy!” Naomi tugged at his shoulder, then grabbed his arm with both hands and hauled him away from the safe.

He scrambled to his feet. “Calm down, OK? I’m not doing anything.”

“You call that nothing? That’s private, man. It’s their stuff.” She looked at him breathlessly, her cheeks flushed with exertion. “What are you looking for?”

“Nothing. I’m just curious.”

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