Man Made Murder (Blood Road Trilogy Book 1) by Z. Rider

except weeds and litter. He went around the block and came up behind the building. The rear door was shut, a couple wooden steps leading up to it. The windows on the main level were shuttered just like the others. No sign of a bulkhead anywhere. He turned up Main Street, the way he’d come, the St. Michael medal swinging from his rearview. Eggs sounded almost as good as orange juice—or would once he took care of his bladder. There was a diner just up the street, close enough to keep an eye on the bar if he sat in a window booth. He parked out front, the car easy to get to if the bikers made a move.
    He shoved the handgun back under the passenger seat, reached in back for the manila folder. Leaving it on the table he wanted, he gave a nod to the waitress and strode through the scattering of tables toward the restrooms.
    When he got back, a menu sat by his folder, a napkin and silverware. A glass of water. He chugged half of that down, glanced at the menu, pushed it aside.
    The waitress showed up, and he ordered orange juice, coffee, a couple eggs over hard with toast. When she left, he opened the folder. Reports and photographs and newspaper clippings from the series of P.I.s he’d hired over the past two years, his bank account leaping downward with each new lead. Each had gotten him closer, but ultimately they’d gotten him nowhere—until now. Until Walker. Walker who’d got him to the bar and refused to get him any more information. Walker who’d gone silent, refusing to take his calls.
    The waitress brought a cup of coffee, a little pitcher of cream.
    “Thanks.” He didn’t look up. He’d arrived at the picture he’d been thinking of in the dark, the one of the soldiers in Korea. The resemblance between the dark-haired man and the biker he was tracking was unsettling. Not far from his canary-eating smirk stood a wide-shouldered man, maybe two hundred and fifty pounds, taller than the sergeant. While the other guys in the photo—the canary eater and the other three whose faces Carl could see—had helmets like metal mixing bowls turned upside down on their heads, this one was holding his at his thigh. His hair was short on the sides, thick on the top. Blond. A lock that might have been carefully combed over to the side at one point had fallen loose, making him look more like a bar brawler than a lieutenant.
    Of the other guys, one had his tongue out, his eyes rolled to the side. Another had his thumbs tucked under the straps of his backpack. The guy on the far end was angled away from the camera, his face tilted toward it, a scar white at the lower curve of his cheek.
    A quarter century ago. The guys in the photo were the same age as the guys at the bar last night.
    The waitress came with his eggs and juice. He shoved the photo back in the folder.
    He watched the bar through the plate glass as he ate. The row of chrome out front glinted in the sunlight; the building itself was silent, shut up.
    When the waitress came by with the coffee carafe, he said, “Hey, let me ask you a question.”
    She cocked her hip, the carafe jutting out. “It’s your nickel.” A pocket in her apron bulged with her order book. She acted older, but looked not more than a year or two ahead of where Sophie’d be now, her hair pulled back into a ponytail the way Soph used to wear it. But the waitress had auburn hair, her eyes dirty green and set wide apart. She had a scar under her lip, a pale nick.
    “Do you know anything about the bike club? At the bar down the street?”
    She shrugged. “I don’t really hang out with that kind of crowd.”
    He smiled. “I didn’t think you did. I just thought you might know something about them, you know, in general.”
    “They have a skeleton on a motorcycle on the back of their jackets,” she said.
    With the outline of the moon in the background. “They call themselves the Black Sun Riders?”
    “I guess. They never come in here.”
    “Do they ever leave there ?” He thrust a thumb