But now that I was standing here, I wondered what the hell I was even looking for.

I stood by the door where I’d come in and talked to the manager.

“Tell me what you remember,” Remy said.

“Adrian was nervous,” I said.

“He was the guy who got robbed?”

“No,” I said. “That was Pelo.”

“Right,” Remy said. “Adrian was the manager.”

I nodded, picturing John Adrian. Five foot ten. Wild, curly black hair. “Adrian felt more invested than an employee, Rem. But there was something else. It always felt like he was pushing me to talk outside.”

“To not stir up customers?” Remy asked. “Having a cop there?”

“That was my guess back then,” I said. “But now I dunno. Maybe he was avoiding something that I didn’t notice. Something illegal, hidden among the liquor bottles? Something . . .”

I walked over to the counter of the store, remembering my conversations with the manager.

“The store looks different now,” I said.

Presently, the counter was shoved against the far wall, opening up a giant space in the center of the store by the front door.

“Years ago, customers lined up here,” I said, motioning at where we were standing. “Made impulse buys of lottery tickets and rolling papers. Cheap cigars.”

As I stepped toward the counter, I heard a squeak. The kind of thing you only hear when a place is dead empty. A weak floorboard maybe.

I stepped forward and heard it again. Ehhh.

Back again. Ehhh.

Remy crouched, wiping at the dusty wooden floor with the back of the arm of her sweatshirt.

When she got the area a little cleaner, we noticed that a few of the planks didn’t match the others around them.

“This area would’ve been behind the counter, Rem,” I said. “Back then. On the cashier’s side.”

I crouched down and moved from board to board, feeling along the wooden floor. After a dozen pushes, one area popped back out at me, a spring-loaded door.

Remy grabbed at the edge and opened a hole about two and a half feet square, on a hinge. Propped it open upon itself.

Shining my flashlight into the hole, I stared down a set of concrete stairs. As I stepped down into the area, cobwebs covered my face.

“Jesus,” I said. Pulling the mess from my hair and mouth.

I shined the light around and saw a concrete room, maybe twenty by twenty, with three or four card tables set up in the center, and shelves lining each wall.

Remy followed me down, and both flashlights scanned the place.

If the upstairs felt like a land locked in time, so did this space. Except dustier. It smelled like dead soil and ammonia, and I heard Remy cough. She held her sweatshirt over her mouth.

I walked over to the shelves and saw only one item left behind. A busted money-counting machine.

What was someone doing down here that you couldn’t find out about? Purvis huffed in my head. That was worth killing a cop’s wife and son over?