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the blood smear, the tattoo of a pentagram was clearly visible on his palm. I'd seen the edge of it from where I was standing.
      "Wizard," Karl said.
      "There's something else you guys oughta see," Conroy said. "It's in the next room."
     
    We followed him through a connecting door into what was clearly the wizard's bedroom. The ceiling light was burning, along with a two-bulb floor lamp.
      I asked Conroy, "Were these lights already on?"
      "Yeah, that's why I decided to take a look," he said. "Everything's exactly the way I found it." He sounded defensive, and I wondered why.
      The four-poster bed was shoved over against a wall, fresh drag marks clearly visible on the polished hardwood. Where the bed had been standing was a hole in the floor, maybe a foot square. The matching pieces of wood used to conceal it had been pried up and tossed aside.
      Inside the hole was a safe with its heavy door open. I looked inside and saw cash, lots of it, although there was plenty of room left. The bills were divided into stacks bound with rubber bands.
      Now I knew what had gotten up Conroy's ass: he was afraid we might accuse him of helping himself to some of the dead guy's money.
      I straightened up and looked at Karl. "Whoever it was, he didn't come here for money," I said. "The bills haven't been messed with at all." The last part was for Conroy's benefit, although it was also true.
      "Unless maybe he was after the money," Karl said, "but got scared off by somebody before he could grab it."
      I shook my head. "Anybody who's hard-core enough to do all that–" I pointed with my chin toward the study "he's not gonna be stopped by a surprise visitor."
      "Yeah, maybe you're right." Karl turned to Conroy. "We got a name on the vic?"
      Conroy checked his notebook. "Kulick, George Lived alone."
      "Who called it in?" I asked him.
      "There's a housekeeper, Alma Lutinski, comes in once a week. Has her own key. She found the stiff, went all hysterical, and started screaming her lungs out. The neighbors heard her and called 911."
      "We'll need to talk to her," Karl said. "Where is she?"
      "She really lost her shit, so they took her to Mercy Hospital. The docs'll probably give her a shot, get her calmed down a little."
      "I doubt she got a look at the perp," I said. "Otherwise, he would've iced her, too. But we'll find out what she has to say for herself, later. Maybe she knows what the late Mr Kulick's been up to lately. And with who."
      There were voices coming from the hallway now. "Sounds like forensics is here," I said. "Finally."
      "Wanna start canvassing the neighborhood?" Karl asked.
      "Might as well," I said. "Shit, we might even find a witness. That happens every three or four years."
      I looked at Conroy. "Make sure the forensics guys pay close attention to that safe, okay? I'd like to know what else was in there besides money."
      We went back out through the study, careful not to trip over the forensics techs, who were crawling all over the place like ants on a candy bar. "Guess whatever was in that steel box was real important to somebody, haina?" Karl said.
      "Two somebodies."
      "Two?" Karl's brow wrinkled. "The perp, for sure..."
      "Kulick was the other one." I looked once more at the savaged piece of meat that had once been a human being. "Otherwise, he would have given it up long before all that was done to him."
     
    Our canvass of the neighborhood turned up precisely zip. Richie Masalava, the M.E.'s guy at the crime scene, guesstimated that Kulick had been cold about twenty-four hours, but nobody we talked to remembered seeing or hearing anything unusual the day before.
      When Karl and I got to the hospital, the tranquilizers had worn off enough so that Alma Lutinski was more or less coherent. She said she had been George Kulick's housekeeper for about two and a half years.
      "I dust, I vacuum, I sweep and mop up. That's all." Her voice sounded husky,