Troubleshooter (2005)

by Gregg - Rackley 03 Hurwitz

  "Believe me, I've used worse." Tim offered his hand, and the doctor took it. "I'm glad she's in your hands."

  "I'll take care of her."

  "Please."

  The door clicked, leaving him with the headache beep of the monitor and the white noise of unseen moving parts. Dray's hair remained dark at the tips from dried sweat. Tim rested a hand on the mound of her stomach. His thoughts took him to the waiting crib in their nursery, and he remembered his first three weeks home with Ginny when C-section complications had left Dray hospital-bound. He tried to envision those three weeks of solo parenting stretched into eighteen years, and then he pictured not even having that option.

  The thrill of their honeymoon, a four-day weekend in Yosemite he'd squeezed between deployments, had been heightened by his impending departure. The orange glow of moonlight filtered through tent nylon. Dray's form emerging from the flannel sheath of a sleeping bag. The muscles in her tapered back, arranged like river stones beneath her smooth skin. Her face smudged up against her shoulder so her cheek grew chins. A fall of lank hair split over her left eye. Tim tended hot--the exertion had overheated him--and he was sitting Indian style at her side, fingertip-tracing the dip between her shoulder blades.

  Her voice was muffled by her shoulder. "How 'bout if I lost a leg?"

  "No."

  "Both arms?"

  "Nope."

  "Hysterical blindness?"

  "We'd get through it together."

  "Chronic halitosis?"

  "We'd figure something out. Buy stock in Listerine."

  "Hmm." Her eyes were closed; she moved toward his touch like a contented cat. "Would you divorce me if I started collecting Hummels?"

  "No."

  "God, you really took those vows literally. Just so you know"--with exaggerated exertion she shoved herself up so she could look at him--"one false move, I'm outta here, pal. I'm talking allergies, facial tics, whistling while you pee, disfiguring scars, referring to yourself as 'this guy,' bringing home sport-themed couch pillows--"

  "I'll watch my step."

  She hugged him at the waist and curled into him, suddenly serious, inundated with feeling. She spoke to his ribs in a hot whisper. "I want you to always be happy. If anything ever happens to me, you can marry someone else."

  She was twenty-two and new to emotion. He was twenty-five, convinced of his greater maturity, and invincible.

  "Nothing's going to happen to you," he'd said.

  Now her milky arm protruded from the papery gown, exposed to the armpit. He lifted her hand. It came limply, as if detached. He ran his thumb across her short-cut fingernails, then over the recent wrinkles that pond-rippled from her middle knuckles. He pressed his face to the skin at her inner wrist--the smell of her, disguised by hospital soap and sweat. He slid his finger into her fist to feel the soft press of her skin all around him. "Squeeze, Dray. Go on, squeeze."

  He waited for the faintest pulse. He lowered his head, closed his eyes, choked on a breath.

  What are you doing here?

  "Visiting you."

  Leave the hound-dog-at-the-grave routine to Mac. He's got nothing better to do.

  "I wanted to see you."

  Great. Wring your hands. Rend your hair. Fall asleep on the visitor chair, too--that one always looks good on TV movies. This isn't me. Come on. You spent thirteen years enlisted, eleven with Spec Ops. You know better than to sentimentalize this.

  "What do you want me to do?"

  She laughs, crow's-feet bunching around her impossible green eyes. Get out there and bag some crooks.

  Chapter 20

  Ambulances lined the unlit berths like worn-out predators. Tim and Bear walked through the dark underground bay, heading up the slope to the open air. A GMC Safari van waited in the turnaround circle up top, bubble lettering announcing DRAIN-CLEAR PLUMBING. Tim rested the heel of his hand on the butt of his hip-holstered gun. As they passed, the door slid open. Tim halted but didn't draw--too much like a bad South American kidnapping to occasion hard-edged concern.

  Pete Krindon's voice issued from the dark interior. "Get in."

