Troubleshooter

Chapter 5

Bear drove his beater of a Dodge Ram, Tim riding shotgun and Guerrera sandwiched between them on the bench seat. They wound over Grimes Canyon Road from Moorpark to Fillmore. When they passed the dirt turnoff to the garage shack where Tim had first confronted Ginny's killer, he felt his stomach tighten as it always did. He'd eradicated many of his painful reactions-to little girls' laughter, the smell of Jolly Ranchers, hacksaws-but the familiar dirt road still got to him. Distracted with a phone call, Guerrera didn't take note of Tim's discomfort, but Bear, familiar with the secret history, glanced over, gauging Tim's temperature.

The fall blazes hadn't left much in their aftermath-scorched hills, ash-streaked foundations, beavertail cactus cooked to a pale yellow and collapsed in limp piles. The few trees that had magically avoided incineration thrust up from the blackened ground like charred skeletons. The late-afternoon sun was low to the horizon, lending a cinematographer's cast to the bleak landscape.

Earlier Tim had dispatched Haines and Zimmer to check out the Piru shooting so he could review the admittedly slight case information at hand and get the command-post structure up and running-bureaucratic responsibilities he was only too glad to assume with his new role. His afternoon meeting at L.A. County Sheriff's Headquarters in Monterey Park had gone well, as he'd anticipated-the two agencies had a history of working closely, and both accorded the unfolding case top priority. A mutual aid agreement between departments pulled in Ventura Sheriff's, Dray's agency, seamlessly. Already the techies had put together a database to record the intel Tim had requested on biker stops-it could be accessed and updated online from the various stations. Before Tim had left the meeting, names and descriptions of the Sinner mother-chapter members were already trickling in. The Ventura deputies, familiar with individual Sinners from drug-related arrests within their jurisdiction, seemed to be leading the charge.

Guerrera flipped his phone shut. "So Haines confirms that there were no witnesses to the Piru shooting. Our boy Chooch Millan was gunned down on a quiet road at the city outskirts. They stripped his originals, left muchacho in an undershirt."

"Why take the jacket?" Bear asked.

"An outlaw's originals are his ultimate symbol of pride-more than his bike, even. Once they're awarded, they're never washed."

"Never?"

"Not even after initiation ceremonies where the jackets-and their proud new wearers-get baptized by oil, piss, and shit. The hard-core dudes even leave their jackets under their bikes at night to collect crankcase drippings. Yeah, it's sacrilege to wash the originals. Punishable by death, even."

Knowing that Bear's fascination with the lurid would likely lead to a conversational detour, Tim steered Guerrera back on track. "What else did Haines get?"

"Looks to be an AR-15, same they used in the break. Sheriff's devoted a lot of units to the area, but nothing doing. Bikers are too fast. Those boys were long gone before Sheriff's even got the call."

Bear gestured ahead, to where the road wound down through the hills. "Piru's less than ten miles from the Sinner clubhouse."

The truck veered close to the high-rising canyon wall, and Tim could see where people had etched graffiti into the rock. SEAN +