We rolled into The Margin under the cover of night and a fresh batch of rain clouds. Wally’s memory got a lot better once we were away from the safety of the elevated freeway, but he saw boogie-men everywhere his twitchy eyes jumped.

His blubbering, vacillating directions brought us to The Margin’s northern border. It was at the opposite side of the district from the abandoned warehouse where Al bought the big one and a lot closer to Moire Park where Virginia lived. It wasn’t quite walking distance, but a bike ride wasn’t out of the question.

The spattering rain steadied to a persistent drizzle, and Dolores’s tires splashed in newly formed puddles as we rolled down yet another block lit by dreary yellow streetlights. Half of them flickered like strobes at a disco. Wally bolted up in his seat and pointed at a break between the buildings.

“Shit! There it is!”

I slowed and pulled closer to the curb as I approached. The alley looked the same as every other cut along the street.

“How do you know?” I asked. I didn’t want to get soaked wandering around unless I knew it was the right place.

“There! On the corner of that building!”

I followed Wally’s finger to a patch of graffiti sprayed across the bricks. There, I saw a finely-rendered and gruesomely veiny three-foot-tall penis standing out amid hasty slashes and bubble-letter tags. If not for the other artwork bleeding over top of it, the phallus would have looked like it was popping out of the wall.

“I’d recognize that dong anywhere.”

“All right,” I said as I rolled Dolores down to the mouth of the next alleyway.

The engine hissed an appreciative sigh, and the prattle of raindrops on the roof took over for the garrulous sputter. Turning Dolores off might have been a mistake, but I didn’t want the beacon of her headlights or the raspy siren of her motor to give us away. I needed the keyring stuck into the ignition anyway.

I leaned over Wally, pushing him into his seat. “Hey now, Howl, you know I’m not that kind of girl.”

I let him have his jokes and unlocked the glove compartment. I pushed the crumpled parking ticket from yesterday aside and retrieved my revolver. Some men treated their piece like a living thing—a pet, a girlfriend, a part of themselves to make up for inadequacies in other departments—but not me. Not my gun.

My gun was a piece of hard, cold steel. In each chamber, it carried a ten gram piece of lead sitting on nearly a hundred and fifty grains of gunpowder, ready to deliver swift justice to whoever deserved it. That was the story at least. Hardly ever worked out that way.

“Woah. Watch where you’re pointing that thing,” Wally said as I pulled away and tucked the gun into the holster slung under my shoulder.

The barrel hadn’t gone near him. I didn’t keep up to date with things like fashion trends and motor laws, but I took gun safety seriously. The rules were as hard and as old as guns themselves, and they were the only part of the PSA campaign I agreed whole-heartedly on. Then, as now, my advice was to keep your fidgety hands off any gun unless you knew what you were doing and had a damned good reason to be doing it.

I got out first, then encouraged Wally to come along with a stern look. He followed at my side, hiding between me and the boarded-up building that gave the block its structure. A gust blew through, and he pulled his coat tight to protect from the spray.

“Jesus, Howl, why’d you park so far away? Could have pulled straight in.”

“Felt like stretching my legs,” I said as we rounded the corner and started down the alley. “Besides, if anyone’s in there now, we don’t want them to hear us coming. Ringing the doorbell of places like this doesn’t tend to work out in anyone’s favor.”

It was a valid reason, but my main concern was getting stuck there if someone snuck up on us. Dolores would have needed to suck in her gut to squeeze down the alley, and I wasn’t confident in her reverse gear to get us out again. It would be especially challenging if someone parked something more sturdy than Dolores in front of the opening—a mid-sized sedan or a soggy cardboard box would do the trick.

Wally got even jumpier as we approached the end of the alley. He hissed and gasped whenever he thought he saw something on one of the stoops, shadowed doorways, or busted-out windows, but it was always the wind and the rain playing tricks. We were the only living things around. There was just enough juice running through the neighborhood for a grow operation and not an ounce more.

“This the place?” I asked when we reached a dented steel door at the end of the chute.

Wally was staring behind us, at the mouth of the alley, and I had to jab him with my elbow to get him to answer. “Huh, yeah, this is where I saw them.”

I tried the door with my left hand on the knob, my left shoulder pressed against the steel, and my right hand hovering in front of my open coat, ready to snatch my gun.

The knob didn’t turn, not even a jiggle. I had a lock picking kit in my coat, and a bit of practice using it, but the door wasn’t actually locked. It had gone so long without opening, it might as well have been welded shut. There was no way kids Ethan’s size had been gone through there any time in the last half decade.

Wally saw my skeptical look and pointed to the window off to the side. After a short inspection, I realized it was boarded from the inside and the pile of junk in front of it looked suspiciously sturdy. It had been arranged so the pallets and crates formed a set of steps up to the window.

