I stared at Charlie for a long time, waited until the a few cars had passed by.  In the end I answered him with a movement. The door knob turned easily with an extra bit of effort and Charlie followed me through the door and up the staircase.  We walked up a single flight of noisy stairs beneath a flickering, naked lightbulb that hung between narrow walls with peeling wall paper.  I could smell the mold in their exposed boards.

Moments later we stood in our office.  Charlie grabbed a newspaper from a chair in the corner and separated the pages. With tape from the squeaky drawer in my desk he made a newspaper window shade to cover the hole that reminded us both of how much blood had splashed over our floorboards not so long ago.

The office was quiet for some time.

We didn’t need to speak, only consider our options. Charlie’s question hung in the air around my hat like smoke in a bar. I inhaled it deeply and savored the flavor; like copper off an unlucky penny.

Charlie pulled his notebook from the inside pocket on his jacket. The pages stuck together, but only on the edges and none of the ink bled. He took it to the table near the door, the one with an old typewriter, and he began to hammer away on the keys. I watched my friend work, watched the jerky movement of his shoulders when he bent to reset the platen, and watched when he rubbed his eyes in exhaustion.

When Charlie finished he slid his newly typed notes on the desk in front of me and left the room.

“See you in a few hours,” he said over his shoulder, didn’t bother to shut the door. I listened to his footsteps thunder down the staircase and then the door slam behind his back.  Charlie had been gone for a full ten minutes before I looked at the page in front of me. Six lines of black text stood out against the white paper, each letter looked different, pronounced or faded in odd spots.

It read:

 

Girl, maybe 19, blond hair. Sour look, blue eyes, dark eyebrows. Dye job?

Husband, criminal/victim, suggest abuse, no marks on girl.

Clouds in sky, bad omen, rain later? She wore the wrong shoes.

Quick talker, nervous or rehearsed. 

Boy on fourth street talking about us. Selling papers with our name.

She’s asking for info.  Asking for trouble. Last words: “I’m sorry”.

 

I let the paper fall from my fingers and land back on the desktop. It looked up at me and I realized my heart was pounding.  She asked for trouble alright.  Got a stomach full of it.  And now she’s dead, cold and gone the way I never expected one of my clients would have to go.  I should have expected it.  You don’t get into the crime solving business and get away without a few bruises, a few losses.  Back in the beginning I had a weak stomach.  But not so weak that I would give up.

The morning came and Charlie brought me coffee from a shop down the street.  They always burned it, but on that day that’s the kind of coffee I needed.  Unfortunately, that shop would get a lot of business from us in the coming months.

Over the coffee I told him that we’d accepted the case.  Charlie and Cloudy would get to the end of this if it killed them.  Sure.

The first thing we did was take down that newspaper Charlie had put up the night before. We pulled it away form the window like a scab and revealed a jagged hole in the glass the size of a wine cork.  Cracks ran out around the edges of the hole in about an inch and a half diameter. The whole thing looked like a terrifically blood-shot eye.

We peered through that eye at the building across the way. In the morning light I could make out the places along the sides where bare brick had been exposed. Some of the window frames had lost their sills. All of the windows were dark, nothing moved inside.

“The way I see it,” Charlie said. His breath carried the taste of his coffee. “Whoever shot our girl did it form one of the top two floors, maybe the roof. She had a bullet in her gut.  You can’t get that angle from the street. And I expect they were watching her when she entered our building. They could do that easily from the roof.  But they must’ve been watching her for a while to know she’d come to us.  They may have been watching us, too.  Still might be.”

“Who owns that building,” I said.

“It’s abandoned,” He said.

“Then why is that kid walking in the front door?”

Charlie followed my gaze down to the sidewalk across the street. We watched the kid, some punk in a short hat with a vest on and a white shirt on underneath that.  We watched him yank open the front door and disappear inside.