The four of them were sitting at a table in a small room. In front of them was a glass partition which Bill Cronin had said was one-way glass. On the other side was another wooden table—with one chair. When Cole came in, they would be able to see him, but he wouldn’t be able to see them. Also, the interrogation room was mic’d—Cole’s voice would carry into this room, but he wouldn’t be able to hear them.

“Cole grew up in Philadelphia,” Trudy said. “Apparently, it was a game between the New York Rangers and the Philadelphia Flyers.”

“That explains everything,” Mark Swann said.

Luke was silent. This was the man who was supposed to get them in to see Edwin Parr. Luke didn’t mind the banter about him, but he also wanted to get to the meat of it.

“What is he doing here?” he said.

Trudy looked as the dossier. “He’s a former military contractor with Triple Canopy. How they hired him with his record is still an open question.”

“It’s a war zone,” Newsam said. “Always room for more killers.”

“Triple Canopy let him go in February of this year,” Trudy said. “He has been operating in Iraq under no one’s supervision for the past few months. It is possible that they released him because they discovered he was working with Parr.”

“Why don’t we know these things?” Luke said. “We don’t talk to the contracting companies? They don’t answer us? It seems like they might want to respond to inquiries from the government, if they want to keep their contracts.”

“Cole’s not arrested,” Trudy said. “Officially, he’s not here. No one has any reason to inquire about his employment history with Triple Canopy, because no one has him in custody.”

Luke nodded. “Ah. That makes sense.”

On the other side of the glass partition, a side door opened and a big man walked in. He was perfectly bald. He was shirtless and wore camouflage pants and combat boots. His upper body was huge—with a massive chest and shoulders, and a neck like the stump of an oak tree. Oddly, Cole had what looked like a metal collar around his neck. He also had one black eye—it was half shut and turning various shades of purple and sickly yellow. His lower lip had been busted open on the left side—it was swollen to three or four times its normal size, and someone had been kind enough to stitch it up for him. That seemed to be the only damage he had sustained.

Luke knew that Big Daddy Cronin preferred to leave the scars on the inside.