Book 3, Burton Crane
Chapter 13CRANE TRAILED BACK TO the place, crossing from the street into the communal backyards, a few houses down from the run-down store. The backyards were a scrubby waste of dust and refuse. The afternoon was cooling but the sun was still up. The well-trodden paths through the backyards lay empty and deserted.
There was no time to case the building; only one door in the back led to the ground-floor studio. There was no option but to give a determined knock and barge in. A split second brought him through the doorway; enough to survey the scene and sum up his odds. This was, after all, as Evelyn would say, his natural habitat: bursting in on people.
The girl was battling to raise her shoulders from the floor as she gathered the torn shoulder of her dress, an act
