"What do you see?" Benjamin whispered. He was close, but not close enough that he'd draw attention beyond the window.

Getting into the building next to the alley had been stupidly easy. We had climbed through a broken window and navigated through dirty blankets and piles of trash to the first floor, where, in a room made of bare concrete, we crouched by the window overlooking the murder scene.

I waited until the last moment before looking outside, and now, with nothing but emptiness between me and the body, I lacked the courage to uncover the truth.

"So? Describe the victim to me."

I couldn't hesitate in front of Benjamin. He would suspect.

With my hands tight on the sill, and a gray, damp nastiness sticking to my fingers, I leaned forward to look.

It was him.

I knew it.

I had no idea what his name was, but I knew his voice sounded nasal and that he flapped like a girl.

He had been killed because of me.

"Carli, if you want to leave..." Benjamin touched my shoulder. It sent shivers down my spine when he used that gentle voice, reminding me of his mother.

I shrugged him off. "He's male, with short, curly black hair. He must be no older than twenty. He has Jodi's gang's dragon tattoo on his neck."

"A dragon?" Benjamin made a disgusted face. "How tacky."

"He's wearing a blue and red puffer jacket and black pants. He's lying on his back, arms open, legs curled up, head turned to the side. There's a hole in his forehead, but there's no blood around the wound, only on the ground under his head."

My voice remained steady, focused. Had he already realized I was guilty? Did he buy it?

I looked at him, with his stupid blue hair, corpse-colored skin, and sunglasses. He looked like a hipster vampire, but Cassy was convinced he was a genius. I had to be careful.

"And what does that pool of blood tell us?"

I pressed my lips together. I looked down again. What does it tell us? Why was he asking me? Wasn't I just there to describe the scene? "Maybe he hit his head when he fell? HEY! OW!"

He flicked my temple, looking very pleased with himself.

"Think, kid. The victim has a bullet hole in his forehead and blood loss from the back of the head." He tapped the center of my forehead with his index finger. "The bullet enters here, the head snaps back, the body falls on its back. A pool of blood forms under the head. So...?"

"So... the bullet exited from the other side?"

"Exactly. Probably something more powerful than a .22 caliber, to go through a skull from side to side, but less powerful than a .45, or the entry wound wouldn't be just a hole without blood. The exit wound opened immediately, and the bleeding started right away. Death was instantaneous, so the heart stopped beating when the bleeding began. What does that tell us?"

And what the hell do I know? Why was he asking me, and why did he expect me to answer? I felt an irrational irritation building up. "I... I don't know."

"Blood circulates because the heart beats. If the heart doesn't beat..."

"The blood doesn't circulate."

"And so?"

I pondered for a moment. "So the victim stopped bleeding very quickly."

"Exactly. We're talking less than one hundred and twenty seconds. So that pool formed immediately after the shot, and so we're sure the body wasn't moved after death; this must definitely be where the killer shot. Does the entry wound look round to you? Or is it oval?"

I looked beyond the glass again. The white-clad men were taking photos around the corpse, and the fat policewoman was arguing with that bastard Kaya had thrown ice cream at.

The body lay still, eyes open and staring at me. It looked calm now that it was dead. Calmer than it had been when alive, for sure.

"To me, the wound looks round."

"Then it's likely that the gun was perpendicular to the forehead. The killer was facing the victim, and the two didn't have a significant height difference. Are there any signs of burning on the forehead?"

"Burning? No. Why should there be?"

"Because a shot closer than five centimeters would have caused burns. If there aren't any, it means the gun didn't fire at point-blank range. Now look at the direction of the torso. The impact caused the victim to fall backward, and if the killer really fired from in front of the victim, we can hypothesize the line where the killer should have been at the time of the murder."

Benjamin was smiling. It was a bit unsettling how he buzzed like a caffeine-pumped child. What an annoying guy.

I did as he asked, following the line of the torso. "He must have been towards... the entrance of the alley. But what does this information do for us?"

"It can give us some idea about the nature of the relationship between the victim and the killer. The two were looking at each other, probably more than a meter apart, which can indicate a social distance, kept with coworkers or acquaintances, or a personal distance, typically kept with friends and family. Certainly not an intimate distance. The victim was further inside the alley than the killer. So either he didn't consider the killer a threat enough to keep a clear escape route, or the killer caught him off guard by entering the alley later."

"This doesn't eliminate countless possibilities." It could be a friend, or a relative, or an acquaintance, or a colleague. Maybe he caught him off guard, or perhaps they were just talking calmly.

"True, it's not a great lead. So what should we look for then?"

I glared at him, but he didn't even notice. It must be a nice life, one in which you don't even notice when people give you dirty looks.

Maybe my stubborn silence was enough to make him realize I had no idea what he was talking about.

"What are the three fundamental things we should always ask ourselves in front of a crime? You don't know?"

"And why should I know?"

"You're a smart kid," he replied, as if it were a normal thing to say. And there he was smiling like his mother again.

I squeezed my fingers around the window sill, and that gray, damp nastiness slipped under my nails. What did he know about whether I was smart or not? He didn't even know me.

"Well, I don't know."

"Means, opportunity, and motive," he said, listing them on his fingers. "Talk to me about the means, what did the killer need?"

The same thing I needed at that moment to end that conversation. "A gun."

"And a bullet. Don't forget the details, they're the heart of the investigation. What about opportunity?"

I huffed. It felt like being interrogated at the blackboard. "Anyone who passed by here at the right time with a gun would have had the opportunity to commit the murder. We're always groping in the dark."

