The man lying on the bathroom floor of the Gold Dust Meridian looked to be in his mid-fifties, but it was hard to tell because part of his head had been blown off and was dripping down the wall over the toilet. The killer had used a high-caliber weapon at close range. The wall was spattered with a stew of flesh, hair, and bone. The toilet seat was down, stained with a fine mist of sticky red. The bathroom was small. No window. One toilet and a sink. The body took up three-quarters of the floor space. The crime scene techs had a long night ahead of them.

Archie and Henry stood in the hall, studying the scene over the crime tape across the open door, their gold shields clipped visibly to their belts. The bar was closed. The patrons had been assembled in the seating area, and were waiting to be interviewed. The lights had been turned up and the music turned off, and the place was uncomfortably bright and quiet.

“You know you have a birthday hat on, right?” Henry said. He had a day’s growth of salt-and-pepper stubble on his shaved head, and with his hulking physique he looked more like the bar’s bouncer than a homicide detective.

Archie reached up and touched the conical paper hat on his head, then pulled the hat off and pushed it in the pocket of his blazer. He could hear the toilet in the bathroom running, the hollow sound of water moving through pipes. The blood on the floor gleamed in the fluorescent light.

“Why am I here?” Archie asked Henry. It was an ugly crime scene, but didn’t look like something for the Major Case Task Force.

Henry glanced back down the hall where two uniformed officers stood talking. “You knew him,” he said quietly.

Archie didn’t let himself react. Not emotionally. But he consciously waited a beat before he let his eyes move back to the corpse on the floor. He could make out the man’s jaw and neck, half of an ear, but the face was too damaged. He didn’t recognize him.

Henry pulled an evidence bag with a Visa card in it out of his pocket. “He had a tab open at the bar,” Henry said.

Archie took the bag and examined the name on the card. This time his spine stiffened despite himself. He looked back at the body. Then back at the card. “Shit,” he said.

“What do we do?” Henry asked.

Archie rubbed the back of his neck and tried to think. The cops in the hallway were still talking. Someone from the ME’s office would be here any minute.

“Let’s go for a walk,” Archie said.