“Where does Ms. Rodriguez work?” Ryan asked.

“You’re not listening to me.”

“She have a steady income? A way to pay the rent?”

Trees shrugged—as well as he could with his hands in the air.

“You maybe turn her out, Rocky? Hook her on snow so she’s there when you need a quick jolt? Is that the business you’re talking about? You pimp more women than Rodriguez?”

“No way. I watched out for her. Alva isn’t what you’d call a genius.”

Ryan started firing questions, shifting topics to keep Trees off balance. “You know of her using a name other than Rodriguez?”

Trees shook his head.

“Where did she live before coming here?”

“She’s Mexican, right? Or one of those.”

“Why do you think that?”

“The name. And she had a sort of accent. Not French. I figured it was Mexican. Didn’t matter to me.”

“That’s touching, you being so open-minded and all.”

Trees rolled his eyes skyward. His forearms were now V-ing down, hanging deadweight from his upraised elbows.

“You the baby daddy?”

“What?”

“You help her kill them?”

“Kill what?”

“You crank up some tunes to drown out their crying?”

“Are you out of your fucking mind?”

“Or did she do the babies herself because you gave the word?”

Trees’s eyes bounced from Ryan to me to his car, repeated the circuit. I wondered if he was about to bolt.

“Three, Rocky. Three newborns. Presently on their way to the morgue.”

“You’re freakin’ nuts. Alva wasn’t pregnant. Isn’t pregnant. Where the hell is she?” Trees forgot all about hands-up. Both palms slapped his chest. “What do you want from me?”

“We believe Ms. Rodriguez gave birth early Sunday morning.” Ryan tipped his head toward the three-flat in which we’d spent our day. “We found the baby under the bathroom sink. Two others hidden in the apartment.”

“Jesus freakin’ Christ.” The color drained from Trees’s cheeks, leaving his nose a bright beacon in a field of pitted gray. “I don’t know nothing about Alva being pregnant.”

“How can that be, Rocky? You being her devoted guardian and all.”

“Alva is, you know, heavy. Wears baggy clothes. Looks like a goddamn tent on legs.”

“Don’t worry. DNA will answer all those messy paternity questions. If you’re the daddy, you can buy flowers to lay on their graves.”

“This is fucking horseshit.”

“Where would she go, Rocky?”

“Look, I keep telling you, I don’t know where she come from. I don’t know where she’d go. I just know her to—”

“Yeah. You’re a real romantic. Where did you two meet?”

“At a bar.”

“When?”

“Two, maybe three years ago.”

“Where have you been since Saturday?”

Trees brightened, as though sensing a sliver of hope. “I did a run over to Kamloops. You can ask my brother-in-law.”

“Bet on it.”

“Can I get something out of my car?”

Ryan nodded once. “Don’t pull any cowboy moves.”

Trees reached into the backseat of the Kia, yanked some papers from under an empty KFC bag, and gave them to Ryan. “That top one’s a flyer for my brother-in-law’s company. The green one’s my work order. Check the date. I was in Kamloops.”