"True. If we started looking for everyone who passed by here around the time of the murder, who potentially could have had a gun, we'd have to interrogate a few hundred suspects. That's why the most important point is always the motive. Especially when it comes to murder."

"But the motive could have been anything."

"You're wrong. The only reason that can drive a person to kill another is a very deep passion."

What a bunch of bullshit. "So you think they were in love?"

"No, not necessarily. Love, hate, jealousy..."

I crossed my arms. "Look, people here kill each other all the time for stupid reasons. There's no great passion behind it. That guy worked for Jodi. Probably did something stupid, and the boss sent someone to put a bullet in his head. That's all."

"It's never just that when it comes to murder." Benjamin's gaze wandered out the window, but he wasn't looking at the alley, he was staring straight ahead, at the building across. I wonder if he could see it. His gray eyes often moved aimlessly, as if they had nothing to focus on. "It's possible it went down as you say, but the motive remains the same. Loyalty and fear towards one's boss are powerful passions, they can turn any man into a monster."

A monster.

He talked as if shooting a criminal in an alley was the worst sin there is. It wasn't that serious. After all... that guy had chosen of his own free will to join Jodi's gang, no one forced him. He had decided to mess with the Coyotes. He had been duped by a stupid girl.

It wasn't my fault.

I peeked one last time. The men in white had brought a stretcher. All that remained of the corpse was a black bag.

Benjamin kept staring out the window, seeing nothing. The answers were right under his nose, but he couldn't see them.

...

I pedaled home on my bike. Benjamin had promised to pick me up the next day, at five in the afternoon, to go talk to the first Coyote.

He had refused to pick me up from home, though. I wonder why.

Christopher Walker greeted me with a couple of energetic barks when I slipped in through the back.

"Guard my bike, huh?" I left it leaning against Cassy's motorcycle, just to annoy him.

Inside the house, I found him on the couch, as always. That's how he was, sleeping during the day and living at night.

These days, he knew me by the back of my turned head, lying in bed, and I knew him by the sound of his snoring.

It was better that way. I couldn't bear the weight of his gaze when he looked at me. I couldn't ignore how fake his laughter was when he was around me.

I went into the big room to check on mom. She lay on her back, arms crossed over her chest, as if she was already prepared for the coffin. I touched her throat with two fingers, feeling the warmth of her blood flowing even before capturing the still strong beat.

"Just fucking die already."

Maybe things would be different when she died. Maybe Cassy would return to how he used to be.

I left mom's room and went back to the living room. I approached the couch, wrinkling my nose. The smell of alcohol that Cassy had been saturated with the night before had faded, but the sweat was still there.

I crouched in front of his face. There were still traces of old burns on his right temple; the final tip of his eyebrow had never grown back.

Cassy cracked open an eye. He looked pathetic. Little beard hairs sprouted randomly all over his chin; his eyes were yellowed and sunken.

"How much did you drink last night?"

He grunted, as if the sound of my voice rattled his head. He raised a hand to his forehead, to keep his brain from escaping. "Since when is that your business?"

"Did he turn you down again? Your Benjamin?"

Cassy made a deep, despondent noise. He turned himself around with the agility of a starfish and buried his face into the couch. "I don't know any Benjamin. Let me die."

I rolled my eyes. Maybe it was time to call Masao; only he could get Cassy back on his feet from these moods. I only made them worse.

Since Cassy was occupying the entire couch, I stood up on my tiptoes and sat on his back.

I sighed. "Cassy?"

"What?" His voice was muffled by the couch cushion.

I wasn't even sure what I wanted to tell him. The truth was out of the question. He'd completely lose it. I wanted to ask him if he hated me, if he had ever wanted to abandon me, or if he wished someone would take me away.

But I couldn't ask him. The only time I tried, he... he fought with mom. I had never been scared of him like I had been in that moment. I really thought he was going to kill her.

A deep passion...

"If I had... caused something terrible, would you... stay with me? Even if it was my fault?"

Cassy turned his head to be able to fix one eye on me. He stayed like that for a moment, then started turning completely. He freed one arm and wrapped it around my waist to keep me from falling when he sat up. He held me close and looked me in the eye.

I couldn't stand it. There was something deep and unstoppable in his eyes, every time he looked at me. Everyone thought he loved me deeply; even he wanted to believe it.

I knew the truth. He hated me because mom remembered me when the firefighters arrived.

With the house on fire and the firefighters trying to get something sensible out of that woman, mom remembered she had a daughter.

The firefighters rushed in, found me, saved me. I hadn't even inhaled a puff of smoke.

Cassy was holding me tight. His aversion towards me was hidden, but it was there. I saw it. Before he knew the truth, his eyes were sweet, his love for me was simple and total.

It changed when Masao told him what actually happened that night. How he was woken up by the noise of sirens and the shouting of neighbors. How he ran barefoot down the street to our old house and found it engulfed in hellfire.

Masao ran to the ambulance, found me and mom.

"Where's Casper?"

Masao had caught the attention of the firefighters, who were now just trying to prevent the flames from spreading to nearby houses. He swore there was another child.

They hesitated. Anyone who tried to enter at that moment would risk death. So they ran to mom and asked her to confirm if there was another child.

"No. There's no one else."

Cassy held my face tight between his hands and turned it until I was forced to look at him. I didn't want to, I could see how much he hated me.

"I'd burn for you, Carli. I'd burn everyone."

I clung to his chest to avoid his gaze. "I don't want that. I don't want to see you burn. I just want us to stay together."

"We will."

"And if they arrest you? And if they kill you?"

"It will never happen."

"You'll never die?" I chuckled.

But he answered completely serious. "I'll never leave you."