Protect (21 page)

At the Sheriff’s department it was madness.
Both dispatchers had been called in to help with the phones and
paper work. Martin was running around trying to answer their
questions while taking radio calls from officers and deputies.

“Gimme a list of locations,” she suggested to
him, and he looked relieved.

“You sure?”

“Absolutely. I’ll visit them all, see where I
should stay. DEA is en route.”

“So’s ATF. Somehow they’d already heard, must
have picked up radio chatter. FBI might be coming, too.”

“Shit.” Not that she minded. First of all,
she knew the Rebels would be sure to cover their asses. Not one
witness would claim to have heard a motorcycle, and their weapons
were always well hidden. She had no idea where they kept them,
didn’t want to know. Plus she’d meant what she told Hogan; there
were more players here than the MC. These could have been Mazari
hide-outs, and it appeared as though they’d aligned themselves with
the Dirty Rats MC which had nothing but enemies. Plus cartels, just
for extra shits and giggles.

So yeah, she’d pick her battles. The FBI was
more than welcome to grab a stick and have a go at the piñata.

“With all due respect, we’ll want their
help.”

She blinked at Martin, realizing he was still
standing right in front of her. “No, I know. It’s just that Markham
starts to feel crowded with all these alphabet guys.”

“Mazaris have been on the FBI watch list for
a while,” Martin was explaining, heading to his desk to get his
keys which he handed right to her. “Given the areas they seem to
come from, there’s national security concerns if they make
alliances with weapons suppliers.”

For half a second she contemplated warning
the Rebels about the FBI. Then she remembered the alliance the club
apparently had with a mob family and decided against it. There had
been no warning about mobsters to her. She eventually found out; so
would the Red Rebels.

The first place Martin directed her to was in
a nice quiet cul de sac. These weren’t giant new houses, they’d
been around since the 1960s and big, shady trees featured
prominently in every front yard. Each house had a driveway and your
windows were looking directly into your neighbor’s laundry room. It
was a nice place, and she would have loved to afford a house on
this street. Well, one of them was about to take a dive in
price.

The yard was cordoned off with yellow police
tape. Floodlights had been set up along the driveway and she saw a
couple of her officers walking that locking stone length, eyes on
the ground. According to initial reports there were three dead
here.

She parked the cruiser on the street,
ignoring the irritation that it was Deputy Sheriff Troy that
approached. She was doing the chicken shit move and scheduling him
when she wasn’t on duty but he hadn’t seem to mind that. Tonight,
though, he was all business as he gave a head nod. It reminded her
why she’d wanted them to get along so badly; he was a really good
cop.

“Three deceased inside. They had a stash of
handguns with filed-down serials. Not much else of interest inside,
but the basement’s a little weird.”

She nodded. “Show me.”

He led her to the back door, over which the
light was illuminating a wooden deck with no patio furniture, no
barbecue, no clues that anyone actually lived there. The screen
door squealed on its hinges, the inside door was already open. It
was a straight shot down the stairs from there, where again the
lights were already on.

It was a standard unfinished basement. Washer
and dryer in one corner next to a free-standing plastic sink.
Plastic had been tacked over insulation, the floor was painted
grey. Two drains where the floor dipped in case of a flood or water
leak. But in the floor were metal rings, fed through bolts tapped
into the concrete. About six in all, three feet apart, three along
one wall and three along the other.

Given what they’d seen in Hazeldale she could
only imagine the purpose of those rings. She was imagining ropes
around people’s necks, strangling them when they struggled against
the bonds. She fought back those memories and sighed. “Jesus. That
is fucking weird.”

“You need a power drill and masonry bit to
install something like that,” Troy said. “There are absolutely no
tools here, not even a fucking screwdriver.”

Sharon was nodding. “Here’s hoping they had
to rent it.”

“Two places in Markham rent tools. We’ll
check them out when they open.”

“Good thinking. Now show me who died.”

