“A cat, I think,” he said, still staring.

“Weird.” It was more than that. The animal was wrapped in a makeshift bag, clear plastic bunched at the top and bound with the green paper twist ties I liked to swipe from the grocery store. One furry white leg stuck straight up, and the animal’s pink toe pads were pressed against the inside of the sack. In my mouth, my saliva had turned to glue. “Is it . . .”

“Dead?” I could feel his heart thumping through his back. “There’s blood.”

I swallowed hard and stepped out from behind him for a better look. Through the plastic I could see the white fur around the cat’s left ear was dark and matted with blood.

“If it’s dead,” he said, “that means it got murdered.”

“Fuck.” Using the illicit word gave me a thrill, and tweaked his mouth into a smile. He studied my face.

“I heard a story. This old guy in town, lives over by the river? Crissy told me. He tortures animals and stuff.”

“But Crissy’s a liar.” That was fact: she made shit up all the time, mostly so she could sneak out with her friends.

“She’s not lying about this.”

“My neighbor has a cat,” I said, contemplative. “It digs in our flowers and drops dead mice on the porch. Mom hates it. One time she was so mad she said she could kill it. I bet a lot of cats make people mad like that.” I waved my arm at the box to support my argument. Flies lifted like a cloud of black confetti.

“This isn’t like that.”

“Well, somebody did this. We’ve gotta figure out who.” It was the first thought that came to mind, not We have to tell my parents or Let’s get the cops. I loved a good mystery, even then.

“We’ll look for clues.” There was an undercurrent of excitement in his voice. Try as he might to be solemn, I could see he was delighted. “Footprints and stuff. And we can ask around to see if anyone saw him.”

Wanna play? This was our new favorite pastime. The games our fellow fourth-graders liked—four square, cops and robbers—held no joy for us. We yearned for more. Usually we had to concoct mysteries for ourselves, but here was a real one, right at our feet, and we aimed to solve it. We were natural-born detectives, he and I. That’s what I told myself, and I believed it.

“I’ll look here. You take the field.” He flashed me a grin as he crouched on the dirt path and swatted a fly from his shin. He was so tan his legs were three shades darker than the skin visible where his sock, the elastic stretched out from wear, had slipped down.

“Okay,” I said, keeping my head real still. Trying not to let him know I’d spotted the bracelet on his ankle, a neat braid of green paper twist ties lying flat against that band of pale, secret skin.