‘Really, how?’

‘Let me show you.’

They returned to Helen Webster’s apartment. The two forensics agents were still working the bedroom, but they told Hunter that they had collected a buffet of fibers and hairs, together with several fingerprints coming from what looked like two different sources. They could already confirm that one of those sources was Helen Webster. The second was someone with relatively large hands.

Hunter had no doubts that those prints would match Jake Goubeaux’s.

‘OK,’ officer Travis said, addressing Hunter. ‘I can sort of picture the scene now. Boyfriend gets dumped just after Valentine’s, doesn’t take it too well, keeps on calling the victim asking for a new chance. The victim keeps on saying “no”, but still he doesn’t take the hint. So, on Monday evening he decides to drop by for a little face-to-face chat.’ Travis shrugged. ‘Maybe he knocked and she let him in, or maybe he used his own key, because now we know that he had a set.’

Hunter listened, nodding every now and then.

‘He probably had a few drinks before turning up here,’ Travis continued with his deduction. ‘Which would only make matters worse. They argue, loudly. Some of it is overheard by Mrs. Peers from apartment 2815.’ He pointed to the next-door apartment. ‘The victim tells the ex-boyfriend that there’s no getting back together and he loses it. He goes for her throat and starts choking her, maybe not with the intention to kill her, but she passes out anyway, and he freaks. He knows that when she comes to, she will probably report him. Given his track record, he also knows that that would be strike three. He will be put away for a long time.’

‘So he comes up with a plan,’ Hunter said.

Officer Travis agreed with a nod and took over once again. ‘He knows that the victim is bipolar, going in and out of depressed states every now and then. Maybe she had even told him that, during one of those states she had considered suicide in the past.’

‘Possible,’ Hunter said.

‘So he figured that staging a suicide scene was his ticket out, especially if he could make it so it looked like she had been alone, locked inside her apartment. He puts her in bed, undresses her, and slices her wrists.’

‘Very good, Officer Travis,’ Hunter said. ‘I don’t think I could’ve come up with a better theory myself.’

‘Yes, but it still doesn’t explain how he did it. How did he get out and lock the door from the inside?’

‘Cleverly,’ Hunter said, walking back into the bedroom. The officer followed him.

Hunter returned to Helen Webster’s wardrobe and slid the door open.

‘See how everything is precisely organized,’ he said.

Travis nodded.

‘But look at this.’ Hunter indicated the black silk blouse that had fallen on top of some shoes.

‘OK . . .?’ Travis dragged the word out. ‘What about it?’

‘At first I thought that the blouse had just slipped off its hanger,’ Hunter explained. ‘But if you check the rack, there are no empty hangers, which means, there’s a hanger missing.’

Travis frowned.

Hunter reached for another blouse and slipped it off its hanger. ‘Then I realized that Helen Webster only used wire hangers.’ He exited the bedroom, taking the hanger with him. In the living room, he indicated the small stereo on the TV module.

‘Over here, we’re missing a speaker.’

‘Yes, I see that,’ Travis replied.

‘Well, Mr. Jake Goubeaux is a soundman, so I think it’s safe to assume that he knows a thing or two about musical equipment, including stereos like this.’

‘I’d agree.’

‘So he would know that these speakers are magnetic speakers, where strong magnets are part of the motor of the subwoofers.’

Travis chewed his bottom lip again. ‘I didn’t know that.’

Hunter quickly went into the kitchen, picked up the garbage can, and brought it into the living room.

‘I found the other speaker in here,’ he said. ‘Completely pulled apart.’ He dumped the garbage can contents onto the living-room floor. ‘The subwoofer, as you can see, has been smashed to pieces. And I bet that if we take our time collecting all the smashed-up magnet pieces and putting them back together like a jigsaw puzzle, we’ll find that there’s a small piece missing.’

‘Sonofabitch,’ Travis whispered. He was starting to get the picture.

Hunter gloved up, selected a small broken piece of the subwoofer’s magnet, approached the chest of drawers by the east wall, and opened the top drawer. It was full of stationery and office supplies. The topmost item inside the drawer was a tube of superglue.

‘And this is the last piece of our puzzle,’ he said, showing it to Travis.

Hunter reached for the wire hanger, unwound its hook, and unfolded it out. Thirty seconds later, he had a long, crooked piece of hard and strong wire in his hands. He re-twisted and reshaped the hanger until he had an L-shaped, foot-and-a-half-long piece of wire, with a small curved hook at the end of it. He then cautiously superglued the small magnet piece to the tip of the wire hook.

‘And here we have it,’ he said, walking over to the door. Holding the security chain’s wall mounting back in its original place, he tested his new device. The magnet at the tip of his wire hook firmly snapped itself to the circular metal piece at the end of the security chain. Using the wire device, Hunter then slowly and very easily slid the chain all the way across, until it was free from the lock.

‘He probably practiced a few times in here to get the hang of it before stepping out onto the corridor,’ Hunter said. ‘All he needed to do was to bring the door to. The original open-door gap that the security chain provides is more than enough for anyone to be able to push the wire device through, snap it onto the chain, drag the chain over to its lock, carefully prod around until it slots into its spot, and just slide it across to lock it. I’m sure it took him a few tries to get it, but it wouldn’t have taken him long. Once that was done, he closed the door, used his key to lock it, and got out of here. Luckily for us, he bumped into Mr. Grant as he returned home.’

‘Clever sonofabitch,’ Travis said, studying the wire device Hunter had created. ‘When did you figure this out?’

‘The idea came to me when I was leaving Ms. Lewis’ apartment on the fifteenth floor,’ Hunter said. ‘The fridge in her kitchen is covered by fridge magnets. Suddenly everything made sense.’

Travis looked back at the detective. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, extending his hand. ‘I’m sorry to have given you such a hard time earlier on. I allowed all the superficial scene readings to guide my judgment. Everything indicated suicide, so I assumed it had to be suicide.’

Hunter shook the officer’s hand.

‘But I guess that’s why you are a detective, and I’m not.’ Travis smiled. ‘So now what?’

‘Now we get a warrant, go arrest Mr. Goubeaux, and take it from there,’ Hunter said. ‘I’m sure that some of the hairs and fingerprints found in Ms. Webster’s room will have come from Jake Goubeaux. If we’re lucky, something might give us a DNA match. But if not, once we put a person like him inside an interrogation room and present him with what we have, it doesn’t take long for whatever bullshit story he had prepared to start showing its cracks. Trust me, Travis, we’ve got him.’

Hunter reached for his phone and called Captain Bolter.

Chapter 9

The captain had listened to Hunter’s entire report without interrupting once.

‘I’ll be Goddamned,’ he said at last. A surprised but satisfied tone found its way into the captain’s voice. ‘I stand corrected, and I guess I owe you an apology, rookie.’

‘No apology necessary, sir. Like I said, just doing my job.’