  Tim and Bear stepped up into the van. Rim seating, carpeted walls, embedded surveillance screens, wires protruding from the torn-apart dash. Pete veered around the block, easing behind a Dumpster in a supermarket parking lot. He cut the engine and pivoted, his thin arm fish-white against the navy vinyl of the headrest. "Turn off your cell phones. You don't have BlackBerries, do you? Good. Those wireless PDAs might as well be billboards advertising your location. I told you before, Rack, the Mark of the Beast'll be a bar code worn on the palm."

  Krindon, a technical-security and surveillance specialist, could remote-monitor a man's every movement, or reconstruct a woman's life from the cards she kept in her wallet. Though he was too paranoid or too informed to work for the government, he sometimes contracted in, delivering sensitive intel while maintaining a freelancer's distance. Tim and Bear used him on occasion to acquire information that warrants couldn't flush out.

  Bear nodded at the gaping hole in the dash. "You tore out your OnStar."

  "You wouldn't believe the information embedded in those fuckers. If people knew the half of it." A world-weary head shake. "They're remote-operated--Big Brother can send a signal that turns off your engine. I tracked a mule from Matamoros once, remote-locked him into his Buick by satellite. Federales came, he was at the windows like a lizard in a jar, fifty bricks of coke locked in there with him." Krindon chuckled sadistically, scratching his vivid red hair as he scrambled into the backseat.

  Tim withdrew the CD from his jacket pocket, and Krindon slid it into a unit beneath the passenger seat. Dray's approach played on a mounted screen. Krindon watched it through once, his face remaining impassive. He offered Tim no condolences, instead tugging on a catch that released a folding instrument panel from the wall. He stopped the recording when Dray's head jerked to the right to track the phantom bike's approach, and he set to work on the digital enhancer. After comparing each pixel to those surrounding it, the artificial-intelligence program either sharpened or flattened it, bringing the freeze-frame into greater resolution--it was like watching a cheap repro of a Monet transform into a photograph.

  Something seemed to catch Krindon's eye, and then he zeroed in on Goat's rearview, angled to the side to deflect the squad car's spotlight glare. He advanced frame by frame until he picked up a darting movement--black on black, like a bat against the night sky. He captured the reflected blob, then enlarged the image and fussed with the contrast, bringing a partial silhouette into view. The mystery biker. An immense man astride a motorcycle. Kaner.

  "What's that?" Bear squinting, leaning forward.

  "Don't touch the screen." Krindon zoomed in farther, and then the screen rippled downward to pick up a protrusion from Kaner's boot. Krindon worked on it awhile, the screen rendering the image in waves of clarity.

  "It's a shoe," Bear said.

  "He's double-packing," Tim said. "Someone's on the bike behind him. We just can't see him because Kaner's so wide."

  "Her." Krindon focused in on a fan of wrinkles at Kaner's side. Four fingers with cherry-painted nails, clutching Kaner's shirt.

  Tim and Bear waited patiently, letting Krindon fuss over the segment, but the phantom bike never reappeared in the other bikes' mirrors, nor did the female passenger. Krindon sat back, frustrated, letting the footage roll in real time. Though Tim had seen it now many times, he couldn't tear his eyes from the screen.

  Dray's profile, frontlit by the spotlight. "Okay. Stay still. Relax." The striker's snarl: "Get the fuck outta here." The refrigerator truck blasting past, on its way to another stop, another city, Andrea Rackley little more than a passing speck. Just another deputy harassing a few bikers. Nothing to turn a trucker's head.

  Krindon slowly drew himself up until he sat erect, locked in the grip of an idea. Bear started to ask something, but Tim stayed him with a gesture. Krindon reversed the footage. The blood sucked back up into
Dray's side. She drew herself together, bounced off the ground onto her feet, holstered her weapon and reverse-waddled a few steps. The truck flew by, also in reverse, winking back the spotlight. Krindon froze the bleached-out screen. He fiddled with knobs, darkening the truck's aluminum paneling. A reflected tableau resolved, like ghost characters emerging from a Polaroid fog. Kaner on his bike, a teenage girl clinging to his back.

  "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.

  Chapter 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 Inmigracion. No se preocupe. Estamos aqui 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 troub
le. 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?"