... nothing. It's nothing. There's nothing to find.

Diane sat down, resting her elbows on the stone checkerboard.

The old man poked a thumb under the floppy brim of his hat and pointed his eyes at her. "I've been watching you."

In spite of herself, she glanced suspiciously around. "What?"

"I've been watching you, Detective," he repeated, slowly, as if she were the addled one and he the police officer.

"Why?"

"Because I can tell."

She watched him, studying his face carefully. There was nothing that she expected to find. Just the jowls of an old man, roughed by gray stubble, knobbled and scarred by time. It had crafted him carefully, sculpting his face in its image, leaving him turned and pale.

Diane swallowed hard. "What can you tell?"

The old man shifted his weight a little, dragging his boots around on the concrete beneath him. "I can tell that you've done something. Something you've been praised for but didn't deserve. Something you're ashamed of."

He smiled and leaned across the checkerboard at her.

"Something you didn't do."

She saw it. In the space of his smile was a gap. A little, tiny crinkle that ran along the seam where latex met spirit gum met flesh beneath his eyes and along the bridge of his nose. She blinked and looked again.

But it was gone with his smile.

"Who are you?" she demanded quietly.

"Nobody, apparently, that you need to bother yourself with, my love."

The rasp was gone again. Diane put out a hand to touch his face, to make sure, to find the reality in the illusion he'd put in front of her.