Leland shook his head. “She was right. She didn’t have to show us anything.”

“She got us off the hook with that description,” Curran said.

“Maybe that’s our little bit of luck—a rattleproof, trustworthy woman. Was there anyone else?”

“No. I wish I knew how you figure trustworthy.”

“Leikman trusted her. By her account, she didn’t let him down. As a matter of fact, I kind of like her myself. Let’s see what’s cooking upstairs.”

“I’m getting an education,” Schoenstein said before they went into the Leikman apartment. “I feel like the dumbest cop alive.”

“Don’t let it throw you, boy,” Curran said. “We’re all doing only what our daddies taught us.”

“I think I’ll put you on report,” Leland said.

“I meant in the general sense,” Curran said, flustered. “That we were playing it by ear.” He had forgotten about Leland’s father.

“Relax,” Leland said. “I’m needling you.”

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.