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Sampson stuck the phone in his pocket and entered the diner. Boog was in the same booth they’d used earlier. A waitress was setting two bacon cheeseburger platters in front of him.
“Get him a salad too,” Sampson said, sliding into the booth and pulling both platters toward him.
“Hey,” Boog said. “Why?”
“You need to eat fresh vegetables so you won’t have a heart attack in your thirties.”
Scowling, Boog ate a fry and then two more.
“Your mother come back?” Sampson asked.
Boog’s expression hardened. “That what this is about?”
“You go to school today?”
“Hard to go to school when you’re caught up in a murder investigation. I’ll go on Monday. Promise. And my mom’s just off on a trip, working on a new life for us.”
“Uh-huh,” Sampson said, taking a fry off a platter. “You in contact with her?”
“She texts me every day, lets me know she’s okay,” Boog said defensively.
“How long has she been on this trip?”
“I dunno. Couple of weeks?”
“Any other relatives around?”
He pursed his lips, sour, and shook his head.
Sampson sighed. “Son, I hate to tell you this, but your mother is being grossly negligent. You can’t go on living alone like this.”
“I knew it,” Boog said, sounding disgusted. “I knew that’s what this was about.”
“It’s not why I came,” Sampson said. “But I am interested in your welfare, and I should be calling child protective services to have you placed in emergency foster care.”
Boog looked sick and frightened. “Foster care? Detective, please don’t do that. I been in that loop once and it was… I just can’t. You’ve got to believe me. Sorry, man, but you do that and I’ll run away, I swear it.”
John could read the anguish and desperation on the boy’s face. Boog had been in foster care, and the experience had damaged him. That much was plain.
“I believe you,” Sampson said. “Tell you what—help me with some information, and I won’t notify CPS right away. But the second your mother shows up, I want a call from you. If she hasn’t come back in a week, I won’t have a choice in the matter.”
“A week works,” Boog said, brightening. “She told me she was coming back next week anyway. I’m thinking she’ll have found a new place for us to live on her trip. New start, you know?”
The waitress set a house salad in front of the teen. He wrinkled his nose, then shrugged, speared a cucumber, and chomped it.
Sampson figured Boog was lying but nodded. “Tell me about life under the Bridge to Nowhere.”
Boog chewed some lettuce before saying, “We’ve only lived there a year. What do you want to know?”
“In a camp that big, there have to be leaders or at least people who control things—you know, people who have more power than others.”
Boog said nothing for several seconds, then snorted and laughed scornfully. “For sure, there are equals under the bridge and then some who are more equal than others. Like in that book Animal Farm we read in school last year.”
Smart kid. “Who are the ones who are more equal than others under the bridge?” Sampson asked.
The young teen’s brows knit. “Should be obvious. The high trolls, the ones who get to live on the upper-upper tiers, right under the ramp. You’re out of the weather there. Roof overhead. You can build fires that heat up the concrete and steel. Sleep against it, keep you warm on a cold night. And you can see the whole camp from there. Spot danger from a long way off. Prime spots.”
Sampson remembered the lookouts. “And how do you get one of those prime spots?”
