“Sounds like he’s still willing to help, at least.” Guilt had been written all over Willie’s face yesterday, even through the high. “Assuming he didn’t lose his nerve.”
“Or that he didn’t get high again and ruin our shot,” Rios muttered. “Gotta temper our expectations of what we’re gonna get out of this interview.”
I didn’t answer. The possibility of another failed lead sat between us, heavy and unwelcome.
We turned off onto a side road that dead-ended into a cluster of low apartment buildings crouched near the salt marsh. The siding was faded, the parking lot cracked, but a few potted plants on stoops and a kid’s bicycle chained to a stair rail made the place feel lived in rather than abandoned.
As Rios scanned the building, I noted a tightness in his jaw. I wondered what he saw here. Something that reminded him of old cases? Or something that reminded him of growing up on this side of the island? I dimly remembered that his neighborhood had been a few streets over. I’d picked his sister Gabi up a few times to drive her, Gwen, and Willa to a few things. I knew their home life hadn’t been a good one, so I didn’t push. If Rios was thinking of his past, walking into a place like this as an adult carried a weight. One that was none of my business.
He pulled into a spot in front of a ground-floor unit with a crooked screen hanging half off the window track and killed the engine. “You ready?”
“No,” I said honestly. “But that’s never stopped me before.”
We climbed out. The air smelled like low tide and old oil from someone’s perpetually leaking truck. A dog barked listlessly in the distance. Willie’s door had a faded four stenciled on the frame. Rios knocked—a trio of crisp raps that spoke the universal language of official enough to be taken seriously.
We waited.
Nothing.
He knocked again, harder this time. “Sanders! It’s Carrera!”
A television murmured from somewhere in the building. An air conditioner unit churned away. No movement sounded from inside. No voice.
“Maybe he’s still asleep. You said he texted around three, right?”
“Yeah.” Rios frowned at the door like he could see through it. “Could be.”
He knocked a third time, an impatient pulse of knuckles against wood. “Willie. You told me to come by this morning. We’re not the cops. Open up.”
Silence.
The unease that had been tapping at the base of my skull slid up a notch.
“I’ll check the back,” I said. “See if there’s another entrance.”
He looked like he wanted to argue, but what was he going to say? Don’t investigate? On a missing-person case?
“Stay aware,” he said instead.
“Always,” I shot back.
The space between buildings was narrow, choked with overgrown shrubs and trash that had blown free of someone’s can and never been reclaimed. Sand and grit slid under my boots, and a spiderweb I didn’t see until the last second streaked across my arm like a ghostly thread. Behind the building, each ground-floor unit had a small concrete patio that overlooked a strip of dying grass and the marsh beyond, the kind that came standard with cheap plastic furniture and unrealized aspirations.
Willie’s patio had one chair, a cracked ashtray, and a sliding door with the blinds half-drawn.
And the door itself… wasn’t quite closed.
The latch hovered a hair’s breadth from engaged, the glass parted just enough to show a thin line of darkness inside.
Every hair on my arms stood up.
People forgot to lock doors. People were careless.
But people who’d texted investigators at three in the morning, promising to help find a missing woman, probably wouldn’t leave their door like that when they’d invited company over a few hours later.
“Rios!” I called his name sharper than I intended.
His footsteps pounded down the side path a moment later; he emerged around the corner, every muscle of his body shouting ready for action. “What is it?”
