As I scanned the shelves more carefully this time, I noticed three or four empty cardboard boxes, each lined with a plastic bag of some sort. The bags were empty, but had traces of powdery white residue on the inside.

“Drugs?” Remy asked.

“I dunno,” I said. I opened my wallet and found a parking receipt on hard card stock. I scraped it along the inside of the bag, collecting the residue. Then folded it upon itself and saved it in my pocket.

In movies you always see a cop taste powder he suspects to be drugs. Which always drives me crazy when I see it. I mean, would you put some unknown foreign substance in your body? You wouldn’t.

“It could be construction materials,” Remy said about the powder.

“Yeah.” I nodded. Concrete and plaster were placed in bags, and shipped in boxes. I looked for markings on the sides of the boxes, but there were none.

“So they were moving something illegal . . .” I said, my voice trailing off.

“Only problem is—there’s nothing down here now,” Remy said. “Other than the rats.”

Remy was right, and we spent the next thirty minutes confirming it. Inspecting each shelf and empty carton for evidence. First down here. And then upstairs after. But for Lauten Hartley, who owned this place, there was no crime to chase him over, unless failure to dust was a felony.

“Let me ask you a question, P.T.,” Remy said after we’d searched every shelf.

“Shoot.”

“Where do you think this is going to lead anyway?”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “By ‘this,’ do you mean us sneaking around?”

“Yeah.” She nodded.

“We’re gonna get to the bottom of this old crime,” I said.

“And then what?” my partner asked. The look on her face was legitimate curiosity.

“Put these guys away,” I said. “Hartley. Whoever he’s with.”

“When you called me last night, you were sitting on the deck of that houseboat, right?” she asked. “That’s what you said.”

“Uh-huh.” I nodded.

“Where was Kelly Borland?”

I stared at Remy. Had she been spying on me? Or more likely, had Marvin given me up? Described the woman I was with when I dropped off Purvis?

“She was inside,” I said. “Asleep.”

“By herself?”

I wasn’t sure where Remy was going with this. “Yeah.”

“Why weren’t you with her?”

I sneered at my partner. “It’s none of your business who I do or don’t sleep with.”

“I just want to understand how this ends,” my partner said. “Let’s say we find the guy who hired Tarticoft to take out your wife,” Remy said. “What then?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I was gung ho before,” she said, pausing to look around the dusty rat trap. “But . . . will it be over for you?”

“Are you for real?”

Her voice softened. “I need to know, P.T., if this is just another mission to distract you from the rest of your life.”

A flare of anger shot through me.