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I said, “And then he follows her to the Avid Eyeball. Maybe she suspects he’s a murderer?”

“Or maybe she spurns him there,” Chief Kane said. “And in a fit of rage, he shoots her and sets her on fire.”

Sampson said, “And then, what, he keeps on killing even after Corey’s dead? Why kill Conway?”

“Maybe in his mind, he’s cleaning up,” Winthrop said. “Eliminating them all.”

“Assuming Conway was even a client,” Sampson noted.

The COD said, “What are we missing?”

“More like who are we missing, Chief,” I said. “We still haven’t located Aldous Campbell. We have no idea where Choir Boy went after seeing Corey McGovern. And when you watch the security footage from the Fall Flower Motel, Alejandro Rodriguez, the ex–Special Forces guy, is the last to seek her favors.”

Sampson told them that Hawk’s whereabouts were unknown for eight hours after he left McGovern’s room, which theoretically gave him more than enough time to find Reverend Sentinel, kidnap him in his own car, drive him to the Bridge to Nowhere, kill him, torch him, and walk back to the motel.

Kane looked at me. “You think that’s what happened, Dr. Cross?”

I squinted one eye. “It’s plausible, so maybe. But there are things unaccounted for with that theory.”

“Such as?” Sampson said, raising an eyebrow.

“The fuel. The avgas,” I said. “Was it Reverend Sentinel’s? Or was it Hawk’s? And where did it come from?”

Detective Winthrop said, “Killer could have hid it somewhere beforehand. Maybe right there below the ramp.”

“Lot of maybes to run down,” I said. “And I have more to add to that list. Like, where’s Choir Boy now? Is he dead? Is that why we haven’t found him? Where’s Hawk? Why did he run? And we still don’t know who the first victim was—the one behind the abandoned building Frost and Lear owns in Northeast. That makes four murder victims: the unknown vic, Dylan Sentinel, Corey McGovern, and Drake Conway.”

Before anyone could reply, Sampson’s cell phone buzzed. He looked down at the screen. “It’s a text from Boog.”

“Bug?” Kane asked, sounding irritated.

“Robert Bogner, Chief, a thirteen-year-old kid who calls himself Boog and lives under that ghost ramp,” Sampson said. “He says, quote, ‘Bing Bang, one of Hawk’s bad trolls, just showed up. BB is crazy and disappeared when Audi burned.’ Boog also says, ‘I’m hungry, Detective.’”

He looked up at us, shaking his head. “Jesus, kid’s thirteen, abandoned, and he has no idea where his next meal’s coming from.”

“I hear you,” I said. “Why don’t we go talk to Bing Bang about Hawk and buy young Mr. Bogner some food on the way.”

54

BOOG WAS WAITING FOR us behind the lumberyard, well away from the Bridge to Nowhere, which loomed in the background above the brush.

After putting Judy Winthrop and Tommy Hayes to work on other aspects of the Drake Conway murder investigation, John Sampson had texted Boog and told him we were on our way with takeout. Now the hungry kid snatched the McDonald’s bag from John, peered in, and grinned.

“Nuggets!” he said. “And so many fries. And is this cherry Coke? Thank you, Detective!”

“You’re welcome. Your mom hasn’t shown up yet?”

Boog stuffed fries into his mouth, then took a long sip of Coke. “She’s on her way,” he said. “Told me she’d be here day after tomorrow at the latest. Coming by bus from Chicago, which I guess is where we’re gonna go live next. Did you know they have a lot of blues bands there? I’m going to see some. Mom said so.”

John glanced at me in a way that told me he thought the kid was full of it.

I said, “Tell us about Bing Bang.”

Boog said that, like a lot of the homeless guys Hawk surrounded himself with, Bing Bang had been in the military and went from the field to the streets. The guy’s real name was O’Hare, but “Bing Bang” was his war handle.

O’Hare was big like Rodriguez, plus he carried a knife and was very fast with it. While Boog wolfed down chicken nuggets, he told us that Bing Bang was generally eager for a fight, but he’d run anytime the cops came under the ramp.

He said, “He always goes out the same way—up through the hole in the ramp above the camp on that side, then down the ramp to where barriers close off the low end. He vaults them and he’s gone for a few days. That’s what he did after the Audi burned.”