Private investigator Ian visits his friend unannounced, only to discover the man lying in bed, not asleep but dead. Ian resolves to find out how his friend died and, if he was murdered, to bring the killer to justice. But the details of the case are bizarre: the door of the condo unit is locked and the only other occupant is a bodybuilder, Horst, found sitting on the living room couch, half asleep or drugged. Ian calls 911 and the cops, when video footage showing no one entered or left the condo around the time of death, fixate on Horst as the most likely suspect. Ian is convinced Horst is innocent and offers his services to help the police solve the mystery of his friend’s death. But the situation is complicated, not only by the self-contradictory nature of the physical evidence, but by the fact that Ian increasingly finds himself drawn to Horst. Worse, the lead police detective shows increasing signs of interest in Ian himself. Love and death become strangely intertwined, their resolution not easily discovered. Is Horst as innocent as Ian believes? Can Ian help solve the locked-room mystery?

Bliss

After several minutes, I reminded myself that there were other things to think of. Now that Horst was out of sight and I could actually think more coherently, the image of my friend rose up inside my mind’s eye—and I felt slightly sickened at what I had seen, and what that suggested about my new friend, Horst. For there had been slight, but definite bruise marks on Quentin’s face, bruises that opened the possibility that Quentin had not died a natural death, that he had been smothered. Which meant, of course, that someone—and that meant possibly Horst—had murdered him.


It was at this juncture that there came an authoritative knock at the condo’s door, which could only be the police.2: Cops


I opened the door on two plainclothes police officers, both fairly young. The woman, rather attractive, was all business. The man on the other hand, while tall, slim, and well-built, radiated an air suggestive of some inner, hidden issue. That both interested me and made me sigh as well.


Chapter 5