Andre’s apartment was on the other side of King George Proper, in a newer complex that catered to young professionals and military personnel from the nearby base. The kind of place with a fitness center nobody used and a pool that got crowded on weekends. Clean lines, neutral colors, utterly forgettable. You could live here for years and never learn your neighbor’s name.
The landlord met us at the entrance to building D—a heavyset man in his sixties who jingled a ring of keys like worry beads. Sweat stained the collar of his polo shirt, and he was breathing hard by the time we reached the third floor.
“Terrible thing,” he said between breaths. “Terrible. Kid was quiet, never caused any trouble. Paid his rent on time, kept his place clean. You couldn’t ask for a better tenant.”
The refrain of the dead. I’d heard it a hundred times. Nobody ever said the victim was a jerk who played loud music and let his dog crap in the hallway. Death had a way of sanding down the rough edges, leaving behind only the smooth and the polished.
“Did you see him recently?” Jack asked.
“Thursday, I think. Maybe Friday morning.” The landlord scratched his chin. “After that, no. But that’s not unusual. Lot of these young folks keep odd hours. Work, gym, whatever. I don’t keep tabs.”
Thursday or Friday. Right before his world collapsed.
He unlocked apartment 312 and stepped aside with obvious relief, eager to hand off the responsibility of whatever we might find.
“A crime-scene unit will be here shortly to process the apartment,” Jack told him. “They’ll need access to the building.”
The man’s face went a shade paler. Nobody wanted to stand too close to murder. It had a way of rubbing off.
“I’ll be in my office,” he said, and retreated down the stairs faster than he’d climbed them.
Jack and I pulled on gloves and stepped inside.
The apartment was small—a studio with a kitchenette along one wall, a bed against the other, a bathroom tucked in the corner. But what hit me wasn’t the size. It was the order. The bed made tight enough to bounce a quarter off. Clothes in the closet arranged by color. Shoes lined up like soldiers awaiting inspection.
Andre Washington had carried the military home with him. He’d built his life around discipline, around control, around everything being exactly where it should be.
“Tight ship,” Jack observed.
“Once a Marine.” I moved toward the kitchenette. “These habits don’t fade.”
The refrigerator confirmed what I’d suspected. Chicken breasts in the freezer. Vegetables in the crisper. Meal prep containers stacked neatly, each one portioned with rice and protein for the week ahead. On the counter, a high-end blender sat next to a tub of protein powder. No beer. No soda. No junk food.
This wasn’t a man who trained casually. This was someone who treated his body like a precision instrument.
“No liquor,” Jack said, checking the cabinet above the stove. “Not even a bottle of wine.”
“He was serious.” I closed the refrigerator door. “Whatever he was training for, he was all in.”
The nightstand was next. I pulled open the drawer and found the expected evidence of a personal life—condom wrappers, a half-empty box of Trojans, a bottle of lubricant. Someone had definitely spent time in this bed.
But it was what I found tucked behind the condoms that made me stop.
A slip of paper, folded once. I opened it carefully. Numbers, initials, a date from three weeks ago. Handwritten in pencil on cheap paper, the kind you’d tear off a pad.
Not a lottery ticket. Not a receipt.
“Jack.” I held up the slip of paper. “What do you make of this?”
He crossed the room and took it from me, studying the numbers and initials with a frown that deepened the longer he looked. I watched his expression shift from curiosity to recognition to something harder.
“This is a betting slip,” he said. “The kind you get at underground games. Poker, fights, whatever.” He turned it over, checking the back. “I’ve seen these before in vice busts. They’re handwritten so there’s no electronic trail. The numbers are odds, the initials are the bookie’s mark.”
“So he was gambling?”
“Or someone was gambling on him.” Jack’s jaw tightened. “A man with his build, his boxing background—he’d be worth serious money to the right people. And where there’s serious money, there’s someone keeping the books.” He held up the slip. “This is a piece of an operation, Jaye. Betting slips, a professional execution, days of interrogation. That’s not one guy with a grudge. That’s a business.”
I thought about the discipline evident in every corner of this apartment. The meal prep, the protein powder, the body that had been honed into a weapon. “You think he was fighting illegally.”
