I went next, landing on a fenced-off rectangle of blacktop behind the liquor store, an area that was empty, except for two angled white streaks denoting parking spaces. One of them still held the faded blue markings of a handicapped sign, painted onto the ground.

I stared at the rear of the store. In front of us was a steel door, and off to its right a window.

I tested the door, pulling on the latch, but quickly realized that it wasn’t going anywhere.

“Your plan . . .” I whispered to Remy.

“Sure.” She nodded. “You didn’t hear something inside?”

I blinked. Thinking I knew where she was going.

“I mean, anyone could be in there,” Remy said. “And we have a responsibility to investigate.”

I smiled at this, but also thought through the machinations of this deception. My partner was talking about us going through the place, and then reporting it. Saying we heard a noise. Then getting a patrol car down here, to document anything we found. This held more risk than usual, with Hartley’s position on the police board.

Remy walked back to the six-foot-tall fence. She grabbed my hoodie and wrapped it around her fist. Approached the window.

Without warning she punched at the glass.

I’d seen Remy hit plenty. Both out in the field and at her kickboxing gym.

The glass shattered fast, and she took a flashlight from her back pocket. Looked inside.

I wondered how much of this Remy had thought through before she met me at the bar. Her moves were something I’d do, and it usually wasn’t good to be working off the P. T. Marsh playbook.

Remy took her right boot off then and used the metal heel to clear the rest of the window, sending glass shards down into the store.

Knocking out the remaining glass with the toe, she shined her flashlight inside again, and we saw it was a small bathroom. Through the open door at the far side of the tiny room, we could make out the empty liquor store.

“Age before beauty,” my partner said, spreading the hoodie over the edge of the window.

I laid my right foot inside the hole, and then my left. Turned on my stomach and eased myself backward through the two-foot-square space.

I thudded to the ground, noticing a piece of glass had sliced at my right hand on the way in.

My blood was smeared onto some shards on the floor, and I carefully picked up the red glass and placed it in my back pocket.

I flicked on my own flashlight, raking the darkness with light. In the quiet, rats scurried, and Remy landed behind me.

We moved into a storeroom, standing in the middle of two aisles with empty wooden racks. From the different heights of the shelves, I could imagine which ones once stored six-packs and which ones were for “fine wine,” as the sign outside had originally advertised. More like Two-Buck Chuck.

But nothing lined the shelves now except an inch of dust.