I watched her, searching for clues, and found her waiting with her eyes fixed on me, pupils lit with curiosity. She enjoyed this game, wondering what I could want from her, reveling in having all my attention.

It was something I had seen before, that light. It was the same one Cas had once had, when he would plant himself on the carpet in front of my TV, and for hours on end, he would stare at those racing bikes spinning in circles like tops.

He dreamed of becoming a professional motorcycle racer. He wanted it more than anything else, and he was ashamed of it, just because it was a dream.

He said it would never happen. It couldn't happen. He could never afford a racing bike.

"Tick, tock..." Carli brought me back to the present.

Maybe I knew how to play this. It was true, I didn't know much about what motivated Carli, but I knew she liked this attention, being the one with the answers someone desired.

"I need information."

She immediately reached out her hand again.

"But! No more sporadic payments. You know I'm investigating on behalf of your brother. I need more stable help. Let's say... part-time."

Carli tilted her head again, dazzling me with her earrings. "You mean you'll hire me? And for how much?"

"Um... six dollars an hour?"

"Twenty. Plus bonuses."

I rolled my eyes. "Fine, twenty. But I need to have you always on hand. And you can't hide ANYTHING from me. Got it?"

She crossed her arms and thought for a moment. Was she calculating her potential earnings?

"Hmm, to be always on hand, I'll need a cell phone. And a computer."

"Okay. I'll buy you a phone and a computer. So let's do a trial run on the hiding bit, shall we? Where did you get those earrings?"

She huffed. "I bought them."

"How?"

"With money?"

"What money?"

"My money."

"And where did it come from?"

She shrugged. "From a bag."

I clenched my teeth until my jaw hurt. "And where did you find this bag?"

More shrugs. "In a building."

Okay. She would continue like this forever. "Did you steal it?"

She put a finger on her chin, deep in thought. "Um, define stealing."

"The act of taking something that isn't yours without permission and with no intention of returning it."

"Oh, well... then yes."

I let my face fall into my hands. Eleven years old and already a thief. Christ... "Okay, fine. If you want to work for me, no more thefts from now on, understood?"

She shrugged vaguely. "If you pay me well... So, what do you need?"

Right... what did I need? Casper had relieved me from the investigations, it was no longer my problem. Of course... there was the issue of Jodi. There was the issue of the body.

I had no intention of getting involved in that story more than necessary, but if there was a murderer involved, someone needed to find out what was happening.

"Okay, let's start with something easy. The letter you showed me mentioned a place, the Roller. Do you have any idea where that is?"

"Sure," she replied as if I were the biggest idiot. "It's an abandoned construction site. They left a large concrete cylinder there, that's why they call it the Roller. A lot of drug dealers hang around there."

Drug dealers. Of course. I felt my heart squeezing like a shriveled sponge. "And do you know what the stuff referred to in the letter is?"

"Well, usually it means drugs, right?"

I fell silent, lips pressed tight.

"If you're asking me if my brother is a drug dealer, the answer is: I don't know. Maybe, well... if he is, I hope he's making someone else do the counts, because he's always been shit at math."

"Okay, last question: do you know who Jodi is?"

She opened her mouth, then closed it. Then opened it again: "You don't know who Jodi is?"

Okay. At least I had confirmed Dotty's version about this mythical master of the Pit.

"I know something. I want to know what you know, living around here."

She turned her head from side to side and then started walking, motioning for me to follow her. "I know what everyone knows," she spoke quietly, heading towards the same alley where she and Kaya had passed a little while ago. "Jodi is a white man, almost entering his forties. Dark hair, but sometimes he dyes it red. He has tattoos on his arms, neck, and face. I think he's about six feet tall, maybe a little shorter, I'm not sure, I've never seen him up close."

"But you've seen him?" I asked, astounded.

"Of course. He lives here. What do you think? That he stays in the tallest tower of his castle and plots in front of a map of Nogree? Everyone has seen him, he walks the streets like a normal person, although he's never alone. Anyone can approach him, they say he's a friendly type. It's easy to join his gang, but it's practically impossible to leave it. People around here like Jodi. Everyone knows that if you have a problem, you can go to Jodi. His prices are reasonable and, unless you try to cheat him, he won't send someone to break your legs."

"That's not what I heard." We exited the alley and emerged onto the main street. The kids on the side of the road had been dispersed, the police car sirens had been turned off.

Carli tried to cross the street, towards the cordoned-off area, but I grabbed her shoulder and held her back.

"I heard that Jodi is behind most of the murders in the Pit. Your reasonable criminal version doesn't fit with that of a murderer."

