Free Blood and Bone by Austin Camacho

Baltimore as well as I know Washington. It ain’t far.”
    â€œOkay,” Hannibal said, clenching his teeth against the thump of a pothole every bit as deep as any in DC. “I guess I expected him to be a bit more upscale.”
    â€œSorry,” Ray called from the front, lighting another smoke. “Once you pass Johns Hopkins it’s downhill from there. I don’t know, makes sense to me. The kid wanted to get as far away from his father’s world as he could, right? Join the revolution, get with the real people. He’d go looking for a real neighborhood.”
    It made sense to Hannibal too. And unless much had changed in eighteen years, Jacob Mortimer had found what he was looking for. Hannibal could almost hear the income level drop as Orleans became Franklin Street. By the time Franklin turned into Edmonson, he felt right at home. This could be Anacostia, his neighborhood. Same people, samebuildings, same sparse trees trying to survive at the edge of the sidewalk.
    Ray turned a corner, then another, and Hannibal watched a kid exchange money for drugs with an even younger boy. Now every face he saw was darker than his own and the limo was getting hard looks from some of the passersby.
    â€œUh Oh,” Ray said, and Hannibal sat forward, looking around for trouble. He did not see anyone nearby who looked like a threat, so he checked the dashboard. Plenty of gas. No warning lights. But Ray was pulling over to the curb so maybe something was happening to the car.
    â€œWhat is it?”
    â€œNothing wrong up here,” Ray said, “But I think you got a problem. We’re here.”
    Hannibal checked the street number against the piece of paper he got from Moon. This was Jake Mortimer’s last known address. A four-story apartment building in the middle of a block of row houses. He had lived on the first, which was now the only floor completely intact. The place was unoccupied. Large signs on the door and the boards over the front windows declared this building condemned.

-11-
TUESDAY
    When a clerk unlocked the door to the Baltimore Hall of Records at eight-thirty Tuesday morning, Hannibal and Ray walked in. Once inside, Hannibal knew which desk he wanted. The woman behind it looked like every librarian in a nineteen fifties film, complete with glasses and her hair with a bun on the back of her head. Before asking for any help, he offered her his private investigator’s license and removed his Oakleys. She read it, compared the photo to his face, and returned it to him.
    â€œI’m trying to verify birth records for an estate case,” he said. “The girl in question was born in Baltimore seventeen years ago. Are those birth records computerized yet?”
    â€œAfraid not,” the clerk replied. “I think they’re on microfiche, but they might still just be paper records. We could find that birth certificate for you in ten business days, but since you’re a licensed investigator and all, if you’re in a real hurry…”
    â€œYes,” he smiled. “If you’ll just point me in the right direction, my assistant and I will get started.”
    Two minutes later Hannibal and Ray were seated at adjoining microfiche readers, poring over poorly organized copies of every birth certificate filed in the state of Maryland.
    â€œI was up too early for this, Chico,” Ray said.
    â€œThat’s why I turned in early,” Hannibal said, working to bring his reader into focus. “I knew we’d be fighting rush hour and I wanted to be here when they opened. Don’t forget, Kyle’s clock is ticking and I want to report some progress to him today.”
    â€œSpeaking of reporting, did you call Cindy last night? She told me she’s involved with the case.”
    Hannibal never looked up from his search, lapsing into the tunnel vision he knew often led to success. “No, I never got the chance to call.”

    Cindy paid