Troubleshooter

by Gregg Hurwitz

  “That’s why Kaner made sure to keep out of the camera’s range on his departure. He didn’t give a shit if we saw him. He didn’t want us to see her.” Bear studied the girl’s terrified face. “What would the Sinners want a Mexican girl for anyway?”

  Krindon made a sucking noise, his tongue against his front teeth. “Nothing good.”

  Tim recalled Strauss’s words this afternoon: We’re fielding nearly two hundred tips an hour on the hotline—everything from looted TVs to girls snatched off street corners. Bear met his eyes, nodding, already on the same page.

  Krindon’s reverse frame-by-frame quickly confirmed that the young woman was Kaner’s captive. A hefty girl, she was sobbing, face streaked red. Her mouth opened at Dray’s approach—a cry for help? When the girl struggled, Kaner threw an elbow to her temple.

  “Okay. Stay still. Relax.” Dray’s voice sounded softer not because she was rattled but because she was speaking to the young woman.

  Hey, Timmy. How ’bout you give me the benefit of the doubt next go-around?

  Krindon said, “Let me bring up the audio.” A twist of a fat dial warped the striker’s voice into a retarded drawl. “Get the fuck outta here.”

  And then Dray, interrupted by the truck’s roaring appearance: “I’m not going without—”

  Pete detached the audio track, rewound and enhanced it. The last word rang out over a hiss of high-fidelity static. “—her.”

  Kaner’s hidden reply. “Fine. Take her.” A female cry, then a grunt as a body struck the ground.

  Dray’s cheek tensed—the grind of her teeth. She gathered her courage, stepped toward the fallen girl. Den’s shot blew her off her feet.

  21

  Tim was relieved to have a lead to follow, an excuse to avoid going home, and a distraction that would keep him from calling the hospital to check in every twenty minutes. Bear leaned against the faux wall that partitioned off the phone banks from the command post, but the warning creak it emitted straightened him back up.

  “The mayor told me about a call you guys fielded on a girl who got snatched?” Tim said.

  The court security officer tugged at the textured bags under his eyes with a thumb and forefinger. He flipped through the call log— textbook thick and growing. “Yeah, I think Mattie P. took that one. Here it is. Some girl called, hysterical, said her friend got nabbed off a street corner by bikers.”

  “Where?”

  “Owensmouth in Chatsworth.” He smirked. “Prime real estate.”

  “What’d you do with it?”

  “Since the alleged victim had family, I told the friend we’d need an immediate member to file a missing person’s. That we usually wait forty-eight hours, but if she wanted to call Sheriff’s, she could see if they could move on her report. She said she’d have the mother call back.” He flipped a page. “Never did.”

  “That’s all you did with it?” Tim’s frustration, he realized, was directed at himself. He’d adopted the dismissiveness in Strauss’s tone and disregarded the piece of information. Dray’s admonishment came at him: Everyone counts. And everyone counts the same. Getting personal is like putting on blinders. It blocks you from weighing deaths equally, which blocks you from weighing clues equally.

  “We got nearly a thousand calls in twenty-four hours.” The CSO worked up an impressive scowl. “The Sinners had just shot a deputy. I assumed they’d be on to more important matters. Plus, the woman—or the mother—never called back. I figured it was a hoax or a mix-up or something.”

  “Do you have a trace number for the call?”

  As the CSO grumbled and clicked away at his computer, Guerrera leaned around the corner. His face sharpened with concern when he saw Tim. “What are you doing back? I thought you were gonna get some sleep.”

  “Sleep’s overrated.”

  The CSO jotted a phone number on a piece of paper, ripped it from the pad, and handed it to Tim. “Happy tracking.”

  Lydia Monteverde came out on the porch to speak to Tim, Bear, and Guerrera because her baby sister and five-year-old daughter were sleeping in the living room. Battle-scarred holiday decorations clung to the walls, survivors of Christmases past—Frosty with a torn abdomen, Santa sporting crayon scribbles, amputee Rudolph. From the scattered toys and TV trays, Tim guessed that at least three others lived in the tiny apartment. Lydia wore a T-shirt with the sleeves cuffed up above her shoulders and a polyester maid skirt, freshly washed but stained.

