The murder had happened around noon, when Winter Reynolds III had met a thick length of steel piping in a restroom at the Federal Reserve. The bludgeoning to death of America's most reclusive financial magnate was heady stuff for a press starved of political gossip: given the number and influence of the tycoon's avowed public enemies, his killer could have been almost half of New York or Washington.

And yet, Detective Stronach thought as he surveyed the crime scene, this mystery could be unraveled by the evidence in this room. For who could have wielded the weapon? Initial evidence pointed to the plumber who had been repairing the executive washroom upstairs. Who else could have had the opportunity to sneak the murder weapon into the building or the professional acumen to wield it with such destructive force. And yet something about this hypothesis was also unsettling to the detective. But why?