Troubleshooter Read online

  13

  Tim hit the brakes, and for an instant the two men regarded each other through the windshield. The split second of shock passed, and then Tim’s gun was out, the PA at his lips. Den hopped onto his bike, which faced the Buick.

  “Get off that bike now!”

  Den spun the Harley in a half circle, throwing up a sheet of dust. Breaking Service policy, Tim fired a warning shot out the open window. Den revved the engine but didn’t take off. Finally he turned, the insect bulge of his helmet fixed on the gun pointed at his shoulders.

  “Turn off your motor. Throw your keys to your right. No—do not put down your kickstand!”

  Den remained on his tiptoes, forced to balance the weighty bike.

  Tim alternated the PA with the push-to-talk mike of the dashboard Motorola. “Request immediate backup following high-risk motorcycle stop on Den Laurey.”

  The CSO responded from the comm center downtown, his voice ratcheting high with excitement. “Where are you?”

  Tim paused, frustrated with himself. “The Malibu hills. I’m not sure exactly where—check my location with OnStar. Do we have any units available in Malibu or Simi?”

  “Hang on, lemme see who’s on the air.”

  Den bristled restlessly. Tim got back on the PA. “Take off your helmet. Throw it to the right. Now!” The helmet bounced once and rolled a few feet down the slope.

  The CSO came back in his ear: “It’s a twenty-minute ETA.”

  “Then contact the watch commander at the Malibu/Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station, give him my bearings, tell him to get a few units up here ASAP. This won’t wait.”

  “Ten-four.”

  Tim eased out of the car and stood, both hands on the .357, his wrists resting on the V created by the open door. A faint breeze blew musky canyon smells across his face—sage, eucalyptus, dirt, and leaves commingled in a marijuana-like sweetness. Despite the December night, his neck tingled with sweat. Due to the sudden nature of the encounter, Tim hadn’t been able to locate the stop to his advantage. The curve left blind road in front of and behind them. At the edge of his vision ahead, the narrow road split three ways. Through traffic would be disruptive— and provide Den opportunities.

  A knucklehead engine powered Den’s Harley cutaway, the row of bulky nuts on the right side sticking up like an iron fist. The front wheel was barely raked out, maybe a few degrees, flame-decorated extensions lengthening the front fork.

  Holding a shooting stance, Tim slowly approached. Den shifted slightly, his right leg tensing to take more of the bike’s weight. Tim froze, a red flag rising. His eyes picked over Den’s back and the motionless bike.

  Crosshairs had been etched on the left rearview mirror. The left grip, pointing back at Tim, terminated in a hole, the bore of a jerry-rigged shotgun hidden in the handlebar.

  Tim shuffled quickly to the side, out of the scatter radius, holding the gun on Den’s head.

  “Put down your kickstand. Put it down! Dismount on your right. On your right.”

  Den had to turn unnaturally to dismount on the wrong side, presenting Tim with a full view of his body and hands. His road-filthy jacket didn’t feature the more visible rockers and flaming skull on the back, but the front bore his markings, safe from the view of drivers. A scattering of upside-down cop patches for the officers the nomads had killed. The ubiquitous 1% triangle. A rectangular in-memory-of patch, NIGGER STEVE written in block letters. Tim felt his stomach tighten when he took in the two upside-down U.S. Marshals Service patches, not yet dulled by road wear.

  Den’s face, bearing a few days’ stubble, remained relaxed. He offered a disarming smile. “This ain’t gonna end well for you.”

  The sight of the patches had put a charge into Tim; he did a poor job keeping the anger from his voice. “Turn around. On your knees. Lace your hands behind your head. Good boy, you know the drill.” He eased forward, holding his .357 steady, his other hand going to the cuffs at his belt.

  Den’s shoulders started shaking, and then Tim heard a low, ticking chuckle.

  The crackle of a Harley engine disrupted the night. Then another. Within seconds two Harleys materialized, skidding up on the dirt plateau to flank Den protectively. The helmeted drivers, like Den, wore plain leathers in place of their originals. The larger of the two— Kaner—showed off arms covered with ink, the Illustrated Man on growth hormones. Double-looped around his neck hung an impeccably cleaned motorcycle drive chain. Its silver links, unblackened by grease, were surprisingly elegant. Whereas Den radiated quiet menace, Kaner was all brute force—head-on posture, wide fighter’s stance, chin pulled back over blocklike shoulders as if he’d just reared up to his nearly seven feet.

