GATOR: Wolves MC (Riding With Wolves Book 2) (3 page)

September 15, 2015–San Francisco, California

The address the chief gave me was just over ten miles away from the station, and I made it to the scene of the crime in just under twenty minutes.

I parked my car two blocks away from the scene, however, so as to carefully scan the surrounding area as I approached. Sometimes the perpetrator of a crime sticks around to see what happens with the ensuing police attention and investigation, so I had to keep my eyes peeled for anything suspicious.

But I didn’t see much of anything as I approached, let alone anything suspicious. People were just going about their business and only occasionally, halfheartedly, paying mind to the taped-off crime scene with uniformed officers standing guard at its perimeter.

“Hey, Knowles,” one of them said when I came near. I couldn’t remember the officer’s name, and the sun was reflecting rather brightly off of his nametag, but regardless, I nodded in recognition.

“Wait ‘til you see this one,” he added, lifting up the crime tape for me to duck under. I followed him over to the body, which was covered by a sheet. As soon as another officer near the body saw me approach, he pulled the sheet back… and what was underneath was quite alarming.

There, lying on the ground, was a dead, shirtless junkie. He had three hypodermic needles stuck in each of his arms, his throat had been slit, and a large “W” had been carved into his tattooed chest.

“Wow,” I said, examining the body from where I stood. The same sunlight that made it hard to read the first officer’s nametag was now reflecting off of the dead junkie’s nipple rings. “Coop was right. This is
brutal
… What did you find? Do we have anything yet?”

I glanced at the body again, trying to avoid the glare, and focused on the space around it. For as brutal as this slaying was, there wasn’t much blood around the body, which again indicated that the junkie hadn’t died here but had been left here—and given the careful way he was sprawled out on the ground, with the needles still intact in his arms, it obviously wasn’t a drop and roll. He’d been placed here like this for a more important reason.

“We got an identification on the victim,” a third officer said from behind me. I knew who it was… immediately. His name was Mario Ramirez, and he spoke with a thick Chicano accent.

“Vic’s name is John Berry,” Ramirez continued. “Standard junkie rap sheet—a few possession charges, two assaults, a handful of drunken disorderlies, and nothing else surprising there… But there
is
a little surprise—he’s not from San Fran. He’s from L.A.”

“L.A.?” I asked, still eyeing the body. “Maybe he decided to relocate?”

“Well, if he
did
,” Ramirez answered, “he either relocated right into the heart of trouble, or someone followed after him as soon as he left. The boys in L.A. said they had him in their station
yesterday
afternoon, questioning him about a recent, unsolved attack on a biker.”

“So he was running on that rap?” I asked, trying to work things out off-the-cuff with Ramirez.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Ramirez answered. “Think about the timeline here… He left the police station around four thirty yesterday. Say he decides to run. He goes, gets his shit together, covers his tracks—whatever. At best, he leaves L.A. around six that night or so. If he drives here himself or gets a ride, that means he can be in San Fran by, what? Midnight? If he hops a bus, it’ll take even longer.

“Now this murder isn’t just a bullet wound or a knife to the gut. There’s overkill here—and it’s obviously a message of some sort. And whoever is behind that message clearly took some time with the body and took some time and care placing it
here
.

“We don’t have a time of death yet, but this body is obviously not fresh. It’s stale, and there isn’t a lot blood around it. This guy was dead for a while before he was placed here… So think about it.”

For a beat cop, Ramirez sure had a lot of insight, I was both jealous and proud of him for it.

“So this guy either got killed as soon as he got into town,” I replied, putting together the puzzle pieces Ramirez had so painstakingly presented, “or someone killed him in L.A. and
brought
him here?”

“Exactly,” Ramirez answered. “And whichever it was, it means we’ve got more than a simple junkie murder on our hands here, and it’s gonna be a ball-breaker.”

I shook my head in the affirmative, despite the fact that I didn’t have balls. “Sure is,” I said. “Did you get any prints off of anything?”

“Not the needles,” Ramirez replied. “They’re clean out of the box, unused, and don’t even have a partial fingerprint on them—which again shows the great care with which this murder was executed.”

I leaned down closer to the body and examined the needles without touching them.

“We did get some fingerprints from this though,” Ramirez said, holding up an evidence bag with a blood-covered object in it.

“What’s that?” I asked, standing up and moving closer to Ramirez.

“A switchblade,” Ramirez answered. “And it’s likely our murder weapon.”

“Why would the perp leave the murder weapon?” I inquired, asking an obvious question. “Why go to all these trouble with everything else just to leave a calling card behind?”

“Had to be an accident,” Ramirez replied. “Or it was planted there… and again, in either event, it means this case ain’t gonna be that simple.”

“So did you get anything on the prints?” I asked.

“Not yet,” Ramirez said. “But we’re running them now… If they’re in the system, we’ll find ‘em in no time.”

“Alright,” I replied, turning to head back to my car. “I’m gonna go check in with the chief—gotta let him know what’s up and tell him I won’t be joining him for lunch after all.”

