“Yeah, okay…Do you think I can still play with the team?”

“You are definitely good enough to play with the team, but you’ve got to get yourself back in school before you can practice again. Can you do that between now and Monday?”

She nodded solemnly and got out of the car. It worried me that she left the baby carrier on the backseat for Betto to deal with, but I couldn’t add a parenting skills class to my current load; I just watched until he and the baby were safely up the walk and inside the house, then turned south, to the underpass where I’d found Billy’s Miata.

Carnifice might have searched this area for William, especially if my hunch was right that he was hot for whatever document Bron had used to threaten the company. Still, South Chicago was my briar patch. I refused to believe that Carnifice would think about it the way I did. The Bysen family was a job for them, not a complicated part of their roots.

The first part of the Skyway is built into an embankment that severs South Chicago—in fact, when it was built it put a lot of little shops and factories I’d grown up with out of business. But as it approaches the Indiana border, the highway rises up on stilts; homeless people build little shelters under them, but mostly commuters and locals use the road as a handy garbage bin. I pulled over to the verge, driving carefully—I didn’t want to puncture a tire down here—and left my lights on, pointing into the thicket of dead branches and discarded appliances.

The bracken showed fresh scarring from where the Miata had plowed into it. It had been three days now, and the area saw a lot of movement, people hiding in the undergrowth or sorting through the debris for salvage, but because of the cold the car tracks were still visible. I was no forensics expert, but it looked to me as though the car had been driven deliberately into the thicket, as if someone wanted to hide it—I couldn’t see any traces of swerving or other signs that the driver (was it Marcena? had it been Bron?) had lost control of the car.

I moved slowly, inspecting every inch of ground as I walked forward. When I got to the end of the broken branches, I got down on my knees—I’d put on old jeans after the basketball practice just for this search.

I was glad of my mittens, as I pushed the undergrowth aside and inspected the area for any trace of—anything. I found a small piece of the front fender, the paint still shiny, unlike the dull, rusted metal all around me. It didn’t mean anything, but I still stuck it into my parka pocket.