The fog rolled into Aggieville thick as a guilty conscience, swallowing the pre-dawn sounds of the college town and leaving only the damp chill and the lonely hum of the streetlights. Each lamp wore a sickly yellow halo, a false angel watching over a deserted street. Through this ethereal gloom walked private detective Eli Cain, his sixty years weighing heavier in the thick air. The brim of his black fedora hat cast his face in shadow, but the light caught the silver in his salt-and-pepper hair and the neat lines of his well-trimmed goatee.