GATOR: Wolves MC (Riding With Wolves Book 2) (7 page)

September 15, 2015–Los Angeles, California

“Rise and shine, sleepy head,” I said getting back into my car.

Immediately after I said it, I felt like a dumbass. I’d just spend over six hours traveling with a childlike rookie, but that didn’t mean I had to talk to him like a mother!

“Barnes!” I shouted, correcting my emotional error. “Get your ass up!”

Barnes had been cooed a little by my earlier wake-up call, but my second one startled him, and he jolted in his seat nearly knockin’ his noggin on the ceiling of my car.

“I’m so sorry,” he said meek and humbly. “I must have fallen asleep… I wasn’t out long was I?”

“I don’t think so,” I answered, lying. “I didn’t really pay attention or notice.” The truth was, I didn’t have the heart to tell the poor kid he’d been asleep for more than two hours. He would have been so embarrassed.

“Where are we?” he asked, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes.

“Los Angeles,” I replied.

Barnes opened his eyes and out through every window, trying to take in his surroundings
and
figure out how long he really must’ve been sleeping.

“We’re in the parking lot of the motel,” I went on. “I stopped here first, to get our room keys. It’s on the way to the station. Who knows how late we’ll be there tonight.”

Barnes simply nodded and continued to scan the area around us.

We’d officially rolled into L.A. just after six thirty that evening—and as I’d told Barnes, the motel
was
on our way to the station. I’d been out of town on cases before, and I’d learned through experience that it’s sometimes best to secure your accommodations sooner rather than later—and this was one of those times.

For all I knew, we’d be tied up at the station until well after midnight, and checking into motels that late can sometimes be a hassle, especially in a big metropolis like L.A. Reservations tend to get lost, and many places are staffed with late-night staff for whom English is a second, possibly third, language.

At the end of the night, I was going to need a place to lay my head down, and by golly, I was going to make sure I had one. So as soon as we got to L.A., I headed straight for the motel. Barnes was still asleep when I pulled into the lot, and I decided not to wake him. I figured it’d be much easier and faster for me to take care of check-in for both of us than for me to wake him and wait for him to come to his senses.

“Here you go,” I said, handing him the credit-card-like key to his room and shoving mine into my bag. He took it from me, and I started the car.

As soon as we pulled out onto the street, Barnes started shifting around in his seat.

“Don’t tell me you have to pee again,” I sighed.

“No,” he said. “But I
am
really hungry.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Think we can hit a fast food drive-thru real quick?” he asked, again reminding me of a child. “I haven’t had anything real to eat all day, and like you said, who knows how late we’ll be at the station tonight.”

Barnes had behaved for most of the ride—so even though it set us back a few more minutes, I decided he deserved a treat and pulled over at the first burger joint we saw.

Barnes told me his order, and I conveyed it to the young woman running the drive-thru.

“That’ll be four dollars and twenty-six cents,” she said, tallying his order.

As I moved past the speaker, towards the first window, Barnes asked, “Aren’t you gonna get anything?”

“Nah, I’m not hungry,” I told him. And indeed, I was speaking the truth. I had terrible knots in my stomach—as well as a few butterflies—and there wasn’t any room left for food.

Barnes pulled out his wallet and started sorting through it. It was filled with all different kinds of cards, receipts, and whatnot, and he was emptying some of it out onto his lap, which, of course, made me sigh
and
roll my eyes.

After digging and searching, Barnes finally reached out and handed me the money to pay for his food. He gave me four one-dollar bills, two dimes, one nickel, and one penny—exactly four dollars and twenty-six cents.

I took it from him carefully. I wanted to grab it from his hands in a hurried gesture, but I was afraid I’d drop the change and he’d need to look for more.

I paid the woman at the first window while Barnes shoved his shit back into his wallet, and a moment later, I retrieved his greasy snack from the second window. No sooner had I handed the bag to Barnes than he stopped what he was doing, tore into it, pulled back the wrapper on his burger, and went to town on it. It seemed the child had the eating habits of a teenager now. We couldn’t have been more than a minute down the road before he was finished.

Barnes and I didn’t talk much after his meal—or rather, we didn’t talk
about
much. We just reviewed the details of the crime, and I filled him in on what I’d seen at the crime scene.

It wasn’t until we were right outside of the station that I decided to bring up something new and important with Barnes, though naturally, it was still related to the case.

“When we get in there,” I said. “
I’m
going to run the entire ballgame.
I’m
going to call all of the shots. This guy’s a guy, and he’s a biker. So I’m going to play the ‘woman detective’ angle to get him to talk, and I’ll be conducting the interrogation
alone
. I don’t even want you in the room, unless I ask for you specifically.”

