Outside, French slid behind the wheel, and followed a two-lane until he caught the state highway that would take him into Charlotte. As a city cop, he’d always felt guilty about life beyond the city line, but he was a father first, and city life had been trending down for years. It would be easy to blame the war, but the shift felt more fundamental than that. People didn’t care like they used to. They locked their doors, and looked away on the street. There was less trust between neighbors, and no love for cops, either. It had been that way since the Kent State shootings, at least, since the race riots in New York and Wilmington, the uprisings at Attica, the bombing in Wisconsin. Even in a city as small as this—a half-million people—French had seen things he’d never imagined, not just the protests and riots but bra burnings and flag burnings, the explosion of homelessness and poverty and drugs. To jaded eyes, the problem was larger than broken families or loyalties or even broken cities. The country was wounded and hurting. Was divided too big a word?

Once across the city line, French worked his way past the subdivisions and commercial areas, then downtown, where buildings rose twenty and thirty stories, and people were out on the sidewalks. The restaurants were busy, so were the nightclubs and bars. The main drag was four-lane, and cars cruised it slowly before turning around to do it again. His interest was little more than passing, but eyes still found the cruiser as if cop were written on the side.

Deeper in the city, French slowed as he approached a half-mile stretch of abandoned factories built in the late 1800s. An experiment in city renewal had seen attempts at rehabilitation, but the longed-for influx of apartment and condo dwellers never materialized. The buildings now were mostly vacant. There were a few flophouses, some struggling artists, a bit of industrial storage. The building he wanted was on the last corner of the worst block, so he rolled in quietly, and got out of the car the same way. Darkness pooled between distant lights, and there was movement in that darkness, hints of glass and cigarettes where people huddled on loading bays and crumbled stoops.

“Anyone here seen Jimmy Hooks?” French showed the badge as he approached a group of men on a loading dock, their legs stretched out, backs against the brick. They saw the shield, but didn’t care enough to hide the needle. “Hey. Jimmy Hooks. You seen him?” One of the junkies turned his head and gave a slow blink. French held out a ten-dollar bill. “First to tell me gets it.”

“Oh, hey, man, I think I saw him…”