When Denise answered, I asked if she could go to her mother with one very specific question: Had she noticed anything unusual about her attacker’s appearance?
But Denise said, “I don’t need to ask her that. She told me the man had yellow eyes. I think it was why the police didn’t pay all that much attention. They thought she was batty.”
Now the ice-cold hand wrapped fingers around my neck. Make that three attacks. Maybe more.
I thanked Denise, pocketed my phone, and got back in the vehicle to stare at the data, looking for additional connections. Nothing popped out. I’d let my subconscious work on it. I set aside the laptop and did a Tahoe version of a stretch, arching my back and rotating my head to get out the kinks. Bandoni scratched his left ear, then settled back into his coma.
The radio buzzed softly. It was Boz, who was monitoring text messages from his partner.
“Fox is in the den,” he said. “No sign of Patterson yet.”
“Roger that,” I said.
Bandoni gave no indication he’d heard. While my subconscious chewed away at both mysteries—Noah’s death and the nursing-home rapes—I entertained myself playing a solitary game of I Spy using a flashlight. I counted twenty-six empty beer bottles, two tennis shoes—nonmatching—eight separate piles of rubbish, the carcass of what might have once been a squirrel, and a cracked commode. Alphabetically, I was on K and having zero luck—no ketchup bottles or busted-up kegs or stray keys—when the radio popped again.
“Street Cred is in the hole,” Boz said. “Looks like he’s ordering a pitcher of beer for him and his pal. Street Cred has lost his rooster tail. And Damn Fox has tattooed his ugly mug. Anything that covers up that kind of nasty is an improvement. Cooper is sending photos.”
My phone lit up. Four photos, dim and shot at an angle. But the punks would be easy enough to make. Street Cred might have shed his rooster tail, but now he had a red buzz and an immense silver ring dangling from his nose, suggesting that eating was more of a recreational sport than a necessity.
Damn Fox had a fresh-looking tattoo of a red devil on his left cheek. He also had a black eye and swollen lip. The blank flatness of his stare brought up thoughts of roads that led nowhere.
“Our boys are heading for the back door,” Boz said. “My money says they’re just gonna take a whiz. Music’s like a chain saw on speed, but they’re digging it. I’m following them out.”
I started the Tahoe and pulled out of the strip mall as a few raindrops pattered on the windshield and thunder rumbled in the near distance. Sensing action from his place in the back, Clyde barked. Bandoni opened his eyes, and I passed him my phone with the photos of the punks.
“How long’d I sleep?” he asked.
“Just to K.”
“The fuck is that supposed to mean?”
On the radio, Boz said, “Our guys have company. Another male. Looks like a little entrepreneurial activity going down behind Leopard’s Den. I’d sure as hell love to bring them in, but it’s your show tonight. You two want to wait until our guys are alone?”
Bandoni picked up the radio. “Don’t want them slipping down a rabbit hole. Why don’t you and Cooper stick around while we make our move? In case things get complicated.”
“You got it. Hold on, something is—” The radio squealed. “Fuck! Kelly just took off. Repeat, Kelly is rabbiting. Cooper ordered him to halt, but that works never. He’s heading south. Patterson and the third male took off in the opposite direction. Cooper’s going after Patterson. I’ll run Kelly down.”
I grabbed the radio from Bandoni. “Boz, go with Cooper. We’ll use the K9 on Kelly.”
“Roger.”
I slammed to a stop in a private parking lot across the street from the Den and opened my door just as a figure sped by at the far end of the lot, heading toward a gap between the buildings. While Bandoni got on the radio to set up a perimeter, I opened the back and ordered Clyde out.
Belgian Malinois, the backup plan.
“Fass ihn!” I cried, flinging out my arm in the direction of the fleeing punk. Get him!
Clyde took off like a shot. I ran after him, grateful I’d swapped my pumps for sneakers before we’d left the station.
“Stop!” I yelled at Kelly as he reached the edge of the building and spun right. “Dog in pursuit!”
Clyde turned the corner. I followed as the skies opened up and dumped rain.
Kelly was halfway down the path between the buildings. He was moving like he was trying out for the Olympics, arms pumping, feet kicking.
I yelled again. “Halt, or my dog will take you down!”
Kelly reached down deep and put on an extra bit of speed. But it was impossible for him to outrun Clyde. Clyde leapt, and man and dog hit the pavement. Fox screamed as Clyde’s teeth sank into the punk’s ass.
I shouted, “Out!” to Clyde, grabbed his collar, and told him to guard. Then I slapped handcuffs on Damn Fox, pulled on gloves, and patted him down while he howled in pain.
“He hurt me!” he screamed.
My lungs bellowed. Rain poured down my collar.
It was never a K9 cop’s first choice to use their partner as a weapon. But I had no sympathy for Damn Fox, whether or not he was guilty of Noah Asher’s murder. According to the radio chatter that was coming in, Cooper had caught up with Patterson, but Patterson and the third man had escaped after Patterson hit Cooper with a set of brass knuckles.
“I told you not to run,” I muttered under my breath, feeling metal in the right pocket of Damn Fox’s jeans.
Gingerly, I slid my gloved hand into his pocket and pulled out a set of brass knuckles, heavy and dense.
“Who’d you plan to use these on,