  A spill of white hair collected at his partner’s collar beneath the helmet—Tom-Tom the towhead.

  They were too close, almost right on top of Tim. His voice came out hoarse. “Hands up! Hands up!”

  His eyes flicked to Den’s discarded helmet, the tentacle of a wire mike floating below the visor to provide hands-free radio communication with the other bikers. The nomads were traveling close for protection but riding separate to stay inconspicuous.

  The night chill filled Tim’s nostrils, his lungs. Keeping his gun level at Den’s head, he began a cautious retreat to his car—the distance would give him a better shot at holding all three in his scope. When the other bikers moved, Tim jerked the gun to cover them, and they held up their hands casually, as if amused.

  “Lugathat,” Tom-Tom said. “Guess he’s got the sitwayshun under control.”

  The sound of two more bikes approaching, this time from behind Tim, sped his pace. He ducked behind his open door, reaching for the mike of his radio as the bikes swept past. They stopped about ten yards back from the others, where Tim couldn’t effectively cover them. Another Harley and an Indian. Chief’s helmet tilted in mock greeting. The bikers turned off their engines, one after another, until the night held only a dizzying silence and a few crickets scratching their legs disharmoniously. Four helmeted heads pointed at Tim intently, the alien, eyeless stares of the dark wind visors projecting threat.

  Tim heard his breath as an echo in his chest, his gun flashing left and right as he tried to keep everyone pinned down. When he spoke into the radio, he could hear the slight tremor in his voice. “I have all the Sinner nomads here. Repeat: all the Sinner nomads. I’m outnumbered and need backup immediately.”

  Den lowered his hands and rose from his knees, keeping his back to Tim. His breath fogged over his shoulder. He turned slowly, his profile cut cleanly from the glow of Kaner’s headlight.

  “Sheriff’s gave me a ten-minute ETA.” The CSO sounded a touch panicked himself. “That’s the quickest we got, Rack. Want me to stay on with you?”

  Tim released the mike, the coiled cord sucking it back across the seat.

  He sighted on Den’s critical mass, but the others in his periphery were moving, and there was nothing he could do about it.

  Kaner tugged the drive chain from his neck and wrapped it once around his forearm like a flexible bludgeon. Tom-Tom pulled the sissy bar free from his bike, its filed points rising into view, and wielded it like a double lance. The red road flare latched to Chief’s frame transformed into a pipe shotgun in his hands. Goat slid off his bike, twisting his gas cap to reveal the hunting knife welded to the inside. Tim swung his gun over to Chief, who had the only firearm, but then a handgun appeared at Den’s side, pressed to his thigh.

  Tim lowered himself against the hinge of the open door, presenting as small a target as possible. Figuring he’d die either way in an exchange of shots, he aimed his .357 at Den. If lead started flying, he’d rather take out the head man before going down. Imminent death registered as a throbbing at his temples and wrists. He felt his desire to pull the trigger as a craving, maddeningly reined in by thoughts of his family and the loathsome necessity of thinking tactically in a blood standoff.

  They squared off, no one eager to start the fireworks.

  The
n the Sinners pulled back to their bikes, Chief and Den keeping their weapons aimed at Tim’s head. As desperately as Tim wanted the takedowns, he weighed the situation. There was no imminent threat to a civilian. If the nomads continued their ordered retreat, his life wasn’t at risk. If he initiated a gunfight, he’d be able to take out one nomad at most, and at high cost.

  Rather than search for his keys, Den threw a switch on his bike, bypassing the ignition—another design trick to catch law enforcement off guard. The bikes fired up, one after another, and they were off in a cloud of smoke. They spread at the fork like a squadron breaking formation and faded into the darkness, dispersing through the hillside.

