To all reading: I wish I had more to offer than this scrape of a chapter! Unfortunately, updates will probably continue to be sporadic at best. Grad school is almost completed but still manages to consume a large chunk of my time.

Chapter 4

If his teens had been about seeing just how fast he could run, his thirties had been simply about running at all. 18-year-old Joe would be so disappointed – the thought drifted by as Joe struggled to jog along the alleyway towards his car, gripping a small crate in front him and feeling his hip wrench a little in protest as he stumbled over a patch of loose gravel. The extra height and weight from a 10-pound dog food bag balanced on top of the load did little to help matters as he hitched his shoulders to grip more firmly at the bottom of the crate.

It was getting darker and Joe shivered, the sweat beading his forehead cooling abruptly with a gust of wind. As he rounded the corner, he caught sight of Nancy and Mike, still sitting on the bench outside of the coffee shop they'd originally met at. Slowing his jog to a walk, Joe gave a half wave of his elbow in the general direction of his car. "Well, I think we're all set! What do you say to getting out of here?". If Mike had heard him, there was no sign of it. Joe cleared his throat, stepping towards his trunk and balancing the weight of the crate against the trunk lid for a moment to shove a hand into his pocket and retrieve his keys. "Nancy, could you get the trunk for me?"

Hooking her fingers through the key ring dangling from his hands, Nancy stepped around Joe to unlock the trunk, eying the lid's ominous shake at her touch and grabbing to stop it from crashing back on Joe's arms as he heaved the dog food into an empty space. "Where, exactly, will Mike stay?". Her voice was quiet, but Joe still glanced over his shoulder towards Mike.

Ignoring Nancy's raised eyebrow directed at the duct tape wrapped around the trunk latch, Joe shrugged, pushing the crate to wedge between a faded blue sleeping back and an old typewriter he couldn't remember why he still had. "You heard Frank – this kid doesn't exist, legally. And the shelters here aren't any place for a kid."

Frowning, Nancy opened her mouth, seemed to change her mind, and nodded. Joe moved to pull the truck lid from Nancy's hands and carefully slammed it shut, keeping his hands heavy on either end of the lid so that the latch would catch despite its protests.

"There isn't exactly a protocol for how to handle a kid that technically doesn't belong to any district, has been dead for the past year, and doesn't have any living relations on record. We could take him to the police here, or CPS or something. But…" Joe gave a grimace, grunting as he tugged at the trunk lid to make sure it had caught, "if he has a death certificate, I'm wondering about the story there. Is he even Michael Althelhorn? Did his parents need to make him look like a citizen so they got him someone else's certificate? I mean, he looks Caucasian, but you never know. So," Joe sighed, shaking his head, "a lawyer is what this kid needs, not the police." He leaned against the trunk, crossing his arms to look at Mike who still stood on the sidewalk, quietly rubbing at his dog's ears and keeping his eyes fixed on the pavement in front of him. "He'll stay in my spare room. It's a small place, but there's room. It has heating, and it's clean—well clean for the most part—which is more than I can say about his former living situation."

Licking her lips, Nancy sighed and rubbed at her neck, watching Mike bend down and whisper something into Buddy's ear. "I see your point, okay? Really, I do. And I agree, until we figure out the death certificate issue, it might not be in his best interest to report him. But," her eyes sharpened, as she studied Joe closely, "what are you going to do with him when you're at work? I'm assuming you have some office hours, right, if you're still taking private cases?"

"I…I honestly don't know. I haven't really thought it through much more than this. I didn't exactly sign up for a kid when I went looking for a dog." Joe muttered the last sentence under his breath, but Nancy's mouth softened at the corners as he scraped a foot along the broken gravel collected against the sidewalk.

"You're right, you didn't sign up for this."

It was said quietly but somehow the tone still had Joe straightening up, and he sighed, frowning, "But neither did Michael. Or whoever he is. And I can't just take Buddy and leave him."

Nodding, Nancy looked thoughtfully at Michael, then glanced back at Joe, biting at her bottom lip.

"Well, keep me in the loop, if you can?"

"Of course".

Waving a hand to catch Michael's attention, Joe opened the rear door of his car and tilted his head towards the seats, "You and Buddy can sit back here."

It was a quiet drive. While he wouldn't have done so well with that in the past, Joe knew it was probably for the best, not pushing Michael, letting him take in the changes around him and get used to his presence. It wasn't until they were 10 minutes away from Joe's apartment that he cracked his neck and shifted in his seat, breaking the silence in what he hoped was an unobtrusive gesture.

