GMT “Captain Ledger!” I turned to see Detective Sergeant Rebekkah Owlstone hurrying along the bystreet toward me. Owlstone was the coordinator for the team to which I’d been assigned. We were doing background checks on the Hospital staff and I was coming out of a house where the family of a dead nurse was lost in the horror of shared grief. The day was bitterly cold, with a raw wind that smelled of salt water and ash. Owlstone waved me toward the lee side of a parked delivery van. It was about a degree warmer out of the wind. “What is it?” I asked. Owlstone, a petite and pretty brunette from Hampshire, pitched her voice in a confidential tone: “We have a situation, sir. A pair of our lads—Constables Lamba and Pettit—have been interviewing the families of the janitorial staff, and they found something very curious taped to one of the apartment doors. Lamba took a photo of it with his phone and e-mailed it to me.” She produced her BlackBerry and pressed a button to bring up a picture of a standard apartment door: beige wood with metal numbers.
