The taxi stopped in front of a decrepit building that housed a hole in the wall restaurant and a used clothing store on the first floor and, judging by the laundry billowing out the windows, had apartments on the second. After a beat, a scrawny man stepped from the restaurant and leaned into the cab. The two Namibians exchanged a few words and the man pointed up the street.

“He says Luka lives two blocks that way.”

A minute later they stopped in front of another building, this one more run-down than most. The clapboard siding was bleached and split and the building’s sole door hung from a hinge. A mangy dog lifted his leg against the corner of the structure then took off after a rat that had emerged from a crack in the foundation. From inside they could hear a child wailing like a siren.

Cabrillo opened the taxi door and stepped onto the sidewalk. Sloane slid across the seat and emerged from his door, not wanting to be separated from him by even the width of a car.

“You’ll wait here,” Cabrillo told the cabbie and handed him a hundred dollar bill, making sure he saw the other two in his hand.

“No problem.”

“How will we know which apartment’s his?” Sloane asked.

“Don’t worry, if we’re right, we’ll know.”

Cabrillo led her into the apartment building. The interior was dim but the heat remained oppressive and the smells were nauseating — the stink of poverty that was the same the world over. There were four apartments on the first floor; one of them housed the crying child. Juan paused outside each door for a moment to inspect the cheap locks. Without comment, he took the stairs to the second floor.

At the landing he heard what he’d most feared, the incessant buzz of flies. The drone rose and fell like a tuneless song. The smell hit a second later, something that carried above the background stench. It was an odor he’d know on a primordial level even if he’d never smelled it before. It was as if the human brain could discern the decomposition of one of its own kind.

His ears and nose led him to a back apartment. The door was closed and the lock didn’t look damaged. “He let his killer in, which means he knew him.”

“The pilot?”

“Probably.”

Juan kicked the door. The wood around the handle was so brittle that it shattered. The flies hummed angrily at being disturbed and the smell was thick enough to coat the back of their throats. Sloane gagged but refused to shy away.