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back room, then stuck his head in. The dresser drawers were open, clothes strewn from them and from the closet. Books had been toppled from a bookcase. “He was likely in here.”
    “Maybe he was lying in wait,” Nuchitelli suggested.
    “Maybe, except then he would have likely brought his own weapon.” Logan walked back to the body. “He came up from behind. The victim turned and got hit while standing, which explains the blood on those masks six feet up the wall.” Logan pointed. “Was that light on?”
    “Far as I know,” she said.
    Another voice shouted from the back of the room, one of the technicians. “The lamp was on. Only light on in the house.”
    “Why wouldn’t the victim pick up the papers from the floor?” Nuchitelli pointed back down the hallway.
    Logan turned. “What’s the estimated time of death?”
    “Based on the body temperature, between ten-thirty and midnight to one in the morning. Give or take.”
    Logan thought for a moment. “Okay. He gets home late, tired after a long day. He’s hungry, so he heads for the kitchen. Or maybe he had to pee, but I don’t think so if the perp was in the bedroom, because that would have given him time to get out.”
    “Maybe the perp was upstairs,” Nuchitelli said.
    “Then the victim likely would have heard him. No. I think the perp was definitely in the bedroom.” Logan turned in the doorway, facing the room with all the activity. He rocked as if walking down the hallway. “So he drops the papers on the table, and some fall. He puts his glasses on top, hangs his coat on the banister, and walks down the hall to get something to eat.”
    “Why would he take off his glasses?”
    “I don’t know.” Logan thought but didn’t come up with a plausible explanation. “Anyway, when he does get here, it’s dark, so he reaches and turns on the light. He hears something behind him, turns partway, and bam! He’s hit. The force of the blow pushes him against the table, knocking those pieces over, and he pinballs against the couch.” Logan mimicked the motion of the initial blow and fell to his knees, careful to avoid the marked evidence. “The second blow catches him in the back of the head.”
    From his knees, Logan noticed the object sticking out from beneath the black leather couch. He called over one of the technicians and asked for a plastic bag. The man pulled one from a bunch clipped at his belt and handed it to Logan. Logan reached beneath the couch and pulled out a cell phone. It was on. He stood and slipped the phone into the bag. Through the plastic, he pressed a button that pulled up the last phone numbers dialed and received. “Huh. Guess I’m wrong. He might have been going to the kitchen, but the reason he didn’t pick up those papers or clean off his glasses was because he was on the phone.”
    “How do you know it’s his phone?”
    “Because I’m a pessimist, and I just can’t believe the killer would be so kind as to leave behind his phone for us to use to convict him. Time of death was eleven-ten,” he said, turning the phone so Nuchitelli could see it. “Give or take.” He wrote the number in a notebook and handed the telephone to the technician. “We’ll want a log of every number he called. Start with the past twenty-four hours.” He turned back to Nuchitelli. “What do we know about the victim?”
    Nuchitelli shook her head. “You know me, Logan; this job is hard enough without making it more personal.”
    “How’d we hear about it?”
    “Neighbor phoned it in. Someone is next door calming her. She’s pretty upset.” Nuchitelli pointed to a doorway with no door. “Rodriguez is in the kitchen.”
    Logan walked into the kitchen. A short Hispanic man stood observing an evidence technician attempting to lift fingerprints off the inside and exterior knobs of a back door. Head of the forensics laboratory for Seattle’s police districts, and fastidious to the point of neurosis, Rodriguez stressed over the