Around the time the first editions came out, Tesla gave in a little and changed his story. At first he claimed that he had not known Leikman well at all, that they had been only roommates, and that if Leikman had been a homosexual, he, Tesla, had had no knowledge of it. Then he gave it up. He had had an “affair” with Leikman, it was true. Last Friday evening they had had an argument—about money—and he had packed and left at seven-thirty and had not returned. He had wandered around the city until he had come to the decision to return to the beach. By then it had been too late to travel, so he had spent the night in an abandoned car on Pier Twelve. At dawn he had walked across Harbor Bridge, then had caught the bus to Clarendon.

The hair was identified as his. The bit of patent leather fit the corner of his wallet. All the unidentified prints from the apartment save the small fragment on the living room ash tray matched his hands. Tanner and Maule were assigned to work with the lab on the final report; Leland heard from them that the men of the lab did not give much importance to the unidentified fragment. There were other parts of the hand that could produce prints that could resemble fingerprints over an area as large as their fragment. In that sense, Dave Schoenstein had not been wrong by much with his suggestion. What the fragment was, really, was a classic example of the rule that disallowed bits and pieces like it to be admitted as evidence in a court.

Tesla admitted to Richardson that he had gone back to the apartment “around midnight.” He talked excitedly, stammering, shouting, gesturing. He had seen the body on the floor in the bedroom. He had panicked, thrown his clothes in his suitcase, and run. Richardson, following the story, asked if he had not been curious about the china object on the floor of the foyer. Yes, Tesla said, he had picked it up when he had come in. Richardson wanted to know how he had cleaned his hand. With his handkerchief. He had thrown the handkerchief off Harbor Bridge. The rest of the story was as he had told it.

The next morning the Commissioner had Leland tell him about the capture. On the questioning, there was nothing new to report. Tesla was sticking with his last story. He was being given rest periods and meals and being carefully treated. No one was satisfied. On the matter of the china object, there had been no prints on it; it had been thoroughly, almost deliberately smeared. The Commissioner interrupted and asked to speak to Captain Richardson. When Richardson came out of his office later he looked annoyed.