The one thing I had hoped to find was her laptop, so I could see who she’d been e-mailing what to. Although she seemed to do most of her communicating by texting, a computer might have longer documents, more of a key to what she was doing. At a minimum, I could have seen what websites she’d been visiting lately.

The big room flowed into a kitchen with a tiled work island and a big cooktop, with a grill and a restaurant-sized exhaust fan. The fancy appliances seemed wasted on my cousin. Her refrigerator held wine and blueberry yogurt and not much else. In the morning, she’d grab a carton and eat it on the bus. At lunch, she’d pick up a sandwich and eat it at her desk. And at night, the group of friends she’d made would all go out for Thai or Mexican. Or so I pictured it.

A door by the refrigerator led to a small deck and back stairs. When I pulled the door open, it swung crazily on its hinges and then fell off. I jumped out of the way just in time to avoid a smash on the head.

The noise, the shock of the door collapsing under my hand … I leaned against the work island, shaking. When my heart was more or less normal, I saw my gun was in my right hand. I hadn’t noticed drawing it.

Whoever had come in through the back hadn’t bothered with the finesse of picklocks; they’d simply crowbarred the hinges out of the doorjamb and then propped the door up when they left.

What had they taken? The computer? My cousin at gunpoint? I moved the door and went down the back stairs. There were cigarette butts on one landing, but they looked old, the residue of a smoker sent outside to indulge, not a recent watcher. The stairs ended in an asphalt areaway that was separated from the alley by a high fence and a gate. I opened the gate. Its lock was still in place. But a row of parking spaces lay behind the gate, and the intruder could have waited out there for someone to park and simply followed that person in.