Tzneos meant modesty. Decker said, “Maybe it did get back to the brother.”

“Nah.” Gindi shook his head. “If he was doing something bad to her, it wouldn’t be here in home territory.”

Novack came back from a closet holding a box. “Lookie here.”

“Whaddaya got, Micky?”

“Looks like work-related stuff.” Novack plopped the box on the floor and picked up some random pages. “Lists of items, prices, and bar codes from Lieber’s Electronics.”

Decker said, “Ephraim worked in the family business.”

“That’s what they told me.” Novack shuffled through the pages. “The old man told me Ephraim did whatever they needed him to do. And when he wasn’t doing that, he worked inventory. And from the looks of it, he had a pretty good idea of what was going in and out of the stores.”

Gindi tapped his toe. “Doesn’t it strike you as odd that they’d put a man with a drug problem in charge of inventory? You know in business, there’s always a certain amount of theft. It’s like dangling a carrot.”

Novack said, “Help yourself as long as you don’t take too much?”

“Exactly.”

Decker broke in. “If they thought he was really a risk, would they have trusted him in any facet of the business? Maybe the old man would, but a brother?” He shook his head. “Betcha Chaim was watching him like a hawk.”

“Well, to me, it’s still an angle,” Gindi said.

“Hey, this is what I do with my people in La-La Land. We throw out ideas and see what sticks.”

“Here too, and you made a good point.” Novack rummaged through the papers. “Just more of the same. I’m gonna bag all this and go through this at my desk, slowly and methodically. Maybe there’re other things that I’m missing.”

“Like what?” Gindi asked.

“Like a bankbook for starters. Guy musta had a checking account.”

Decker said, “It could be that if he was part of one of those twelve-step programs, he didn’t have a checkbook or credit cards. He might have dealt only with cash.”

“Yeah, that’s a point,” Gindi stated. “Lots of addicts have had credit problems and have been caught bouncing or kiting checks.”

“Then that would make our life a little harder,” Novack said. “No paper trail.”

“Maybe he had some credit cards in the past,” Decker said.

Novack folded the ends of the box and began to tape the edges. “I still think we should think about theft within the family business. Maybe Ephraim was paying off old drug debts. Maybe he didn’t pay them off fast enough.”

“And the girl?” Gindi said.

Novack sighed. “She’s a big problem.”

“Poor parents,” Gindi said.

“Poor girl,” Decker said.

6

The crime took place in a dingy cell of a room with a stunning view of a brick wall, although Decker assumed that the killer—or killers—had drawn the faded shade. The chalk marks were still in place, the body positioned next to the bed. But because there wasn’t enough space on the floor, Ephraim’s left arm and leg had settled up on the wall. The tech had extended the white figuration onto the once-white painted surface now ambered to puke yellow. Inside the outline of the head was a deep brown stain—a single amoeba-shaped sticky puddle of dried and tacky blood about six to seven inches in diameter. The rest of the wall was covered with print powder, as were a lone nightstand, the phone, the clock, and almost all the cracked white tiled floor. There was a bathroom with a stained-gray porcelain toilet streaked with dirt lines and an equally stained porcelain sink.