  Bear thumped a cigarette out of a crumpled pack—he didn’t smoke but kept Camels on hand for precisely this reason—and she gladly took it. After a shallow inhale, she blew a shaky stream of smoke and gestured with the two fingers clinching the cigarette. “Right over there. That’s where Marisol and me was talking.”

  A chain-link view of broken-down playground equipment festooned with graffiti tags. Owensmouth Avenue—a stretch of North Valley depravity, a mainline through the crack-and-porn hub of the nation. Lydia gazed up the street as if seeing it with them for the first time, her eyes momentarily blank.

  “By the park?” Tim asked.

  A jerky nod. She crossed her bare arms, rubbing them. She’d refused Tim’s jacket earlier.

  “I was too scared to see good. They vroomed past me on both sides. I ran, hid over there.” She pointed to a jungle gym in the far corner, glistening like a mass of steel wool. “They circled around her on their motorcycles, revving the engines.” She was trembling with the cold and the memory. “So loud. Marisol was screaming, but no one heard. Not around here.”

  “How’d they grab her?”

  “One guy—big guy—drove by and just yanked her like this, around her neck and arm, and dragged her up on his bike behind him. He kept going.” She was crying now, her frail shoulders shaking. “They passed me first. They could’ve grabbed me. It should’ve been me. But then I ran, and so they circled around Marisol.”

  “Was Marisol involved with any biker gangs? Any friends or boyfriends who were Cholos?”

  Lydia laughed, swiping at her tears. Her knees cracked when she sat on the front step. “No.”

  “Did she live around here?” Tim caught himself using past tense a second too late.

  A mousy nod. “With her abuela.”

  “We’d like to talk with the grandmother. Can you tell us where she lives?”

  Lydia’s eyes darted away. “You’re gonna find out anyhow?”

  “Yes,” Guerrera said. “But don’t worry. That doesn’t interest us.”

  Bear furrowed his brow inquisitively at Tim. It took a moment for Tim to catch up to Guerrera, but then he put together why the mother hadn’t made a follow-up call to the hotline.

  “I have the address inside.”

  “Did you notice anything about the bikes?” Tim asked. “Or the bikers? Any distinguishing marks?”

  She closed her eyes, drifting back through the scene, then shuddered. “One of them had a tattoo.”

  A baby’s sputtering cry from inside set her on alert. She rose, dusting the wrinkles from her stained skirt.

  “What kind of tattoo?”

  “A burning skull. Like a devil. Real mean-looking.” She flicked her stub at the pavement, where it sent out a shower of sparks. “And it was laughing.”

  The front door opened tentatively to reveal a rotund Mexican woman, pronounced black doughnuts ringing her puffy eyes. Her fearful expression—not surprising given the late-night ring at the door—yielded to panic. “No take me away. Please no take me. I no cause trouble.”

  Tim and Bear stood behind Guerrera on the front step. Bear prodded Guerrera with an elbow, and Guerrera said, “No somos Inmigración. No se preocupe. Estamos aquí solamente para ayudar a su nieta.”

  But the woman was hysterical, bending deep on her knees as if contemplating collapse. “I no cause trouble. I jus’ want to be here for when mija come home. I no cause trouble. Here. Mira, mira.”

  She grabbed Guerrera’s arm and dragged him down a brief, dark hall, past a doily-draped side
table with guttering Advent candles. A tortured Jesus hung from a porcelain cross; it seemed more a fixture than a holiday flourish. Kitchen humidity had spread through the apartment, tinged with the smell of cooked onions. Tim and Bear arrived at the bedroom door as the woman crumbled, weeping, one hand clutching Guerrera’s pant leg. Neatly made bed, cutesy animal posters, costume jewelry laid with care on a pink towel covering the bureau. Marisol Juarez looked out from a picture frame, teased hair framing a plump, cherubic face. Eyeliner tailed beyond her eyes; russet lipstick widened the lines of her mouth. Generous smile, a dot of neon green bubble gum glowing at her molars.

  “ Por favor. She come home soon. I be here for her. You take me then.”