  Tim took off after the last bike, getting back on the radio. “I lost them. Alert every agency. Send manpower. Redirect the units that are en route. These canyons are a sieve—let’s do our best to seal them off. And get the Chippies out all over the surrounding highways in case they make it out.” He rattled off Den’s license-plate number and spit a gob of cottoned saliva out the window. “He’s without a helmet, but the others have them on. They’re wearing plain black leathers, riding chopped hogs—four Harleys and an Indian. They’re traveling alone but staying in the same vicinity. They’re armed and dangerous. They have weapons in their possession and built in to their bikes. Do not approach them on their bikes. And do not approach without backup.”

  Only when he clicked off did he note his heart double-thumping with adrenaline. He tried to slow his breathing, but every few minutes a motorcycle whined past, heading for the Rock Store, quickening his pulse. He fought the convoluted landscape, chased down a few bikers for a closer look, returned to search the dirt apron, all the while updates pouring in on federal and local frequencies. Nothing and more nothing.

  When he glanced at the clock, forty-five minutes had passed. By now the nomads could’ve wound their way free of the canyons or holed up in a safe house within the maze of roads. The night air smelled of brush and distant smoke. The Buick pushed an orb of light before it, seeming to generate the road it was driving on. The canyons grew quiet, but Tim continued to navigate, his nerves frayed, the radio abuzz, his apprehension growing.

  Near the hour mark, a shaken sheriff ’s dispatcher radioed in to advise that a pregnant deputy in Moorpark had been shot point-blank in the chest.

  14

  He didn’t remember turning the car around or the drive to the hospital. He didn’t remember parking or the walk across the ambulance bay. His first flash of cognizance came when Bear appeared in the emergency-room lobby, running toward him, gear jangling on his belt.

  Bear halted, winded; his voice was high. “She called in a high-risk stop.”

  Tim felt his veins go to ice. “Who?” he asked, though he already knew.

  “Den Laurey.”

  Tim’s vision narrowed again. When he came out of it, a doctor was midsentence with Bear, thin hand on his chest to stop his advance through the swinging doors. A nurse at Tim’s side was trying to comfort him with facts, but he couldn’t quite keep up with the words. “—medevacked her. We’re the closest trauma center with a helipad—”

  He looked around blankly. “Where are we?”

  The nurse’s face registered concern. “UCLA Medical Center.”

  Bear lifted the doctor by both shoulders, moved him out of his way, and set him back down. The security guard took one look at Bear and stayed in his seat but kept his hand on the phone. Tim followed Bear through the doors, down the sterile corridor.

  Bear froze up ahead, peering through the windowed doors to Procedure Room Two. Filled with dread, Tim drew to his side and looked through the glass.

  Surrounded by nurses and doctors, Dray lay naked, her pallid skin smeared with blood. The blue tint of the fluorescents and her position—supine, elevated, focal—gave the scene a religious aspect. A fat needle stuck out an inch below her left clavicle, and a web of blackening blood glittered on her side. Her brilliant green eyes were cloudy, or maybe it was just the lighting.

  Tim heard the shuffle of boots walking in unison—the approach of the guards—but he couldn’t tear his eyes off his wife. One of the doctors glanced up, then stepped away, moving toward them. He shot his gloves on the way through the doors and stepped between Bear and the guards. “I got it fellows.” When he pulled down his mask, Tim recognized him as the doctor who’d treated him last year. As the guards backed off, the doctor shot Bear a stern look. “Behave yourself and you can stay back here. Don’t go in that room.”

  He took Tim’s arm and drew him into an empty exam room. He started with details and hard facts—a good read on what Tim required right now.

  “She took a blast from a twelve-gauge, double-aught buck. The vest absorbed the brunt of it, but a pellet got through the armhole, penetrated beneath her breast at the fourth intercostal. It pierced the pleura, the sac surrounding the lung, and caused the lung to collapse.” He moistened his lips. “When the paramedic got to her, she wasn’t breathing. Unresponsive, no pulse, blood pressure was at fifty. He bagged her and did a needle decompression in the field, but she’d been down for a while. She didn’t have oxygen to her brain for seven, maybe eight minutes. There might be brain insult.”

  Tim took it standing. The doctor gave him a moment to digest this, waiting for his eyes to pull back into focus.

  “She may have had some hypoxic injury while she was down. The cat looks okay, but it’s a wait-and-see.”

  “She stable?”

