Gregg Hurwitz - Troubleshooter

"We're just looking around, right?" Guerrera asked as they climbed out.

Bear pulled his shotgun from the trunk. "Sure."

Tim emptied the new. 357, checked the trigger tension again, then refed the six rounds. Guerrera nodded once, mouth pursed, and followed them silently toward the building. Securing the door, a shiny new padlock didn't match the rust of the hasp. Guerrera squatted and retrieved the severed pin of an older lock from a cluster of leaves.

Tim gestured, and they eased around the back of the warehouse. No cars or motorcycles in the parking lot or alongside the building. The sole window looked in on an office and beyond, the expanse of the warehouse proper. Parked inside the office was a Harley. Tim clicked on his Mag-Lite and drew the beam across the room. A russet pool glittered on the desktop. Smudges down the side. A wide stroke along the carpet, the signature of a dragged body.

Bear's exhale breezed over Tim's shoulder. "I'd say there's our probable cause."

Tim leaned on the window, which had been paint-welded to the sill. It gave with a creak. As Tim pried it open, Bear called for backup, requesting an ambulance and advising a stealth approach in case the suspects were still inside when the units rolled up. Guerrera took rear cover, his eyes darting nervously around the empty parking lot and neighboring buildings as Tim climbed over the sill.

Once he was in, Bear followed suit, then Guerrera. The air was dank, sweetened with the faint smell of mold. Tim tapped his knuckles to the Harley's craggy engine-faintly warm. He recognized the pan-head engine and the checkerboard skull pattern on the stretched tank from the surveillance shots of Goat they'd found at Meat Marquez's.

Weapons drawn, they followed the blood trail. Tim led the way, his wrists crossed to keep the barrel of his. 357 nearly parallel with the beam of the flashlight.

Outside the office an embalming table gleamed, a stainless-steel anomaly among the industrial equipment. Tim paused beside it, Bear and Guerrera halting behind him. What looked like oil rippled in the table's gutters. Tim didn't require a closer look to know, but Guerrera's flashlight beam proved the liquid crimson. A puddle on the far side, then a wider path snaked back into the warehouse interior.

He heard Guerrera take a gulp of a breath, his own stomach knotting with the certainty of more ugliness ahead. Few noncombat experiences were more hideous than the slow-motion unfolding of a crime scene.

They wound through heaps of dilapidated machinery. A faint glow up ahead. A rumble from the interior announced footsteps. The sound of cheery whistling.

They eased around a partition. In the sole stroke of light cutting through the warehouse gloom, Goat tugged a woman's partially disemboweled body. He shuffled backward, hands gaffed into the front of her so they disappeared in the folds of her armpits. Her head lolled, hidden beneath a mask of tangled hair.

A desktop lamp, set on the concrete floor, provided meager illumination and funhouse effects. It threw Goat's pitted face into fierce relief and stretched his shadow up the wall, bending it across the ceiling. Between blinks the etched skull stared out from his glass eye.

Tim gestured for Bear and Guerrera to spread out along the perimeter of the darkness, then stepped into view, light falling across him like a sheet. "Hands up! Hands up!"

Goat jumped a bit at the intruding voice. He released the woman, smiling almost sheepishly, and raised his arms. The body didn't flop back to the concrete; her shoulders and upper back remained banana-curved, rigor mortis defying the laws of physics and propriety.

Both hands steadying the. 357, Tim walked forward. A rectangular flap had been laid open in the woman's gut. A loop of intestine waggled from the gap, hanging like an ankh between her legs. Her face remained invisible behind a scraggly wall of orange-tinted brown hair. A few feet beyond them, a floor hatch angled back on its hinges, revealing a black square of crawl space.

Tim stopped a couple of yards from Goat, sights aligned on his upper sternum. The smell of the corpse reached him-a battlefield stench, the odor of Ginny on the coroner's table-and he looked up into Goat's marred face, feeling the cool air tingle across the band of sweat dampening the back of his neck. He thought of Dray drifting a few feet above the shoulder of the highway, hair on end from the impact.

The crisp report of a gunshot jarred him back into the present.

For an instant Tim thought he himself had fired, but then Guerrera's boots pounded behind him, Tim hit the ground, and Goat flashed into the darkness. Tim twisted to look over a shoulder, picked up Guerrera at the edge of the shadows, gun now pointed down, standing over a sprawled form. Bear charged past Tim after Goat, and Tim leaped up and followed him into a maze of modular partitions.

The whine of a bullet past Tim's cheek broadcast that Goat had located a gun. Tim and Bear split the aisle, backs to the partitions, stalking forward. A gooseneck in the path dumped them in the corner of the warehouse. The muzzle flashes of Goat's gun-pistol, semiauto, poking blindly around the corner-revealed a backdrop of concrete wall.

The slide of Goat's gun locked to the rear. The gun disappeared, and Tim heard the click of the mag dropping. He crossed the open space, shoulder-slapping the far partition, now within feet of Goat's position. Bear held down the wall just before the turn. Tim heard Goat's mag click into place.

He snapped his fingers at Bear, holding up his hand. Bear tossed his Remington across the four-foot span, the walnut forearm slapping Tim's raised palm. Goat's pistol poked back around the corner as Tim raised the shotgun and fired at the wall a yard away. The double-aught buck tore at the concrete, ricocheting around the corner.

As the thirty-five pounds of recoil shuddered Tim's torso, he registered Goat's scream. Bear rolled around the turn first, disappearing into the haze of concrete powder. Goat groped at his head, shrieking. He'd taken most of the pellets in the face. His glass eye was missing, lost somewhere in the darkness; fluid streamed from the socket and from his good eye. Bear kicked the gun from its loose dangle in Goat's hand and put him down on his chest. A knee in the back, a quick frisk-Bear was unparalleled at escort control-then the flex-cuffs cinched tight. Bear tried to hoist Goat to his feet, but Goat kicked and thrashed violently. Bear deep-grabbed the hair at the base of Goat's skull and pulled back and down hard, forcing his chin up. He kept the leverage firm and steady, forcing Goat to ride his chin up to his feet. As Bear steered him back toward the light, Goat babbled and sputtered, streams of blood matting his face. He was a fearsome sight.

Shoulders slumped, gun drawn but at his side, Guerrera stood over a body.

Diamond Dog Phillips.

Approaching, Tim noticed Guerrera's boot pinning down a. 45; he'd secured Diamond Dog's gun but not picked it up. Tim called out, "Did you clear the area?"

Guerrera snapped into motion. Bear cuffed Goat to a forklift and left him whimpering. Tim shined his Mag-Lite at the banks of overheads, checking that they weren't rigged, then found a switch panel. Section by section, the warehouse flickered into light.

After a quick search, the three met up again in the open area. Bear followed up with backup-two-minute ETA. Goat had mercifully passed out, cuffed arm dangling over his head. The deep rumble of his breathing and his pulse-when Tim checked-showed strong vitals.

It did not surprise him when Dray weighed in.

So I neglected to mention maiming.

I didn't kill him.

Maybe not, but this is a pretty close second. Doubt he'll be talking much with his face blown off. Next time don't take me so literally.