Resisting the urge to rub his temples—his hands were newly gloved—Decker felt an encroaching headache. He hadn’t had a decent meal in sixteen hours and floating particles of fingerprint dust weren’t helping the situation. Plus, there was the odor of waste: a strong stench of urine with a hint of feces. Novack hadn’t bothered with the Vicks; neither did Decker. He had seen and smelled worse.

Novack took out his notepad and an envelope filled with postmortem photographs. “Single shot through the temple area—close range judging by the entrance wound, but it was lacking the usual star-burst pattern.”

“Why’s that?” Decker asked.

Novack shrugged.

Decker flipped through the snapshots. “Exit wound?”

“No exit wound. So whatever it was, it’s still in the skull. Probably a hollow point—something that exploded inside the poor bastard. We’ll know more after Forensics pulls it out. The casing was a thirty-two caliber.”

“A hollow point…” Decker looked up from the pictures and back at the kill site. “That would explain the lack of blood.” He went over and examined the chalk mark. “We’ve got a solid mass of blood here. Which meant that the vic had to have fallen with the wound side down. Any ideas how it played?”

“Yeah, I was wondering about that, too. First off, I considered that he was shot on the bed and fell off. But then there would have been blood on the sheets where he rolled off. Problem is… no blood on the sheets. So next, we figure he was popped while he was cowered in the corner, or standing up in the corner.”

“Splatter?”

“No, no splatter on the walls there. Not that we could find.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Them’s the facts.”

Decker said, “Unless he was lying left side down, and shot through the floor, there has to be some amount of splatter from the entrance wound.”

“So we’re figuring maybe this wasn’t the kill spot.”

“So where was the kill spot?”

“Not in this room.”

Decker said, “But that would mean taking a body up the stairs… what? Ten flights?”

“There’s an elevator. They could have stuffed him in a duffel.”

“We rode up that elevator. It took about twenty minutes. Not to mention that it would have been one heck of a big duffel.”

“It’s been done before,” Novack said.

“Let’s suppose… for a moment… that the guy got here on his own two feet.”

“You mean he took the girl up here?”

Decker thought about that. “You find any evidence that the girl was up here?”

“Nothing. No sperm-stained sheets, no dress, no purse, nothing to suggest any kind of sexual activity whatsoever.”

“Okay, for the moment, let’s assume that the girl wasn’t up here.” Decker raised his eyebrows. “We’ll worry about her later. Anyway, Ephraim was kidnapped and taken up here—maybe in a duffel, maybe by his own two feet… somehow he got up here.”

“That we know. What we don’t know is if he was dead or alive.”

“Assume that he was alive when they took him up here.”