I tried to smile but found my voice cracking instead. “It’s because of the fire. Because of … Sorry, my cousin has vanished in a way that has me pretty freaked. I’ve got to go, see what I can find out.”

He walked down the five steps to our common landing. “You need any kind of help from me? You know, anything that doesn’t involve a handgun or some kind of physical heroism?”

I started to say no, then remembered that Thibaut had seen the people who broke into my apartment as they left early Tuesday morning. I pulled my folder of photographs from my briefcase and showed them to him.

“I know it was dark, and these aren’t great shots, but could any of these guys be the ones you saw?”

“It’s impossible to say.” He tapped the picture of Alito and Strangwell. “They’re sitting, so I can’t tell how tall they are. This one”—he was touching Alito—“he’s broad enough, but … I’d have to see them walking. I measure people’s height against Bessie. My bass,” he added when he saw my puzzled look.

I put the pictures back in the folder. As I started down the stairs, Thibaut said, “They looked menacing. Remember that.”

I nodded soberly. Menacing didn’t even begin to cover the way these people had acted.

I went out the back gate and picked up my car in the alley. In the frenzy we’d all been in since last night, no one had talked about seeing if Petra were at home, doped or … or not dead. I was going to make her apartment my first port of call, then head to South Chicago.

I hadn’t had time to replace the lump of melted plastic in my wallet with a new driver’s license, and I didn’t want to waste an hour explaining that to a traffic cop, so for the few miles that lay between me and Petra’s loft I stayed within the thirty-mile-per-hour limit, stopped at all stop signs, and even braked when the light turned yellow.

My picklocks were still in my glove compartment. I rang Petra’s bell, but there was no answer, even though I leaned on it for a good thirty seconds. I didn’t want to be seen using my picks in broad daylight, so I got inside on the tried-and-true method of ringing every bell in the building. There is usually someone careless enough to buzz you in, and I was lucky with the third bell I pushed.