Coletti shut his eyes against the macabre daydream. When he opened them, everything seemed normal again. The scruffy man begged, and the sleeping ones were only dead in spirit. In some ways, the reality was more frightening than the vision, because a land of lost souls was the perfect place for the angel of death to appear.

As trash swirled behind passing cars, Coletti rubbed his temples in an attempt to clear his mind. Then he took the short walk to the spot where the three men lay.

“Yo,” he said, reaching down and snatching the blankets off one of them. “Get up!”

“Leave me alone,” the man said, trying to turn over. Coletti bent down and put his badge in his face. “I’ll leave you alone when I’m finished.”

The man sighed in frustration. “They’re roustin’ us again,” he said, awakening the two men sleeping next to him.

“No, I’m not,” Coletti said. “I’ve just got a couple of questions.”

All three men were wide awake now. Coletti stared at them and wondered how they’d wound up living in the shadows. Was it simply the bottles of alcohol that surrounded them, or was there more? Had they seen things they wanted to forget, done things they refused to remember? Or were they like him—men who’d tried and failed to right some monumental wrongs?

Coletti put his badge away. “There’s a guy named Bobby Robinson who sleeps down here. Kinda stocky with brown hair. You guys know him?”

They all looked at each other, afraid to answer. Finally, the one closest to Coletti spoke up. “Look, we don’t want no trouble,” he said.

Coletti reached down and snatched a half-empty bottle of whiskey from beneath one of the blankets. “You won’t get any trouble if you answer my questions. But if you don’t…”

They watched anxiously as he raised the bottle above his head. He was just about to drop it when the man farthest from him looked up with swollen eyes.

“We know him,” he blurted out, his face pockmarked and red from years of drinking. “He hangs out here a couple weeks outta the month.”

“When was the last time you saw him?” Coletti asked.

“Last night. Why? What’d he do?”

“It’s not what he did,” Coletti said, putting the bottle down. “It’s what he saw.”

The three men looked at each other. Clearly, they were uncomfortable. In fact, they looked downright afraid.

“I’m assuming he wasn’t the only one who saw something out here last night,” Coletti said.

The men remained silent.

“Look, we can do this the easy way, or we can do it the hard way. It’s up to you.”

The men still refused to talk.

Quickly, Coletti reached under his jacket and took his radio from his belt. “This is Dan 26. I’ve got three prisoners. I’m gonna need a wagon.”