January 29, 1933 Manhatten, New York Broadway

Detective Mark Castle got a call an hour ago from a man that said he would find something interesting in apartment 61 of the Victorian. Interesting wasn’t the half of it.

Broadway stage actress Nina Monet lay dead on her bed, with a single blow to the head, in an apartment as clean as the day it was furnished and the Times advertised its vacancy. Sans the dame that wasn’t breathing in the back room, of course. That and the strange greasy residue on certain areas of the floor.

Now Castle, had worked every grissly homicide this side of the Hudson, but this made him wish he stayed in law school like his parents wanted.

He hadn’t thrown up at a crime scene ever. He couldn’t recall throwing up at all since he was sick with the pox as a child. Those scars ached from time to time in the cold, and this winter was cold, but somehow it was more than that. This wasn’t a crime of greed or jealousy. This was pure evil. The closest he would ever come to it.

Maybe those boys over at the Hoffman Institute could give him a hand with this one…