Barnes’ eyes widened, and he nodded.

“And while
I’m
in there talking to the suspect,” I went on, “I want you doing some research. See what you can dig up on the gang affiliations involved here, and see if there’ve been any similar cases over the past ten years or so, especially any involving mutilation and carving gang symbols into a vic’s chest.

“Try to figure out as much as you can on your own, and don’t talk
too
much to the boys in local… But definitely listen and follow any leads you hear. After I’ve talked to Struthers for a while, I’ll check in with you to see what you’ve got, and we’ll take it from there.”

Barnes nodded again. If I had to come up with a nickname for
him
, it’d be “Bobblehead.”

“You got all that?” I asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” Barnes answered.

“And enough of that ‘ma’am’ shit,” I added. “I’m not
that
much older than you, and we don’t want L.A.P.D. here to think you’re beneath them. ‘Ma’am’ and ‘sir’ are reserved for chiefs and members of the community. You call me ‘Detective’ or ‘Knowles,’ and you refer to officers and detectives in there in the same manner.”

“Yes, Knowles,” Barnes said, correcting himself and nodding his head more pointedly.

I smiled at him, and he smiled back, obviously touched by my silent affirmation of his obedience. He was good at following instructions; he was willing to do whatever I said; and he was out for praise and recognition. Ah, yes. Good choice for a partner!

“Alright then, partner,” I said, shutting the car down. “Let’s do this.”

Barnes and I both stepped out of the car at the same time. But as I headed toward the station, he lingered at the car for a moment. He was getting his oversized trench coat and fedora out of the backseat and putting them on.

I couldn’t stand the thought of him walking into L.A.P.D. in that getup, so I stopped him.

“Leave all that in the car,” I said. “You’d just take it off as soon as you got in there anyway.”

“I’m not leaving it in
your
car,” Barnes said back, sassing me. “
You
don’t lock your car doors, and I don’t want anyone to steal it.”

Poor kid! He
actually
thought someone would steal his trench coat and fedora?!? Not even the most downtrodden bum on the worst street in L.A.’s worst ghetto was
that
desperate.

“Just leave your stuff in the car,” I moaned. “I’ll lock it.”

Thankfully, Barnes took off his coat and hat and put them in the backseat. Then, I clicked the “lock” button on my keychain, securing his precious getup, and together, we walked into L.A.P.D. Central Station.

September 15, 2015–Los Angeles, California

Eight bottles of beer on the wall, eight bottles of beer… You take one down, pass it around—seven bottles of beer on the wall. Seven bottles of beer on the wall, seven bottles of beer… You take one down, pass it—

“Struthers,” the guard said, banging his nightstick against the tiny glass window that separated the pigs from the scum. “Get up, Struthers. That detective from San Francisco is here to question ya.”

I kept my eyes closed, despite the guard’s instructions.

Four bottles of beer on the wall, four bottles of beer… You take one down—

“Struthers!” he shouted. I could tell by his voice that it was a different guard than earlier, but, still, I wasn’t gonna budge yet.

Three bottles of beer on the wall, three bottles of beer…

I heard the door click open and felt a hand on my shoulder. “You dead or somethin’, buddy?” the guard asked, shaking me.

One bottle of beer… You take it down, pass it around—no bottles of beer on the wall!

I opened my eyes and looked at the man. “Sorry,” I replied. “I zoned out.” When you start your countdown with five thousand bottles of beer on the wall, you can’t stop when you’ve reached SEVEN. You gotta see it through.

“Well, zone back in,” he said, pulling on my shirt. “That detective’s here, and she’s called you for questioning.”

“Alrighty then,” I responded, rising to my feet. I nodded my head like a cowboy, and almost fell over from the movement. My legs were kind of numb—and limp, like spaghetti—because I’d been sitting in the same spot for hours. I’d parted ways with the attorney sometime after three, and, now, five thousand bottles of beer on the wall later, it was nearly seven thirty.

The guard led me out of holding, down to a room not unlike the one I’d been in earlier. It was a little smaller, and the chairs looked—and eventually felt—less comfortable, but it didn’t matter much. Those types of scare tactics weren’t going to force anything out of me I wasn’t willing to tell.

Once the guard deposited me in the room, he locked the door behind himself, and I sat there for about twenty minutes. I didn’t bother counting bottles of beer on the wall, because I wanted to be alert at that critical moment…

And by golly, I was.

Let me start by sayin’ that, when I first heard that Jessica “J.T.” Taylor had become I cop, I sure was surprised—and even more so when I heard she made detective. I just never imagined her working in such a profession. Not that I imagined her as a schoolmarm or housewife…and not that there’s anything wrong with
those
professions; I just never saw her doing something so—I don’t know—aggressive? Hardcore? Hands-on?

