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acts as a go-between for thieves. The fence finds a market for the stolen goods and takes a cut for himself."
                  "Do you have a motive for the murder?"
                  "Well, the fence isn’t the only guy who wants to get his hands on the stolen merchandise. Could be another fence – Jack Daltry's competition. Could be a rival gang. We don’t know. We're searching for leads."
                  "Interesting," I said, trying to sound intellectual. "I've been thinking about this case myself."
                  "Have you now?"
                  "Indeed. And I've come to the conclusion that there was no way for Jack Daltry to arrive in my alleyway without an escort."
                  He stopped eating, and a look of intense scrutiny came over his face. "Explain."
                  "I mean his shoes should have been wetter, and by wetter, I mean soaked through. You said it yourself that a street sweeper came through that morning. Well, the sweeper left an ankle-deep puddle at the entrance to the alley. If Jack Daltry had walked into that alley at the time you say he did, he would’ve had to have walked through the puddle. This means that either the body was already there when the sweeper came through and the sweeper didn’t see him – which is impossible seeing as how the sweeper made his round through the entire alleyway, like you said he did – or the sweeper dropped him off. And you said it yourself that the only tracks left there were the ones left by the sweeper—"
                  I stopped here because I had one of those brain-freezing moments where sudden insight makes you temporarily forget how to function as an intellectual being. I think my jaw was hanging open. And I think I was giving a full view of partially-chewed tuna to the cop.
                  "What is it?" he said, possibly contemplating the use of a taser to snap me out of it.
                  "He was driven in."
                  "How do you figure?"
                  "The sweeper was on schedule with his route."
                  "Okay."
                  "And any tire tracks left by the previous guy were eradicated by the sweeper."
                  "Okay."
                  I was disbelieving. "You're not seeing it?"
                  "Seeing what?"
                  I almost threw the remainder of my wrap at him. "The sweeper didn’t murder anyone, but he was in on it! He was supposed to be Jack's ride out of there. He arrived, saw the body, dragged it behind the dumpster, finished sweeping the area clean, and left beating a hasty retreat. It's obvious he got out of there in a hurry because he left a trail of debris from a full trash container."
                  "We talked to him though."
                  "Talked to whom?"
                  "The sweeper."
                  "Ah huh."
                  "You don’t believe me?"
                  "I believe you."
                  "Okay," he said.
                  I shook my head at him. "So what does that prove?"
                  "I'm saying we talked to him. His story checks out."
                  "Of course it does. On paper, via GPS and timesheets, of course it all checks out. I could've told you that."
                  "How could you have told me that?"
                  I waved a hand at him. "Don’t worry about that for now. All I'm saying is that the sweeper says one thing and his route report corroborates it. All he has to do is stick to that story. He says he didn’t see a body. I say he did. He's the only one that could have seen him."
                  He gave me a look that said I was full of more than just tuna.
                  "Listen," I