I got my flashlight out and moved over, leaving Wally on the stoop. When I leaned on the piece of rotted particle board it held only a fraction of my weight before caving inward. I thought I had punched through the mouldered wood, but I had simply overcome the latch. One of the kids had put the board up on hinges, so while the place looked abandoned, they still had an easy way in and out. Smart kids.

Inside, there were a few empty tables, a few light stands, and a lot of withered stems and leaves forming a carpet on the dusty concrete. There had been a grow room there, but it had since moved. It was hard to believe that didn’t have something to do with Ethan’s disappearance. Maybe the police got wise and closed them down. Or maybe a competitor saw a chance to get Ethan alone.

I needed answers I couldn’t get from outside and threw my leg over the sill. Had there been a struggle? How many people were involved? Who were they? Where did they move to next?

“Howl!” Wally croaked, trying to keep his voice low.

I brushed it off as cowardly hesitation and pulled myself the rest of the way through, but when I looked back, I was nearly blinded by a set of bright lights sweeping my way. A car had turned down the alley. My hand drifted toward my holster again, but I put it down when the alleyway’s profuse rain-wet mirrors lit up blue with the light from the bulb on top of the car. I figured I had about even odds of getting shot by the cops now. Those odds turned sharply against me if I had a piece in my hand.

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Wally did a bit of calculus himself. His cost benefit analysis told him he was better off anywhere else, and he ripped away, scrabbling through junk to reach a gap too narrow to be considered an alley.

The car’s passenger side door opened before the car had stopped, and a hulking figure ran out, eclipsing the headlights as he passed. I saw the light glint off boar’s tusks. Knowing my luck, it was Boggs, meaning the person stepping out of the driver’s side was Detective Henry.

I thought about hiding, but if they found Dolores parked down the block, they would know I was here anyway. It would be especially easy once they got Wally by the scruff of the neck and asked who he was there with. As long as my car wasn’t there, whatever he said would be hearsay.

I tried not to make a racket as I made my way to the only closed door leading out of the room. The door stuck, but my skeleton key shoulder got it open at the cost of a loud thump. There was a bleak hallway beyond, covered top to bottom with graffiti, and smelling of piss. The punks had trashed it so badly, even they didn’t want it anymore.

I ran across the maintenance shaft and blew through another door. The shop on the other side reminded me of pictures I’d seen of cities bombed out during the war. A cursory glance at the bent racks and caved-in display cases as I sprinted across the rubble-strewn ground wasn’t enough for me to identify what it had once sold.

The alley on the other side of the shop went clear through the block, from the street I had parked Dolores on to another empty street to the west. I saw a smallish man cut across the way to another narrow alley.

“Stop right there!” Detective Boggs yelled, but Wally didn’t flinch as he pelted into the slot. Boggs cursed and gave chase, but he had to turn his body sideways to sidle through the same gap.

I waited a second until he was gone, but I was impatient knowing Detective Henry could already be crossing the maintenance shaft. I sprinted out of the shop and down the street toward Dolores.

I was almost to the east end of the street when a spotlight lit me up from behind. Tires swished on the wet pavement, and the car thumped as it crawled over the disused walkway’s tectonic ridges and craterous potholes.

The pursuit car lit a fire under my ass, and I beat it out of the alley with time to spare.

My hand squeaked on the wet windshield as I slid over Dolores’s hood, then caught the A-pillar to spin my body around. My bones would be hounding me for a week after a stunt like that, but adrenaline kept me going. I ripped the door open, threw myself into the seat, jammed the key into the ignition, gave it a twist, and—

Click.

The engine didn’t even try to turn over. I cranked again. More clicks, a tap-danced jig of them. They mocked me for ever thinking I could get away clean.

I jiggled the gear shifter, futzed with the pedals, and tried again. This time the engine teased me with a sputter, but went cold without developing into anything. The beam of light coming out of the alley ahead of me turned into a wedge, widening as the car came closer. I saw a red glow and pulsing blue in my mirrors. They had me boxed in.

As soon as I accepted I was sunk like a paper canoe, the panic ran out of my body with a steady lungful of air. I wasn’t really in danger; there was no use letting my body tell me otherwise. My hope of finding anything out about Ethan might be shot, but the worst I’d get from Boggs and Henry was a bit of a chewing out.

The second car stayed where it was at the mouth of the alley, waiting like a tongue-eating louse lurking inside a fish’s gaping maw, biding its time. Henry’s car finished backing out and pulled up behind me.

The thought of sitting, helpless, while my old partner sauntered up to my window turned my stomach. If I had to hear his smug, “License and registration,” I would have an aneurysm.

For once, Dolores didn’t fight me, and I stepped out at the same time as Henry did. Dressed for his role as a detective, he didn’t have gadgets, handcuffs, and keys clipped to his belt, so it didn’t have quite the same jangling weight when he pulled his pants up into his sagging belly. He had to flip open his coat, exposing his holster, to achieve the same imperious effect.

