Chapter 10

CHAPTER TEN

Wolf stood at the side of the desolate highway, relieving himself into the base of a wind-bent sagebrush.

A thread-worn blanket of clouds draped over the sun to the east, still low in the sky and failing to warm the landscape of northern Colorado after a cold night. A pair of hawks circled overhead, squealing at each other.

The land in every direction was covered in green grass, sage, and greasewood that carpeted rolling hills. To the north, the land rose again for the first time since Rabbit Ears Pass down south of Steamboat Springs, but not in the jagged, snow-capped way he was used to in Rocky Points. Further up the highway where he was headed, the tops of the mountains were like long swells covered in pines.

The scene reminded him of a painting Lauren had done and hung in the bathroom when she had lived with him. Funnily enough, he’d spent many moments just like this, staring at that painting.

The floodgate to memories of Lauren and Ella had apparently opened. It didn’t take Sigmund Freud to know why. He still hadn’t told Piper about the plans she’d shown him.

The prior evening, Wolf had returned from work to find an empty house. Piper had been gone to a working dinner, a task she did frequently now that her boss had learned she was not only a crack investigator for the firm but also an expert schmoozer for prospective clients. When she returned, he’d already been sound asleep.

He knew he needed to break through his mother’s mantra. He wasn’t complaining by telling her what was on his mind. Piper had a right to know she was accidentally jabbing an icepick into his heart. But for some reason, waking her before dawn and telling her that just hadn’t felt right, so he’d kissed her on the cheek and left quietly.

And now here he was, stewing in his inaction, regret mixing with the trepidation Waze’s words had given him yesterday.

He walked to the SUV and got in, the cab a sound booth compared to the breezy conditions outside.

The GPS told him he had another seventeen miles to his destination, and his dashboard temperature light said it was fifty-eight degrees. The forecast was calling for mid-sixties.

Two miles south of Doyle he stopped at a gas station, filled his tank, and continued up the highway as it entered a wide, low valley flanked on either side by pine-covered hills. Traffic in either direction was sparse. A river came down from the mountains to the west and sidled up next to the highway, hidden beneath a wall of towering oaks, quenching green hay fields, and cattle.

At 8:12 a.m., he passed a sign reading Doyle: Population 1,183 and entered the town .

Just like down in Rocky Points, the speed limit dropped to thirty miles per hour, and the road became Main Street, according to signs posted at crossroads. Looking down the length of the thoroughfare and then at the GPS map, only a half dozen streets were shown before the town ran out and the road continued into the valley.

Following the directions, he slowed and took the first right. Small, cubed houses squatted underneath old-growth trees. Manicured lawns were lined with bursting flowers.

Two blocks up, he turned into a parking lot and parked in front of a one-story building, squeezing between two trucks emblazoned with the Anniston County Sheriff’s Department logo.

He shut off the engine and got out into the still, pleasant air, smelling of cut grass and pine trees. A mirror-finished window reflected his image, and he sensed someone inside watching him arrive. Wasting no time, he stepped onto a crumbling sidewalk and opened the front door.

The interior was quiet, far from the bustling interior of the county building down in Rocky Points, with three vacant desks. The fourth was occupied by a deputy.

The deputy watched Wolf enter, a tired-looking smile creasing his handsome face, and stood. “You must be from Rocky Points.”

“Yes, sir.”

The man walked over, showing he was equal to Wolf’s above-average height but much more muscular.

“Deputy Nichols.” He held out a massive hand, standing ramrod straight. Sandy-blond hair stood up in a mess on top, cut short on the sides. The man obviously had a penchant for the gym that would have rivaled Rachette’s. “I thought there were two more detectives.”

“Just me,” Wolf said, shaking his thick hand. “The other two stayed back.”

“Oh. Well, nice to meet you. You’re even earlier than we thought you’d make it.”

“I got an early start.”

Nichols looked at the wall clock. “I’ll say. Doesn’t it take four hours to get here from Rocky Points?”

“Something like that.”

Nichols chuckled. “Got ourselves an early riser here.”

Wolf’s eyes caught movement in another room beyond, where a sign on an open door read Sheriff Brandenburg .

A man appeared a second later. “Wolf?”

“Sheriff Brandenburg?”

“That’s me. It’s good to meet you.” Brandenburg stepped on tree-trunk legs attached to a medicine ball gut. He offered a hand attached to a well-insulated arm, suggesting the man took his eating regimen as seriously as Nichols did his weights. His hair was spiked in a silver cube on top, shaved close on the sides. He wore a tan uniform and a toothbrush-bristle-length mustache of the same frosty color as his hair.

“Welcome to Doyle.” He splayed his hands like they were in the center of a vast warehouse, then pointed to a coffee machine on a table against the wall. “You need coffee?”

“I’d love some, sure.”

Brandenburg gave him a paper cup off a stack, waited for Wolf to pour a cup, and then poured himself one.

Nichols sat down at his desk again.

“Come on in.” Brandenburg waved Wolf to his office .

Wolf followed, looking down a hallway toward a pair of doors.

“Holding cell,” Brandenburg said, following his gaze. “Just one of them. I’ve had a few drunks in there, sobering up on the cot, but as far as criminal activity goes…it’s normally pretty quiet here. Even with those biker hooligans so close.”

