The figure hit the last flight like a body thrown away.He bounced, recovered, bounded into the alley… and ran into Torres, who was ready.She took his momentum and pointed it into the wall.He hit with a sound that belonged in a butcher’s shop and slid, arms flailing for purchase that didn’t exist.
Marcus was on him first because Marcus always found a way to be first when it meant taking the worst of it.He pinned wrists that flailed like a bag of eels.The man bucked like a fish and hissed something in Spanish.
“Stop,” Kate said, almost wearily.“Stop, or you’re going to make me hurt you more.”
Something in that tone did what no badge ever could.The fight leaked out of him the way heat leaks out of a bad window.He sagged against the bricks, breath working hard.The coat smelled like rain and cigarettes.
Torres’s flashlight hit his face and stuck there.He squinted, shut one eye, opened the other.Thirty?Forty?The street makes guessing ages an insult.The scar at his temple looked like a map of a place nobody wanted to go.His teeth were too big for his mouth.
“Name,” Marcus said, efficient, calm.“Let’s start there.”
The man blinked.“Tommy.”
“Tommy what?”Torres said.
“JuthtTommy.”He said it like he’d practiced until it became true.
“Big fan of church architecture, Tommy?”Marcus asked.“You picked a scenic spot.”
Tommy twitched a shoulder, almost a shrug.“It’s dry.”
“Not everywhere,” Torres said, glancing up at the roof line.“What were you doing up there?”
“Sleeping.”
“Your bed’s downstairs,” Kate pointed out.
The man shrugged.
Kate took a breath that had dust on it and asked the thing that mattered most.“Who else is here?”
“Nobody.”He didn’t hesitate.He didn’t blink.
“Then you won’t mind if we look through your things,” Kate said.
“What things?”Tommy said, and the ghost of a smile slipped over his mouth and was gone.The smile wasn’t for them.The smile was for the dodge.
Park and another uniform, Ruiz, materialised at Kate’s shoulder, breath fogging.The list was in an evidence bag in Park’s hand.
“I’m going to search you now,” Torres said.“Is there anything in your pockets that you shouldn’t have?”
The man called Tommy laughed at that, a laugh like a crack in the ice.
“Depends what you mean by shouldn’t.”
Torres patted him down, slipped a hand into the man’s outer coat pocket and came out with a wad that didn’t belong there.She flicked it with her thumb.“A hundred and… sixty-three.”She gave a small, appreciative whistle.“Church pays well for naps these days.”
Tommy stared at the money like he’d never seen green before.Then he shrugged, smaller this time.“Found it.”
“Where?”Torres asked.
“Thtreet.”
“Which one?”Marcus said, patient in the way he was when he was enjoying himself.“This street?That street?The very big one down there with the river in the middle?”
Tommy’s eyes slid to Kate, then back.“Street’s a street when you ain’t got money.”
“Try again,” Torres said.“Because right now, we’re looking for somebody who liked making lists.Lists of people who then died.We’re trying very hard not to assume you’re that somebody.”
