The uniformed patrolmen he had put on the search returned to report that they had found nothing. The fingerprint men finished the living room and the small bedroom and went on to the bathroom. Leland wished he had more testimony than he had: he was wary of laboratory evidence, not because he himself doubted its veracity, but because juries could be convinced that scientific methods were only so many steps of guesswork. As clearly as the scant evidence pointed to the roommate, Leland had not dismissed other ideas. There was too much that was not clear about the evening. Leland wanted to know exactly what had happened. There could have been another person—say one of those men who beat up homosexuals for the fun of it. How much trace of himself could he have left in one visit? By the landlady’s account, people had been in and out—noise and silence. It was also possible that the landlady had entered and run out while the roommate had been packing his clothes. While she had run out he could have gone over the rooftops. Even so, Robbie Loughran probably could not have got him. How long would it have taken a man of the roommate’s size and apparent condition to hurdle two-foot walls and find an unlocked access door? The slam of the apartment door could have been an accident, or the wind, or the invention of a nosy old woman who had come up in curiosity over the general noise. Leland decided to put all the ideas away for a while, and he told Schoenstein to note that they were to canvass the shops in the area to find someone who had seen Leikman and the roommate together.

While the three detectives dismantled the living room they played Leikman’s records. There was a chance that some of the records weren’t what their labels said. Under the cushions of the couch were two hairpins and an earring snarled in lint. The cigarette butts scattered out of the ash tray were all one brand, and again the ashes were too thick for the number of cigarettes. Curran said that many people flushed their cigarettes down the toilet. Leland thought it was a long walk to take in this apartment, and he was not satisfied until he remembered a girl he had known in college who would half-empty ash trays by picking out the butts and matchsticks while leaving the ashes. They would see.

Leikman had subscribed to The New Yorker and Vogue, and copies of Vogue had pages neatly removed. The detectives reckoned that the pages would turn up in Leikman’s bedroom.

The examiner’s men came to take away the body. Leland finished the chalk outline on the wall. In the small bedroom Curran and Schoenstein removed fibers from the joints of the dresser drawers. The mattress was turned over, for no reason, it developed. Schoenstein got on a chair and looked at the top of the closet. Nothing.