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I said, “But you say he’s in there now?”

“Up in high-troll town, arguing with the guy who’s trying to take Hawk’s place.”

“Damn it,” Sampson said. “That’s Brundage. Wait for us here, kid.”

We left Boog devouring his meal and ran to the Bridge to Nowhere. Soon, we heard shouts coming from beneath the ramp on the south embankment. As we got closer, we saw that almost everyone in the camp was looking up toward the shouting.

Everyone except Lainey Locket, the high troll of the north embankment. Locket was watching us from her perch high on the girder jutting out of the upper ramp.

“Let’s take Boog’s word for it that O’Hare will run,” I told Sampson, panting, before we broke free of the brush there. “I’ll flush him.”

“And I’ll sit on the escape route.”

We were still being ignored by everyone except Locket when we reached the shade of the ramp. All heads were craned up to see whether the raging argument was going to turn violent.

Sampson jogged past the burned remnants of the crime scene and vanished into the brush to the south, and I climbed up to where two people were shouting at each other.

“I’ll cut you before I let you have that spot!” The speaker, a big, balding dude, was right up under the ramp and facing Sean Brundage, who was in a fighting crouch. This must be Bing Bang.

“Not before I lay you open,” the ex-cop roared. “It’s mine! You and yours left!”

Brundage wielded a piece of rebar in his right hand. His left hand was wrapped in some kind of fabric. O’Hare carried a large lock-blade knife that he waved in the air menacingly. Then he lunged.

Brundage batted the knife away with his padded hand and swung hard at O’Hare’s forearm with the rebar. But Bing Bang was quick, and it only brushed him.

I drew my service weapon and shouted, “Police! Drop your weapons!”

Bing Bang did not even look my way. He just spun in his tracks, crouched over, and sprinted to the rubble below the hole in the underside of the ramp. I charged up the last three levels and aimed my weapon at Brundage.

“Drop it, Sean,” I said.

“He’s getting away!” Brundage yelled as O’Hare scrambled up into the hole. “That’s Hawk’s right-hand man.”

“John’s waiting for him,” I said. “Drop the rebar.”

The former detective shrugged and tossed it aside. “Self-defense. He charged me, tried to throw me out. That’s just the way it is here.”

“His name’s O’Hare?”

Brundage nodded. “Colin ‘Bing Bang’ O’Hare. Did multiple tours in Afghanistan like Hawk. Got his bell rung a few too many times. He gets angry and goes for that knife at the slightest provocation—if a mosquito bites him, he pulls it out.”

“Where does he go when he runs?”

“Got me. I’m not the guy’s keeper. I am no one’s keeper.”

With the prospect of a fight diminished, the people who’d been tuned in started drifting off. I asked quietly, “You don’t stay in touch with your family at all, Sean?”

The ex-cop looked away. “They’re better off without me, Cross.”

“You might be surprised.”

“I don’t think so,” he said, then gestured with his chin down the embankment. “Nice work, bird dog.”

I saw Sampson leading Colin O’Hare away in handcuffs. Most people were dwarfed when they stood next to Sampson, who was six nine and weighed around two seventy-five. But Bing Bang was almost as tall as my partner and maybe twenty pounds heavier.

“We might have more questions,” I said.

“Well, you know where to find me,” Brundage said and went back to building his shelter on Hawk’s spot. “Head high troll. Lord of all I survey.”