He sat on the metal office steps with his arms on his knees looking at the parked cars and wondering what kind of hell the Wilton Street Asian Boyz had stirred up.

After a minute he lit three ground flares at the entrance of the parking area to keep the county vehicles from driving in and wrecking evidence.

Within an hour there were thirteen men and women on scene and an entry/exit log taped to a front window next to the door that a deputy had forced open with a four-foot pry bar.

The homicide sergeant was Bill Marlon. He was pale-complected and black-haired and not young. When the door fell open he motioned Hood in ahead of him, a courtesy to the first responder that surprised and pleased Hood.

“Sign in, everybody,” said Marlon. “The usual-look, don’t touch.”

Hood scribbled his name on the log and stepped in. He glanced at the office and the overturned chair. With his hand on the butt of his service weapon and his ears and eyes on alert, Hood moved through the open counter door then slowly down the hall toward the bay.

Hood recognized three of the dead as Wilton Street Crazy Boyz. Another, no more than a boy, the one with the painter’s mask still half-on, looked familiar, but Hood couldn’t place him. The other Asian was new to him. Maybe another Boyz click, he thought. The four Latins were Mara Salvatrucha by the tattoos, but hard to say where they came from because MS-13 wasn’t about turf but about money and violence.

Hood scrolled back through his almost four years with the Sheriffs trying to remember Mara Salvatrucha and the Crazy Boyz mixing it up, but couldn’t think of one incident.

“Haven’t seen much of this,” he said to Marlon. “Different gangs fighting it out.”

“I wonder if anyone walked away,” said Marlon.

“Funny they’d leave the guns.”

Marlon nodded. “If there was a winner, I’d put my money on the Salvadorans. I wish this guy could talk.”