He turned away, and I noticed a dark-haired man with broad shoulders enter the crime scene. He walked over and fixed coal-black eyes on me. Chief Inspector Calvin Rizzo.

“Do you have an update for me?” he asked, his voice smooth and commanding. Rizzo doesn’t waste time or words, but is all business, all the time. He’s hard-nosed and detailed. At times he rubs me the wrong way, probably because we’re alike in many respects, and I’ve learned to work with him, hold my tongue at times, and speak up when I feel the need.

“The boy is Logan Pickett.” Rizzo is three inches taller than my five-foot-eight, and I always feel the need to stand tall so I can come close to looking him in the eye.

He didn’t say anything for a moment. “Okay, you’ll have to talk to the parents.”

“From what I remember from the news, they’re divorced. I’ll see who I can reach first.” He waited, and I went on. “One of the responding officers has been interviewing the neighbors to see if anyone heard or saw anything.”

“Good. Spats and Moore can talk to anyone with information.” Roland “Spats” Youngfield and Ernie Moore are my partners. I was expecting them to show anytime.

Rizzo gestured at the CSI team. “Have they found anything that will help us?”

“Not yet.”

“All right. Keep me posted.” With that, he turned and walked toward the crime-scene tape. As he went under it, two men approached. He spoke to them briefly, then held the tape up for them. They ducked under it and walked toward me.

“Rizzo says it’s a missing boy?” Ernie Moore asked in a deep voice.

“Yeah, it’s Logan Pickett,” I said.

“Ah, hell,” he said. He hefted his pants up over his gut. He’s generally one to crack jokes, but not now. Not with the death of a child.

“What do you have so far?” Spats asked. He wore a tailored suit and black shoes so shiny the sun glinted off them. I’d heard he’d gotten his nickname from an old partner who said Youngfield reminded him of a gangster from the old days, the men who wore spats on their shoes. I’d never seen Spats wear them, but the nickname had stuck.

I filled them in. Both nodded as they listened and looked around.

“So not much,” Spats answered his own question when I finished.

“Right,” I said. “We need to talk to the officers who’ve been canvassing the neighborhood.”

“I saw another officer nearby. I’ll get him,” Ernie said. He walked off in search of the other responding officer.

“Hold on, Speelmahn,” Spats said. For some reason, he gives my name a Jamaican flair, even though he’s from Harlem. He went over to the dumpster, and when he returned, his face was pinched. “He was killed somewhere else and moved here.”

“That’s what it looks like.”

Ernie returned with Officer Flatt.

I got right to it. “What do you have for us?”

Flatt cleared his throat, consulted a small black notepad. “We’ve talked to five neighbors so far.” He waved a pen in the air. “It’s a Tuesday, so a lot of people have already left for work. Of those I talked to, two have some good information.” He checked the notepad again. “One, Larry Blankenship, says he got up about two a.m. to go to the bathroom. He sleeps upstairs, and the bathroom window faces the alley. He saw headlights at the end of the alley.”

“Did he actually see a car?”

He shrugged. “It might’ve been an SUV. He didn’t think much of the car itself, he just thought it was pretty late for someone to be out on a weeknight.”

“Anything else?” Spats asked.

“No,” Flatt said. “The other one is Karen Pacheco. She’s pretty old, and she has trouble sleeping. She was dozing in front of the TV, and she thought she heard a noise out back, a loud thump or something. When she went to look, she didn’t see anybody.” He shrugged. “That’s it. The other neighbors either didn’t see or hear anything, or they aren’t home.”

“Addresses?” I asked.

Flatt rattled off the addresses for Larry Blankenship and Karen Pacheco. I thanked him, and he went to join his partner at the crime-scene tape.

“You take Pacheco,” I said to Spats. He can be exceedingly charming, and I had no doubt he could get the old lady to open up.

“I’m on Blankenship,” Ernie said.

“Good. I’m going to talk to the guy who found the body,” I said. “Then I have to talk to his parents before news of this gets out.

Ernie twisted up his face. “I don’t envy you that.”

“Yeah, it’s the worst.” I gestured for them to get moving. “We’ll meet up later.”

Both gave me a mock salute and headed for the alley entrance. I watched the CSI team for a moment. It was a new investigation, and I was being revisited by the same unease I had with each new case. I had to perform well so that no one would ever have reason to question my abilities. I couldn’t afford to have anyone delving into my past, into my life before I was even a rookie cop, to discover the one mistake I’d made then that could jeopardize my career even now. I quickly dismissed the thought and walked over to Clark Leblanc, who was still waiting by the corner of a house outside the crime scene.

“Mr. Leblanc?” I said. I introduced myself.

“Call me Clark.” He had a hoarse voice, full of phlegm. He cleared his throat and shifted on his feet.

“How’re you doing?” I asked.

He lowered his chin and stared at the dumpster. “I won’t ever get that out of my head. I’ve never seen a dead body, let alone a kid.” His eyebrows furrowed, and he cleared his throat again.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured and gave him a second. “Would you tell me exactly what happened this morning?”

“Not much. I had my usual cup of coffee. Then I cleaned out the coffee pot, dumped the coffee grounds into the bag. It was full, so I put on my sandals and brought it out here.” He jerked a thumb behind him. “I live there.”

I glanced past him. Through an open gate, I saw a neatly manicured backyard and the rear of a two-story house. “And then?” I prompted him.

“I, uh, went to the dumpster and was about to toss in the bag, but I looked inside to make sure there was room. That’s when I saw the arm. I didn’t think I saw what I saw, so I looked again. I walked to the edge of the dumpster and saw his face. I could tell he was dead.” Another throat clearing. “I dropped the bag and called 911. Then I waited.”

“Did you talk to anyone?”

He shook his head.

“You didn’t call anyone else besides the police?” I put a little force into my question.

“No, I didn’t.” A tinge of indignation in his voice. “I told you exactly what happened.”

“All right,” I said. “Did you recognize the boy?”

“No, but I didn’t get a real good look at him.”

“Did you notice anything unusual in the area?”

He looked around. “No, the alley’s like it always is. It’s usually pretty quiet out here, sometimes people walk through, or you get the occasional car. It’s not as busy as the street, though. It’s not like I’m out here a lot, though. Just to take out my trash.”