Gregg Hurwitz - Troubleshooter

"What'll it be?"

Bear tilted his hand, showing off the photo of Den cupped inside. To try to lessen the false positives, they'd chosen a different picture from the one that had been running on the news. "Seen this guy?"

"Nah."

The kid from the bathroom leaned over, concerned. "You guys cops?"

"Yeah, but no worries, Cheech. We're after bigger game."

"Like who?"

Bear flashed him the picture, and the kid's eyes widened about a millimeter, the closest approximation of surprise he could currently muster. "Yeah, I seen that guy."

Bear looked skeptical. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. He came into the station." He twisted on his barstool, pointing back up the road. "Needed a spark plug."

"What was he driving?" Tim asked.

The kid blinked a few times. He pulled something off his tongue and flicked it, then blinked some more. "Uh, nothing. He needed a spark plug."

"So he walked?"

"Cars don't work so hot without spark plugs." He laughed a slow laugh, then took a pull from his Coors. His eyes went longingly to the bags of chips clipped up behind the bar.

Tim snapped his fingers in front of the kid's eyes, and the dilated pupils pulled back into semifocus. "He walked? No one dropped him?"

"Yeah."

"When?"

"Yesterday. Maybe the day before."

"How many houses are within walking distance of there?"

"Not many." The bartender returned, trailing his rag along the counter. "There's a pocket community up a half mile north where the pass drops, but aside from that you gotta good run of ranch 'n' farmland either direction."

"How many houses in the community?"

"I'd say thirty."

"You forgot the new mods they put up on Grant," the kid said.

"Yeah, so thirty-five."

"Did this guy walk in from the north?" Tim asked.

The kid squinted up his face thoughtfully and nodded. "Went back that way, too."

As the Explorer flew down the dark road, Bear tried to ease Tim's expectations. "We're working off the memory of a stoned kid. No one else in the bar recognized the photo."

"We got the location from both angles, Bear. It's a good, strong hit."

Uncle Pete had driven through the area only once, five and a half months ago. Tim hoped he'd done so to conduct some business at a Laughing Sinners safe house in the pocket community, a house where Den could now be lying low. They had Dana Lake placing a call to the bar's pay phone three days ago. The cross-ref had popped the location to the top of the list.

A reinforced-concrete barrier protected the patch of prefab-looking tract houses from the two-lane thoroughfare. Tim turned off into the small grid of streets, which terminated at the base of a forbidding hill. There were maybe five square blocks in all, and Tim moved through them systematically.

"Not a bad spot," Bear conceded. "You got no dead ends, and all roads dump out on the main road. Plenty of turnoffs within a mile either direction."

"Some open flats, too," Tim said. "If he got creative on a bike, it would be tough keeping up."

He circled the final block and pulled to the curb. Boston muscled in on Precious's space in the back, and Precious let him hear about it with a low growl. Bear turned around in his seat like an angry vacation dad, and they silenced.

Bear settled back into his seat. "I'd bet the safe house is gonna be forward on the first two streets. If the shit goes down, they don't want to get trapped at the base of the hill."

Tim killed the lights and cruised the first two streets again. One house amid all the others, virtually identical, caught Bear's eye. He pivoted, then indicated a side window barely in view above an empty, fenced-in dog run. A blanket, tacked from the inside, covered the glass.

Tim pulled past a few more houses, flipped around, and parked.

They sat for a minute, taking in the view. A dark house at the end of a dark block. A blanket blocking a window, providing some economical privacy. Just like at the abandoned meth lab where they'd run down Kaner.

Tim and Bear removed their watches, dumped their keys, and switched their Nextels to silent. Tim thumbed out the wheel on his. 357 and spun it, watching the casings twirl. He snapped it shut and climbed out. Bear tugged Precious from the back in case they decided on a kick-in and needed her to check the doors for explosives. Boston, the bigger dog, wasn't tactically trained; he whimpered at being left behind, but Bear gave him the stink-eye, and he lapsed back into carefree panting.

Wide alleys, designed to accommodate boat trailers and still leave room for the garbage truck, sliced between the rows of houses. Sidearms drawn, Tim and Bear eased their way along the dirt trail, dodging puddles and tarp-covered mounds of firewood. TVs lit the back windows of nearly every house. A woman's laughter, reduced to bronchial wheezing, drifted out a screen door. Wheelbarrows. Refrigerator planters. A single-horse trailer hitched to a souped-up Camaro.

Precious, glad to make use of her training, stalked silently at their sides. They reached the corner of the house in question and stopped behind a shed.

Their eyes traced the two-story house. The roof overhung a vine-covered veranda that was jumping distance to the neighboring dormer, a carport, and the shed behind which they squatted. Two men couldn't cover all the ways out.

The gate latch gave with a click, and they crept through the backyard. A thickening odor came from the dark crust of leaves turning to chlorinated mulch on top of the pool cover.

The TV blared, as in the other houses they'd passed. Melissa Yueh chattered on about pharmacist errors and pending lawsuits. The lights were off, the interior illuminated only by flickering blue light that mapped patterns on the ceiling and bare walls.

Tim and Bear eased up on the back veranda, half shadowed by a lattice of moonlight strained through the cheap pergola. Lozenges of light played over them, accentuating their movement, but when they stood still, they disappeared in the camo spatterings. Precious's claws scraped the warped deck ever so slightly. Gnats plinked against the porch lamp. A spill of kitty litter, probably dumped through the nearby kitchen window, textured the veranda's edge. Someone moved swiftly from room to room, wearing boots or heavy-soled shoes. A mosquito-eater fluttered along the rafters, beating itself against the wood. Intertwined with the overhead trellis, the long-dead carpet of nasturtiums scratched and rattled in the breeze.

Tim and Bear leaned over to peer through the windows on either side of the back door, but they looked in on an empty living room. Melissa Yueh continued to chirp, the TV on a wicker stand to the side of the carpeted staircase. The smoke detectors had been removed, and mounds of kitty litter occupied the room's corners. A yellow-and-rust couch with herniated cushions blocked much of the floor from view. An open door to the garage revealed a pristine Harley, faintly illuminated by a bare, dangling bulb. Danny the Wand-detailed with flame yellow and orange, the motorcycle aimed at the closed garage door.

Ready for takeoff.

A polished metal top case was mounted to a cargo rack behind the bike's seat. Bear pointed and mouthed, "Allah's Tears?"

Bear gestured for Precious to safe the back door. She nosed along the jamb, then rose to her hind legs, retracting her paws so as not to scratch against the wood panels. She dropped down to all fours but didn't sit-no booby trap.

A dark figure came in from a front room, holding two fistfuls of clothes. He passed right before the windows and sat on his knees on the water-stained floorboards of the living room, facing away, stuffing the clothes into a backpack. He was shirtless, his skin oily with sweat, and though he was shadowed, Tim could discern the tattoos swarming across his shoulder blades. Den strapped a snub-nosed. 38 to his ankle and tucked a Colt. 45 into his belt.