They came to the small house in the outskirts of the town, where the roads give into the deserts urges and reduce to yellow plains. There are few markings here, most of them are left by other tires and the dragging carcasses of birds and small rodents. Roadkill, splatted, flattened carrion like convenient, fast food for vultures. Behind them, a sign that reads "Heading onwards to Las Vegas" - they'll never reach the city. Their path snags to the right of that sign, out to empty planes.

They stopped in front of a small street, the chain link fences were misaligned across the six houses they saw. There was a small gas station nearby. It wasn't the afterbirth of the Casino El Rey, it was worse. Like the rotting umbilical cord of the afterbirth of Casino El Rey. A barren little hub of buildings.

They walked and stopped in front of a particularly yellow painted house. The numbers in front of the lame mailbox were slanted, crooked. '364' and a 3 that hung by the end.

It was their mark.

The sun beat on them hard, they could feel the hot air flex around them. Wind blew sand across their suits and faces. Apollo closed his eyes.

"This is giving me Déjà vu," Apollo said.

"You weren't the one that got stabbed in the abdomen."

"No, I was just the guy who went through hell to save your ass, buddy." Apollo slapped him across the chest.

"You don't have to rub it in every time." Dion walked towards the patio of the home. It all seemed done in adobe. It had that rustic Spanish antiquity about it.

"So, do we like, knock or something?" Dion asked. Apollo sighed and scooted him aside. He put his hand on the doorknob to turn, of course, it was locked. He expected that. So he pushed his shoulder into the mesh door and into the wooden door behind it until they both collapsed into themselves.

"There." He said.

"Don't you have any kind of appreciation for privacy? It's always kicking...or tackling...or caving in..." He walked into the kitchen. Dion was close behind him. "Or punching...or stabbing..."

Apollo looked around the decor of the room. No televisions, nothing that would require electricity save for the lights. To the side was a grandfather clock, the arm perpetually stuck to the right side, unable to tick the seconds down. Well, it seemed apt. It seemed like time had never moved for this little house.

There were stairs, white guard rails leading up. There were mats and rugs of lion fur. And cacti. Plenty of them, by the window sills. The kitchen wasn't much better, a fridge left cracked open and some table chairs left to their side on the floor. Empty plates in the sink collected buzzing flies.

And Dion, close behind him.

"Sometimes you even rip doors off. Have you ever just opened a door normally, Apollo?"

"Shut up." He said, his gloved fingers felt every inch of the sink and table. A heavy film of musk left itself on his fingers. "It's like no ones ever lived here. And yet it's all in chaos. A stampede wreckage left alone for decades, it feels. I can't imagine anyone lives here."

"Maybe they're upstairs." Dion shrugged.

"And with your blabbering mouth, I'm sure they've already heard us."

"Oh, so it couldn't have been you crashing in through the door again?" Dion smiled, rather smug. Apollo walked past him, to the stairs and pressed down on every creaky plank of wood on the way there. Before him, the bathroom stall and next to it, a bedroom.

There was a cord to the attic dangling in front of him.

If Apollo were honest, he'd had said he was expecting a corpse up there.

"You first," Apollo said.

"No, I insist." Dion passed the cord.

Apollo sighed and drew the cord, the stairs slammed in front of his feet. They felt slippery, one step almost made him trip.

He popped his up the dark attic and found -

Nothing. Not even a ghost. Just foam, spider webs.

He stepped down

The bathroom next. Dion opened it.

"No ones in the tub," Dion said.

The last room was the bedroom. It wasn't flattering, rather, it was plain. A wardrobe dresser (there was eyeliner and roux still left on the table) and...nothing.

Floral patterned wallpaper covered the square.

"Maybe they're underneath the bed?" Dion asked.

"Are you joking or being honest?" Apollo asked.

"Half and half."

Dion knelt and nodded his head no. And Apollo stepped towards the hallway. He heard a crunch underneath his foot, an electrical wire clung to his heel. He took his foot off it and followed it, all the way past a small shelf of dolls. They were lined up - some of them were knocked on their side. The piece was offset from the floor as if dragged and Apollo felt the air draft hit his thigh. He moved the shelf, pushing it with his shoulder. Two doors waited for him, a closet. He nodded towards Dion, Dion nodded back and kept his hands inside his coat, securing the handle of his pistol.

Apollo opened the closet.

He got a lamp straight to the face, the bulb breaking across his forehead. He drew his head back.

"Ow." He said, slowly coming forward again. The woman was already running by then. Dion clamped down on her arm.

"Hold on, you can't do that and not say sorry," Dion said. Half in seriousness.

