Wolf cleared his throat. “These folks are the cops I talked to y’all about,” he said. “They got something to say—maybe it’s lucrative for someone here.”

Lucrative?

What angle had Wolf presented to these people?

“Fuckin’ cops,” I heard someone say, but I couldn’t tell who.

“Nolan Brauer,” I said. I passed a photocopy of the man’s picture to Wolf, who stepped down and handed it to another guy. Brauer was the man who the Cracker Barrel waitress had called unmemorable. “He’s got a 3D-printed M24 sniper rifle.”

“Bullshit,” someone said as the photo passed among the group.

“No, y’all,” Wolf said. “I saw some of the damn parts. And not the easy ones to make. The inside of the trigger assembly was tight as fuck.”

Murmurs moved through the room.

“Guys,” I said. “He’s gonna shoot someone tomorrow, and there’s a couple rooms full of Feds looking everywhere online to see who it might be. But I think you guys have places that you hang out that the Feds don’t know about. We need to know where this Brauer guy might be. And who he might hate enough to kill.”

I stepped backward and looked to Remy. “You wanna add something?”

Remy stepped forward, and the place went quiet. Maybe it was my own bias, but I was guessing some of these guys didn’t get laid too often. And here was this cop who was drop-dead gorgeous and packing heat.

“Guys,” she said. “We need you. We need your help. And we need it fast. ’Cause if someone dies tomorrow morning, a world of hurt is gonna fall on anyone who owns a 3D printer.”

Wolf nodded and pointed us back up the stairs.

“That’s it?” Remy asked as we trudged back up.

“I think the way it works,” I said, “is now we wait.”

“That’s right,” Wolf said as we got to the top. “’Cause the folks inside are just a small portion of the community. You gotta let ’em work. Text and chat with their people.”

We moved back to the alley then, and the night sky was a purplish-black. The air smelled clean here, just four miles north of the numbered streets.

I grabbed a pack of Marlboro Reds from my truck, and Remy grabbed her iPad.

As I smoked, I found myself thinking about Kelly Borland.

I considered what Remy had said last night when we argued. How it was part of my mission to keep myself unhappy. Was it a line my partner said to get a reaction out of me? Or the Gospel that I had been denying?

My phone pulsed, and I looked down.

It was Abe.

The Feds got something. An assemblyman from Alabama. He received harassing mail from Nolan Brauer ten days ago. Turned it over to the police, but it’s just been sitting on someone’s desk.

I picked up the phone and called Abe, putting him on speaker.

“Clearson is getting on a copter and heading to Birmingham,” he said. “From there, it’s a one-hour drive to Downey.”