  Guerrera crouched beside her and spoke soothingly in Spanish. The woman finally calmed, overcome with relief. He helped her to her feet, and she reappraised them gratefully. She squeezed her eyes shut, muttered a prayer, then led them back to a small couch by the front door. She patted the cushions, then deferentially removed the plastic cover from the footrest. Tim’s and Bear’s soles were muddy; they kept them on the floor. Her insistence grew oppressive, so finally, to her apparent pleasure, they raised their boots to the spotless fabric.

  Guerrera followed her into the kitchen, which flickered with candlelight. Tim clicked the lamp beside him, but no light cut the gloom. Evidently the funereal candles also served a pragmatic purpose. A few used tea bags punctuated the base of the lamp.

  The old woman fussed over the sink as Guerrera murmured questions in Spanish. She emerged proudly bearing four steaming mugs on a tray. She plucked a desiccated tea bag from the side table and plopped it into one cup, which she reserved for herself. Reverently, she withdrew a box from the cupboard, removed the cellophane wrapper, and dropped fresh tea bags into the three remaining mugs. She handed them off, nodding encouragingly until they all sipped.

  “You will help my Marisol? You will find her?”

  “We’ll do our best,” Tim said.

  She and Guerrera spoke for about twenty minutes, Tim and Bear straining to keep up with the Spanish, Guerrera pausing from time to time to fill in the blanks. They turned up no new information and no compelling reason her granddaughter might have been targeted. The woman must have read the disappointment in Tim’s face, because she clutched his arm at the door and asked, “You bring her home to me?”

  After the battering of the past twenty-four hours, the question hit him hard; his emotions had bled close to the surface. “We’ll do everything we can.”

  She looked to Guerrera, who translated, and then her shoulders sank. Two skateboarders rolled past, their wheels snapping over cracks in the sidewalk.

  Bear and Guerrera headed back to the rig. Tim paused on the walk and turned. Her squat, shadowy form remained at the door, candles mapping orange sheets on the walls behind her.

  “Thank you.” He gestured as if raising a cup to his lips. “For the tea.”

  Her face warmed, if only briefly, and the door swung shut.

  22

  Muffled feminine whimpers found resonance in the high corners of the deserted warehouse. A leaking pipe had corroded the far wall, leaving the air musty with the bittersweet stench of mold. The soggy drywall had buckled, dragging over the nails of the studs like sloughed clothing. Partitions and cubicle walls divided up the concrete expanse into a labyrinth—narrow runs, sharp turns, cul-de-sacs. Broken-down machinery accompanied the compartmentalized workspaces—crumpled conveyer belts, rusting metal desks, spills of bolts. The industrial carpet lining the desk area of the office suite carved out of one corner gave over to a concrete floor slick with oil, worsened by the sweating engines of the four Harleys and the Indian. Den sat at a managerial desk, a hand rasping over his stubble-sharp jaw. Kaner, Chief, and Goat lounged in chairs opposite him; they might have been reviewing first-quarter estimates. Goat’s scar cysts had flared up, the flesh on the right half of his face weeping a clear fluid. Kaner spun a finger in the links of his weighty drive-chain necklace.

  Tom-Tom stood in the flimsy doorway, staring impatiently across the vast warehouse. “Thafuckizee?”

  The closet door behind Den rattled. A stifled sob deteriorated into gagging sounds and moist snuffling.

  The bowie knife pinned down a stack of papers to Den’s left, glinting red stones lending the flame to the Sinners skull. Den picked the knife up, let it dangle between thumb and forefinger, then slowly lowered the tip to the desk blotter. He tilted the knife, letting its weight draw the point the length of the material. He leaned forward and blew, the blotter neatly halved along the blade’s line. Pleased, he settled back in his chair.

  A muffled screech, and again the closet door banged in the jamb.

  Kaner’s low growl of a voice came softly, his lips barely moving: “Let’s shut her up already.”

  An entrance across the warehouse was announced by a bang, a column of thrown light, and the near idle of an engine. Diamond Dog rolled toward them, weaving through machinery. He drove right up into the office and killed the engine. He removed a saddlebag and tossed it onto the desk before Den, equipment rattling within.

  Den flipped the reinforced-leather top, looked into it, and smiled. “Good.” With a slide of his eyes, he indicated the closed closet door. “Let’s get the show on the road.”

