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.

The fingerprint men finished in the bathroom and the three followed them in there. The fingerprint men went on to the master bedroom. They had found prints in all the rooms so far and no signs of wiping or fouling the surfaces. In burglaries, the men responsible either wiped everything in sight, or splashed it with soda pop, milk, and once, honey. Here there were over eighty prints which had to be sorted and matched and finally checked with the prints to be taken from Leikman, the landlady, the roommate when they found him, and anyone else who had been in the apartment in the past several days. Whatever was left would be sent to the files and, if necessary, passed on to Washington.

In the bathroom were pink towels and washcloths for two, a pink shower curtain and pink curtains on the window over the tub, which was spotless, like the other fixtures. There was an expensive scale, which Leland and Curran tried out. The roommate had taken his toothbrush, razor, blades, and shaving cream. In the medicine cabinet where the blades had left their marks were longish hairs, dark and softer than the beard of the roommate probably would be. Schoenstein swept them into an envelope. In the corner under the sink, Curran discovered a gallon bottle of light mineral oil, half-full. All three men hunkered on the bathroom floor and looked at the bottle.

“Well?” Leland asked.

“Somebody had constipation?” Curran said.

“Not Leikman,” Schoenstein said.