Troubleshooter

Chapter 10

Tim crouched among the bodies, some charred from the bonfire blazes, taking in the quarter-mile death scene. The smoldering shells of the war wagons remained, exhaling black smoke. An upended bike framed his view, its tire spinning lazily like a pinwheel in a faint breeze. Tim closed his eyes, trying to drown out the pervasive buzz of black flies, and images pressed in on him with the smell-Black-hawks circling, desert sand swirling, dossiers smudged with camo-face-paint thumb marks. His combat memories underscored what he'd already gathered: This wasn't macho bikers squaring off over wayward glances at club mamas but a tactical hit, expertly planned and executed.

A sheriff's deputy chuckled and pointed to the quarter-size holes that the cooked ammo had punched in the war wagon's metal. "Looks like they got their twenty-one-gun salute."

Tim said, "This is funny to you?"

"They cut irony outta the federal budget, too?" The guy casually went back to scribbling in the crime-scene attendance log.

Tim rose and walked over to a cluster of criminalists by the CSI van. Before the hit TV show, they'd called the division Crime Lab, but a number-one ratings winner can be a strong impetus for change. Guerrera stood a few feet off from the group, finger in his ear, phone pressed to his head. He gave Tim a quick nod.

Aaronson was squinting at a slug he held up before his face on tweezers. He was a slight man, prone to wearing crisply ironed, tissue-thin button-ups that showed off the lines of his undershirt. His crime-scene reports were filled out in a hand that looked like typewriting.

"Explosives look to match?" Tim asked.

"Those used on the transport convoy? Oh, yeah."

"AR-15s again?"

"Yup. They don't call 'em street sweepers for nothing."

Bear jogged over, high-stepping through the wreckage, and beckoned Tim and Guerrera. By the time they reached him, he was holding a handkerchief against his mouth and nose.

"So get this. I found out where Uncle Pete was after the funeral." Bear undercut his dramatic pause with a sneeze. "In church. He and the whole chapter rolled into First Baptist, scared the hell out of all the blue-hairs. Not the pastor, though. He thought he made the score of a lifetime."

"The times line up?" Tim asked.

"Perfectly. Before that the entire mother chapter was mourning peacefully under our surveillance. No way they had time in between to get out here. It was a nomad job, all right."

"They got solid intel for this. They knew the route, which vehicles to rig."

"Maybe they had someone on the inside."

"With this rivalry? Doubt it."

"They could've put the squeeze on one of the Cholos."

"Can't interrogate them now." Tim surveyed the steaming landscape, the wooden box of the coffin resting untarnished amid the destruction. A mournful club mama sitting out the ride with a broken leg had turned over the restricted Cholo mother chapter's roster; a preliminary check matched a body to every name.

"That's why they shot Chooch Millan," Guerrera said suddenly. He looked at them expectantly, then seemed to realize they were waiting for him to connect the dots. "What's the only thing that gets a whole club together in one place?"

Tim bobbed his head-of course. "A funeral ride."

"Right. Shoot someone in the rank and file, within a few days you'll have the entire club assembled right before your sights."

Bear surveyed the scene with watering eyes. "Hell of a revenge for Nigger Steve."

"This isn't revenge," Tim said. "This is extermination." He took in the baked tableau. "They're paving the way to something bigger."

Bear made a muffled noise in his throat, and Tim started back to his car. Before driving off, he sat for a few minutes, staring at the wheel. He headed toward downtown in silence, stopping off at Forest Lawn.

His phone chirped as he climbed out of the car.

"Hey, babe. Jesus, huh?"

"Yeah."

He heard Mac shout something in the background, and then Dray said, "Shoot, I have to peel out. You think you'll be home?"

He chuckled.

"Right. Okay, the captain needs someone to pick up a few overtime parole hours-this case is stretching us thin on man-hours, too. I'll take 'em if it'll be a late one for you."

"It will."

"See you whenever. If it's before dawn, bring Yakitoriya."

"Yakitoriya?"

"Don't ask. I'm craving chicken neck." More distant voices. "Okay. Gotta run. Be safe."

Tim folded the phone and got out, strolling among the gravestones. It wasn't hard to locate Palton's fresh carpet of sod. A blanket of lilies cascaded over a table laden with candles and bouquets. Frankie's decade-old credential photo from the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center had been blown up and placed in a gold frame, like a signed former-celebrity eight-by-ten at a dry cleaner. His pose, stalwart and uptight, didn't reflect his humor. He wore a suit and no smile, twenty-four years of tough with a shaving nick at his Adam's apple. He and Janice, high-school sweethearts, would have been six years into their marriage when the photo was taken. And now he lay six feet under, collateral damage in a biker gang war.

Tim's mind pulled to the civilian killed in the explosion, the illegal guy in the Pontiac, but he couldn't produce a name. He thought about Dray's cautionary words as he'd sat perusing the field files at the kitchen table. Though he was three years older than his wife, she still had him hands down on wisdom.

He walked up and down the rows of graves, looking for Hank Mancone's plot. Hank was old, divorced, no kids, on the eve of retirement for five years now. Tim's impressions of Mancone were culled strictly from elevator nods and hallway passings, and he recalled only that the deputy was cranky, pouch-faced, and smelled of stale coffee. In the post-break hysteria, Hank hadn't played as well to the news cameras and weepy public; he was Shoshana Johnson to Palton's Jessica Lynch. Staring at the rows of gray headstones, searching for a cushion of color like that surrounding Frankie's grave, Tim flashed on the photos of Hank's corpse seat-belted into the transport van. Was the crime against Frankie any worse? Did the pretty wife, the two kids, the square jaw, the specialized credentials make it any more a tragedy?

Tim stepped between two high headstones, coming upon an older woman on her knees. A few bouquets dotted the fresh-turned soil. Tim followed her gaze to the chiseled name.

"I'm one of Hank's colleagues," he said gently. "Are you his ex-wife?"

"His sister." She raised her eyes. They were tired and sad, though Tim would have bet they looked that way outside of cemeteries as well as in. "Were you a friend?"

"A colleague," he repeated. "I'm sorry. I didn't know him well."

"Nobody did."

Tim let that one expire in the graveyard silence.

"Hank was supposed to retire last year. And the year before that. Just wouldn't. He always said he had nothing else to do." She wiped her nose. "You reap what you sow, I guess. You stay closed off, you get less flowers at your grave. And you know what? Hank wouldn't have minded that one bit. He wouldn't have complained. He just wanted to drive his van and be around."

Tim felt an urge to give her something, to share with her his own loss, but he recognized the impulse as self-serving. His cell phone vibrated at his belt. "I'm sorry." He started to add something in closing, but she waved him off. Her voice was more regretful than sad. "I know. I know. Me, too."

When Tim reached the edge of the cemetery, Bear still rattling off updates in his ear, he looked back. Mancone's nameless sister was in the same position on her knees before the gravestone, hands folded calmly in her lap.