“Okay,” Ramirez said, shrugging off my comment about my lunch plans.

I only managed to walk a few feet away before Ramirez called out to me again. “Hey, Knowles, get back here. We got an ID on the prints.”

“Let’s hear it,” I said, returning to the scene.

“They’re from a biker out in L.A.,” Ramirez explained, holding up the android tablet another officer had handed him. “He has one prior—an assault on another L.A. biker about ten years ago. Served six months on it and hasn’t popped up in the system since…until now.”

“And his
name
?” I asked.

“Let’s see here,” Ramirez replied, scrolling his finger along the tablet. I looked over at the body again, waiting to hear the name of the person responsible for such a brutal murder. Junkies may not be the most upright citizens, but no human deserved to be cut, carved, and poked with needles like this guy had been.

Whoever did this had to have been a monster.

“Here it is,” Ramirez finally said, keeping his finger steady. “The prints belong to a guy named Carl Struthers.”

September 15, 2015–Los Angeles, California

“Gator!” Hammer shouted from the driveway. “Open your fucking door right now, or I’ll open it for you!”

Hammer was one of my biker brothers. We both belonged to a motorcycle group called the Wolves, and we’d both belonged to it for well over ten years. Now, I say that the Wolves are a motorcycle group, not a gang, because I don’t much like the word “gang,” and I don’t think it describes who we are—or what we do—all that well.

We ain’t your typical, run-of-the-mill thugs, and we definitely ain’t no dealers, runners, or pushers. We’re just a bunch of guys—and some ladies—who enjoy ridin’ on hogs and keepin’ our streets clean. Sometimes that second part involved breaking the law, or what some’d call “vigilante justice,” but you gotta crack a few eggs to bake a cake, now don’t ya? When we broke the law or exacted vigilante justice, we did it for good reason, and the greater good was always served in the end.

But I tell ya this much—I had no idea what the hell “greater good” could be makin’ Hammer pound on my door at ten in the morning on a Tuesday. The dude and I had been through a lot of shit together over the years, and I even saved his life once. But damn, with a twelve-pack of beer and a late night behind me, the way Hammer was hammering on the door made my entire house shake, and I wanted to let him have it for disturbing me so abruptly so early in the morning.

“Open the door, Gator!” Hammer shouted again, beating his fists against my back door. He was the best friend I had, and I knew that his persistence meant that he meant business, so I pulled myself out of bed, walked down the stairs, and stumbled through the kitchen.

“What the fuck, Hammer?” I said, rubbing my eyes to combat the sunlight that affronted me as soon as I opened the door. “This better be important. Someone better be dead or in dire need of something, otherwise
you
will be for getting my ass out bed like this.”

I was wearing nothing but my boxers and a pair of socks, but Hammer didn’t seem to notice, or care. He pushed right past me and stormed into my house without an invitation. Not that he needed one, but still, it woulda been nice if he’d waited for it.

“Not a good thing to say in
our
world,” Hammer said a moment later. “And not a good thing to say
this
morning.” Hammer sat down at my kitchen table and leaned down over his knees with a solemn look on his face. He tried to lean on my table before leaning on himself, but you gotta understand, I’m a bit of a packrat, and I always got a lot of shit scattered around my house, especially on my kitchen table. So there wasn’t much room for Hammer’s arms on it.

“John Berry is dead,” Hammer went on.

“Who the hell’s John Berry?” I asked. “Wasn’t he one of The Beatles or something?”

“No, Gator,” Sam replied. “He was one of the Seraphs… and he was a junkie.”

I guess you could say the Street Seraphs, or Seraphs for short, were our biggest rival gang here in L.A. As much as we tried to keep the streets clean, they tried to make ‘em dirty—and they
were
your typical, run-of-the-mill thugs. They
were
pushers, runners, and dealers, not vigilantes, and they had no concept of real justice. They broke laws with an ill spirit and were bound by that ill spirit, rather than by the spirit of loyalty and brotherhood that bound the Wolves. By all measures, the Seraphs were a gang, and for that reason alone, yeah, I guess you could say the Seraphs were our rivals.

And given what I just said, I guess it’s no surprise that, sure enough, every so often, a Seraph was also a junkie. They were pushing, running, and dealing the stuff, so obviously, it was a big part of their culture, and some of ‘em probably made it a big part of their lifestyle. I’d met many Seraphs who were more addicted to dope than their clients were.

“Big deal,” I said, opening the door to my refrigerator. “I ain’t never heard of no John Berry, so it don’t matter to me. I ain’t gonna mourn his loss. World’s probably a better place without him anyway.”

“Don’t talk like that, Gator,” Hammer said, straightening his back and sitting up.

“Why not?” I asked. “I don’t like hearin’ ‘bout
anybody
turnin’ up dead. But you can’t tell me you’re sad to see a dirty Seraph junkie gone, now can ya?”

“I’m not sad,” Hammer said, taking on a softer tone. “But I
am
worried.”

