The last body was the ponytail guy with the bright blue eyes. I couldn’t find any external wounds. I didn’t imagine that the freelancers were subtle killers so I dug my thumb and index finger into the area just above the kid’s throat and behind the chin. The hyoid bone holds up the tongue. I felt around for it until I got it and pushed. It was broken in at least one place, which is a sign of violent asphyxiation.

No bruising on the neck. Probably a plastic bag.

I searched the truck and found a clean hand axe and a pair of red ratchet straps behind the front bench, which was confirmation enough that I had found the psychopath responsible for the axe murders of Houdin and Rigalle. The axe was new and barely used, the price sticker still on the handle, which accounted for the blade’s factory sharpness. It had a decent heft and I could imagine swinging it in a controlled manner. I looked out the windshield at the bleak industrial landscape. A huge tractor trailer drove by, no doubt looking to unload and then move on, or else to load up and move out.

I recreated the scene.

The rat-faced guy was an example; he’d messed up. Didn’t deserve the bullet, so he got the axe. The hazard suit guy was the axe man. He probably did the ponytail as well. Put a plastic bag over his head and held him there while the others watched, probably did him or rat-face first.

The cleaners allowed the meat man the examples. He was a full-blown psychopath. They allowed him the examples so that he didn’t take it out on them. The meat man had been useful in some ways.

Benoit Houdin and Alain Rigalle were public examples. Which meant that quite a lot of people were in on whatever was going on. They needed to be kept quiet. I wondered if Nazari and I were to be examples and figured that no, we would have just been disappeared in the meat truck. The Woodcutter and the tall thin guy were not dead because of anything they had done wrong. They were dead because they were loose ends that needed to be cleaned up. Evidently by the cleaners, professionals hired by a third party.

Which begged the question of who the third party was. Whoever they were, I was moving up the chain of command.

The truck was otherwise empty. Nothing in the glove compartment and nothing else under or behind the bench seat. I had an idea. It was a modern truck, and modern things have computers in them, and computers are like little snitches that keep track of everything you do with them.