The living room led to a hallway with rooms on either side of it, boxcar style. As I moved down it, I could smell something rank, like stale garbage or a dead mouse. I poked my head into each of the rooms but didn’t see anything. The hall ended in a kitchen. The smell was strongest there, but it took me a minute to see its source. A young man slumped over the kitchen table. I walked over to him. Despite the window air conditioner his body was in the early stages of decomposition.

The smell was strong, sweet, and sickening. The crabmeat and Chablis began a protest march in my stomach, but I fought back my nausea and carefully lifted the boy’s shoulders. A small hole had been put into his forehead. A trickle of blood had come out of it and dried across his face, but his face wasn’t damaged. The back of his head was a mess.

I lowered him carefully to the table. Something, call it my woman’s intuition, told me I was looking at the remains of Peter Thayer. I knew I ought to get out of the place and call the cops, but I might never have another chance to look over the apartment. The boy had clearly been dead for some time-the police could wait another few minutes for him.

I washed my hands at the sink and went back down the hall to explore the bedrooms. I wondered just how long the body had been there and why none of the inmates had called the police. The second question was partially answered by a list taped up next to the phone giving Berne’s, Steiner’s, and Harata’s summer addresses. Two of the bedrooms containing books and papers but no clothes must belong to some combination of those three.

The third room belonged to the dead boy and a girl named Anita McGraw. Her name was scrawled in a large, flowing hand across the flyleaves of numerous books. On the dilapidated wooden desk was an un-framed photo of the dead boy and a girl out by the lake. The girl had wavy auburn hair and a vitality and intenseness that made the photo seem almost alive. It was a much better picture than the yearbook snap my client had given me last night. A boy might give up far more than business school for a girl like that. I wanted to meet Anita McGraw.