But when Detective Jessica “J.T.” Knowles walked into the interrogation room, I saw something that I’d never seen before, even though it’d been right in front of my face. The woman wearing that sexy yet sophisticated skirt suit—with her hair pulled back into a ponytail and the barest, simplest dabs of makeup on her face—was doing exactly what she was meant to be doing for a living. She looked the powerful part she was playing—and she’d looked it all along though I’d been blind to it.

But the eyes staring back at me were the eyes of the same girl who didn’t leave me when I didn’t leave her to the gator. And I became intently aware of the fact that I was about to talk to the same apt-minded problem-solver who’d told
me
how to protect myself when the gator had my foot in his mouth, which meant that, now, I could end up with my foot in
my
mouth.

“Carl Struthers…,” J.T. said, looking down and flipping through a file folder. She definitely
said
my name, rather than asked it, and she didn’t look up at me again until she’d finished saying it. It was as if she was reading my name from the file, which made me chuckle.

“Carl Struthers?” I asked. And I definitely
asked
it, rather than said it, and I stared at J.T. the whole while, pleasantly smiling. “I’m sure that file of yours tells you I got a street name. And I know you don’t need to check to find out what
that
is… Everyone calls me Gator, on account of a run-in I had with an alligator a long time ago, back in Lou’siana.”

J.T. looked completely unmoved by what I said and totally disregarded my smile.

“Is
that
what this is all about?” J.T. asked. “Is
that
why you killed John Berry? Trying to reignite an old flame by sending me a junkie with a bouquet of needles?”

“A bouquet of needles?” I asked, curiously, before moving on to my next question—which was one of those rhetorical ones.

“Aren’t you getting a little ahead of yourself here, Detective Knowles?” I inquired. “All I did was tell you my street name and remind you of the reason behind it. I didn’t say nothin’ about killin’ no junkie—or about reigniting an old flame.”

“Fine,” J.T. said, leaning back in her chair. “Let’s go about this a different way then. Tell me,
Gator
, did
you
kill John Berry?”

“No,” I replied, point-blank.

“Do you know who did?” J.T. asked.

“No,” I answered.

“Are you telling me the truth?” she asked.

“Yes,” I told her.

The questions and answers were swift and immediate. One after the other… bang, bang, bang. There was no time for pause or thought. And once she was through, J.T. looked down at her file, opened it, and examined something inside for a moment.

“Why are you here?” she asked, finally looking up at me again.

“Pardon?” I replied.

“
Why are you here?
” she repeated. “If you didn’t kill John Berry and don’t know who did, why would you voluntarily turn yourself in for questioning regarding this crime? Why would you think the police wanted to talk to
you
?”

“Look,” I said, leaning in over the table. “I didn’t have anything to do with Pigpen’s murder, but I heard about it. I know he turned up dead in San Francisco—and I know my prints turned up on the knife that killed him…
And
I knew
you’d
be looking for me because of it, so I turned myself in for questioning—to save us both a lot of trouble.”

“How did you hear about the murder?” J.T. asked. “Who told you?”

J.T.’s questions made me chuckle again, which might sound inappropriate. But consider what she was asking me!

“I heard about it,” I answered. “That’s all that matters. I could tell you that a suspect in line-up overheard officers talking, or someone in the back of a squad car squealed. Or I could tell you that one of beat officers tipped me off—or someone higher up owed me a favor.

“But I ain’t gonna tell you any one those things. First of all, none of them are true. And second of all, like I said, it don’t matter… I have my sources—and, obviously, they’re reliable.”

“So… you’re a
connected
man these days, Gator?” J.T. asked, taking on a different tone. “You have
sources
, do you? I bet you have
resources
too—people you can go to when you have problems… people who can make those problems go away for you. Was John Berry a problem for you, Gator? Did one of your
resources
take care of him for you?”

“I never even knew John Berry, not by name or face,” I told J.T. “But from what I heard—from my
sources
—he was pretty much a lowlife, and a lot of people had problems with him.”

“What kind of problems?” J.T. asked.

“Apparently some mighty big ones,” I answered, sitting back. My legs were starting to hurt again, and I wanted to stand up, but I didn’t know if the situation allowed it (and I am, at times, a stickler for manners).

J.T. ran her fingers over the file folder, then tapped them against it.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, abruptly rising from her chair. She didn’t even bother to push it in, as she made her way to the door, which popped open the moment she scanned some type of card in front of it.

“Alrighty then,” I said aloud once she was gone. I don’t know
why
I said it aloud, but I had to.