“Check out what I found in the sweater drawer.” Bailey held up a plastic bag filled with a green, grainy substance, rolled tight, and bound with rubber bands. “Cannabis sativa. Blue Dream, if I had to guess. Not that I have any personal knowledge. By the way, why’s stuff always hidden in the sweater drawer? Are sweaters some kind of high-security thing?”

“It’s why I brought you, Bailey,” Coyle said. “Only someone with your training could get past the sweaters.” He turned to a handmade collage on the last wall. It was about three feet square, with words written in markers and pictures glued on. One picture was Keats, whom Coyle recognized from the book cover; another was an enlargement of the man in the nightstand photo. The words in marker were short phrases: “All I Want Is Boundless Love” and “Pray for the Grace of Accuracy.” In the center was “Ne M’oubliez Pas.”

“Know any French?” Coyle asked.

“Oui, monsieur.” Bailey made a stage bow. “The department requires it of all new hires so we can infiltrate those new French gangs downtown. Once they opened that café on Fourth Street, it’s been one baguette fight after another.”

Coyle typed the words into a translation app on his phone. The translation read “Don’t Forget Me.” He pulled the collage off the wall, rolled it up, and put it beside the evidence bags.

“I do know one French phrase.” Bailey stood in the closet doorway, looking through the hanging clothes. “Il y a une couille dans le potage. My high school friend Andy used to say it all the time. It means something like ‘There’s a problem here,’ but it translates as ‘There’s a testicle in the soup.’ Fits almost any occasion.”

Coyle walked across the room to a small wooden desk. On it lay a laptop and two small pieces of paper, with scribbled notes that looked like appointments. He put the computer and the paper in separate evidence bags. For a moment he watched Bailey search the closet. He thought of the way the roommates described the victim’s oversexed clothes and unstable moods. She was pretty but overdressed and had mental issues. In her room he and Bailey had found poetry, prescription meds, and illegal drugs—all of it hidden from her roommates. What did this add up to, and what did it have to do with her being killed?

He left the desk, then turned and came back. With his right hand, he reached under the desktop and felt from one side to the other. In one of the far corners, he touched a hard object. Bending over, he saw something taped to the desk’s underside.