Gregg Hurwitz - Troubleshooter

"Thank you."

"How's she doing?"

"It's been four days."

"What's that mean?"

Tim studied a shattered bottle in the gutter, feeling the familiar dread twist his gut. "I don't know."

The deputy nodded severely, lips pursed, and Tim, Bear, and Guerrera headed for the house. Tim used Kaner's key to unlock the dead bolt, and they made their way upstairs. Though several of the windows had been left open, pepper aftermath spiced the air. Tim pulled his shirt up over his nose and mouth, and Bear and Guerrera followed suit. The second floor was a mess, the ceiling eroded from the bullets, plaster hanging down from the punctures like the fringes of flesh wounds. The spent canisters lay among the wreckage. As they headed to the bathroom, white dust clung to their boots and the cuffs of their jeans.

The criminalists had left a ladder beneath the attic hatch in the bathroom; they probably wanted to let the attic air out more before crawling around the closed space. Looking up at the dark square, Tim shook off a shiver recalling the mirrored glimpse he'd caught of Kaner's eyes. He climbed up, clicking on his flashlight. Because of the. 223-caliber ventilation and the shattered window, the space wasn't as dark as before, but the air was thick and oppressive. Bent at the waist, Tim shuffled forward, rods of light playing across him like a disco effect. Mindful of his weight and the aerated footing, Bear was careful to balance on the joists. Brass casings shimmered in the insulation, nestled like eggs.

They searched for about twenty minutes, until Tim's eyes were watering and Guerrera developed a repetitive one-note cough. Tim's breath had moistened the collar of his shirt, still pulled up over his nose. The humidity and dust were making his head throb, and the flickering fingers of light were playing tricks with his eyes.

Guerrera finally said, "I need to go grab a gas mask." He headed for the hatch, stumbling over a raised corner of insulation.

Bear pulled back the pink strip. Lying against the plywood was a smashed cell phone.

The service rep, Bryant by his name tag, regarded the shattered cell phone skeptically. The top of the fold-down had been ripped off, the LED screen shattered. The battery was bent out of shape and the casing twisted.

Having progressed through a salesman and a store manager, they were finally backstage at the downtown Sprint PCS store on South Flower Street, blocks from the command post.

"Dude, we got some great deals on new phones."

"We need the information off this phone," Tim said. "We don't need it to work-"

"Well, that's good."

"-we just need to get what's on it."

"Looks like someone didn't want you to get what's on it." Off Bear's look, Bryant said, "Right. Right. Okay." He scratched the tuft of hair protruding from the top of his visor. "Lemme get Larry. He does some next-level shit."

He disappeared out a side door and returned accompanied by a thin East Asian kid with orange hair. The smell of cigarettes lingered in Larry's jacket. His eyes were hidden beneath mirrored Oakley Blades. Larry held out his hand like a surgeon requesting an instrument, and Tim laid the crippled phone in his palm. Larry took it to his workbench, Tim following and looking over his shoulder as he worked. After casting an annoyed glance at Tim, he screwed earphones into his head and turned the volume up so loud that Tim could make out the tinny lyrics-something about blood devils and suicide pacts.

Tim glanced back at Bryant. "You explain to him what we need?"

"Oh, yeah. Lar's on it, dude."

Lar swapped the battery, then dissected the casing, threading a series of wires over to a brand-new cell phone of the same model. He turned on the new phone, made some minute adjustments with what looked like an eyeglass-repair screwdriver, and tugged the earphones down around his neck.

Tim's Nextel chirped-the radio signature-and he keyed the "talk" button. "Go for Rackley."

Freed's voice filled the small service room: "The twins' bodies turned up, dumped naked in the wash by the Tujunga Bridge. Predictable incisions. Aaronson's handling the workups. What do you want him to do next?"

Tim pursed his lips, studied the tip of his boot. Bear and Guerrera exchanged a weary look-they'd all known it was coming, but that didn't make the reality any more pleasant.

"Clean up the bodies as best he can and give the parents a burial."

When Tim signed out, Bryant looked a touch queasy.

Tim raised his eyebrows at Lar-let's get back to business. Larry's face was softer than before, his tone agreeable. "Okay. You got the brains of the old phone on the display of the new phone." He handed the linked phones to Tim. "Be careful."

Bear and Guerrera crowded around as Tim trial-and-errored his way through the elaborate phone menu. He arrived at the address book, his hands sweating with anticipation, and clicked the icon. It was empty-no saved numbers.

His disappointment was sharp, but he couldn't say unexpected. If Kaner knew enough about investigative technology to want to destroy and hide his cell phone before being killed or taken captive, he probably wasn't dumb enough to input Den Laurey's numbers. Bear made various sounds of irritation, and Guerrera took a step back and sank his hands into his pockets.

But Tim kept his focus on the cell phone, using the arrow buttons to reach the submenus. All outgoing calls had been deleted. He thumbed around some more, and the missed-calls menu popped up, also empty. He backed out, highlighted "incoming calls"-the final play-and punched

Amid seven "blocked callers," the same phone number came up three times.

From the street nothing was visible, just a dark room off an unlit third-floor balcony, parted polyester drapes billowing in the breeze like languid belly dancers. The three-hundred-dollar-a-week, four-story apartment-hotel, ambitiously named Elite Towers, overlooked a quiet throw of street. Crowded along the far side were a parking lot, a biker bar named Suicide Clutch, complete with neon martini and padded door, and most critically, a wall-mounted pay phone.

Standing ten feet back in the hotel room behind a tripod-mounted, high-powered rifle, Tim observed the pay phone through the Leopold variable-power scope at 5x. If he zoomed in to 10x, the faded phone number above the pay phone's black receiver-the same number listed three times in Kaner's incoming-call log-would fill his field of vision. A KN250 attachment provided him night vision, more essential every minute. The drapes flickered, never intruding on the two-foot gap that provided Tim a clear line of sight. The only interruptions in his field of vision were the uprights of the balcony railing through which he aimed and a crisscross of suspended electric cable too high to matter.

After tracing the number to the location, Tim had organized the takedown, then headed home to retrieve his sniper rifle. He'd oiled and run a patch through his bolt-action Remington M700, which held four in the well, one in the chamber, then gone back to the master to shower. After staring at the unmade bed and Dray's Gap sweats kicked off in the corner, he'd upgraded to his match-grade M14. It was semiauto, accommodating twenty magazine-fed rounds, and, if the necessity arose, it could turn Den Laurey into pink mist.

Based on his knowledge of the Sinners' chain of command, Guerrera surmised that Kaner took his marching orders from Den Laurey alone. The deputies assumed that Den Laurey was using the pay phone to place sensitive calls that he didn't want traced or logged. There was little question that Den still needed to be in contact with the higher-ups-Uncle Pete, the Prophet, the money launderer, or whoever was coordinating the drug-money exchange.