“We cleared the place and stood sentinel, Detective. I’ve been right here while Ingram went outside to call y’all. Nobody touched a thing.”

“All right,” I said. “I appreciate you.”

I turned and opened the evidence bag. Picked up a few of the filings between my gloved index finger and thumb and let them fall back into the bag.

My dad had a wood shop when I was a kid, but often he worked with metal too.

“These particles from the trash look like steel,” I said to Remy, who was in the bedroom. “But they don’t feel like it.”

The pieces had fallen back into the evidence bag, and I sealed up the top.

Out in the hall I heard Yantsy shift her weight from one hip to the other, but when I glanced over, she was looking away from me, down toward the elevator.

I turned and stared at the fridge. I’d already checked inside when I first searched the kitchen, and it was empty. I opened the tiny freezer area. Felt a wave of cool come at me. Opened the main door again, but didn’t feel much at all. When I checked the dial, it was at two out of ten.

Remy had come out from the bedroom and was watching me.

“I can see the little hamster running in that big brain of yours,” she said. “Burning off the dust bunnies.”

This was a line a man said to me once, right before he and his friends kicked the shit out of me. I’d told Remy the story, and she thought the line was pretty cool. To be honest, I remember thinking the same thing right before the first punch.

“Well,” I said. “We got metal filings.” I motioned at the evidence bag.

“Check.”

“The counter is scuffed. And the fridge is turned down. Maybe you’re doing some metalwork here. Then you gotta store something, but temperature control it? I dunno.”

“Something like what?”

“Remember Carilla told us there was something the old guy didn’t get.”

I reached for Remy’s iPad and found her notes from the aftermath of the stakeout at Tandy’s. The final moments of Carilla’s life.

I scanned through them, paging down with a gloved finger.

“Three shots were fired from west to east,” I said.

“That was the old guy shooting Carilla,” Remy said.

I nodded. “Then the old guy saw you and took off. When we found Carilla barely alive, he patted his leg and said, ‘The old fucker. He didn’t get it.’”

“Then started mumbling about some café,” Remy added. “Bled out a minute later.”

I held up my own notebook. Old-school. Six-by-nine spiral bound.

“We both have slightly different notes, but those details are the same. Patting the leg. What he said.”

“Guy in patrol heard three shots too,” Remy said. “I interviewed him during your vacation.”

I scrunched up my brow at the word “vacation.” I’d been part of a school shooting, back-to-back with a kid dying in the bar. I took three days off. Cops. The way we talked to each other sometimes.