“You’re basically wearing carpet samples, Shaw. You don’t have room to talk.”

“Mine are comfortable.”

North raised one foot—exposing a long patch of pale thigh where the shorts slid up—and then wobbled and put his foot back down. “See how comfortable they are when you step on a fucking nail.”

“They’re eco-friendly.”

“That’s going to be a real comfort when you get tetanus.” North tried again, this time sliding the massive Red Wing between the strands of tape before dropping his foot. The whole building seemed to shake with the crash.

“They’re quiet,” Shaw said with a wince.

“Give me a hand.” North was bent double, trying to swing his other leg through without snagging the tape.

“And they’re fair trade.”

“Just give me a hand, please.”

Shaw helped him through, and the building trembled again as North dropped his second foot to the ground.

“Next time I’ll fucking crawl.”

“I’ll get you a pair like mine next time I’m in Barcelona.”

North groaned something, and Shaw thought it sounded like a very long, very muffled fuck me.

They moved through the apartment systematically. Shaw read the room in layers, as though excavating strata of an ancient civilization. The uppermost layer, the most visible and the easiest to read, was the search that the police had conducted. Kitchen drawers had been emptied, their contents strewn across the tile. Cabinet doors hung open. A sack of flour had been poured into the trash, outlining the trash can in white drifts like snowfall. In the living room, the sofa had been overturned, the dust cover slashed, the cushions opened and the foam ripped out in chunks. The bedroom had suffered a similar fate: the mattress and box springs cut, the closet doors ajar, clothes tossed around the room. The signs of Mark’s various interests manifested like the bones of past lives. Two Cardinals jerseys. Cleats. T-shirts branded with games like Destiny and Dragon Age and Call of Duty. In a separate pile, all by itself, was an incandescent white velour robe. Then, in the closet, Shaw found a matching hat and staff and wand. One of the asshole cops—he assumed it was Barr because Reck, even though he was an asshole, didn’t seem like this particular brand of asshole—had snapped the wand in half.

Shaw’s mind turned over a single question: had Reck and Barr had a warrant to search this place? For some reason, he doubted it. And if not, what had prompted them to conduct a warrantless search? Were they banking on an open door and signs of a fight to hold up in court as exigent circumstances? Or did they simply not care? That last possibility opened a door onto a darker world.

The second archaeological layer that Shaw read in the apartment was a fight. In the front room, a sunflower print had been knocked from the wall, and a large hole showed in the canvas. More holes opened the drywall, and gypsum dust sprinkled the baseboards and the carpet. The dining room table had been overturned. A glass had shattered against the wall. The fight had carried past the front room. Someone had kicked straight through the television in Sevcik’s bedroom. Someone had gone into the bathroom, his blood forming a long, blurred track on the wall, as though he had stumbled—been kicked? punched?—and tried to catch himself.