The Waterfront
Max and Alec emerged from the tool shed.
"I guess the dirt bags are gone," Max looked in the direction of the road.
"Max, you don't think they were involved in the shooting, do you? There's no way they'd risk coming back to the scene. Maybe they were just other enemies of Eyes Only, coming to check out the scene? But what the hell just happened in the boathouse just now? Hey, shouldn't we be checking back with that Matt guy, Logan's friend? Assistant Chief whoever?"
Alec looked back toward Max, expecting an answer, but she was gone. Sighing, he picked up the backpack Max had left on the ground and trotted around the side of the building.
"Hurry up, I've got to have another look at that alley before the light is completely gone. We can go back to the boathouse later," Max spoke in a stage whisper over her shoulder, at a volume she knew Alec could still hear 50 feet away. She skirted the corner of the building and stepped into the alley.
The light had begun to turn purple. The moon stood in the sky, but didn't seem to shed much light yet. Max strode past the spot where the body had lain, her eyes purposefully avoiding the stained ground. Instead, she stepped over to the wall, where she had seen the two sets of clear hand prints. The rain had long since washed away the prints, but Max remembered where they had been. She gazed up at the expanse of brick wall, whose smooth surface stretched up three stories. She closed her eyes, remembering the clear set of handprints that had stood out so clearly from the footprints that had criss-crossed the entire alley. She didn't need a coroner to tell her that the wheelchair was definitely Logan's, but if he and his chair had parted ways, as she so desperately hoped, she would need to start tracking for handprints, not footprints.
Max traced her finger along the windowsill of the one of the sixteen windows that faced the alley. The dust was spotted by the rain, but, otherwise, the windows looked undisturbed. Climbing in one of those windows would have taken considerable acrobatics from Logan, since Max could barely see into them on tiptoe. She dismissed the row of low metal doors that lined the alley. They looked like some sort of maintenance access, but she had seen the detectives try all the doors and they had all been locked tight.
Max turned around and leaned against the wall. The moon glowed dully behind a thick cover of clouds, casting only faint moon shadows across the alley. She tilted her head back, closing her eyes, and let out long breath. She slid slowly down the wall, sitting against it with her legs drawn up in front of her.
"Where could you have gone, Logan?" Max whispered under her breath, as she tilted her head back and leaned against the wall.
Max felt something shift behind her head. Curious, she turned to inspect the wall again. What she had thought was a maintenance hatch was actually a trash chute and this one appeared to be slightly ajar. Slowly, she pulled the door open. The smell of rotting trash hit her like a wall. She thrust her head into the tunnel and peered down its length. Down at the far end, some debris lay piled up, but right in the middle of the shaft lay a tiny scrap of paper. She pulled it out and unfolded it. It was a piece of paper torn hurriedly from some sort of list. The ink was smudged and wet, but Max could just barely read the word, artichokes, written in a familiar scrawl. A grocery list. Logan's grocery list. Max grinned.
"Logan was here. Alec, get over here. Help me track him." Max leapt to her feet and began to circle the boathouse, her nose to the ground.
"Hey Max, at least give me a second to catch up with you."
Alec ran to catch up to Max, but she had already opened the door of the boathouse and ducked inside.