The bottle of lotion which has not passed out of this tale, and which will not for a while yet, plummeted the six floors between Greg's window and approximately 5-foot 6 inches above the ground. It accelerated as it fell, and by the last two inches of it's jaunty trip it was clipping along at a terrific rate. But the human skull is an equally terrific protective structure, so it is no surprise that the vial merely punched a neat hole into Christy Matherson's head, entering and ending her life in a fortieth of a second that may be the longest in anyone's recollection. Had Steve lived on the top floor, with twelve floors between him and the girl's head, said head would have exploded on impact and sent brains, blood, bone and miscellaneous gore flying one-way trips to the persons of startled and horrified passers-by. So the world was lucky there.
In fact, Steve had almost had the top-floor apartment. At the last minute, however, a girl (Diana Matherson, the beloved sister of now-departed Christy, who would soon devote her life to finding and imprisoning Steve) had decided not to go to their college after all, but to attend Princeton instead. So, Steve had gotten a nice six-floor room with a view of the lake and the grounds, and Christy Matherson had been stuck with the top room next to all the air conditioning machinery.
Christy's life ended suddenly, inconspicuously, quietly and nearly invisibly. Once she had fallen on the grass a slight rise of the land kept her from being seen from most places, so really only the people who had seen her crumple like a person hit by a ton of bricks (or a screaming fast jar of lotion) knew that something was up.
Those people were: