Troubleshooter

Chapter 16

The command post hushed when Tim stepped through the door. Zimmer's hand went to the laptop keyboard, and the projected image vanished from the wall. A few deputies mumbled greetings; the others got busy in the field files. Malane was absent, a minor blessing, as Tim was in no mood to stomach FBI-Service friction. He spotted the empty jewel case beside the computer.

Tim sank into a chair between Bear and Guerrera and said, "Go on."

Zimmer reluctantly clicked a button. The CD rasped into motion inside the laptop, throwing the footage from Dray's patrol car back onto the opposing wall. The vehicle cam, mounted in the center rearview, activated automatically when the overheads turned on, providing a panoramic windshield shot.

A bumpy view as she pulled to the side of the desolate highway, Den riding trapped in the spotlight in front of her. Dray had been able to make the ID only because Tim had ordered Den to toss his helmet at the last stop-a stroke of luck soon to go bad.

Dray keyed a few bursts on the siren to make sure Den got the point, and then her voice came loud over the PA: "Pull over! Motor off! Hands up!"

Her nervous breathing was audible as she sat for a moment, gathering her adrenaline for the approach. A vicious barking exploded over the PA system. Dray kept a recording of a German shepherd in her car to deter arrest resistance when she patrolled alone. She pretended to soothe the dog, then the car rocked a bit, and they heard the sound of a door opening, Dray's boot setting down on gravel.

Dread sat like a medicine ball in Tim's gut.

Dray finally stepped into view in the spotlight's fringe, all muscle and belly, gripping her Beretta with both hands. As her pregnancy had advanced, Tim had objected to her working a squad car alone, but her arguments had already been sharpened against her reluctant captain. Her station was short on manpower and long on casework, and Dray was short on patience for special treatment and long on obduracy.

Her olive green baseball cap sported a molded bill and a Ventura County Sheriff's badge. Blond hair shot out in clean strokes behind her ears. She lumbered toward the bike. "That's it. Keep those hands up. Step off the bike."

The engines scarcely gave warning before four bikes materialized from the darkness, two from each direction, pulling tight around Den. The nomads' security travel formation, as Tim had learned last night, was geared for precisely this contingency. The bikers angled their mirrors away so the spotlight wouldn't blind them. Den alone squinted into his rearview, braving the glare to keep the bore of the handlebar shotgun sighted.

Dray stopped, caught halfway between Den and her vehicle. Tim registered her fear in the slight crouch of her posture. The knowledge of how she felt and what was coming made his breathing quicken to match hers. He'd been in precisely the same position an hour before she was. Bear raised a hand halfway to his eyes as if unsure whether he wanted to cover them.

The other bikers wore helmets, but Tim could tentatively identify Chief, Tom-Tom, and Goat from their builds and postures. The fourth, too slender to be Kaner, wrestled off his helmet, revealing a familiar sallow face framed by ragged hair. The elastic eye-patch strap indented his hair on either side. He shifted, and the armband came into view, as well as the gaudy pinkie ring. The striker. Either they'd picked him up en route to Moorpark or he'd hung back out of view during the nomads' encounter with Tim.

The striker's words barely reached the camera mike: "You'd better back off, bitch."

"Get back to the car, Andrea," Tim said sharply under his breath, drawing a few glances from around the table.

"Hands up. All of you. You, too." Dray eased back a few steps, her shoulders to the camera. Tim found himself, dumbly, hoping for her safe retreat.

The crackle of gravel was barely audible as an additional bike rolled up, out of the camera's view. Kaner?

Dray's head snapped back, offering a clean profile over her right shoulder. She tracked the phantom bike forward as it passed her car, then her present position. Judging from the angle of her head, the bike stopped on the shoulder to the right of the others, just out of the camera's scope. She kept her eyes on the phantom bike, her gun on the cluster of men in front of her.

Her tone was authoritative; probably Tim alone could tell it lacked her usual confidence. "Okay. Stay still. Relax." It seemed she was speaking as much to herself as to the Sinners.

Tim made a noise of frustration, rubbed his mouth, let his fist fall to the table. He silently urged her to turn tail, to seek cover in the car as he had. The guy with the armband shouted at her, "Get the fuck outta here!"

"I'm not going without-" Her words were drowned out by a refrigerator truck barreling obliviously by in the near lane, its aluminum side catching the spotlight and bleaching out the footage. She was facing away, making lipreading impossible.

She tightened her grip on the Beretta, steeling herself. Den's right foot dropped, bracing for the recoil. His face remained a tan smudge in his mirror, etched with the nearly invisible crosshairs.

A drawn-out moment as Dray made her decision. She studied the phantom biker, her cap casting her eyes in shadow. Her jaw firmed. Her mouth tensed.

