“What kind of noises? Did she say?”

“Shouts and banging around, like a violent argument. But not a brawl. Then there was just banging around. I didn’t press her, Joe, because I didn’t think she could take it. After I saw the body I thought of the roof but decided too much time had passed—she said about ten minutes—and I called in.”

“Okay. She gets along with you, so go down and keep her happy. Don’t say anything about further questioning. Stop out front and tell them to get two men up here with flashlights. And tell them to call the squad and get Maule and Tanner over here. This takes top priority. Anyone who wants to come in or out—run them into the landlady’s apartment until we’ve taken statements. She’ll let us use her place, I think.”

“Knobs are clear, Joe,” Dave Schoenstein said. “There’s another bedroom here with some things you’ll want to see.”

“Okay. Anything else, Robbie?”

“Just him in there,” Loughran said.

“We’ll handle him. Ready, Dave?”

“Sure—”

Leland did not know if Schoenstein saw the body first or if the wind only seemed to go out of him because Leland’s own reaction affected his hearing. His eyes reacted, he knew, and his stomach, and his heart. His heart seemed to jam. In 1940 as a rookie he had seen three healthy men die in the interval of two minutes, and during the war he had seen airplanes explode and unmistakable pieces of flesh fall through the air, but those experiences had not hit him with the calculated, terrible cruelty of this.

Theodore Leikman stared back. He was naked, sitting on the floor, his legs spread. His body, gray now, was smeared with finger-marks of blood. His right hand seemed to end in a pool of blood. The hand, at first glance, seemed shredded. The eyes had that dry, soft shine; they stared at Leland because they had rolled up and the head had tilted down. His tongue protruded from the corner of his mouth, which was encrusted with blood. Above his eyes, like a forelock, was a gray mass like something boiled over. The back of his skull was dented in like a punctured rubber ball. There was blood four feet up the wall behind him, on the dresser beside him and, Leland saw in the corner of his eye, in splatters on the bed. He looked again at the hand. The thumb and forefinger had been removed. There was blood in the crotch. The penis had been cut off, in the same shredded way.

“Oh, Jesus,” Schoenstein said. “Joe, I’m going to be sick.”

“No,” Leland said. “Tense your muscles. Swallow and hold it.” He stepped into the room, his skin prickling. There was the dank odor of blood. He stepped carefully over the body and walked around the bed. The shade on the night-table lamp had been knocked awry, which accounted for the harsh light. The bed was a double with both pillows impressed and one darkly soiled. Schoenstein was watching him like a boy. Leland went around to the other side of the bed, careful where he put his feet. “Get out your notebook, Dave.”