“I know what you mean,” the investigator said. “This place has been crazy for the past two days.”

“We’ve all been crazy for the past two days,” Mann said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

The investigator shook his head. “Are you guys any closer to catching whoever’s behind all this?”

“Depends on what comes out of Gabe’s pockets,” Mann said.

The technician went to work, pulling a set of needles from the dead man’s pockets. Since there was no wallet or identification, he went back to the personal effects book and started to write the name “John Doe.” Mann stopped him.

“It’s Gabriel,” he said. “We’ll get his last name later when the prints come back.”

The technician shrugged and followed Mann’s instructions. Then he continued going through the pockets. “This guy looks a lot like the one from this morning,” the technician said as he pulled two packets of heroin from his inside pocket. “You think this one’s a homicide, too?”

“No,” Mann said. “This one shot himself.”

“That’s a shame,” the technician said as he went to the book and completed the list of personal effects, including the dead man’s jacket, pants, boots, shirt, and hat.

“We’re going to need to keep the clothes on this one,” the investigator reminded him.

“The doctor’s going to want to examine the powder burns on the jacket and shirt.”

The technician nodded as he finished filling out the paperwork.

“Was that everything?” Mann asked. “There wasn’t anything else in his pockets?”

The question annoyed the technician, who looked at Mann and sighed heavily before going through Gabe’s pockets once more. He was about to turn to the young detective and say no, but he felt something deep in the dead man’s pants pocket.

“It’s a phone,” the technician said, pulling it out and making note of it in the effects book.

“I need to take that,” Mann said.

“Sign for it and it’s yours,” the investigator said.

“You got any gloves?” Mann asked as he scrawled his name across a property receipt.

The technician handed him a pair.

Mann donned the latex gloves, took the phone, and flipped it open to navigate through the recent calls. They were all from a single number, and each call was placed around the time of one of the murders. The phone didn’t contain voice mails or outgoing calls, but there was a single text message. It was received right before the police arrived at the house on Kensington Avenue. It simply said, “Run.”

Mann jotted down Gabe’s phone number and slipped the phone back into the plastic bag. “Thanks,” he said to the technician and the investigator as he rushed out of the medical examiner’s office and into his car.