Lionel took the lead. “I only have an hour, because I have a class at three-thirty. Nick has a class at three. So until then we’re all yours. How can we help you? Anything Mrs. Cricket wants, we’re up for. First, though, is there any news on Mr. Cricket? We call the hospital every day, and they just say the same thing—he’s holding his own, or words to that effect. One day I did talk to the doctor. Nice guy. All he would say, though, was he was optimistic.”

“Mr. Cricket is improving. They had to take him back into surgery, but he came through that okay. He was in a coma, but he came out of it. He’s a fighter and has a lot to live for, so like Dr. Wylie said, we’re all optimistic,” Jack informed the young men. “Now, tell us what you know about this place and the day the shooting happened.”

“See, that’s the thing, Mr. Emery. We were all in class. We usually don’t come out here during the day, unless one of the tenants calls us. If we have a slow week, we will come out during the week, at least once or twice a day. We work in shifts. Basically, though, we’re the night patrol. Mr. Lomax is in charge during the day. My boys and I take turns. There are nine of us on any given night. Sometimes all twelve of us are here. And Mr. Lomax doesn’t want us out here during the day anyway. The guy hates us, hates the ground we walk on. None of us has ever shown him one ounce of disrespect. Never, not once.

“He wanted us gone from day one, but Mr. Cricket put his foot down. That settled things. We try not to get in his way. I just wish he would do the same thing, but he’s determined to get in our faces every chance he gets. For some reason, he thinks this place is his. And he does run a tight ship. This place runs smoothly. I’ll give him that. The tenants don’t like him for a variety of reasons that are none of our business, and we try to stay out of it.

“But to get back to your question, no one here knows anything, and I made sure my boys and I talked to every single tenant. Most of these people are up in years, and they play their televisions loud because most of them don’t have hearing aids, so the sound of a gunshot wouldn’t register. Trust me when I tell you, if they knew anything, we’d know it before Mr. Lomax.