It was a voice I knew, but a tone I'd never heard it use. Sounded the way a man might if you broke his fingers then had his own mother in front of him.

I didn't suspect the truth. It'd turn out that breaking his fingers would have been nicer than what this guy had done to him.

"What happened, pal?"

I started moving through the shelves, palming my Smith & Wesson in case the perp had decided to stick around. Finding LaFresque shouldn't be too hard. The air was still spicy with gunpowder, and there was something else too, something copper that put my hair on end. Didn't want it to be blood, but I knew that it was. And I knew that LaFresque would be at the centre of it. I just had to follow my nose.