Pike passed walls lined with thousands of tattoo designs, then through a narrow back door and up a flight of metal stairs. Straw was waiting at the top, wearing jeans and a loose V-neck T-shirt that needed a wash. He showed Pike into a tiny two-room office suite without furniture. The only light came from a single lamp burning in the back room. The front room overlooking the street caught a wedge of light through the partially open door, but the windows overlooking the street were covered with black cloth spotted with small rectangular cutouts for viewing the street. The man in the orange shirt was cross-legged on the floor with his back against the wall. He stared at Pike with indifference and made no move to offer his hand.

It was a bare-bones hide, smelling of pizza, cigarettes, and body odor. Suitcases piled with rumpled clothes were in the corners near air mattresses mounded with sleeping bags. Empty soda cans and Starbucks cups spilled from a garbage bag. Straw’s team had come in light, and hadn’t planned on staying as long as they had.

Straw smiled as he gestured to the room.

“I’d say pull up a chair, but we don’t have chairs.”

“Mendoza and Gomer didn’t trash Smith’s shop. The man who killed them did it, and your guys might have seen him.”

Straw and the orange man stared for a moment, then the orange man tipped forward, interested.

“What does he look like?”

His voice was higher than Pike expected, and hoarse at the edges, as if he was getting over a cold.

“What’s your name?”

Straw answered for him.

“This is Kenny. Let’s leave it at first names.”

Kenny was watching Pike now, his eyes intense.

“Can you describe the guy?”

“Haven’t seen him.”

Kenny smirked as he slumped against the wall, his interest gone.

“Oh.”

“He wanted to know when people came and left, when the shop was empty, what kind of alarms there might be. That means he was here.”

“Yeah? So how do you know what he wants?”

Pike stared at Kenny, then looked at Straw.

“Because that’s what I would want. He’s hunting Wilson and Dru. He blooded the shop to flush them, and probably followed Wilson back to his house, but Mendoza and Gomer got in the way. This isn’t about a couple of bangers shaking down a cook. This is bigger.”

Straw and Kenny glanced at each other again as if they were having a silent conversation, then Straw shrugged at Pike.

“I don’t get it. Why all that business with the blood and the heads if he wanted to kill them? Why not just kill them?”

“I don’t know. Maybe to see where they’d go.”

Kenny grinned, bugging his eyes like Pike was an idiot.

“Maybe he’s crazy. If, you know, he’s real.”

Straw frowned at Kenny for a moment, thinking.