Chapter 4: Blackwell's First Reading — The Telescope Mount Theory

Blackwell began at the door.

Not the body — the door. The body would be there in twenty minutes. The body would be there in twenty years, if he chose to think about it. The door was the argument's first premise, and he was a man who began with premises.

The bolt mechanism on the interior side was a heavy steel throw-bar, custom-fitted, the kind of reinforced hardware a man installs when he has spent enough years accumulating enemies to think architecturally about their access. Blackwell crouched and held his watch-face close — not for the light, which was adequate now that Marek had found the wall panel, but for the angle it gave him on the scored metal. Three parallel marks, shallow, running along the bolt's throat at approximately seven degrees from horizontal. Not forced entry. Not forced anything. The scoring was on the wrong side for forced entry. The bolt had been thrown from the interior, and something had touched it on the way through — briefly, precisely, at a specific moment in the mechanism's travel.