In addition to the latex gloves covering the detective’s hands, plastic wraps now enclosed his shoes as he walked into the bedroom. The balcony doors opened inward and allowed the same breeze that had earlier filled his nostrils with the smell of death to gust through the bedroom. The pungent odor was less noticeable here, one story higher than where death hung in the morning air. He stood in the door frame and moved his gaze around. This was clearly the master suite. Vaulted ceilings were twenty feet high. A king-sized four-poster bed stood in the middle of the room with a night table on either side. A dresser sat against the far wall, its mirror reflecting his image back at him. Through the open balcony doors, the white rope curved up and over the railing to run at waist height across the room and into the closet.

He stepped into the room and followed the rope. The closet had no door, just an arched entryway. When he reached it, he saw a spacious walk-in filled with neatly organized clothes hanging from scores of identical hangers. Shoes filled the thick pine cubbyholes that covered the back wall. Amid the cubbies was a black safe about five feet tall, likely weighing close to a ton. With an ornate knot, the end of the rope was tied to one of the legs of the safe. The other end, the detective knew, was attached to the man’s neck, and whether he jumped off the balcony or was pushed, the safe had done its job. The four legs indented the carpeting with no adjacent depression marks to suggest the weight of the man’s body had moved it even an inch.

A large kitchen knife lay on the floor next to the safe. Morning sunlight spilled through the balcony doors and into the walk-in closet, painting his shadow across the floor and up the far wall. He pulled a flashlight from his pocket and shined it at the carpeting, highlighting the small fibers next to the knife. He crouched down and examined them in the bright glow of his flashlight. They appeared to be bits of frayed nylon from when the rope had been cut. Within the carpet fibers was a small puddle of blood. A couple of droplets had also landed on the handle of the knife. He placed a triangle-shaped yellow evidence placard over the blood and fibers, and another next to the knife.