Free The Scent of Murder by Barbara Block

were quiet. The streetlights reflected off the wet roads. Crepe paper skeletons and cardboard witches leeringly marked our progress. When we got to Wolf Street, Manuel indicated I should take a right. Halfway down the block, he told me to stop.
    â€œAre you sure this is the place?” I asked.
    The building I was parked in front of was a one-story brick structure. The sidewalk in front of it was cracked. The front door had been boarded up with plywood, as had the two front windows. A weathered sign hung above the door. I managed to make out the first word, “Syracuse,” but the next two were too faded to read.
    â€œOf course I’m sure,” Manuel told me. He sounded annoyed. He didn’t like having his expertise questioned.
    I questioned it anyway. “How do you know?”
    â€œBecause I’ve seen her here.” Manuel started playing with the zipper of his Windbreaker. “She was at a party I went to.”
    â€œYou went to a party here?”
    â€œWhat’s wrong with that?” he demanded.
    â€œNothing, I guess.” I’d done stuff like this when I was his age, too. I turned off the ignition and pocketed the keys. “Who lives here, anyway?”
    Manuel shrugged. That and tugging up his pants seemed to be his favorite gestures. “Different people. Right now it’s two girls.”
    â€œRunaways?” I guessed.
    â€œThey’re doing okay.” Manuel’s voice was defiant. “Anyway,” he added, when I didn’t say anything, “they got no other place to go.”
    I didn’t state the obvious. Instead, I surveyed the street. The buildings—some square, some rectangular—one-, two-, and three-story structures, housed a variety of small industrial companies and warehouses. In the background, a lit up Carousel Mall loomed off to the left like a deranged blue and white spaceship ready to take off into the evening sky. Silhouettes of oil storage tanks sat off to the right.
    â€œNobody comes here at night,” Manuel said, voicing my thoughts.
    â€œExcept for you guys.”
    â€œThat’s right. Except for us. And we don’t count.”
    I took two sticks of gum out of my jacket, gave one to Manuel, and began unwrapping the other one. “So how do we get in?” I asked.
    Manuel grinned. He liked being the one in charge. “I’ll show you.” I wondered if he’d ever been a child.
    We got out of the car at almost the same time. The thud of the cab doors shutting echoed up and down the street. Manuel beckoned for me to follow him. We walked down the driveway. In the middle of the warehouse wall, someone had spray painted a smiley face with its tongue sticking out. Under it, they had written. “Going nowhere. Doing nothing.” Seemed right to me.
    I continued walking. The asphalt was littered with junk food wrappers and beer cans, plus the occasional brick that had fallen out of the wall. Manuel turned the corner, and I did the same. The back of the warehouse had been blacktopped over. A band of weed trees had grown up around the edges. Stray strips of newspaper and plastic hung from branches, fluttering in the wind like lost souls. I turned towards the building. A large pull-up accordion-pleated metal door marked the loading dock. A smaller door, now boarded up with plywood sheeting, sat a couple of feet away. The four concrete steps leading up to it looked safe enough, though once I got closer, I could see that the metal railing fastened to them was beginning to rust through.
    Manuel climbed the stairs quickly. I was right behind him. When we got to the smaller door, he bent slightly, put his hands on either side of the bottom half of the plywood, and pulled. The wood came away, revealing a door with a hole gashed into the middle of it. It looked as if someone had taken an axe to it.
    Manuel grinned. “Neat, huh? When you put the plywood back, you can’t see anything from the