Free Blood Ties by S. J. Rozan

kid’s only been in town a couple of months.”
    â€œMorgan said he only was interested in her before he knew kids who were cooler.”
    â€œYeah,” Sullivan said, stepping over the remains of a kitchen chair. “I guess that would be this crowd.”
    We all stood for a moment, looked around. “Shit,” Burke said. “Stinks in here.”
    It did. The gas wasn’t on, but beer, chips, and pizza had had days to meld with the ashes of cigarettes and joints and bake in the angled autumn sunlight. Flies buzzed and darted in the rancid air with the energy of an unexpected reprieve.
    Sullivan took a pack of Camels from his shirt pocket. I gave him my cigarette to light off of. He offered his pack to Burke.
    â€œI don’t smoke,” Burke said.
    â€œHelps with the smell,” said Sullivan; still Burke shook his head.
    â€œWonder where the parents are,” Sullivan said.
    I said, “Neighbors might know.”
    â€œNeighbors. Tell you something: less classy neighborhood than this, houses closer together, neighbors would have heard the party. Somebody’d have called us before things got this bad.”
    Things were pretty bad. Graceful dining room chairs lay crippled, broken, around a mahogany table with deep gouges in its shining polish. China shards sprinkled a corner of the dining room as though there’d been a dish-hurling contest. In one spot in the living room the pearl-gray carpet was still squishy underfoot; there must have been a lake of beer spilled there. Unexpectedly, a cat appeared at the top of the stairs and meowed. With clear distaste, it tiptoed down through the broken glass to join us, rubbed against Sullivan’s leg. Sullivan bent down, scratched its head. “When’s the last time anyone fed you, huh?”
    â€œYou want me to take a look around upstairs?” Burke asked.
    â€œMight as well.”
    Burke’s face said that was the wrong answer, but he went to do his duty. Sullivan headed back to the kitchen. He found the cat’s plastic water dish under the radiator, filled it, pulled a can of food from a cabinet. When he ran the electric can opener the cat spun around like a whirlwind.
    Sullivan put the can on the floor and the cat plunged its face into it. Sullivan started sifting through the papers that littered the terra cotta tiles, papers that had once been piled on the stone counter or held by magnets to the fridge. “Parents might have left the number of the place they were going,” he said, cigarette dangling from his lip. He glanced at front and back, collected in his left hand papers that didn’t help.
    He was picking up papers and the cat was eating and I was smoking when Burke called from upstairs, “Sullivan! Oh, Jesus, Jim, you better come look at this.”
    Sullivan and I exchanged looks; he dropped the papers, rose, tossed his cigarette in the sink. I followed as he strode for the stairs, where Burke, white-faced, waited at the top. We worked our way over the debris. The second floor was pretty much in the same shape as the first: wrecked. It smelled worse, though, and the stench got stronger as Burke led us along the hall to a bedroom where we had to step over what was left of a desk to get in the door. When we did, we knew why Sullivan hadn’t seen Tory Wesley around town, and why no one would ever wonder where she was again.
    Sullivan and I stood on the lawn, watched the ambulance pull in, the medical examiner’s man pull out. Huge trees with golden leaves blazed in the midday sun. The cop at the bottom of the drive was telling the neighbors, the joggers and dogwalkers, to go home because there was nothing to see. I’d given a statement, shown my license to Sullivan and various other people who wanted to see it, asked a few questions myself. Now we stood, watching.
    â€œI’ve got to go see your sister,” Sullivan said.
    â€œI know. I want to be there.”
    â€œNo. For