“Don’t get any ideas,” I said to Lionel. I moved farther into the apartment and checked the bathroom and a storage closet. The storage area housed a washer-dryer combo. End of the line. Concentrating, I mentally cleared away the current mess, focusing on how the unit appeared during the height of the project. Who, if anyone, surveyed the contents after Sean Pruitt died? To my knowledge, there might not have been an accounting of any kind.

Lionel was right; nothing had survived. We wouldn’t be able to separate the routines and lives of men from the passage of time. The image was corrupted with no chance to re-create or rehabilitate it. Despite my cynicism, I’d almost begun to hope I was onto something, that perhaps I’d salvage a clue, an incriminating photo or note, or a ghostly phone message. Dust, rust, mold, jettisoned clothing, shredded paper, and tiny animal corpses were the sum and the legacy of those who’d moved on. The meaningful lack of evidence compounded the simple math; the ME and cops had performed their due diligence and correctly concluded a suicide had occurred. Sean Pruitt went to Shaft 40 and jumped to his death.

Tidy, except for pesky, nagging details. Sean Pruitt had taken a sauna, scraped his nails, anointed his entire body with mineral oil, and dosed himself with a combination of drugs including synthetic peyote. That sounded like a ritual. How had Boss Man described the Mares of Thrace? Pentecostal, minus the Christianity.

Pensive and annoyed, I gripped my squash ball; twenty-five repetitions with the right, thirty with the left because that hand needed all the help it could get, and as I meditated, a question materialized. When crashing with friends in cramped quarters, where does one sleep? With a kind of dazed apprehension, I went to the couch in the living room and pulled out the cushions. Two quarters, a ballpoint pen, and lint. There was a floor vent near the couch. I lifted the grill and spotted a white smudge in the murk. A wadded handkerchief was tucked into the space. The handkerchief contained a wedding band and a bent photo of Sean Pruitt and his wife, Linda. June Pruitt had mentioned the ring was missing and presumed it stolen. A klepto paramedic would’ve made for a simpler explanation. Reality bends in strange directions. The photo was similar to the one she gave me; the couple was younger, less careworn in this version. On the back Sean Pruitt had scribbled, To my darling, Rita: Youth, Looks, and Love Everlasting. The wedding band was inscribed, Darling Sean, Love of My Life, Linda.

I flipped over the photo. Who the hell was Rita?

“Oh, come on,” Lionel said upon examining the evidence. “We were almost in the clear. Tell you what, put that thing back and we’ll pretend it doesn’t exist.”

“Tallyho, boys,” Bellow said as he ambled toward us.

I pocketed the evidence.

“It’s a bust.”

Bellow shrugged and continued to the front door. Lionel made frantic bug eyes at me. I shushed him with a throat-slash motion and followed Bellow.