Apollo's eyelids flickered, the glass coming out like brilliant rain.

He rubbed his eyes.

"I think the attic was your best chance," A chunk of glass raised itself from his skin and fell. Then most came out from his lips. And finally, he rubbed the inside of his mouth with his tongue. He pushed out glass lodged in his cheeks. It plopped on the floor.

"Get away from me!" The woman screamed, she had a familiar face, someone he remembered seeing, the memory came with club music and the moody blue light.

"Oh, oh. I remember you." He stepped up, his face releasing the smoke and the cuts slowly healing before her. She couldn't even struggle anymore, not at the sight.

"What the fuck-" She reeled back from Apollo. With her other hand, she tried pulling from Dion's grip. Hot blood fell on the floor, steaming red from Apollo's face. "Get away! Away!"

"Remember me?" He asked.

Her eyes widened.

"What are you?"

"I'm a detective. From the church. We need to have a long talk about your… boyfriend."

♠

"So, what was your first name?" Apollo asked. "The one you were born with."

It'd been thirty minutes. They hadn't gotten far in the conversation.

"The one that doesn't belong to me," She nearly spat at his face, the words were so venomous like a snake hiss. "Not anymore."

"Sure."

She sat in the chair opposite from Apollo. Dion stood with his hands against the sink, the flies scattered about them, too afraid to approach the girl. Apollo stepped with his leg up and down.

"Why do you want to know this?"

"Knowing is my job," Apollo said. "And when you have a boyfriend this big into trouble, knowing each detail is necessary. I need to know everything about you."

"Fuck off." She said.

"That's not too polite," Dion said, softly, behind her. He looked inside the fridge, grime kept the door stuck to the interior. Pushing the fridge door open only stretched out this slime and revealed a rancid smell too indescribable. It was a medley of strawberries, of beef, of milk; all rancid.

"Did you just move in here? Or are you that forgetful?" Apollo said. "I'm guessing he moved you here? Turnus that is."

"I can't remember." She said. "I don't know anything. I don't know what I am to him."

She said in half-loyalty and half actual consideration.

"Well, I know you fuck him. But that doesn't tell me anything." Apollo said.

"Be a little more polite, would you?" Dion asked. Dolores sat stiff, with her fingers locked and placed in front of the table.

"You're not getting anything out of me." She said. "Stop trying, I won't say a word about my babe."

Apollo stood and put his foot on the table, directly in front of her. He knelt his head down to her height.

"Your babe, huh."

Her face was mismatched. One side was beautified with contours and eye shadow and all shades of color - blue and purple, sharp lines. The other half, less so. The other half hadn't had the time to dress itself, her eyes in this half were dead-looking. And weak. She turned away from his all-seeing gaze.

"You don't strike me as a bad person, and I mean that sincerely. That's why I'm not mad that you broke a lamp over my fucking head." He said.

"You sound mad," Dion said.

"That's why I'm not going to hurt you or break you or scare you to some kind of submission." H put his foot down. "Because I think you - contrary to everyone in this shitty town and that shitty tower - I think you are moral."

Her shoulders tightened. Her chin went down to her chest, she looked down.

"So when I asked you what your name was, it's really just to warm you up. I know you're Dolores." He said. "What I really want to know is how you met him and more importantly, why someone like you would ever stay with him? You don't have a killer's eyes or a killers ambition. So it couldn't have been money. Or power. Was it just because he paid for your sex change?"

"I used to be Dwayne." She mumbled. Her voice grew to outrage. "And - And I didn't change because of him! I was always this person...I was always Dolores. I just...didn't have the money, the resources to be her." She said. "He helped me."

"Why?" Apollo said.

Dion played with his hands, turning and fidgeting. There was grime on his hands, it wouldn't come off.

"Because we fell in love, I think."

"You think? People are either in love, or they're not." He said.

"I don’t know." Her breath left, escaping her mouth with slow strain. “I can say we were in love.”

“How’d that happen? The freak seems too angsty for something as regulating as love. I can't imagine he'd come home early for anyone.”

“He was never like this, you know that, don’t you?” She asked.

“I don’t know much besides the fact that he’s a bad person.”

“He’s not bad!” She jerked her head to scream, but hesitated and retracted slowly. “At least he used to be good. At least half decent.”

“I can’t imagine.” Dion chimed.