  Chief disappeared back into the warehouse, Tom-Tom hopping after and whooping with excitement. Kaner tugged open the closet door. Marisol Juarez lay pressed against the jamb, arms wrenched painfully behind her considerable back and bound at the wrists. A ribbon of duct tape indented her pudgy cheeks—the bordering flesh rubbed raw. Snot ran over her lips; sweat curled her dyed hair. She tried to retract into the shallow closet but had nowhere to go.

  Diamond Dog considered her for a moment, then nodded. “She’ll do.”

  Goat and Kaner lifted her effortlessly despite her weight. They propped her in a chair—she sat compliantly—and cut the tape from her wrists, ankles, and face.

  She sucked deep breaths, smeared the sticky hair off her face. “Please don’t rape me.”

  Goat laughed. “We don’t do Mexicans.”

  “Why am I here?”

  “To shut up,” Kaner said.

  He, Goat, and Diamond Dog returned to their chairs, and everyone sat quietly, almost sociably, around the desk. Marisol’s eyes went to the jeweled bowie sitting on the slit blotter before her. Her chest jerked; she took in hiccups of breaths. Den looked from her to the blade, the set of his face suggesting amusement at the implicit dare.

  From deep in the warehouse came a screech. Marisol stiffened as the sound grew steadily louder. Her thin beige top clung to her sweaty torso like a film.

  Tom-Tom’s humming carried to them—a histrionic rendition of “Here Comes the Bride” followed by a spray of laughter. Marisol watched the doorway, terrified; Den kept his focus on her, enjoying the entertainment.

  The sound of metal scraping concrete reached an unbearably high-pitched wail, heralding the object’s arrival.

  Marisol cried out, “What did I do? Why do you want me?”

  Den’s mouth pulled to one side, a private grin. “We don’t want you, bitch. You’re just practice.”

  Chief backed into view, guiding a large object behind him, and then it, too, slid within the doorway’s span. A stainless-steel embalming table. Tom-Tom brought up the rear, overcome with delight. “Ta-da!”

  Marisol emitted a whimper from somewhere deep in her chest. “God, don’t hurt me.”

  Den’s hand moved in a blur. The blade was back on the table as if it hadn’t moved. “You’re already dead,” he whispered.

  Blood streamed from the slit, a window blind descending. Her uncomprehending eyes blinked. Her hand rose to her throat, came away red. She gurgled, and then her knees rattled against the desk and she flopped forward onto the sliced blotter. Kaner kicked out the chair, and her body shifted, then flipped back, landing on the floor.

  Tom-Tom giggled, his white-blond curls swaying. Kaner and Goat
each grabbed two limbs and hoisted her onto the embalming table. Blood pattered on the floor.

  Den peered down at the body, fingering his blade. “Now, let’s make this thing work.”

  23

  The command post had the tired vibe of a bar ten minutes after last call when the lights come up. The deputies on shift browsed through files, repositioned the surveillance shots tacked to the walls, and pored over crime-scene photos, their skin tinted green from exhaustion and the unforgiving overheads. Malane alone looked alert and sharp, jotting notes and chewing the inside of his cheek. Jim was slurping from his coffee mug, holding it at an odd angle. Tim realized he was covering the words on the side—SUPPORT THE MENTALLY HANDICAPPED. TAKE AN FBI AGENT TO LUNCH.

  “Why grab a girl when you’re on the run from the law?” Bear was agitated, as if angry at the Sinners’ lack of circumspection. “I mean, literally on the run. They’d just faced off with Rack, what, an hour earlier? They knew the heat was coming.”

  “Race killing?” Freed offered from the far end of the conference table.

  “Hate crimes are too low-rent for these guys at this stage,” Bear said.

  “Maybe they wanted to turn out a cutie.” Thomas finished his second cup of coffee in as many minutes and tossed the Styrofoam cup across the command post. It bricked the lip of the trash can and bounced across Malane’s oxblood loafers.

  “These guys are too smart for that,” Guerrera said. “After planning a picture-perfect break and a mass execution, they’re not gonna derail for a piece of ass.”

  “Then what the fuck they doing with her?” Bear’s meaty finger tapped Marisol’s photo, borrowed from her grandmother’s house.

  Tim was sitting back, his eyes closed. “They picked her.”

  One of Bear’s eyebrows went on point. “What?”