Devin

 "You gave that guy his gun back, and now my cousin is dead because of it."

We had walked down to a lot we owned to ask any people camping on it to leave. The other tent city had been broken up that morning, and it looked like a few had moved onto our lot. The neighbors around the lot were extremely intolerant of any campers and would tell us in no uncertain terms to move them on or they would report us to the city.

There were some campers. I had stopped to talk to Puddin, who said he had passed by and seen the tent city had been removed. It had been on his property, but he said he didn't know who had given the order.

 My wife walked ahead, and by the time I caught up, she had talked to a woman who was sleeping on the ground. 

There was a guy there we had seen before, and when he came into view, he told me the man who had been shot two days before had died. His cousin. He was angry. We had run into each other before, when he was throwing trash in my dumpster. I'd asked him to stop, I didn't want my construction dumpster becoming a magnet for all the trash in the neighborhood. He had fumed. Then a day or two later he had upbraided me for throwing some trash in the cans behind the club.

"Don't use those trash cans!" he yelled. Touché.

Two weeks earlier the kid had thrown the gun in my yard. I dropped the magazine and racked the round out of the chamber, but handed it back to him. Then two days ago, he had shot the man to death. The man who he shot had been helping defend another homeless person the kid was harassing.

Since I wrote this, I've been told it was another kid who did the shooting, and that the victim survived and the victim died. I asked the police, but they didn't know.

A few weeks ago I called the coroner's office and learned that Devin survived. I haven't seen him since.