Niceville

expect in a dangerous slum, twenty-five maybe thirty square blocks of crumbling wooden bungalows, fenced-off lots, car wreckers, bars, mom-and-pop stores all barred up like forts, trailer parks walled in behind rusted chain-link fences, bricked-up speaks, and roach-infested crack houses.
    The main industry ruling the place was a lethal combination ofgrinding hard times, blood-simple gunsels, pointless death, and blue ruin.
    The strip mall had a busted-down 1950s-era sign at one end with letters spelling THE MIRACLE MILE peeling off like the mange.
    The Miracle Mile, which was neither a miracle nor a mile, contained about fifteen ramshackle stores in a ragged rambling row, the eaves sagging and tiles missing from the roofs.
    The local branch of Belfair and Cullen County Probation and Correctional Services—known in Tin Town as the Probe—had a white-painted steel grate covering the old glass window wall, a storefront operation sandwiched in between a dollar store and a porn shop.
    The porn shop—the most prosperous business in the strip—had a blue neon sign in front that flashed out the name WIGGLES AND GIGGLES over and over again. Every time he saw that sign Nick wanted to put a bullet in it.
    As Beau brought the car to a stop in the slot in front of the Probe, four dingo-dog-looking black kids in ragged hip-hop togs started to shuffle off to the far end of the strip, one kid looking back over his shoulder, feral eyes sharp under his sideways cap. Beau and Nick looked at them in silence.
    “Which kid is holding?” Nick asked.
    Beau gave it a minute.
    “The one with the gym bag, because if we chase him he can throw it over a fence and then we have to prove possession.”
    “Very good. See the Goth chick in the Doc Martens? Down by the Helpy Selfy?”
    Beau’s eyes slid over to an anorexic white girl with black holes for eyes and spiky blue hair. She had on a pair of shredded purple stay-ups and a black leather jacket six sizes too large.
    She was leaning against the wall outside the milk store, popping her gum and staring fixedly out into the street. She couldn’t have looked any more guilty if she’d been whistling the theme from
Mayberry R.F.D
.
    “You want me to do a field interview?”
    “I do,” said Nick.
    He got out of the passenger side, leaned down and spoke to Beau through the open window.
    “Just be careful. Watch her hands. Her street name’s Iris but her real name is Brandy Gule. She may deal shit for Lemon Featherlight, we don’t know yet, but her being here this morning when we’re supposed to have a talk with Lemon tells us something. That’s why I want you to have her in the car when I get back. I want a chance to talk to her. Hear me, Beau, look at me. She looks fifteen, but she’s twenty-four, a runaway from a small town in the Carolinas.
    “She looks like a kid.”
    His voice was soft, sympathetic. Nick leaned in to get a straight line on Beau’s eyes.
    “She’s
not
, Beau. You gotta get that. She killed a jail guard with a nail file. Stuck it in his eye. And then she tore his jugular open. He bled to death on the floor of her cell. Camera shows her sitting there on the cot, chewing gum, watching while he thrashes around on the tiles.”
    Beau winced.
    “What’d he do?”
    “He tried to rape her. Had done it before.”
    Nick patted the top of the car, glanced back at the hip-hoppers sliding around the corner, did not look at Brandy Gule, and walked off, pushing through the smeared glass doors of the storefront office.
    The interior was lit by a ceiling full of fluorescent bars. The thick air moved sluggishly around the room, stirred by a large fan with blades shaped like angel wings. The floor tiles, almost exactly the color of rubber dog vomit, were peeling up at the edges.
    The waiting area had five cheap folding lawn chairs, mix and match, lined up against the wall, all of them empty this early on a Saturday, since most of the clients for the Probe were still lying on their backs in a tangle of crusty bedding, staring up at the ceiling and trying to figure out what the hell had made them do what they think they might have done the night before.
    The girl behind the counter was new to Nick, a black-haired number with hard eyes and a sour twist to her lips. She glanced up briefly as Nick closed the door, frowned at him, put her head down, and went back to clacking away at her keyboard, staring fixedly at the screen. Nick let it slide, said good morning, got nothing