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Miriam Hartwell had lived in a rehabbed brick warehouse on South Street, west of Broad. Not too many years ago, the neighborhood had been crime-ridden and decrepit. Now the street was lined with expensive townhomes and high-end apartments filled with well-paid young professionals. I still couldn’t get used to it, even though the sidewalk trees planted by the developers were almost fully grown.
    It wasn’t on my way home, but I stopped on my way home, anyway.
    I pressed the button for the building super, and two minutes later, a short, stressed-out Hispanic-looking guy in his fifties appeared, flashing a polite smile that almost hid his annoyance at the interruption.
    “Can I help you?” he asked.
    I held up my badge, and he let out a sigh. The smile went away.
    “Are you the super?”
    He nodded. “Gonzalez.”
    “I’m Detective Carrick. Just a few questions.”
    “Happy to help,” he said, “but I’m really busy, man.”
    “I’ll be quick.”
    “Okay. You mind walking?”
    “No problem.”
    He turned, and I followed, up a short stairway and down a first-floor hallway. It was an effort keeping up with him.
    “You found the gun this morning?”
    “Yeah, in the laundry room, under the change machine.”
    “Can you show me?”
    He closed his eyes, summoning patience. “Yeah, sure. First, I have to check on something—in the Hartwells’ apartment, actually. You want to wait here, or you want to come with me?”
    “Um … I’ll come with you.”
    The apartment was small but nice. “I just need to check the faucet, make sure it’s not dripping again,” he said. Then he paused. “The other police said not to touch anything.”
    I couldn’t tell if he was asking for permission to stop the drip or reminding me not to disturb anything. “It’s fine,” I said, giving us both a pass.
    I didn’t know what I was looking for, because I hadn’t intended to be looking. But I didn’t want to waste the opportunity. I scanned the bookcases. On the table by the door was a carved wooden bowl with some mail, a set of keys, three twenty-dollar bills, and some loose change.
    In the bathroom, both toothbrushes were in their holders. I peeked in the cabinet but didn’t touch anything. The usual variety of tweezers, old razors, first-aid supplies, and several prescriptions—Lipitor for Ron, Xanax for Miriam. Anxiety medication. If I was going on the lam, I wouldn’t leave that behind.
    When I closed the cabinet door, Gonzalez was standing in the door looking at me. “You ready?”
    I followed him down the first-floor hallway.
    “Have you seen any sign of her in the last couple days? Miriam Hartwell, I mean.”
    He shook his head and looked over his shoulder as he walked. “Nah. I saw her a few hours before it happened, though. Kind of creepy, you know? You see the guy, the two of them, walking along, alive and well, a few hours later, he’s dead.”
    “How did they seem?”
    He shrugged as he opened the door to the basement steps. “I don’t know. Not dead, you know? I mean, they seemed all right. Kind of stressed out.”
    “Angry at each other?”
    “No, nothing like that. Maybe worried or something. Anyway, here’s the laundry room.” He pointed at the far corner. “There’s the change machine.”
    The laundry room was small, not terrible but nothing fancy. Three washers, three dryers, one change machine. Linoleum and cinder block under fluorescent lights. The change machine sat on legs maybe two inches off the floor.
    I got on my hands and knees. Even with my head near the floor, it was hard to see more than a few inches back.
    “So, what, you were cleaning back there or something?”
    He laughed. “No, man. One of the tenants called and told me it was there.”
    I looked up at him. “Which tenant was that?”
    “Don’t know. They didn’t want to say.”
    “How do you know it was a tenant?”
    He shrugged. “They said it was. Who else is gonna call about it?”

 
    14
    When I got home, Nola