Linn moved a file box of papers, a huge leather-bound book that looked like a photo album, and a wrinkled, flattened silver jacket from a chair. He motioned me into it. For himself, he pushed the mess on the desk toward the center and perched on the cleared edge. Rico caught a box that fell off the other side.

“Bad cop,” she said, with a glare at Linn. “No donut. Is this your way of telling me we should go to your office?”

“Not at all. Comfort and convenience dull the sharpest mind.”

They sounded like the Ticker and me. How long had they been partners? I felt a moment of jealousy. She had her best friend to back her up. Why couldn’t I have mine?

Rico dropped the drawer on top of the clutter. It was full of the things people wear or keep in their pockets: keys, some jewelry, an impression ball, a tooled leather coin purse. No buttons torn from a murderer’s coat. No matchbook with an address pencilled inside. Wolfboy’d taken me to too many movies. “No clothes?” I asked Rico.

She grinned. “You wouldn’t have liked ‘em.”

“Oh.” I picked up the impression ball first. The song it played, started by contact with my palm, was the Pit Bulls’ “Jump Me Now.” “That’s Charlie all over,” I muttered.

Rico and Linn began to laugh hysterically.

“Shit,” I said, torn between laughter and anger.

“Sorry,” Rico gasped. “Cop humor.”

I swapped the ball for a ring, dull silver metal and a big piece of red glass. I pushed it around my palm, wondering what to do with it. A glance showed me Rico watching, sober-faced now and with that look in her eyes again. I sighed.

Finding things. I had the thing already. What was to find? What it had done? Where it had been? All over Bordertown, knowing Charlie.

No, not where it had been. Where it belonged. Could I do that? I’d never done it before, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t. I asked the question in whatever way I do, called for the answer in whatever language my talent understands.

And I felt the tugging. It was faint, but enough to give me a direction. I stood up and began to walk as much toward it as I could, given the hallways. The pull was so weak that I concentrated only on it, not on where I was. So finding myself at the door to the morgue was a nasty shock.

Behind me, Rico said, “It works.”