We stood face to face for a moment, two yards apart, then he nodded at my side. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a license for that peashooter.”

I looked down at the butt of my revolver sticking out of my coat. Before I could properly express my annoyance, the light behind me changed, and I looked over my shoulder to see the second car pulling out, turning the other way. The weak glow from the streetlights was barely enough to get through the red embers flanking the rear end, but the rays that did hit the glossy black paint bounced right back.

“Looks like your friends are leaving without you,” Henry said. “Thought you knew better than to rely on others.”

“Friends? They aren’t with you?”

Henry gave the car a second look, but we were both distracted by another figure jogging out from a break in the buildings further down. “Asshole got away!” Detective Boggs yelled as he approached.

“Wally?” Henry asked.

It took Boggs five yards of choppy steps to kill the momentum of his jog. He stopped behind me, panting, and nodded.

“You’ve got an interesting partner these days. Money must be tight if you’re out scavenging with him. We picked him up half a dozen times last summer for B and E, trespassing, fraud, that kind of shit.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” I said. “Didn’t even know he was here.”

“Oh yeah. You gonna be singing that same song after we search your car? You sure you aren’t maybe holding onto some of his tools for him?”

“Come on, Henry. I know you’re used to bullying schmucks, but that shit won’t work on me. You can’t just go around searching people’s cars. Not without probable cause.”

“You’re right. Glad to see you’ve been keeping up with the handbook. Good thing I’ve got cause in spades. Boggs, why don’t you give his old heap a once over?”

“On it,” Boggs said. He nearly tore the door off its hinges getting it open, and I let a snarl slip out as he pawed around.

“Look at yourself from a police officer’s perspective,” Henry said. “Come up on a guy rooting around a known drug operation. He’s keeping the company of a notorious criminal.” He smirked with the sarcastic accolade and I couldn’t help but snort out a laugh. “You pair that with the fact this thug’s carrying around an unregistered firearm, and we’ve got a real easy case on our hands.”

“You know I didn’t come to rob the place.”

Henry’s shoulders went up. “Not sure the judge will buy whatever it is you’re selling, but I’ll leave it up to his discretion.”

I heard rustling inside my car and saw Boggs scooping loose papers out of my glove box, looking them over in the beam of a flashlight held between his teeth.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. I know Ethan had something to do with this. I’m trying to find a missing kid here.”

“So you say. How are we supposed to know you have nothing to do with his disappearance? You could be here trying to destroy evidence. Too bad for you, we swept the place days ago.”

“And what’d you find?”

“Just some dumb kids trying to make a buck.”

“Dumb kids don’t have the startup capital to set up a place like this. There’s got to be more to it.”

Boggs stood up, unfolding from his crouch on the other side of Dolores. The suspension sighed as he took his prestigious weight off the car’s frame.

“Find anything interesting?”

Boggs waddled over and handed a crumpled wad of paper to Henry. He unfurled it, indifferent to the falling raindrops smudging the ink. “Well, well, well, looks like you’ve got a concealed carry permit after all.”

“Right. So you can just give that back and quit going through my shit.”

I reached for the license, but Henry snatched it away.

“Hold on. What’s this? My, doesn’t that date look familiar? I remember it like it was yesterday.”

I groaned. Just my luck. I wouldn’t have had the money to re-up the permit even if I had known, but I could have been more cautious.

Henry leaned past me to address Boggs again. “Find anything else?”

“Not yet. Gonna need the keys for a more thorough search.”

Henry held his open hand out. When I didn’t hop to, he gestured emphatically. “Come on, Howl. Either you hand ’em over or I take ’em. It’s up to you.”

“You’re a real son of a bitch, you know that?” I slapped the damned keys down into his palm, hoping a sharp tooth would dig in just right.

He grinned through the minor assault and didn’t look away as he hefted the keys to his partner by Dolores’s trunk. Boggs snatched them and flipped through my collection.

“Which one is it?”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “Lock’s busted.”

Henry and I stared at each other while Boggs got the trunk popped. The flashlight in his mouth muffled the surprised sound he made when the coils of stolen of copper caused the lid to spring open. Henry leaned in to see what his partner had found.

Boggs took the light out of his mouth and shined it at the glistening horde and the not-so-subtle tools on top.

I let out a defeated grunt, and Henry chuckled. “What’d’ya think Boggs? Put that together with the gun, and it looks like we’re treading in felonious waters.”

“I’d say we’ve got a case.”

“Come on, Henry,” I said. Pleading with him felt worse than a punch to the sternum, but I didn’t see any way out. “I’m trying to save a goddamn kid here. Can’t you put our history aside and—”

“Jonathan O’Howell, you are under arrest,” Henry said, turning me around to face Dolores and stealing my gun out of its holster. He passed the piece to Boggs and put his hands back on me as he continued with the homily drilled into every recruit at the academy. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law…”