yourself."
"Man, if you are pulling my leg, that shit ain't funny."
Brody let himself get excited about the possibility. "No, really, it makes sense."
"We could buy the lot behind us, make it a backyard for the entire building. Dude, I could get a dog."
"Who would watch him when you have to pull shifts?" Brody shook his head. Blayze was an animal lover with a big heart. When he was a kid, he'd pick up strays and bring them home. It drove their mother crazy.
"Yeah, I'll figure that out. If you're serious about this, I'm in."
"I'm serious."
"Good. And it wasn't my place to say anything this morning. I'm sorry for that."
"Who'd you talk to?"
"Mom."
"She told you to say that, didn't she?"
"Well, hell, I was going to say it anyway, but yeah." Blay laughed and mimicked their mother. "Blayze Benedict King, you know I love you. You're my youngest son and your brothers let you get away with a lot, but you had no right to insert yourself into Brody and Amber's business."
Brody barked a laugh. "She said that?"
"Serious as a fucking heart attack man."
"Dude, we may need to stage an intervention. Aliens have snatched Mom and replaced her with a pod-person. Come to think of it, she hasn't called me today." He glanced at the old analog clock in Wilma's dash. "When did you talk to her?"
"About an hour ago. She was going to go into the city and help Brianna buy new tile for the restaurant."
"New tile? Does Brianna know about this?"
"Hell if I know. I had to tuck my tail and listen to her fuss at me. I'm not going to stick my nose in anyone else's business today."
"Smart man."
"I can be taught, or so I'm told."
"Don't listen to lies." Brody laughed when Blay hung up on him.
Ten minutes later, he was bumping down a pothole strewn road that fed back under the freeway. As he rounded the corner, the shunned microcosm of society filled the view from his windshield. The homeless, who couldn't get into shelters, the mentally ill, social outcasts, runaways, and drug addicts, had built a community of cardboard homes. Occasionally tents popped up between the shelters. Pieces of rusty, jagged, corrugated tin, old broken plywood, and cardboard of all shapes and sizes, made up small shelters for the residents to get out of the weather, but most of them sat outside in the sunshine today. There were at least fifteen burn barrels scattered through the assembly. Kyle wasn't hard to pick out, neither was Kyle’s partner. He waved to Alex and headed deeper into the community where Kyle was talking to three men.
The scared, the paranoid, the hopeless, the criminals and those who were high or holding, moved away from him as he strolled through the filth and stench. He scanned the area. Communal living with no sanitation facilities. Families seemed to congregate together on the edge of the settlement. The children huddled beside adults. There was no running and laughing, no backyard football game, or a grilled meal to share. Here the barren future held no happiness, only fear and anxiety.
He reached Kyle as the men he'd been talking with shook their heads.
"Are you sure?" Kyle asked the men again.
"Didn't see nothing." Said one of the men. He looked young, maybe twenty, but this life aged people fast. He glanced up and eyed Brody, not missing the badge or gun, both positioned in plain sight. "Nothing." He turned and hurried away. The other two older men shook their heads.
Kyle nodded to him, and they fell into step, walking further into the community. "Amazing how three people end up dead by this burn barrel, in front of all these people, and no one saw a thing." Kyle shook his head.
"Safer for them not to get involved." He glanced at the crime scene. "Who has the death scene?"
"Homicide detectives were here and did the initial canvas. Crime scene techs got what evidence they could, but the bodies had been rolled. No shoes, clothes, nothing of value left on them. It sucks. So many people, so little resources to help."
"Hey, people like Tara and Brianna are doing everything they can."
"True, but what brought you here?" Kyle snapped off his latex gloves and dropped them into a nearby burn barrel.
"We've got good intel that Peña's cartel is bringing in Grey Death. Two ODs are suspected already. Was there any indication that these three were using GD?"
Kyle shook his head. "One died with a dirty needle in his arm. H