"Well, we are getting close to my place." Glancing in the rearview mirror, Joe caught Michael's dark eyes studying his blue ones. The kid was listening and he didn't look scared, so that was something. "I think I'm going to want some frosted flakes when we get there. You know, when I was a kid, I never understood why they made those plain corn flakes. Who eats those anyway?"

No sound came from the back seat indicating Michael knew or cared what Joe was saying, but he took another breath and continued. "Then again, I've always had a thing for sugar. A 'sweet tooth', my mom used to call it. When I was a kid I added sugar to all my cereal, wheat chex, raisin bran, you name it. But my mom drew the line with frosted flakes."

Ignoring the urge to glance back at Michael, Joe continued "So, I'd refuse to eat any of the frosted flakes until Frank had finished almost the entire bag of them. Then, and only then, I would finish off the bag because I knew if I got the very last bowl of flakes, I'd also get a decent pile of sugar that had shaken off them. Frank was always a good sport about it, but he did make me eat all the raisins in his granola until I was 14." Grinning at the memory, Joe huffed out a laugh. "We always were a good team."

"Who's Frank?"

The voice was quiet, almost inaudible really, but Joe heard a shift behind him, like Mike was leaning in.

"Oh, I guess I didn't say, Frank is my brother. He's a little older than me. And a little smarter too, according to him." Risking a peek in the rearview mirror, Joe could see Michael's head tilted just slightly towards him, focused in a way that had Joe feeling encouraged.

"Yep, Frank and I, we've always been pals. Spent a lot of time together. We even had our own detective agency a while ago."

With an easy swing to the right, Joe pulled to a stop in front of his apartment complex, glancing back at Michael as he gave a tug to the emergency brake and turned off the engine. The sudden quiet felt heavy.

"Well, let's head on up. I'm on the second floor." Michael nodded, and with a grunt, Joe hauled himself out of his seat and moved to the trunk, popping it open and grabbing the supplies he'd gotten along with Michael's few belongings.

When Joe paused to set down his crate and lock the trunk, he noticed that Michael had figured out the lock on his passenger seat – so he's familiar with cars – and stood now with Buddy at his side.

"Okay," Joe motioned with his head towards the wooden staircase leading up to line of red doors. "It's number 103".

Michael nodded as if to comply, but stayed stock still, just staring at Joe. The crate was getting heavier by the minute, so after a moment of silent eye-contact, Joe started up the stairs, hoping Michael would follow. He only noticed he was holding his breath when he heard the click-clack of Buddy's nails and a shuffle on the steps behind him, and let out a puff of relief.

Jamming the crate between the door and his chest, Joe fished out his keys and unlocked his door, elbowing it open to step inside. Buddy needed no encouragement to follow and dashed past Joe, nearly knocking him over at the knees to immediately begin sniffing exploratorily around the small apartment. Chuckling a bit as Michael crept in in a far more subdued manner, Joe shoved his door shut with a shoulder, and strode towards his rarely used office. Hopefully soon to be spare bedroom, he sighed, as he examined the bookshelves in the corner and the clunky computer monitor on the floor that had managed to outlive all his laptops so far. There should be an air mattress in here somewhere, Joe mused as he turned back towards the door and walked to his bedroom at the end of the narrow hall.

"If you need the restroom, it's the first door on the right. If not, take a seat on the couch, and I'll set up your room." he called over his shoulder, shoving aside old yearbooks and grinning as he discovered the mattress he'd inherited from Frank tucked into the bottom of his closet.

By the time he'd blown up the air mattress and pulled on a set of his spare sheets, his phone read 8:30pm and there was a text notification from Nancy.

Straightening his back and feeling it crack as he looked over the room, computer monitor now shoved into the room's small closet and mattress pressed into the corner of the room with Michael's crate beside it like a makeshift bedside table, he sighed in satisfaction.

Thumbing the message open, Joe read Nancy's text, 'How was the drive back home?' and considered for a moment before typing out, 'Quiet?'. He wanted to say more, but there honestly wasn't much else he had been able to gather during the drive. After a moment though, he added, 'Any suggestions?'

Three dots appeared, and then, 'Well, at this point he should be heading to bed. But I'd say tomorrow you could start with asking him about Buddy. See where that leads?'

