Gregg Hurwitz - Troubleshooter

"I'm the Troubleshooter."

"Oh, yeah, I forgot." She shoved her short blond hair up off her flushed face and fanned her olive deputy shirt. "I'm hot all day. I sweat like a pig in the vest. I feel like I'm melting. Except when I'm cold. Then I'm freezing."

"Maybe you should start your leave now."

"And miss all the fun of rousting biker assholes? Me and Mac pulled over three today. Yeah, wipe that surprised expression off your face. While we can't all stroll into the lion's den like a certain big shot, we're doing our part, even out here in bumfuck Moorpark. Captain said the database is coming along nicely?"

"That it is." He slid down next to her. She raised her boot, and he tugged it off and rubbed her foot. She groaned with delight, arched her back like a cat. "My visit with Uncle Pete actually gave me some good ideas," he said. "I decided I want you to start wearing a property jacket. And I want a tattoo. Right…here. 'Property of Tim Rackley.'"

"Then you'll let me sled with you?"

"Then I'll let you sled with me."

"Bring on the ink, Big Daddy." His Nextel chirped-radio freq this time-and Dray laughed. "Here we go. Don't mind me. I'll just be here on the couch, sweaty and knocked up."

Tim flipped the phone open, heading back to the kitchen, and keyed "talk."

"Rack, it's Freed."

"How'd it go with the Cholos?"

"How's, 'Chingate, pinche cabron' sound? I'm not really sure how to interpret that."

"Well, we figured, right?"

"I couldn't even get in to see El Viejo-they keep the boss man pretty well shielded. I sat a local unit on the clubhouse. We can't do much more than that. The Cholos buzz out of there like gnats. If the Sinners want to pick 'em off, they'll find a way."

"What are you doing now?"

"After this day? I'm gonna head home and see my kid."

"Don't blame you."

Tim clicked off and dialed the command post.

Haines said, "I told you already, we'll call if anything breaks."

"Anything. My phone is on."

"So you mentioned."

Tim pored over the files as Dray focused on the TV, making occasional wordless exclamations-disgust, contempt, derision. The only thing Dray liked more than watching the news was reviling it.

He spread out the photos, marveling at Goat's face, Kaner's breadth, Den's dark, baleful eyes. He scanned over the crime-scene report, feeling the cold weight of the scientific phrasing. His eyes stuck on the name of his friend.

Six apparent entrance shots to Deputy Frank Palton's torso, two to the head. Skull fragments and soft tissue noted in the mesh and the back of the van.

He flashed on his first day back on the job after Ginny's death, Frankie doing his shtick with Jim, joking about the "Commie Sutra" book his wife had foisted on him. Tim remembered it vividly because it had been his first single moment of levity in three days, the earliest glimmer of a possibility that the world might still be inhabitable. When Tim had gone missing, Palton had been the one to find the blood at the pickup near the cult ranch. Tim pictured the annoyingly endearing batches of photos Frankie used to e-mail out every few months-updates on his daughters' swim-club awards, theme birthday parties, Halloween costumes.

Dray looked over, psychically attuned to Tim's shifts in mood from ten years of marriage. She met his eyes, her face soft with empathy.

"Two kids left behind," Tim heard himself say, as if he and Dray weren't aware of this already.

"Not over there," Dray said gently. "Talk about Frankie's two kids with me over here on the couch. Not when you're a deputy over files." She watched him, the yellow light of a Claritin commercial shining through her translucent, ice green eyes. "Only let it be personal when you're off duty. Otherwise just get it done. That's how you'll honor Frankie's memory. And Hank Mancone's. And Fernando Perez's."

"Who?"

"The illegal guy killed one car over in the blast. Which is my point. If that guy doesn't matter, no one matters. Everyone counts. And everyone counts the same. Getting personal is like putting on blinders. It blocks you from weighing deaths equally, which blocks you from weighing clues equally."

"You're implying I've been hotheaded in the past?"

She laughed. "Never. I'm saying your friend just died. Take a timeout when you need it. Besides, haven't you seen enough of Goat Purdue's fetching smile for one day?"

Tim looked down at the files and pictures spread across the table, let out a breath, and pulled back his shoulders, which he realized had been cramping his chest for the past hour. "What am I supposed to do?"

"You're supposed to feed me." A long pause as they studied each other across the room, both on the verge of a smile. "And yourself."

He got up and looked inside the refrigerator. Save jars of condiments, a browning apple, and the residual legs of a chocolate Santa Claus, it was empty. "I thought you were waiting to eat Santa until Christmas."

"That's four days away."

"I'm gonna have to start hiding food around here."

"There are some sunflower seeds in the cupboard."

"I was hoping for something heartier."

"You," Dray said, "are a Black Hole of Need."

He closed the refrigerator door.

"And while you're out," Dray continued, "can you bring me Strawberry Crush? In the bottles? And Lunchables?"

"Lunchables?"

"Yeah. The turkey ones."

"Right."

He took his newly purchased used Explorer to Albertsons and shoved a cart up and down the aisles, checking his phone-still nothing-and stocking up on everything he could remember Dray eating in the past eight months. No small feat. When he came home, the living room was empty, but he could hear the television going in the bedroom. He peeled off the Lunchables lid, popped open a Crush, and arranged the meal on a silver tray they'd received as a wedding gift from someone they no longer recalled. Across the folded napkin, he laid a clipped grocery-store-diminished Siberian iris-Dray's favorite flower, one of the few girlie indulgences she permitted herself.

She was lying flat as a cadaver on the bed, her tummy sprouting between her boxers and her shoved-back academy T-shirt. Her head rolled to take him in, and then a spontaneous smile reshaped her face and he thought of the first time he saw her smile, in the parking lot at a fire-department fund-raiser. "Timothy Rackley."

He lowered the tray to the mattress and kissed her sweaty bangs. She regarded the food and-through a grin-issued her trademark grimace. "That looks disgusting. Turkey on crackers and strawberry soda? Whose idea was that anyways?"

He handed her the iris, slid the tray onto his lap, and began his dinner.

The five men walked a slow turn around the broken figure on the chair. Duct tape bound the man to the chair arms from wrists to elbows; both his arms had left their sockets. His features were no longer discernible. He coughed out a mouthful of blood; it ran from his cheek to the thin carpet. His matted ponytail hung stiffly.

The room, a garage conversion with milky plastic windows set high in the still-functional roll-up door, smelled of oil from the Harley and from the greasy tools occupying the brief run of kitchen counter. A vise protruded from a wobbly table littered with engine parts, spare wheels, and blackened wrenches. The cot against the far wall and a scattering of dirty plates and cups were the sole signs of habitation.

Den halted, and the others stopped their pacing, waiting for his next move. They looked unnatural off their bikes, eroded into slouches acquired from too many hours leaning on handlebars.

"Tell me," Den said. "I know you planned it out by now."

The man was weeping quietly, a hiss that turned to a gurgle somewhere around the mouth. "I haven't. I swear, ese."