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COLIN O’HARE WAS SPITTING angry when I got to the bottom of the south embankment. “What is this, man?” he said, glaring at me. “I didn’t do nothing.”
“You tried to stab a man, Colin, then you ran from the police,” I said. “People who run have things to hide.”
“I just don’t like cops. No offense,” Bing Bang said. “And that dude has no right to Hawk’s spot. If anybody has a right, it’s me.”
Sampson nudged him out from under the ramp and into the intense sun, and we walked toward the alley behind the lumberyard.
Boog was sitting on a rock to our right, his back against a chain-link fence, still eating and trying not to look our way. O’Hare’s attention fixed on the kid for a moment before we led him to our squad car.
“Do I have to go downtown?” Bing Bang said when we opened the back door. “I mean, can’t you just ask your questions right here? I got nothing to hide, man.”
“Okay,” I said. “Were you here the morning the car was set on fire?”
“Heard it blow, decided to leave for a bit when I heard the sirens,” O’Hare said. “Loud sounds. Can’t stand them.”
“Where did you go? The Fall Flower?”
He stiffened a little. “Yeah. I was there two or three nights, then caught a bunk at the men’s shelter downtown when I ran out of cash.”
“Where’s Hawk?”
“No clue,” O’Hare said. “Seriously, I’m surprised he took off like that.”
Sampson asked, “Know Corey McGovern?”
“Heard she’s dead.”
“Shot and set on fire, just like the guy here.”
“Sorry to hear it. She was cute, funny.”
“Did you have a thing for Corey?” I asked. “Ever pay her for sex?”
He hesitated, then said, “Maybe once.”
Sampson asked, “You know Aldous Campbell?”
O’Hare gave him a blank stare.
“People call him Choir Boy,” I said.
The man relaxed, even smiled a little.
“Yeah, I know Choir Boy,” he said. “That is one whacked dude. A psycho, if you ask me, and he could not get enough of that Corey. Real obsessed. Shoot and burn someone? Oh, yeah. You take these cuffs off and I’ll tell you all about him.”
Sampson said, “You thinking of running, Bing Bang?”
“Where would I go? I’m homeless, man.”
“You run, and I will clobber you when I catch up,” my partner said as he took the cuffs off O’Hare.
“Heard and appreciated,” Bing Bang said, rubbing his wrists.
“About Choir Boy,” I said. “Tell us everything.”
O’Hare corroborated what Hawk had told us and expanded on that information. Campbell had been kicked out of some religious school, O’Hare said, and when he got drunk, he blamed God.
