“Not the roommate, either,” Leland said. “It’s not likely. This is for sedentary people. He wouldn’t have those muscles Miss Linjak saw if he didn’t work out. If he worked out, he wasn’t sedentary and wouldn’t have had constipation.”

“Maybe he used it to oil his pal,” Curran said.

“No, the medical examiner said grease. Why should they use something greasy if they have a vat of this stuff?”

“It’s too thin, anyway,” Schoenstein said. “It has to be thick, like Vaseline. Even Vaseline breaks down and gets viscous.”

“How do you know?” Curran asked.

“Men and women use Vaseline,” Schoenstein said.

“I wouldn’t know,” Curran said sourly.

“Neither would I,” Leland said.

“Congratulations,” Curran said to Schoenstein, who blushed.

Leland laughed loudly. “So it isn’t for that. Okay.”

“Some people like to drink it,” Schoenstein said.

Curran looked at him again. “Keep it up and you’re going to be a suspect.”

“Dave,” Leland said, “maybe we ought to check the drugstores in the area to see if anyone remembers selling a gallon of mineral oil. Maybe Muscle Boy had a prescription filled out in the same store.”

The other team finished with the dusting. Leland told them to return to the Precinct and draw up a preliminary report as concise as they could make it. On the way out they were to tell Carl Schultzer to stay at the apartment door until relieved. Robbie Loughran was to stay with the landlady and a third man was to cover the front. All other uniformed men could go back to their posts. The photographers could come up for their crime-scene shots; the buffs, if they were still there, were to be cleared away. Leland figured that he would have been called if the work at the Precinct had increased, so he said nothing changing the order bringing in additional men. He also figured that he would be back at the Precinct before the end of the tour, so he said nothing about who could go home at six o’clock—or later, if that had to be the case. The chief of the Fifth Detectives, Bill Richardson, followed the rule that the older men went home first, and until nine o’clock, when Richardson came in, Leland would follow that rule.

The photographers were allowed to shoot from the bedroom door. They wanted to see where the “secret roommate” had stayed, and Leland let them have shots of the little bedroom. They asked if there was anything new, and Leland said that progress was being made. They were not happy with that. One of them grabbed a shot of Curran opening a dresser drawer and then the others had to have it, too. They had heard that there was a girl witness and they wanted pictures of her. Leland said not now and got them out of the apartment.