"Not yet. The serial number is unobservable until we turn it over. We don't rearrange the evidence until after I've finished my site inspection."

I pointed at the silencer on the end of the pistol. "Have you ever seen a suicide where the victim used one of those?"

"Uh…"

I remembered to specify, "Yes or no?"

"No."

"Does the silencer strike you as odd?"

"I leave the conclusions to the detectives."

"As you should. Except I'm asking your opinion."

"Yes. It is unusual." In fact, I was sure Tim regarded it as more than unusual-even suspicious-though, sucked inexorably back into his orbit of qualifiers and modifiers, he suggested, "You could postulate, I suppose, that the victim didn't want to disturb his neighbors. A final act of courtesy, so to speak. Or he didn't want to be discovered. I've seen suicides where the victim went to great lengths to avoid attention."

"I see." Sometimes it's the little things. Essentially, in almost every way this looked like a suicide; that is, every way but two. To begin with, that petrified expression on Daniels's face-eyes wide open, mouth contorted, a mixture of frozen shock and amazement. It's my impression that most people, in the millisecond before they blow a bullet through their own flesh, reflexively shut their eyes, purse their lips, and contract their facial muscles-this is going to hurt, a lot, and the mind and the body respond instinctively, even reflexively, toward the anticipation of pain.

Ergo, shock and surprise seemed wrong. After all, the act of suicide was his idea. Relief, anger, sadness, pain-these, or some combination of these, are the expressions one would expect on his death mask.

Plus, the silencer was weird. If I assumed the pistol was Clifford's weapon, silencers are hard to come by, expensive, and, even for radical gun lovers, an unusual accessory. I mean, gun nuts live for the big booms. No, silencers are an instrument of assassins.