She looked at me and her eyes narrowed with concentration, like the answer I was looking for required a physical effort.
Then she said, “The grotto.”
26
“I’ve got him. Suspect in custody, I repeat, suspect in custody.”
Todd Fugate, deputy sheriff with the San Marcos Sheriff’s Station and part of its Gangs and Narcotics squad, felt good radioing in the news. The call had come in from the San Diego office and was a high-priority request from the FBI—not exactly a daily event at the station. Fugate was just pulling out of the Grand Plaza Mall when the call had come in, and he’d jumped on it. The target’s location, a downtrodden warehouse complex tucked in off La Mirada, aka the grotto, was less than five miles down the parkway. Knowing he’d be first on the scene, he hit the gas and rushed over.
Once he got there, he didn’t even wait for backup to show up. The alert had said the suspect had been shot in the shoulder and was probably traveling alone. It didn’t specify that he was armed. Fugate didn’t need more than that, and, as it turned out, he’d been proven right. The suspect was unarmed and weak and looked like he was about to faint. He gave himself up with zero fuss. Hell, by the looks of it, he was probably relieved that his ordeal was over. Fugate would drive him to the hospital himself—faster than waiting for an ambulance to come all the way out there—and the sonofabitch would soon find himself sitting in a cushy hospital bed with flirty nurses fussing all over his bad-boy ass, which had to be way better than bleeding out in some dingy warehouse all on his own.
Fugate felt good as he herded the suspect into the backseat of his Crown Vic. He didn’t bother to handcuff him to the steel loop on the floor of the backseats. The man was pretty out of it already. Yes, the deputy sheriff was pleased with himself. The San Diego County Sheriff ’s Office had been, as per the slogan on his black-and- white’s fender, “keeping the peace since 1850,” and right now, on this fine summer’s evening, Todd Fugate felt proud to be making a solid contribution to that noble tradition.
He was dead less than a minute later.
He was pulling away from the warehouse when a big SUV appeared at the gate and suddenly, unexpectedly, charged at him. Fugate spun the wheel to avoid the collision, but the SUV’s front bumper clipped his tail and spun him around like a toy and sent him careening sideways before diving nose-first into a ditch by the warehouse’s gates. The deputy looked out through shaken eyes to see the SUV do a quick U-turn before storming back and pulling up so it was blocking his way. Before its wheels had even stopped turning, its doors were flung open and two men were climbing out.
Fugate threw the car into reverse and hit the gas pedal, but the tires just shrieked and spun aimlessly as the jammed car rumbled in its spot and refused to budge. He gave up and drew his weapon, but he was too late—the men had already sprinted over and had beaten him to it. The first slug hurt like hell as it punched into his lungs, but the pain lasted only a second. The second bullet took care of that as it went through his brain and turned his lights off.
He wasn’t alive to see them drag his charge out of the car and shove the wounded man into the back of their SUV, nor to see them drive off unchallenged.
Which was just as well.
27
We were back at square one.
Soulpatch—sorry, Scrape or Torres or Dickhead or however you want to refer to him—was gone. Flamehead—or, more accurately, Billy “Booster” Noyes, as it turns out—was in ICU at Scripps Mercy with a big tube down his throat. The rest of the bike brothers were in permanently suspended animation on aluminum trays down at the morgue.
We also had a dead deputy who probably had no idea that this morning was going to be his last.
And we had plenty of questions.
Questions that hounded me as night fell and I finally made my way back to the hotel, ready to toss the memory of this crappy day into the incinerator section of my mind and move on to tomorrow.
I was tired and bummed out, and seeing Tess was like a tonic to my senses. She had Alex already asleep, which was a good sign, although I knew he wouldn’t be out for the night. I checked on him, saw him curled up in his kiddie sheets and with a bunch of plush and plastic toys crowding him, and I got the impression that he looked more restful than he had the night before.
Tess was a tonic all around.
I sent Jules home for the night and saw her out, giving her a breather to catch up with her life after she’d been drafted in all weekend. Then I ordered a club sandwich from room service, relieved the minibar of a couple of beers, handed one to Tess, and hit the couch with her.
I gave her the short version of my day while wolfing down the club, filling her in about what we’d discovered at the clubhouse while leaving out the gorier details. Telling her about my days always helped in that the storytelling exercise allowed me to step back and look at what was going on from a broader, clearer perspective. It also highlighted the questions that were key to figuring out what was going on.
Questions like, why were they following me? Why did they take Scrape and not shoot him on the spot? The one that trumped them all, of course, was, who killed the bikers? Was it someone who had hired them to come after Michelle and/or whoever was being held in the basement, or were the killings unrelated? Timing, and my gut, suggested the former, and that’s what I was going with. So the question, beyond the who, was why? Did they get greedy and fall out over the money? Had they become a liability to whoever hired them, and if so, why? Did they mess up—in which case, was killing Michelle a mistake? But then again, maybe they didn’t know she was dead. Then I thought, maybe their employer felt they’d outlived their usefulness—given that they had a tail on me yesterday, they clearly didn’t have what they were after. Maybe whoever it was had decided to take matters into his own hands. Which, given what Eli Walker went through, wasn’t a reassuring thought.
Tess then took over and told me about her day, and I let my mind throttle back to idling speed and just glide along as I listened to her voice and watched her face light up with animation. Then her face crumpled up with that inquisitive look that I had a real love-hate relationship with—love, because being doggedly inquisitive was part of the allure of Tess Chaykin, and hate because, well, it usually meant trouble—and she got off the couch and went into the bedroom and came back with a few sheets of paper that she showed me, drawings she said she’d found on Michelle’s desk, among her papers.
“Alex’s?” I asked.
“Yeah, must be. They’re similar in style to others at the house.”
I flicked through them. Not to put too much of a Louis C.K. spin on it, but yeah, they were cute, but that was pretty much it as far as I was concerned. Then, animated Tess came to the forefront and took over.
She pulled one of them out and put it on top of the others. “What do you see?”
I struggled a bit. “Two vaguely human-like figures. Or aliens maybe?”
She flashed me the look. “People, doofus. Two people. And I think this one’s Alex,” she said, pointing at the one on the right. “This thing, in his hand. That’s his Ben toy, his favorite. He asked me to bring it back from the house.”
I couldn’t see it. “Did you ask him?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
The nose crinkled. Again, part of the allure. “It’s not a happy drawing.”
“Not a happy drawing. Why, because there aren’t any rainbows and butterflies in it?”