Upstairs the first body they came across was
sprawled on her stomach, stretched across the divide between the
vinyl floor of the kitchen and tile in the living room. One hand
out in front of her was clutching a carving knife. Blood bloomed on
the back of her white T-shirt. The parts that were still white
shone brilliant against her dark skin. Her hair was up in a
ponytail but Sharon could tell it was long. She had on flannel
pants.

“Given the way she fell, I’d say she was in
attack mode when she was hit,” Troy said, detached.

“Absolutely.”

This was why they’d come through the back
door. The entryway was weirdly interrupted by a wall creating a
coat closet. Against the double doors of it a man had slumped down,
leaving a trail of blood showing he’d slid all the way to the floor
slowly. There were even rounds wedged in the dry wall, and she
wondered if they’d passed right through.

“They weren’t fucking around. This was a
high-caliber, single minded attack.”

Troy nodded his agreement. “Oh yeah. This was
a planned assault, not a negotiation gone wrong. We got one more
dead in a bedroom.”

This was where she saw the handguns. She
quick-counted about half a dozen domestic and import models. This
guy had probably gone looking for a weapon, caught it in the back
once he got into the room. There was a small camping cot, a lamp on
the floor, and a Rubbermaid tote of handguns in the room. Plus the
dead body, face first on the floor next to the stash. That was
it.

Crime scene processing would take forever,
and this was one of the more cut-and-dried ones.

“ATF, DEA and FBI are likely going to be
taking over most of this,” she told Troy as they walked back to her
cruiser. “I’m going to let them.” She pulled the cruiser door open,
already feeling exhausted. “I’m making the rounds, but just
maintain the scene until the coroner can get here. He’s gonna be
fucking busy.”

Troy nodded. “I know we don’t get along,
Sheriff. But I’m glad that’s the call. We’re out of our depth here
again. I know you’ve always kept the best interests of the town in
mind.”

She smiled, but she was willing to bet it was
thin. “Thank you, Deputy. I wish we could handle it ourselves,
though.”

“If people want that kind of police service
they’re going to need to triple their taxes,” he told her, and
actually smiled. “Heard about the debate. Heard you did really
well.”

She shook her head, arms on the open car
door. “I don’t know. Sometimes you just feel like saying ‘Fuck it,
let him have it then.’ But I try to imagine him in my shoes right
now, tonight, looking at that.” She jerked her head towards the
house. “I’m terrified he’ll win.”

“Me, too. That’s why I said what I said last
month. I know it was out of line but we’re arguing from the same
side.” After a pause he held his hand out.

She shook it. “No matter what, I want you in
this office. If it’s under Turnbull so be it. But you’re a really
good cop, and I’ll feel better knowing you’re working here.”

He smiled at that. “Thanks. I can’t think of
anything else I’d rather do.”

“Good. Now I have five more crime scenes to
look at and twenty-four more dead bodies to gawk over. You good
here?”

-oOo-

Sharon was walking through the final scene—a
mobile home with four very dead, dark-skinned young men inside—when
the feds began rolling into Markham. Sunrise had come and gone but
she still wasn’t feeling tired yet. At the last couple scenes she’d
started helping out photographing evidence. Martin at the office
was playing communications coordinator; letting her know where the
coroner was, what stage he was at in the process of each scene. Any
other questions that came up.

That was how she heard the FBI was sending in
an entire team to help ID bodies and help with storage until the
causes of death could be determined officially. They had a portable
freezer unit of some kind. Currently the morgue could only hold
nine bodies at one time. She couldn’t even remember the last time
they’d had to borrow space from the funeral home for bodies. They
had the same nine-drawer set up the sheriff’s department did.

Now the FBI interest was making her nervous.
Not for the town, her department, or the club. Her sensors were
pinging off like mad because their arrival could only mean that the
Mazaris were truly involved in serious, big-boy shit that she
hadn’t anticipated. Whoever they were in bed with was a major
player, and that told her the Dirty Rats were a minor part of the
picture here.