“I bet you didn’t know he saved me? I bet you didn’t know we met in a shit hole in Mississippi. Hmm?” She went back and forth between the two. “Yeah. It went like this, me in the back of a concert with a drunk date who…couldn’t handle who I was at the time. Said I tricked him, said I was a man and beat me half to death before Turnus stepped in. Would have killed me. Turnus fought him- he lost, but he fought. That’s the type of mine he was, that’s the man I fell in love with. The one who helped people like me.”

“Who else did he help?” Apollo asked.

“The poor, orphanages. More than just donations too, actual help. Working the lines, offering to teach the kids, helping monasteries…that was Turnus. He always said he had an obligation to the strange and exiled.”

“I don’t fucking believe it one bit,” Apollo said. “He told me himself, he’s a hedonistic monster who needs a glass in one hand and a nice ass in the other. That’s the way he came off, at least. A rich, pervert scumbag.”

“I swear he wasn’t like that! I swear!” She said. “He didn’t change until his mom died. That’s when it all went to bad. Real bad.”

“Was she killed?”

“No. No! She just lost her mind one day. Schizophrenia, I think. She started talking about weird stuff. Said the Devil was in her head. I didn’t understand not even she died. Never will, I think.” She said. “Threw herself out the window. Three stories down... Turnus said the devil was his dad, and then it's like he threw himself out too, right out of the little sanity he had left.”

She looked down at the table. Dion worked the faucet for some hot water and started on a cup of coffee. The filter, the cup, all that. The clinks and clanks of cookware moving, all behind Apollo as he sat down across from her. She didn’t speak. Not until the steaming black sludge was in front of her face. And even then, she didn’t drink it, only looked at it. The fumes rose up past her face.

“Turnus changed,” She said. “And it happened so slowly I couldn’t even realize it, maybe I could have stopped it if I had.”

“You couldn't have,” Apollo said. “No one could have. Anger is a stubborn thing in a man - especially a man.”

She slid the cup away with the back of her hand, her shoulders drooped.

“His transformation was like ocean corrosion. You can spend all day admiring a cliff side, the shoreline, all that beauty. And the next days, it’s eaten away. You don’t notice it, of course. You never do. So it happens the next day too - a little gets eaten away. So slowly. So carefully. By the time you’re old and dying, you finally realize that the thing, the man, you're waking up to isn't even there anymore. Just drowned, eaten by wind and water. Gone. Corroded. Turnus was eaten away, and I didn't even realize it. It took me two years to finally found out he was drinking and sleeping around. Then we moved here and ever since then...he's just...gone."

Apollo paused. Palpable air compelled him to silence, Dion’s glare secured him in it. It wasn’t until she was sniffling and tearing up that he decided to move forward, to press, like a dog. Slobbering about, his head low, waiting.

If he were honest with himself, he’d have to say he didn’t care about the psychopath's girlfriend. If he were honest.

“Dolores,” Apollo spoke in his tempered voice, whisper-like. “Turnus has bought human beings. He's bought, slaves. That's the least of his accusations, too.”

Loud sniffling turned to loud crying.

“I believe he orchestrated the death of Thomas Wolfe Senior.”

Her shoulders rattled.

“I need you to get over your nostalgia for a man no longer there,” Apollo said. “And for your safety, I suggest you help us get him. We need to know where he is.”

“I don’t know where he is!” She said. Her fierce face clenched down, for a moment, before it lowered and returned to tears.

Dion came up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder.

“Then you need to tell us where he’ll be. Before he hurts anyone else.” He said. “Before he starts hurting people like you.”

She came down.

"Are you being honest?" She asked them and didn't even let them answer. Apollo remained in stationary silence. "He really bought people? He killed his dad?"

She muttered it to herself.

“A boy. Probably more than one.” Apollo said. “He couldn’t have been older than fourteen. Just a kid, made to be a show for his fellow conglomerates.”

“I swear…He wasn’t like this! I’m not lying.”

“And I believe you.” He said. “That’s what I also believe you are someone who will help me, because you know he’s in the wrong right now. Because he’s lost his mind, Dolores. Completely lost it.”

She looked down at the cup. Apollo saw her sad reflection and saw it warp and flex from the teardrops falling into the mug.

"I can't tell you where he is." She said. "Only where he'll be." The coffee settled. Her face looked dead in the reflection, the color drained. "It’s a place he always goes to when everything goes wrong. It’s his little retreat.”

Dion took out his notepad.

“You’ll have to leave town. We can help with that-” Apollo said.

“I’m not leaving. I’m staying.” She said.

“If that’s what you want,” Apollo said. “So tell us then, where will he be?”

She put both hands on the table, her head slanted to the right.

“His mom's house.” She said. “He’s a kid in that respect. When he's lost, he knows he can at least go home."