  “She is now. We put in a chest tube. And she started breathing on her own—clear airway, good breath sounds. But the chest tube put out some blood, and she’s not waking up. Because she’s pregnant, she has a lower resting blood pressure to begin with….” He wiped his forehead with the abbreviated sleeve of his scrub top. “We did an ultrasound, and the baby’s heartbeat is regular. We want to keep the baby inside her, but we need to know….If an operation is required and we think we might lose your wife on the table, do you want us to perform an emergency C-section or devote our full resources to your wife first?”

  Tim tried to think of what Dray would want but heard himself say, “Devote your full resources to my wife.” He put his hand on the exam table just to make sure he had hold of something solid and unyielding. “If you lose her, can you still …?”

  “Perform a postmortem C-section? Yes. But let’s hope we don’t wind up there.” The doctor rested a hand on Tim’s shoulder. “I heard about what happened. Your stopping the bikers.”

  “They put it out over the PA?”

  “The deputies were talking.” He regarded Tim heavily. “You can play the guilt game—” He opened his mouth, closed it, wiped his lips with his hand though there was nothing to wipe. “I lost my first wife. You can play that game until you’ve got nothing left to play with.” When Tim didn’t respond, the doctor took a little step back, angling toward the door. “I’m going to go check on her. Want me to leave you in the room?”

  “For a moment.”

  “We’re going to do everything we can.”

  “I know. Thank you, Doctor.”

  Only a few concrete images emerged from the haze of the next few hours. Tim’s colleagues popping by in shifts. Quiet voices, shy eyes. Tim nodding and nodding to the repeated pronouncement, uttered like a verdict, “It wasn’t your fault.” Guerrera and Zimmer in the back, discussing leads in whispered tones as if the topic weren’t appropriate. Dray’s four brothers harassing doctors and flashing badges until the oldest collapsed into a chair, ham-size fists pressing into his sweaty face. Mac pacing in the waiting room, stuck in a loop—“I just saw her at the doughnut joint. Happy’s? I just saw her.” Mac’s and Fowler’s sheriff’s deputy uniforms recalling Dray’s, cut to tatters beneath her gurney.

  Finally the doctor came out and brought Tim up to the ICU, hand on his back, a priest leading the condemned. Tim sat in the bedside chair and stared dumbly at his wife. Beneath her gown her belly thrust up, round and firm. A tube ran from the hole in her chest into a b
ubbling machine that sounded like a bong. Vaseline-impregnated gauze hid the sutures, but a few peeked out, shiny and black like the antennae of some hidden insect. Her legs were sticky and smelled faintly of urine. Her knees were pressed together and laid to the side in a way she never would have held them. It seemed grotesque—someone else positioning her knees, her limbs. What was a person other than how she held herself?

  All of a sudden, steaming at the joints and burning through the shock, it came. Rage.

  Rising, making his way past his colleagues, down the hall, into the bathroom. Leaving his badge behind on a closed toilet tank, stepping onto the lid, pulling himself up and through the window. Purpose quickening his step through the parking lot, the night sharp at the back of his throat.

  Dray leans against his car, arms crossed, a knowing smile touching her lips. “I’m a sheriff’s deputy, Timothy. It comes with the job. You don’t get to be stupid about this.”

  Poleaxed, gun hand hanging limp at his side.

  She studies him, reading his answer in his eyes. Then she laughs. “You’re not gonna get those fuckers for me. No way. That’s a prescription for incompetence. You’re gonna get them because they need to be got.”

  Tim’s eyes narrowed at the sound. Tannino’s voice.

  “—anonymous tip saved her life. Otherwise she would’ve lain there for God knows how long.” Tannino checked Dray’s pulse as if he knew what he was doing, his olive fingers nestled paternally alongside her throat. Working his lower lip between his teeth, Bear crouched at Tim’s side.

  Think, Tim. Where were they going?

  “Moorpark’s a long way from the Rock Store,” Tim said. “They ran the canyons and back roads, probably. Mulholland, Topanga, Box. Too many holes to plug in those hills. You only need a few brief spurts on freeways. You can pop out high on the 118, gets you on your way north keeping you out of L.A. County.”

  “What’s north?” Tannino asked.

  Tim and Bear said in unison, “The mother chapter.”