Carli turned her gaze away from the police officers milling around the yellow tape, and tilted her head to look at me. "Even murder can be reasonable. Don't you think?"

I still had a hand on her shoulder. I found myself squeezing it. I had the feeling she was genuinely interested in my answer. Or maybe I just hoped she was.

"No, Carli. I don't think taking someone's life can ever be reasonable. Or forgiven."

"Oh," she chuckled. "Maybe that's why you and Casper don't get along."

I made an effort to hide any reaction. She couldn't have hit a more painful spot.

A white van approached the crime scene, parking sideways next to the police cars. Two people clad head to toe in white uniforms emerged from the doors.

"You were there with the cops earlier," Carli said. "Did you really become a detective?"

That question was like a loose tooth finally coming out, painful and cathartic at the same time. She knew I was albino, and she still thought I was a detective.

I immediately felt ridiculous at that burst of hope. Carli was only eleven, what did she know about the world?

"I'm not a detective. I probably will never be a detective. I'm blind."

And now I felt even more pathetic because I hadn't said it to convince myself; I had said it hoping that she would contradict me, that she would console me.

"But then why were you there?"

"I'm just an intern. I fetch coffee and fill out paperwork. Today my supervisor was feeling adventurous and took me out into the field."

"Oh." A small exclamation laden with something I couldn't quite recognize. "And... did you see the body? Did he seem... I mean... what was he like? Could you identify him, did he have any... distinctive signs...?"

"I don't know, Carli. I didn't notice anything, I'm blind."

It was the second time I had used that word. I had always hated calling myself blind. It sounded so final and defeatist. Visually impaired was a whole spectrum of possibilities. Who knows what a visually impaired person sees? After all, anyone wearing glasses is visually impaired; it's not that dramatic.

"Now it's my turn. Why were you there?" I asked, regaining my self-control. It wasn't time for self-pity.

"Kaya told me her cousin had passed by and seen the commotion. We just wanted to stir up some trouble."

"I see."

"Can you let me take a peek at the body?"

Oh, what a casual, fortuitous, and nonchalant question. Carli was quite sharp for her age, perhaps even sharper than I had thought. What could a smart and determined girl hide when she's ignored from morning till night?

I had waited long enough to make it clear how suspicious it had made me. Now I could reply with a firm, "Why?"

She continued her casual banter, "I've never seen a dead person."

"I don't think I have the authority to let you through."

"The building on the left is abandoned; I bet we could see something from the window."

I pressed my lips together. "Carli. Is there a particular reason you want to see this body?"

She remained silent. A not-so-casual silence.

The two white-clad men pulled a stretcher out of the truck.

"Tick tock, they'll be taking it away very soon."

"And you don't want to know who it is?" she countered. "It could be a Coyote."

It could...

I hadn't even thought about it. After making sure it wasn't Casper, the dilemma of the corpse's identity had taken a backseat. But Carli was right. If Cas had stepped on the toes of this Jodi, it was possible that one of his associates had gotten involved.

And if one of Cas's friends had been killed... oh. It would be a mess.

"Carli... how well do you know your brother's friends?"

She maintained her stubborn silence.

"One of them attacked me last night. I think our brave attacker doesn't want me poking my nose into this, and that makes me suspect there's a little Judas among Casper's apostles."

"I don't think so," she grumbled.

"That's it? Just 'I don't think so'?"

"You don't know them."

"And you do?"

Carli looked at me. She looked at the stretcher scraping against the pavement on creaky wheels, then back at me.

She didn't answer.

"I think I could get to the bottom of this if I questioned them one by one. If you help me meet them, I'll help you get into the building on the left before they take the body away. But you'd better hurry. They're pulling out the black bag."

Carli hesitated. She put her hands in her pockets.

She had the chest of a mature girl and was so small. Looking at her gave me a sense of discord, as if she were something incomplete, cobbled together from bits and pieces collected here and there.

That's how you felt at that age. You started to recognize distinct pieces of yourself, but there was no way to put them together.

It was impossible to predict who she would become, which pieces would prevail and absorb the others.

With great presumption, I believed I could intervene in that process, that I could smooth out the roughest parts, soften the edges.

But if my intentions were truly so pure, I wouldn't have involved her in that story. I wouldn't have leveraged her childlike naivety, her need to prove herself.

I wouldn't have said, "But if you're afraid of getting caught, we don't have to go."

Because I knew she would look at me defiantly, and with those bright eyes, she would say, "I'm not afraid of anything."