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at the grungy room with its dirty, deep sink. The only light was from a dim, unshaded forty-watt bulb hanging on the end of a rubberized cord with a chain pull for turning it off and on.
    “You’re right,” Baker agreed. “That closet’s not a very nice place, but maybe she wanted to muffle the noise.”
    But I was still studying the hanging lightbulb. Suddenly another bulb switched on in my head. “Wait a minute, Doc, was this light off or on when you got here?”
    Frowning, Baker peered at me over the tops of his thick bifocals. “Off,” he said. “Why?”
    “Had anybody messed with it?”
    “They all said they hadn’t,” he answered, giving me his undivided attention and nodding as the light dawned for him as well. “Now that you mention it, Beau, you’re right. The light was definitely off. I’m the one who turned it on so we could see what we were doing in there.”
    “What’s the light being off or on got to do with anything?” Kramer asked impatiently.
    “People hardly ever kill themselves in the dark,” I replied.
    “Wait a minute. Are you trying to tell me that some poor son of a bitch who isn’t worried about blowing his brains out would be scared of doing it in the dark? Get off it. Once they’re dead, what does it matter?”
    Paul Kramer had walked me right up to the very edge of my patience. “Let’s leave interpretation up to the shrinks, shall we, Detective Kramer?”
    Before Kramer could reply, Baker broke in. “Thanks for pointing out the light thing, Beau. It’ll keep us on our toes when we do the autopsies.”
    “And when will that be?”
    “This afternoon, probably. With the lousy weather, business is a little slow for us right now. Except for this, it’s been too damned cold for people to be running around killing each other. For a change we don’t have cases lined up and waiting. Even if we did, though, this would be a priority. After all, these people are supposedly fine, upstanding members of the community. There’s going to be a whole lot of heat from the public and the media wanting to see results fast. This one isn’t going to be any picnic for us, or for you either.”
    Baker wasn’t saying something I hadn’t already figured out for myself. Bums can get murdered every day of the week and nobody gives a damn, but let the victim be an ordinary bill-paying, tax-paying citizen, and people get a whole lot more interested. Throw in a dash of infidelity and you have a case that’s going to be conducted in a white-hot spotlight of public scrutiny. Believe me, those kinds of cases are difficult for everybody concerned. They have minimal opportunity for glory and unlimited potential for disaster.
    “Any idea when this happened?” Kramer asked.
    “I can’t say right now. We’ll know better after the autopsies.”
    “And the gun?” I asked.
    “A .38 Special. Probably belonged to Chambers or maybe the security guard company. He’s wearing a holster, but it’s empty.”
    “Why would a security guard in a school district need to be packing a piece?” Kramer asked.
    Baker shook his head. “Beats me.”
    “We’d better stop by and ask the Superintendent of Schools about that,” I said. “We’ll ask him about the logbook as well.”
    “Logbook?” Baker asked quickly.
    “According to Jennifer Lafflyn, the security guards were required to log everyone who came through the building after hours. She said the book itself is safely put away in the bottom drawer of the receptionist’s desk. She took care of that before she had any idea something was wrong.”
    “No doubt we’ll need to take a look at it,” Baker said.
    The crime-scene investigators showed up right about then with their little bags of tricks. Crime-scene specialists sift through everything, dust for prints, preserve evidence, and do all the fine detail work made possible and necessary by advanced technology. Their work, combined with what happens later at the crime lab, is absolutely essential in