“That’s okay, keep digging. I’m going to see Warren after this. Call me if you find anything interesting.”

“Will do.”

Taft, an officer who worked with my uncle, pulled up behind me in his patrol car as I closed my phone. A couple of neighborhood kids stood giggling, thinking I was getting in trouble. Kids in these parts rarely saw police as a positive force. It was hard to get past men in uniforms taking your mom or dad away in the middle of the night for a domestic disturbance.

I stepped out as Taft adjusted his hat and made his way toward me, scanning the neighborhood for signs of aggression. He wore a crisp black uniform and military buzz, but he wasn’t the one I needed to see.

“Hey, Taft,” I said, getting the pleasantries out of the way before looking at the departed nine-year-old girl on his heels, aka Demon Child. “Hey, pumpkin.”

“Hey, Charley,” she said, her voice soft and sweet, as if she weren’t evil.

Much like the devil himself, Demon Child had many names. Demon Child for one, as well as the Spawn of Satan, Lucifer’s Love Child, Strawberry Shortcake, or for short, a particular favorite of mine, the SS. She was Taft’s little sister and had died when they were both young. Taft had tried to save her from drowning and spent a week in the hospital with pneumonia for his effort. And she never left his side. Until she found me. And tried to claw my eyes out through no fault of my own.

The first time we’d met, she was sitting in the back of Taft’s patrol car as he was giving me a ride from a crime scene. When Strawberry thought I was after her brother, she called me an ugly bitch and tried to blind me. It left an impression.

She looked back, her long blond hair falling in disarray around her face, spotted the crumbling insane asylum, and folded her tiny arms in distaste. “What are we doing here?”

“I was wondering if you could do me a favor.”

She turned back to me, her nose wrinkled as she considered my statement. “Okay, but you have to do one for me back.”

“Yeah?” I asked, leaning against Misery. “What do you need?”

“David is dating someone.”

“Oh,” I purred, pretending to care. “Now, who’s David?”

She rolled her eyes as only a nine-year-old could. “My brother? David Taft?” She hitched a thumb toward him.

“Oh! That David,” I said, offering him a conspicuous giggle.

“What’s she saying?” he asked.

I ignored.

“She’s ugly and she wears too much lipstick and her clothes are too tight.”

“So, she’s a ho?” I chastised him with a scowl.

He turned up his palms. “What?”

“Deluxe,” Strawberry said, confirming my suspicions. She pointed straight at him. “You need to have a talk with him. That ho stayed all night. Really.”

I pressed my lips together and jammed my fists onto my hips, hoping I wasn’t bleeding internally from Reyes’s blade. I hated it when I bled internally. If I was going to bleed, I wanted to see the evidence, revel in the heroics of it all. “I most certainly will.” After tossing him a glower of disappointment, one that had him glaring back in annoyance, I explained why I needed her. “While your brother and I have our talk, will you go into that building and look for a little girl?”

Taft and Strawberry both eyed the building with skeptical frowns. “That building looks scary,” she said.

“It’s not scary at all,” I lied. Like a dog. What could be scarier than an abandoned mental asylum where, according to legend, the doctors did experiments? “There’s a nice man named Rocket who lives there with his little sister. She’s even younger than you are.”

I’d never seen Rocket’s sister, but he told me countless times that she was there with him. She’d apparently died of pneumonia during the Dust Bowl, and from what he told me, I was guessing her age to be somewhere around five.

“His name is Rocket?” The thought made her giggle.

“Yeah, speaking of which…” I leaned down to her. “While you’re in there, see if you can find out Rocket’s real name.” I had yet to get any real info on Rocket’s origins, though I’d scoured every record I could find on the asylum. Apparently, Rocket Man was not his real name.

“Okay.”

“Wait,” I said a microsecond before she disappeared. “Don’t you want to know why you’re going in?”

“To find that little girl.”

“Yes, but I need information from her if she has it. I need to know if she can tell me where to find Reyes’s body. His human body. Can you remember that?”

She crossed her arms again and said, “Duh.” Then she disappeared.

I ground my teeth just a little, certain Strawberry was God’s way of punishing me for having one-too-many margaritas last Thursday night that resulted in an ugly, tabletop version of the hokey pokey.

As Taft stood at attention, still eyeing the building with concern, I rested against Misery, propping a booted heel on her running board. “Look,” I said, luring his attention my way, “your sister says the chick you’re dating is a ho.”

He turned to me, aghast. “She’s not a ho. Well, yeah, okay, she’s a ho, thus my dating her, but she knows?”

I shrugged, incredulous. “Dude, I have no idea if your GF knows she’s a ho.”

“No, I mean Becky. She knows I’m dating someone?”