Neither of my visitors seemed able to tell her story in a straightforward way, but what it boiled down to was that Six-Points Gym’s medical-supplies closet had been ransacked during the break-in. The gym worked with a lot of athletes, from weekend warriors to some of the city’s pro teams, along with many of the university’s athletes. They had a doctor on call who could hand out drugs. Neither Angela nor Bernie knew what had been in the ransacked closet.

“We don’t take drugs,” Bernie snapped when I asked. “Why would we know?”

I sighed, loudly. “It’s the kind of question you might have asked the police when they talked to you. Or they might have asked you. Six-Points must have controlled substances, or the cops wouldn’t care.”

“They didn’t say.” Angela was talking to her hands again. “They asked me how well I know August and did I know if he took drugs, sold drugs—all those things. I told them no, of course.”

“Even though you don’t know him well?” I prodded.

Angela looked up at that, her eyes hot. “I know when someone is on drugs. Ma’am. It’s true I don’t know him well—I was only two the one time he came to see us—but my mother told me he brought a toy farm with him that I kept messing with. She says August was so cute, how he put the animals to bed for the night, all the little lambs together, all the cows, how the dog got to sleep on the farmer’s bed. A boy like that wouldn’t be stealing drugs.”

I didn’t suggest that every drug dealer had once been a little child who played with toys.

Bernie nodded vigorously. “Exactement! So we need you to find August. Find him before the police do, or they will just arrest him and never listen to the truth.”

“Which is?”

“That someone else did this break-in, this sabotage,” Bernie cried, exasperated with my thickness.

“This is potentially a huge inquiry, Bernie. You need to fingerprint the premises, talk to everyone on the gym’s staff, talk to customers. The police have the manpower and the technical resources for an investigation like this. I don’t have the equipment or the staff to work a crime scene, even if the Evanston cops would let me look at it.”

“But, Vic! You can at least talk to people. When you start asking questions, they will be squirming and saying things they thought they could keep secret. I know you can do this—I have seen you making it happen. Maybe even the manager of the gym, maybe she is doing this crime and trying to blame August.”