Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 811 & 812, March/April 2009

Sergeant Hector Marcos covered the cold, naked body of the woman in Apartment 5 with a white sheet. Some of the neighbors had told him that she was a little loose, but really a good person. According to others, she was a “decent” person, but a little loose. The “loose” side of Paula Ortiz’s character consisted of the way she dressed, her fondness for parties and dancing, and the fact that she lived alone in an apartment where occasionally she received visits that were considered inappropriate.

The night before, when Alma Corrado was closing her window prior to going to bed, she was not surprised to see a young man rapping at the door of the tenant across the way and calling to her to let him in. At first he seemed to be pleading, then he began to sound threatening. The broad shoulders of Isaac Reyes, one of Paula Ortiz’s not infrequent visitors, were shifting back and forth in the rhythm of a manageable but evident state of drunkenness.

“Come on, baby...” he was saying, together with other words that went from mumbled to slurred. “Don’t get me mad,” he kept repeating. The moment came when Alma thought she should call the police, and she was about to do so when Paula decided to let her friend in. In no time they were yelling at each other at the top of their voices. Even after she closed her window, Alma could hear Paula complaining that her visitor was drunk and that this wasn’t any time for her to be receiving company. Then there was a long silence, suggesting that they had made up. Alma went to bed and thought nothing more about it until the next morning, when she woke up to find her street filled with bystanders, police, journalists, and a vehicle from the coroner’s office. In Paula’s apartment, people were taking photographs, dusting for fingerprints, and a police lieutenant who identified himself as Luis Adan was asking questions and looking for witnesses.

Alma needed to take several sedative pills for her nerves. She was fifty years old, but had never been even remotely associated with anything of a criminal nature. The death of her neighbor was a shock. She could have avoided becoming involved just by not telling what she had seen. Like the three monkeys: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. But the image of her friend lying on the floor of her living room, her empty gaze fixed on the ceiling above, compelled her to tell the police what she knew. She trembled as she described the visit of Isaac Reyes at the moment when, ready for bed, she took a last look outside before closing her window.

The little she had to say immediately resulted in an order to find Reyes. He was located in short order. That day he had not gone off to work, staying in bed to sleep off the effects of his overindulgence. He was taken away without any problem.

At the police station Alma, still trembling with emotion, was able to identify him from among the five men assembled behind the one-way glass. It was very simple, since she had seen him on many occasions. Moreover, to the astonishment of the authorities, Reyes wasted no time in admitting that he was guilty. Amidst curses and complaints, he gave an account of his doomed romance. There had been very few moments of real happiness. He was hopelessly in love with the woman, so he inevitably ended up begging for her attention. And on that night the effects of the alcohol allowed him to say things so terrible that there was no way to take them back. They struggled; he didn’t intend to harm her, but Paula lost her balance and fell over backwards, striking her head on the extended wing of a metallic swan figure on the floor. Her body went limp, dropping into a grotesque position, with a halo of blood beginning to circle her head.

“I knew I had killed her.”

“Did you wipe up the blood with her nightgown?”

“No. I was scared and I left.”

Reyes responded quickly and directly to the questions Lieutenant Adan was asking. Everything he said fitted the scene of the crime except for three points. In his account, Reyes failed to mention the moment when he pulled off the woman’s nightgown. He spoke of seeing a circle of blood by her head, but not of wiping it up, something that had probably been done with the nightgown. And he swore he had not drunk a single drop of liquor there, not even water, despite the evidence present of drinks having been served.

If Adan pressed him on these questions, he looked bewildered, as if he were straining, trying to remember something that had never happened. Adan was unable to understand these blank moments. His colleagues insisted: He was drunk, there was no way his memory could be perfectly clear. If you’ve got a confession, what more do you want? Close the case!

Alma’s testimony was decisive. Besides, the blood found beneath Paula Ortiz’s nails matched Reyes’s blood type. And unmistakeable scratch marks had been found on his arms.

“But I didn’t take off her nightgown,” Reyes insisted.

Adan laid a photograph of the crime scene before Reyes.