The day had not dawned sunny and bright. By
mid-morning the sky was grey and she could smell the rain coming.
That shifted the evidence-gathering to the exterior of all scenes,
before dropped evidence or footprints could be disturbed. Not that
they’d found any of either; the ground was hard-packed from a
straight week of heat and not a single assassin had dropped a
business card. The first fed she saw in person found her scoping
out a flowerbed that lined a driveway next to the trailer’s door,
but not a single indent was in sight.

“Sheriff,” a faceless suit approached with a
hand out. “We’re glad to take over with CSI. Would your deputies
mind starting interviews of the neighbors?”

It was a disappointment to her to feel relief
they were there.

She shook the offered hand, and the
generically-pleasant man kept talking but she was barely taking
note of what was happening. She was tired, just as quick as the
handshake, and she realized then she’d been up for over twenty-four
hours.

Markham County Sheriff’s Department officers
switched gears quickly, ringing bells and knocking on doors as
folks were getting ready for work or to send the kids off to
school. It wasn’t difficult to get through it all. Not a single
neighbor anywhere saw anything helpful. One person thought they saw
a black van driving away from one of the houses. It was the noise
that got the ones who heard anything out of bed, but by the time
they’d gotten up the nerve to look out a window there was nothing
but receding tail lights.

It had been a series of fast hits carried out
in perfect coordination. Sure, a Mexican cartel could have driven
to Markham in the middle of the night and done this. But she knew
very damn well who was behind all this. The real question was if
the new folks in town were going to go after them.

During the noon hour she was returning to the
office, surprised to see it overrun with dark sedans and SUVs.

Inside there were many people she didn’t know
in dark suits, women and men. They all looked up at her, gave her a
nod of greeting then went about their business.

Her office was empty. She went inside, shut
the door and sat. Just for a moment, closing her eyes. Surprisingly
she had no fear over how she’d look if all the truth came out over
this. After all, she’d taken out a link in the Mazari chain in
Markham County herself. Just for one moment she considered Markham
with the Red Rebels, and she honestly wasn’t sure if it would be
better off or worse.

The knock on the door brought her around, and
she called out “Come in,” as the door swung inward as Agent Hogan
stepped in. He shut them inside with a gentle smile. “You have been
out all night, haven’t you?”

She had to smile. “I look that ravishing,
don’t I?”

“Deputy Troy said you’d been supervising the
scenes without a break.” He leaned on the filing cabinet across
from her, hand out as a peace gesture. “For the record, you look
damn good.”

She laughed and rolled her eyes, leaning
forward with elbows on her desk. “Well, I met one of the FBI’s
finest and they put us on interview duty and that’s done now. I was
planning on maybe sleeping for three days straight now.”

“Can I take you for breakfast first?”

There it was; that little warm surge in her
stomach. He was smiling at her, looking good and clean and much
more appropriate given her professional circumstances. There was
nothing wrong with this man, nothing at all. He wasn’t a pretty
clean-cut man, unlike some of the others out front. He got his
hands dirty from time to time, she could tell. He just wore a suit,
it didn’t wear him.

So why didn’t he flip that hot switch like
Fritter Horton did? Christ, life would be easier if the Agent
Hogans of the world did.

“Sure,” she agreed, pushing back from the
desk. “I would kill kittens for bacon and eggs right now.”

“You recommend the spot, provide
conversation, I’ll buy.”

“Holy fuck,” Fritter groaned, rolling from
his back to side. Something soft got in the way, giving a grunt of
annoyance. “Hey. Sweetheart. Ghost your ass out.”

With an exaggerated pout the blonde flopped
to her back, and he had to admit her tits bouncing were a pleasant
plea to stay put. “I have a hangover.”

“Me, too. So get out.”

“I’ll blow you.”

He was so polluted he hadn’t even woken up
with morning wood. “Not happening. It’s not you, it’s me. So get
out of here before I get angry.”

She finally pulled herself out of the sheets.
She was fully naked, but he didn’t watch her as she moved around
collecting her clothes from the floor. Instead he was lighting a
joint from the ashtray next to his bed, hoping it would take care
of the spinning, splitting headache.