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“Oh, really?” I ask, doodling a dollar sign. “Is this something the police followed up on? Is it mentioned in the report? It could be motive.”

“You’re going to have to dirty your little hands yourself,” Bristal says, nodding toward the file. “But Larry was super straight with me. He said he and Childress already assumed that Boggs had gone tits-up. They hadn’t seen him outside in days, and he’d never been in the best of health. They went to pick the place over before reporting it, and you know, maybe see if Boggs had any drugs laying around.”

“Right,” I say, chewing my pen. “Because a family treasure is a long shot, but from what I understand of Boggs, drugs weren’t.”

“Nope,” Bristal says. “But when they saw that the old man had been murdered, they didn’t want any part of it. Called it in, square and clean. Didn’t touch a thing.”

Intrigued, I play with the corner of one of the photos. Bristal wasn’t lying. Fast-food burger wrappers and empty beer bottles are floating in the water that fills the trailer, standing at least a foot high on the kerosene heater—likely the only thing keeping the old man alive through the winters. I can just see the pale outline of a naked foot floating in the water.

“Go ahead,” Bristal says. “Nobody is going to be missing that.”

Despite my better intentions, I’ve got the photo out—and a dozen others—and two minutes later am tapping away on my phone, checking first to make sure I’m not uploading to the cloud.

“Did you look through this already?” I ask, fanning the pages out.

“Yep,” Bristal says. “You can keep it, if you want, but the lowdown is that Boggs was beaten quite badly; the coroner estimated that he would’ve died of internal bleeding if he hadn’t been shot, execution-style. He put up a hell of a fight, though. His knuckles were busted on both hands, and there was skin under his fingernails, but it didn’t match any DNA in the system at the time.”

“And I doubt they’re in a hurry to run it now,” I say, sifting through documents.

“There’s no one screaming for justice on this one,” Bristal agrees. “He was an asshole, and somebody killed him. Live dirty, die dirty.”

“Is there anything here to corroborate drug connections, other than gossip?”

“They found MDMA in his trailer,” Bristal confirms. “And a bit of that, a bit of this.”

“‘A bit of that, a bit of this’?” I ask, glancing up.

“A bit of that,” Bristal says, picking up the folder and shaking it, until a little white baggie with a cat’s pawprint stamped on it falls out.

“And a bit of this,” she adds, digging around until she locates another bag, also with a white powder in it.

“Um . . . Bristallll . . . ,” I say, my voice going up in volume as I draw out her name.

“Heroin,” she says, holding up the first bag. “Five-Toed Cat, if we’re being specific. And cocaine,” she says, pointing to the second.

“You seriously brought heroin and cocaine into my house? And the cops just handed you this file?”

“Yeah, they definitely didn’t know those were in there,” she says.

“Oh my God, oh my God,” I say, shoving everything back into her bag. “If my dad knew about this—”

“He’d represent you. I hear he’s got a soft spot for the real hard cases.”

“I want you to take all of this back to the police station,” I say firmly, zipping up her book bag.

“After I make copies?” she inquires, one eyebrow raised.

I shoot an uncomfortable look at her bag. “Yes.”

“So Boggs was beaten and shot,” I say, wiping my lip where a bit of nervous sweat had formed. “But they still found drugs lying around the trailer?”

“Right,” Bristal says. “So whoever did the old man probably wasn’t there about the drugs. Which, if you ask me, gives Larry’s idea about a family treasure a little more weight.”

“But the simple fact that there were drugs present made people assume that it was a drug deal gone wrong,” I say, thinking aloud.

“A drug deal where the drugs get left behind,” Bristal repeats. “Which is, like, no drug deal, ever.”

“I wouldn’t think so,” I agree. “But why did the cops just let it go at that?”