"Ah, crap". Buddy. He hadn't set up for him, but assuming that Michael had been sleeping with him in the makeshift tent, Joe wondered if it would be sufficient to just add a pile of blankets at the bottom of the air mattress for now.

Popping his head around the corner to check on Michael before walking down the hall towards his room, Joe had a moment of panic when Michael's red hat was no longer visible peeking over the back of the couch he'd directed him to. As quickly as the panic rose, it left when he took a few more steps into the living room and saw that Michael had simply curled up on the floor in front of the couch and lay beside Buddy, apparently sound asleep.

Quietly walking back into his own room, Joe pulled out some old blankets and set them inside Michael's room along with a glass of water because he didn't know much but he did know kids always seemed to get thirsty in the middle of the night.

Taking a couple of heavier steps out of the spare room so as to help rouse Buddy and, in turn, Michael, Joe cleared his throat and stopped just inside the living room. As he hoped, Michael seemed to immediately rouse, as the red hat popped back into view over the top of the couch and Buddy stretched and padded around the corner towards Joe, tail swinging lazily from side to side.

"If you guys are ready to sleep, I've got your room set up." Joe motioned down the hallway, smothering a smile as Michael let out a huge yawn, rubbing at his eyes and squinting at Joe with mild confusion. Turning and making the right into the spare bedroom, Joe stepped into the room with Buddy on his heels, shrugging his shoulders a little sheepishly as he gestured to the air mattress. "Just, right down here. There's where you can sleep tonight. You and Buddy."

Wordlessly nodding, as Joe had expected, Michael stepped cautiously into the room, glancing over the bookshelves and giving Joe as wide a berth as possible as he slid towards his bed.

"Right, well, I'm right at the end of the hall there", Joe took a step back into the hallway and jerked his thumb towards his bedroom door. "And right across from you? That's the bathroom. You can use that any time you need to."

Again, Michael nodded. For a moment, both of them simply stood there, Joe in the hallway looking in and Michael beside his bed, looking down. "Um. If you need anything, you just— you let me know. Okay?" For one second, Michael's mouth twitched and Joe could have sworn he was about to speak, but just as quickly, the moment passed and Michael was simply nodding again. Awkwardly shoving his hands into his pockets, Joe nodded, and flicking off the lights with a "Goodnight", walked down the hall into his bedroom.

Sitting on the edge of his bed, Joe took a deep breath. It seemed unreal that only 24 hours ago he had been driving home from Frank's, sure that he had taken a case that had no chance of getting solved. At least one case is solved. Even if I just got another, Joe mused, as he shoved himself to his feet and quickly pulled on his pajamas before striding to his door and cracking it open so he wouldn't risk missing any signal of distress or need from Michael.

As he settled against his pillows, Joe clicked on his phone, pulling up the last message he'd gotten from Nancy.

Nancy: 'But I'd say tomorrow you could start with asking him about Buddy. See where that leads?'

Yeah, I think that'll be best. Thanks for all your help today, Joe typed out before pressing send and opening a web browser. He wasn't sleepy yet, and he figured he should at least try to look up some about Michael Athelhorn.

Several searches later, and he had little more than what Frank had already told him. Apparently, Michael Athelhorn had been born in New York city in 2010, and had died in 2019. The death certificate wasn't available through public records, at least in the cursory search Joe did of them, but he figured he'd get more details when he could use his laptop and search platforms he'd set up on it. No father was listed on the birth certificate, but he did have some hopes for the name listed as Michael's mother: Bella Athelhorn, and he typed it into the search bar. As he'd expected, the name drew up about a thousand different white and yellow pages entries which he knew he couldn't sort through without his search programs, but he still scrolled through several pages of search results, pausing at any obituary announcements and glancing over the "survived by" portion to see if the name Michael Althelhorn had been listed.

A half hour of this later, Joe still hadn't found anything that seemed even remotely relevant and he sighed. Pulling up the picture of the birth certificate he'd snapped for Frank, Joe studied it again, trying to see if there was anything he'd missed that might prove useful. He was rewarded with a small thrill when after zooming into and scanning every part of the picture, he saw a small note scrawled along the very edge, near the City Registrar's signature. 'For Dr. Haddlee-". The ink had smeared but Joe thought he could make out '-stone' or 'stern', and he grabbed a notepad from his nightstand, jotting down the name followed by a question mark. It wasn't much, but it was something. Shoving his phone under his pillow, Joe rolled over, closing his eyes.