Step for­ward. Step back. For­ward. Back.

What is that? A speck of dirt? No, just an ant. Why is there an ant?

The boy has a cou­ple crumbs on his jeans. Per­haps he was eat­ing.

Did he choke? No— clear signs of vi­o­lence, re­mem­ber? Of course you do, you re­mem­ber every­thing. At least, you think you do, as every­one tells you so.

There’s the slight bruis­ing next to the eye. The red hand­print on the face. Scratches, still bleed­ing, drip­ping onto the sin­gle out-of-place white porce­lain tile ly­ing on the wooden floor, un­der the boy’s head.

The de­tec­tives be­hind you keep mut­ter­ing about how dead bod­ies aren’t sup­posed to look like this. Do dead bod­ies bleed? You don’t care.

You’re chief de­tec­tive, any­way. Not them. Won­der how they got the job when dead bod­ies flum­mox them.

You pick up a crumb, and place it in your mouth. Clearly from a blue­berry cob­bler. Now you’re hun­gry. Per­haps you ought to have some cob­bler?

“Get me some cob­bler,” you say, and presently, some­one comes to you with a half-fin­ished plate.

You take a bite, then pause.

“Where did you get this?”

“It was on the table. Why are you eat­ing ev­i­dence, ma’am?”

You raise an eye­brow, and take an­other bite. “Don’t call me ma’am. I’m only eleven.”

“Of course, ma’am.”

Id­iots.