do drugs this evening? Did he offer you drugs?”
“No!”
“I don’t care about drug violations, Jerome,” Hannah emphasized. “I just want to catch Frank’s killer.”
“I didn’t do any drugs this evening.” Jerome said, his face pale.
“Any threats he received lately?” Bernard asked, stepping in. “Was he behaving strangely recently?”
“No.”
“Is there anything else we should know?” Bernard asked
“Not that I can think of,” Jerome said.
“Anything you’d like to add, miss?” Hannah asked
“Oh, I didn’t know Frank well,” Petal said. “He seemed nice. It sometimes got a bit noisy over there, but I didn’t really mind. Everyone’s entitled to some fun, right?”
“Absolutely,” Hannah said.
Both detectives stood up.
“I’ll uh… I’ll stay here a bit longer. To calm down,” Jerome said.
“If you think of anything else, please call us,” Hannah said and gave them both a card. “And Jerome… don’t leave town without calling us first. I’ll need your address and a phone number to reach you.”
Jerome gave her his details and she jotted them down.
Then she and Bernard left Petal’s apartment and returned to the crime scene.
Annie was packing her stuff, while Matt, his jaw clenched in anger, covered the dead man’s hands with plastic bags.
“Anything else, Doc?” Bernard asked.
“The temperature tells me nothing because the body hardly had time to cool,” Annie said. “The cause of death is probably a stab to the heart.”
“How can you tell?” Hannah asked.
“Well, for one, this is where the heart is,” Annie said, pointing at a stab wound on the victim’s chest. “But see those two wounds here? Note that they have almost no blood trickling out of them.”
“Yeah,” Hannah said, kneeling to take a closer look. “So he was dead when those two wounds were made.”
“That’s right,” Annie said. “That probably means he died instantly, while the attacker was still stabbing him, which would indicate that he didn’t die of blood loss. A stab to the heart is the most likely scenario.”
“I see.”
“My assistants are on their way to collect the body. You’ll have a full report tomorrow afternoon.”
“Thanks, Annie,” Bernard said.
She smiled at them both, threw a contemptuous look at Matt and walked out.
“Matt, did you find the guy’s phone?” Hannah asked.
“Yeah, but it’s locked.”
“He called a taxi service,” she said. “I want to find out which one.”
“Sorry, Detective Shor. Once I unlock it, I’ll let you know.”
“How long do you think it’ll take you to process this crime scene?” Hannah asked.
Matt thought about it for a moment. “About four more hours,” he said.
“Can you process the phone first, then?” she said. “I want to take it to the station.”
Matt frowned. “I don’t know…” he said.
“I want to catch the taxi driver before he ends his shift, Matt,” Hannah said.
He sighed. “Fine,” he grumbled, and went to try and get prints off the phone.
“What do you think?” Hannah asked Bernard.
“Let’s suppose Jerome was telling the truth,” Bernard said.
“Okay,” Hannah said. It was a good start—not necessarily true, but they had to start somewhere.
“Frank is dead, wrapped in a bathrobe, naked underneath,” Bernard said. “Jerome said he was getting ready to shower, so I guess he took his clothes off. Why did he put on his bathrobe?”
Hannah thought about it. “There are no marks of forced entry, and according to Jerome the door was locked.” she said. “He went to open the door.”
“Yeah,” Bernard said. “Which probably means that whoever was at the door was someone Frank knew. A friend, or a neighbor—”
“Not necessarily,” Hannah interrupted him. “Whoever it was knocked on the door immediately after Jerome left, right? Frank probably assumed Jerome forgot something. After all, who else could it be at this time of night?”
“Right,”