I stepped across the street with determination in nine long strides. Charlie followed.  When I came to the door of the building that he had told me up in our office had been abandoned, I waited for him.  The kid who had entered not five minutes earlier had left the door ajar.  Its brass handle glinted in the morning light that reflected from each window on the side of the street from which we’d just come.

Charlie stood behind me, not panting, but out of breath. I gave him another moment, took the time to see if the boy had left foot prints. Several scuffs on the third and fifth step of the stoop told me he had polished his shoes in a hurry, left a bit more polish on one foot than the other. I pictured a boy who worked hard and long, with no pause, and little time to keep up his appearance.  A boy old enough to move out of his home and away from his parent’s care.

“Ink,” Charlie said.

“What?” I asked him. He’d shaken me from my thoughts and when I looked at him he smirked.  He enjoyed the shock on my face.

“It’s ink,” he said. “On the step.”

“Not polish?” I said.

“No, look,” he bent to the third step.  With two fingers he swiped up a section of the scuff mark and brought it up for me to examine. Honestly, at the time I couldn’t tell the difference between cheap polish and newspaper ink.  Made me damn glad I had Charlie at my side.

I jerked my head toward the top of the stoop and we went inside.  I rested my palm against the door and let it click shut behind us.  In the dark I could hear Charlie breathing again.

Through habit, my fingers dug into the pocket inside the breast of my jacket, found the near-full pack of cigarettes, and slipped one out. Once I had the cigarette between my lips I offered the tip of the rolled white paper a flame from a match.  They met and for a brief time they glowed together, the only light in the place. Charlie tapped me on the shoulder and I shook the match out. Blew some smoke for us to walk through, and we went deeper into the house.

I heard him, and Charlie must have, too. We held our breath.  The kid had found his way upstairs, must’ve been digging through some boxes, not a worry about how his heavy shoes sounded on the bare boards.  Work shoes.  Maybe boots. Charlie tugged on my arm and we went up a staircase.  Above us a spattering of new and used spider webs hung in a window caked with dust. Just like the building, the webs were seemingly abandoned. I watched a lazy fly twitch in a thread as the last bit of life cooled out of her.

Dim light leaked through the thin filter of dust against the window, showed us the top three steps, and a few feet of the landing above. When we came to it we could see several pairs of tracks leading from the stairs to the hall.  One set led off into the dark, the other to a room off to our left. Kid needed to learn to pick up his heels when he walked. We chose the path to our left, followed the noise.

I sunk my teeth into the filter on my cigarette, tasted the bitter insides that came out, and pulled clean air through the ugly tobacco.  We stood quiet in the doorway to the room the kid had found. Watched him shift through a box, move it off to the side, and start in on another.

Charlie coughed and I dropped my cigarette. The kid turned around just in time to see the small embers die out beneath my heel.  His eyes glinted, then went dark. The light came from the window behind him and hid any expression on his face. He made no move after he caught sight of us.

He said nothing at first. Neither did we. We stood in the doorway and watched the fly caught in our web.

Eventually, he spoke.  His voice cracked, and he talked too fast.

“You’re not police,” he said.  Not a question.  “What are you, a couple of private eyes?”

“Yeah,” said Charlie.  It was the first time I’d heard him call us Private Eyes. Didn’t feel right. Not then.

“You armed?” he said.  Again his voice cracked. He seemed to be doing it on purpose.

“No,” I said. Lifted my heel off the now extinguished cigarette. 

“How long you been working this case?” Charlie asked.  I knew a shot in the dark when I heard one, especially coming from Charlie.

“Couple weeks,” the kid said.  “What about you?”

“A day,” Charlie said.  We had no reason to lie to this kid, but really, I wished Charlie would shut up.  I couldn’t throw him a look in this dank room, so I elbowed him instead. This did not go un-noticed by the kid.

“Could’ve picked a better case to start with,” the kid said, and he actually laughed.  His laugh had no hint of those cracking vocal cords. Sounded genuinely cheerful.

“What’re you doing here,” I asked him, point blank, an attempt to throw him back off balance.  It worked a bit.

“Looking for something,” he said.  Turned his back on us, picked up a newspaper off the desk by the window.  It was then I noticed the window was open at the bottom, just enough to see out of if you made an effort to look.  “This.”

He held up the paper.

“You looking for old news?” Charlie said.

He moved the paper in the light and we saw a hole right in the middle of the first page.  A hole the size of the one in our window. “Not exactly.”

“Where’d you get that?” Charlie said, stepped forward to grab at the paper. Caught it easily, the kid wanted him to have it. Wanted to show us just how clever he’d been.

“Just here,” he said.

“What’s your name,” I asked him from behind Charlie.

“William,” the kid said. “But you can call me Scoop.”

“You’re a newspaper jockey,” I said.

“A reporter,” he said, that crack came back up in his voice.

“Alright, Scoop,” said Charlie. “What can you tell us about this paper? And how did you know it would be here?”

“Easy,” Scoop said. “Some scumbag shoots a dame, he’s going to be looking to hide behind something better than a window. If you read the papers, especially the stories about people getting shot, almost every time there’s a newspaper the bum hid behind to remain inconspicuous.”

“Seems redundant,” I said.  Took the paper form Charlie to have a look.  No way around it. The hole looked right.

“Maybe,” said Scoop. “But that’s just how it is. Trust me, I’ve read a lot of those stories. Even wrote a few.”

I went to the window, looked out at our office across the street.  Our window was almost a whole floor up. Something wasn’t right.  From my vantage point I could just make out the bullet hole in the glass. It was possible that the shooter had been able to shoot the window from this spot, but it’d be much too difficult to hit the blonde.  A car drove by and a soft crunch rose from the asphalt. Drew my attention to the street below. I found the source of the noise to be a patch of glinting light against the black street in front of our building.

“I think you’re on to something with this paper here, Scoop,” I said. “And I think that if we look in a room a few floors up, we might find its twin.”