Page 102 of King’s Ransom

I’d asked Georgy to arrange this because I wanted to get inside the building again to: (a) speak to the superintendent named Lenny; (b) look at the building’s security camera footage; and (c) check out one other thing.)

We arrived in Midtown around 6 p.m. and pulled into the underground parking garage of 59West.

The supertall tower had an eerie quality to it now.

It was still under the evacuation order: all the owners and tenants were elsewhere, having been told to stay away until the cops and the structural engineers were finished with their respective investigations.

A uniformed NYPD cop met us in the garage and escorted us up to the penthouse.

The previously chic penthouse was still a grisly mess.

Dried blood speckled the walls.

Crime-scene tape was everywhere.

Small plastic evidence markers littered the floor.

A second NYPD cop stood guard by the elevators, idly perusing his cell phone beside the mega-expensive Superman and Batman comic books.

The first cop said, ‘Most of the forensic work’s finished. Now the DA is holding the place for a week in case follow-up inquiries are needed.’

I nodded.

This was standard procedure.

As I gazed around the $155 million penthouse, I couldn’t imagine Aristo King would want to move back into it any time soon, not after all the deaths and other stuff that had gone down here. People generally sell their homes after murders happen in them.

‘Mrs King said she left her laptop somewhere in the living area over there.’ Georgy pointed toward a corner of the penthouse.

‘Do what you gotta do,’ the first cop said.

As he followed us, we headed into the living area next to the master bedroom.

I peered into the bedroom as we strode past it.

Its windows—smashed to oblivion by the military drone—had not yet been repaired.

Huge sheets of clear plastic had been stretched over the floor-to-ceiling holes, held in place by heavy-duty tape. The plastic billowed and suctioned with the wind.

I, however, was looking at the mirror on the wall, positioned above the low bookcase.

The mirror that back on December 21st I’d noticed was a two-way mirror.

As Georgy and the cop continued, I lingered in the living area on the other side of the mirror’s wall . . .

. . . where I found a framed painting hanging in a spot that would be directly behind the mirror.

In a luxury penthouse filled with outrageously expensive art, this painting was odd because it was not obviously expensive or rare.

It was a child’s fingerpainting of a tall and ultra-thin tower.

And it was signed ‘Our home. Alexei, age 5’.

I quickly tilted the framed picture to see what was behind it.

And there it was.

A small shelf-like recess built into the wall.