I looked at my brother curiously.

“This dead Seraph junkie wasn’t just
any
Seraph junkie,” Hammer added. “It was Pigpen.”

“Pigpen?” I asked, nearly dropping the container of almost-spoiled orange juice I’d pulled out of the refrigerator.

True there, Pigpen wasn’t just
any
Seraph junkie. He was
the
Seraph junkie Hammer had had a run-in with just a short while back, and he was
the
Seraph junkie we thought was probably responsible for what happened to Hammer thereafter.

You see, not even two months ago, my boy Hammer was lying in a bed in a hospital in San Marino. He was in one of them comas. He’d been viciously attacked on the streets on his way home from doing business at a party house, and whoever attacked him nearly killed him.

Hammer ended up being in that coma for ‘bout three months before he woke from it. And when he woke, he had nothin’ to tell us about what happened. He said he never even saw the guy or guys coming; he said he was hit from the back, then went out cold, only to wake up in a hospital months later.

Now, given how our world works, there are a lot of folks who coulda had it in for Hammer. But first of all, you gotta understand—coming at someone from behind is a low-ball move, and it’s something the Seraphs are known for. Fact of the matter is, Hammer had been attacked from behind once before, long ago, and sure enough, it’d been by a Seraph.

And, the second thing you gotta be aware of is this… Just the day before Hammer got his beat-down, he’d given a beat-down to a junkie in an alley behind a ghetto bar called Kent Town. The junkie was a Seraph, and he’d arranged to meet a woman in that alley—to rob her. That woman just so happened to be the sister of our late biker brother, Terry, and she’d just left Terry’s funeral with a big sack of money the Wolves gave her.

Luckily though, Hammer was on her trail already. He followed her, and right when that junkie had her in his clutches, Hammer stepped in and “Hammered” the fuck out of him.

And that junkie’s name… of course… was Pigpen.

From what Hammer said, Pigpen sounded like a puckered-up pussy. But naturally, there was the fear of revenge. And when what happened to Hammer happened, people thought that maybe, just maybe, that revenge had been exacted.

All the Wolves, and our affiliates, knew to keep an eye out for Pigpen, so that we could ask him so questions and figure out what happened. Of course, “asking him questions” meant roughin’ him up, too—and we all looked forward to that as part of the process.

“And Pigpen didn’t just turn up dead,” Hammer went on. “He turned up murdered.”

“So what?” I replied, ignoring the gravity of the moment. “Someone found him and it went a little too far. Even the noblest warriors get carried away in battle sometimes—and if the war’s gonna be down one soldier, might as well be from their side, not
ours
.”

“I didn’t say
killed
, Gator,” Hammer clarified, standing up and moving closer toward me. “I said
murdered
. Someone
murdered
Pigpen… All the details aren’t in yet. Huck’s still collecting info. But from what I heard already, his throat was slashed.”

Hammer moved even closer to me, and he lowered his voice to a volume and tone I’d only seldom ever heard him use before.

“They found the weapon near the body,” Hammer continued. “And they found fingerprints on it… And they ran those prints… and came up with a match.”

Hammer reached out, reached up, and put his hand on my shoulder.

“Do you know whose fingerprints they found?” Sam asked, almost sweetly.

“No,” I replied matter-of-factly.

“
Yours
,” Hammer said, squeezing my shoulder. “So I’ll ask you this
one
time, brother—and I’ll break every biker law we know for an honest answer… Did you have
anything
to do with Pigpen’s murder?”

I reached my hand up to my shoulder and placed it right atop Hammer’s, then I tilted my head and looked him dead straight in the eye, without blinking.

Hammer pulled his hand down, slapped it against his ass, and turned around.

“Alright,” he said. “I knew you
didn’t
, but I
had to
ask… and that look you gave me told me all that I needed to know. But the question remains—if
you
didn’t murder Pigpen, who did? And, why’d they plant a blade with your prints on it near the body?”

I turned from Hammer, chucked the container of almost-spoiled orange juice into the trashcan, and bent down to look from something fresher in the fridge.

“And why the hell,” Hammer continued without pause, “did Pigpen—or his
body
—end up in San Francisco?”

“What’d you say?” I asked, jolting upwards. I was so shocked by what Hammer had just said that I forgot my head was inside the refrigerator, and I conked my head off of it pretty badly.

“I said, if
you
didn’t murder Pigpen, who—” Hammer started repeating.

“No, no,” I interrupted. “I got all that… What’d you say about
San Francisco
?”

“Pigpen’s body was found outside of a bar in San Francisco,” Hammer explained.

“Was it in the city?” I asked a split-second later. “In San Francisco P.D.’s jurisdiction?”

“Yeah, pretty sure,” Hammer replied, giving me a strange look. “But what’s with these questions? What do
you
care about San Francisco or San Francisco P.D.? Is there something you’re not telling me here, Gator?”

“Actually, Hammer,” I said, rubbing the top of my head, where a big bump was already forming, “there is.”