Chapter Twenty-Five

 

DAVIS

 

The text is short and simple, and I might have ignored it if it didn't come from work, and I didn't have a bad feeling. From Danny Ball, 11:52 P.M. Only 8 minutes before midnight.

"Come quick."

My car is still sitting, turned off and dark inside, outside the warehouse where they took Ryan. He still hasn't come out. Nobody's left, and nobody's entered. Not for… I try to do the math, but my head's already fuzzy. Maybe 9 hours, maybe more.

Come quick.

That's not the sort of thing Danny would usually say. If he wanted me in the office, he'd just tell me so. Usually he'd be kissing ass while he did it, because he knows I can be testy. No ass-kissing. No asking, no telling.

'Quick.'

I turn the car on, frustrated that the lights immediately kick on automatically. As if I'm lighting a beacon that says 'I'm leaving now.'

There's nothing else to be done, though.

I push down the accelerator and start moving fast. 'Quick.' I already had a bad feeling. 9 hours is a long time. It's a very long time, indeed. Ryan can't be doing well, not after 9 hours. Something's going on inside that building, and I want to know what.

But I can't ignore the text. Just two words, and they keep ringing in my head, over and over. Come quick. I don't like it. Something's gone wrong, and it's something that's worse than just a gangster getting beat to death in an industrial warehouse.

It takes me twenty minutes to get back to the office, and by the time I'm there, my mind's turned back the other way.

I shouldn't have left Ryan. He could be hurt. He could be hurt bad. Someone needs to be there to ensure he gets out alright, and if he doesn't get out alright—if they drag him out, throw him into a car trunk in two separate garbage bags, and drive out into the desert to dump him somewhere that nobody will ever see—well, someone needs to be there for that too.

It's too late, now. I'll never be sure that the lost time didn't end up making all the difference in the world. Nobody will ever be completely sure.

I swallow hard and put the car in park out front. It's not hard to figure out why I had to come. At least, I know where I'm going to find out. A small crowd has gathered right outside the door. Maybe a dozen people, most of them civilians, by the look of it.

They're standing at a distance, like high school kids ringing around a fight, but they all look on with interest. Another dozen or so are standing further back, interested enough to watch, but not wanting anyone else to know about it.

A heavy-set Latino man resumes walking his dog when my eyes pass over him as I get out of the car.

I muscle through the crowd, heading for the door rather than the center of the interest, but it's impossible not to look over my shoulder into the ring as I pass.

I force myself to keep moving toward the door as if I hadn't seen anything. Hawkins's body can wait. I have to talk to someone, and I have to talk to them now. About what the hell happened, about how the body was found, about why it's still sitting there on the side of the road.

Danny stands up as I walk in. He's sitting in the chair right by the door, waiting for me.

"Boss, I know you're gonna have a lot of questions—"

"You're God damned right I am," I growl. "Give me the details."

"We found him about thirty seconds before I texted you. We heard a firearm discharged right outside, an engine speed off."

"Did we get a shot of the guy who did it?"

"We did," Danny confirms. He guides her over to a computer.

"And why is Hawkins still outside?"

"We can't move him, officially. Waiting on the lead Agent to make the decision, but officially this isn't a Bureau matter. We have to wait on the Sheriff's Office to come and get him. We've already put out calls through official channels."

So it's either she breaks protocol, or they sit there with their thumbs up their asses and wait for the Sheriff to show up. I take a deep breath.

"Show me the security footage."

He nods and clicks a button. The image on screen cuts to life. The time stamp reads 11:51 P.M. and 36 seconds.

At 41 seconds past the minute, a large motorcycle rides into frame. It appears to be two men on the motorcycle. The one in back appears to be driving.

He pulls the bike to a stop, puts down the kick-stand, takes the weight of the guy in front. I'm not having trouble figuring out that the guy in front is dead, and he's our inside man.

The place where the body gets dumped is just out of frame. As the guy leans down to place the body, he slips out of the shot, and then stands back up. You can see him just at the edge of the screen.

He goes back down to do something else out of frame. He slides back onto the back of the motorcycle and fires his gun into the air, then speeds off.

"Take it back," I growl. Danny is already on it.

"You want a look at the bike, right?"

"There's a smart boy, Danny. There was a good shot of it, near the end."

I don't want to be right. That's why I'm having him bring it back. Because there was a very good shot at the end, there. Because I know exactly what the bike looks like.

I know what it looks like because I've seen it before, and I'm going to have a hell of a time explaining how I know that Ryan Beauchamp, the only guy driving a 1946 Indian Chief in this state, definitely wasn't the one who made the drop.

Explaining it will mean explaining where I've been the past two days. Which, by itself, means explaining how I managed to get Beauchamp to go along with the plan. It means explaining that I've been insubordinate and gone over Donaldsen's head. It will be career suicide by itself.

But what worries me that much more is knowing that somewhere along the chain, it'll get back to McCallister and the Crazy Horses.

I take a deep breath.

"What's he doing with the body?"

Danny seems to deflate just a little. "Come on. I'll show you."

We step outside a few seconds before the Sheriff's Office pulls up, but they don't hassle us as we flash our badges when they walk up.

Right there on the chest, someone has written with permanent marker.

2 down.

3 left.

I swallow hard. Some part of me had hoped that this wasn't what I thought it was. That Beauchamp had figured out that we were pulling the wool over his eyes, and 'Spider' was a plant.

This confirms that there's nothing like that going on. This is payback, coming straight from McCallister. He's going to work his way through the guys who did it, and the list isn't a long one.

It's not going to take long for me to get to the coveted next spot on the list. When that happens, there's going to be a lot bigger problems facing me than just career suicide.