She moved forward toward the unseen bike, her second step bringing her into Den's range. A flame leapt from his left grip. Dray was already airborne by the time the boom hit the camera mike. She left her hat and one boot behind. Her hair fanned up and out as if on an underwater descent. Her foot was bent at the ankle as if broken, but floating two feet off the ground.

A drift.

And then she struck asphalt. Her pants were stained at the crotch; her bladder had released on impact.

The others' eyes made Tim suddenly aware that he was cringing back in his chair, turned almost sideways, one arm raised off the table. He fought his shoulders square, forced his posture straight.

Den blew a kiss at the camera. The Sinners laughed and fired up their engines. Den jerked his head at Dray's body, then called something to the phantom biker, his words lost in the engines' roars. They motored off, debris from their wheels showering her body. Engine noise seemed to indicate that the unseen bike circled around the back of the car and took the dark left lane of the highway, still clear of the camera's field.

A sudden quiet, broken only by the static-filled inquiries of the watch commander. A trickle of blood from Dray's ribs formed a pool that grew to a certain width and stopped.

Someone coughed uncomfortably. Jim rose and left the semidark room. After a pause, Haines and Maybeck followed. Tim sat and watched his wife's sprawled form for the entire eight minutes until the paramedics arrived.

Finally he said, "I want a name for the prick with the eye patch."

Bear's voice cracked, and he cleared his throat and tried again. "Okay."

The paramedics carried Dray offscreen. Tim's throat thickened.

What's this give you, Timothy? Come on, moping's not gonna get you to me.

Tim pressed his fingertips to the beads of sweat that had sprung up at his hairline.

It's a case like any other, or nothing gets done. Where do you start?

Tim's voice was dry, brittle. "What do we got on the anonymous tip?"

"A male voice, muffled," Bear said. "The call went in to a private line at the sheriff's station. No recording, no tracing."

Suspect, to say the least.

"Babe's an accomplice now," Tim said. "Put a local unit on the apartment. Shake up the roommate."

"We're running low on manpower," Bear said.

"Use the guy who sat on the Cholo clubhouse. I'm sure he's free now."

Freed gave a double take when Tim's meaning dawned.

Bear said, "Why would the mystery biker give a shit to avoid the camera? They're all known-and-wanteds. Den vamped for us, for Christ's sake."

Guerrera: "It's gotta be Kaner, no?"

"Maybe the mystery biker's not a fugitive," Thomas said. "Maybe that's why he's ducking his airtime."

"As far as we know, the striker's not a fugitive, but you didn't see him going back to pry the footage out of the trunk lockbox," Bear said.

"Whatever the reason," Tim said, "the other guy doesn't want to be seen."

Watch it again.

Tim took a deep breath and held it before exhaling. "Play it over."

Zimmer took it from the top, Tim doing his best to detach, to observe. The spotlight bleached out Den's face. The glossy flames licking the front fork were pristine, scratchless. Freshly painted? Tim's eye caught on the distinctive design. "We get anything back on Danny the Wand?"

Freed shook his head. "I'll stay on it."

"That's his work on that bike. Might be recent. Have ESU blow it up and check if there's any dirt or roadwear on the paint. Burn me a copy while you're at it. The whole thing."

Bikes resolving from the night. Dray's initial crouch, so much like a scared dog's. The truck's racket swallowing her words. Pellets dimpling her nylon jacket. Her weightless drift across the tarmac. Gravel spray. Growing pool.

Tim's stomach roiled. "Back," he said. "Again."

The truck passed again with the stubborn inevitability of a recurring dream. Den's leg tensed beneath his black jeans. Flame leapt from his fist. In slow motion Dray's brief flight looked almost peaceful.

"Hang on." Tim stood, moving closer to the image. "Back it up. Slow forward. There. Again. Give me a little more volume."

Zimmer moved the recording backward and forward. Tim stood mere feet from Den's mouth, reading its shapes as Den called out to the phantom biker over Dray's body. A few of his consonants were barely audible over the revving engines. Tim watched the segment over and over until he stiffened. He took a step away and eased himself into his chair.

"What'd he say?" Freed finally asked.

"'We should practice on this heifer.'"

Dray lay on the road, one arm flung up over her head. The perfect stillness was disrupted only by the wind riffling her hair and the thin, dark stream of blood making its way languidly from her exposed side to the highway.

Guerrera ducked his head, and when he looked up at Tim, his eyes were shiny. "The way I see it, those boys just made the worst enemy they'd ever want to make."

"If Tannino lets you stay on," Thomas said directly to Tim.

"They'll let him stay on," Guerrera said angrily. "They have to."

Thomas's mustache bristled with the hidden movement of his lips. "Okay, kid."

Line four rang through, and Bear answered it, grunted, and put the receiver to his shoulder. He bobbed his head, resigned; he'd been expecting the call as much as Tim had. "The old man wants to see you."