At this very moment, directly outside of a quaint, currently closed restaurant, a young FBI criminal profiler finds himself sitting in an unmarked car with his devastatingly somber companion.
"I took for you a cake man, Jack."
The companion turned to the FBI agent with a deadpan stare. "This isn't a time for jokes, Will. We've received information that traces the suspect to this pie shop. We can end this investigation right here. Tell me, is that what you want to do?"
The young agent eyed the shop's darkened windows with apprehension and a subtle hint of bemusement.
"Of course I do."
"Well, then I hope you saved room for dessert."
One hundred and twelve feet away and exactly nine hundred seconds prior, The Piemaker finishes disposing of the day's collection of unsavory, inedible remnants into the dumpster beside the restaurant's back door. As the metal lid clangs shut, he retreats inside to complete the evenings cleaning before retiring to his room in a perfectly peaceful manner. The inconsequentiality of this routine strikes the Piemaker as entirely consequential when he hears the back door that should not be opened scrape open. Fear causing him to both turn and not turn, he stifles a yelp at the appearance of a walking, talking living dead man shambling slowly into the Pie Hole on what's left of his two legs. The dead man makes his way toward a booth, and waves Ned over quite literally offhandedly. Ned, incapable of deciding whether or not to call for help, manages to walk towards the booth.
"Yo-You..did you just come through the back door?" he stutters.
"Say, how about I let a nice, warm slice of cherry pie make up for you trapping me in the dumpster and we can call it even?"
The Piemaker stares blankly at the alive-again man who stares back at him, the intact part of his brain trying to make sense of why these things continually seem to happen to him.
Lights shining outside the window and the sound of car doors pull our young piemaker from his self-pitiful reverie. On instinct Ned touches the formerly alive, once dead, then alive and now once again dead man. The sound of fists beating on glass hard enough to shake the dangling welcome sign makes him jump. Shunting himself forward, he opens the door only a fraction more than enough to mumble "Sorry we're closed," before a Maglite prevents him from closing it and an imposing man pushes it fully open.
"I'm FBI Special Agent Jack Crawford, this is my associate Will Graham."
A twitchy, awkward man creeps his way into the dining room.
"This restaurant is now a crime scene. I'd like to ask you to cooperate with this investigation, or the result will be…let's just say it'll leave a sour taste in your mouth that no amount of cherry pie is going to get out."
The Piemaker stands mouth agape staring at the man he thinks must be the mold from which Emerson Cod was cast. Jack hurriedly begins examining the dining room. The nervous man's physical appearance calms considerably when he enters a zen-like meditative state that leaves the Piemaker entirely unsettled.
"I'm sorry, this is all a bit unsettling. Mind if I ask what's going on?"
"We'd like to ask you the same, Mr…?" the timid Will Graham asks.
Ned's eyes trail with resignation towards the third booth from the espresso machine, dreading the dead body laying there, but the seat's vacant. Even the napkin dispenser stands innocently gleaming upon the freshly polished table.
The Piemaker can't decide which is the more terrifying: the whereabouts of disappearing dead-again man or the ominous officers lingering on his welcome mat.
"I'm Ned, this is my shop. Welcome to the Pie Hole, gentlemen."