Since he did not have the benefit of sympathetic neighbors in this case, Richard parked on the street and made his first approach to the building as a pedestrian, sans sledgehammer. It was a brilliant sunny morning of the sort that Seattle would occasionally lay before its desperate residents in the early spring; wild rhododendrons in the vacant lot across the street were showing red blossoms, and hobbyist-pilots were taking off from Boeing Field in their little planes. Richard pounded for a while on what he took to be the front door, then wandered around back. Two large roll-up doors fronted on the alley. Between them was a single human-sized door. Richard was knocking on the latter when a pickup truck pulled into the alley and rolled to a stop, close enough that he could have reached out and touched it. The engine shut down and the door swung open. Out came a lean, close-cropped, stubbled Caucasian male in his thirties, dressed in a scarred brown leather jacket over faded and frayed Carhartts. "Looking for Peter?" he asked, stepping to the roll-up door on the right and inserting a key into a massive tamper-proof padlock that dangled from its hasp. Before Richard could answer, he continued, "I haven’t seen him in a week and a half."