Bentz nodded, and Vincente went on to explain how he slept soundly and even with the window open he’d heard no struggle, no fight. He had only discovered the body, as he’d told O’Keefe and the 9-1-1 operator, when he’d been sweeping up and noticed Teri Gaines’s door cracked open.

The interview revealed few other details, so they moved on, up the stairs to apartment 2-E.

Frances Kowalski wasn’t a whole lot more informative, but the elderly woman in the second-floor apartment filled to the brim with religious artifacts and photos of a man Bentz assumed to be her late husband was certainly an eager witness. Whereas Espinosa had been guarded and a little reticent, Frances Kowalski was effusive to the point Bentz thought the older woman might be exaggerating, just to keep Montoya and him interested.

“About Ms. Gaines,” she’d said from behind owlish glasses, the tops of which brushed thick bangs of dyed red hair. “You know, I have a bird’s-eye view of her apartment. I see everything.” Her lips had pursed in a sanctimonious show of disgust. “And, I hate to judge, you know—”

Bentz thought the opposite was probably true. In his experience anyone who started with “I hate to” usually relished it. Whether it was “I hate to point out,” or “I hate to speak ill of the dead,” or in Frances Kowalski’s case, “I hate to judge,” it all boiled down to some kind of self-justification to spread a little gossip tinged with a bit of self-satisfaction. In some cases, he suspected that these people actually envied the person who broke the rules and walked on the wild side.

“But she had men coming and going all hours of the night.” Mrs. Kowalski’s eyebrows had arched pointedly over the top of the glasses. “They weren’t there selling vacuum cleaners or brushes, if you catch my drift.”

He caught it.

And it stunk.

The more Bentz had talked with the woman, the less he’d liked her. Her only pertinent information was that she had heard “something” and checked her window to witness a man “in black” entering Teri Gaines’s apartment. Her pale lips had pursed even more prudishly as she’d said, “I have no idea what she was doing down there.” A lie. “But it wasn’t good.”

“It ended badly,” Bentz had offered.

“Well, really?” A sniff of self-righteousness. “What could she expect?”

Unable to extract any more information from the woman, the detectives had left her to her snooping and exited the building.

Montoya reached into his shirt pocket for a pack of nonexistent cigarettes, then apparently remembered that he’d quit. Frowning, he said, “I’ll tell you what. I’m glad that old buttinsky isn’t my neighbor.”

“Buttinsky?” Bentz repeated.

“A term my mother used for people who couldn’t keep their noses in their own business. It applies here. With Frances not-a-guy Kowalski.”