Wolf sipped his coffee. “You just have the two of you?”

Brandenburg sat down with a grunt behind his desk. “One more deputy out on patrol. A cohort of volunteers around the county. You must know how it is. Back in the days before Sluice County merged with Byron, you were smaller, right?”

Wolf nodded, although he had never worked for such a tiny department.

“Please, have a seat.”

Wolf scoped the wall as he sat in a plastic chair in front of Brandenburg’s desk. There were framed photographs of the sheriff as a younger man, a hundred pounds ago, some dressed in green with palm trees in the background, others with the current tan uniform he had on now.

His eyes stopped on a different man, one much older, with a white beard and a beaming smile.

“That’s Aldridge,” Brandenburg said.

“Aldridge?”

“The former sheriff. I took over after his death back in…when was it?” He looked up at the ceiling, sucking in a breath as he thought. “Must have been five years ago now. He was a good man. His whole life was this job.”

Wolf sat back, facing the current sheriff.

“So,” Brandenburg said, sipping his coffee.

Wolf cleared his throat, reading into the man’s expression. He was less than enthused to have him there. Wolf had two ways to think about the situation: One, he was stepping on their toes and needed to tread lightly. Or two, he had two dead bodies down in his county, one of which came from here, chased by a troublesome gang of bikers squatting nearby. Wolf was out of a job if he didn’t come home with some resolution.

Wolf chose the latter and sat back. “How are things going?”

Brandenburg sputtered his lips. “Great.”

“You said you rarely see criminal action like this up here.”

“That’s right.”

“Unfortunately, I have some experience with stuff like this.”

Brandenburg blew on his coffee, staring at Wolf through the rising steam.

Wolf cleared his throat. “Right. Well, I’d like to hear exactly what happened at the biker gang compound the other night.”

Brandenburg moved without hurry as he set down his coffee, opened the top drawer, produced a manila folder, and set it on the desktop.

He sat forward as if digging into a meal, opened the folder, and spread out the pictures.

Wolf sat forward, too, and scanned the photos. One picture showed two white males with heavily tattooed skin lying in twin beds that were set along different walls of the same room. The mattresses underneath them were soaked in blood. They were dressed in underwear, and one of them was half-in, half-out of the bed as if he’d been awakened by the shots that killed the guy next to him .

“Sons of the Void,” Brandenburg said. “The four victims we spoke about.”

“Sir?” Nichols’s voice came from behind them.

Brandenburg looked up, nodded, and lowered his eyes to the photos again.

Nichols walked into the office, sitting next to Wolf. The floor bounced, and the chair creaked as his muscled frame settled in.

Wolf glanced over. Nichols sat ramrod straight in his chair and eyed the photos.

“We got the call Saturday morning, at three a.m.,” Brandenburg said.

Wolf looked at another few photos, which were zoomed closer. Just like the two victims down near Ashland, each man was covered in tattoos. The inked artwork showed the stuff of nightmares: skulls, fires, chains, demons, and guns.

“You have names for these men?” Wolf asked.

Brandenburg pulled out a list of names and read them off. One was Donald Cruz.

“Donald Cruz,” Wolf said. “Remember, one of the victims we found in Ashland was Benny Cruz. His brother. The bike he was riding on was registered to an address here in Doyle.” Wolf pulled out his phone, found the address in a note file, and read it off.

Brandenburg nodded. “Yep. That’s the address of the compound.”

Wolf pocketed his cell. “You said they called in the shooting?”

“They needed an ambulance,” Brandenburg said. “It was not good. Like a war zone.”

“And this is, what? Their main clubhouse?”

“They call it a compound,” Nichols said. “And they have a few of them around the west. This is not the main one. This is just the local one.”

Wolf eyed Brandenburg. The sheriff seemed unperturbed by his deputy taking point in answering the question.

“How many of them live here?” Wolf asked.

“It’s fluid,” Brandenburg said. “There can be upward of thirty or forty of them there at a time, depending on…whatever it is it depends on.”

“They have barracks,” Nichols said. “A couple of buildings with bunk beds. Just like the military.”

Wolf pulled a photo near him that showed a different pair of dead men than the two in the beds, both similarly covered in tattoos, also scantily dressed for sleeping. They had been run down and stopped by bullets in a hallway. Blood streaked the walls on either side of them.

A tattoo painted an arc across one of the men’s bare back reading Sons of the Void .

“Have you guys had any run-ins with them down south?” Nichols asked.

Wolf shook his head. “No.”

“They keep more north,” Brandenburg said. “This is their southern compound.”

“Where is this place from here?” Wolf asked.

“Southwest, about five miles outside of town,” Brandenburg said. “Sits on a hundred or so acres. Big house, with two other buildings. Surrounded by woods.”

“You said things are normally quiet around here,” Wolf said. “They keep their noses clean with you guys?”

Brandenburg shrugged. “They keep on their best behavior. I think they have some strict don’t-shit-where-you-eat rules about that. ”

“Are the feds active on them?”

“Not as far as we know,” Brandenburg said.

“How long have they been there?”

“This is the tenth or so year.”

“So, what? Do they keep their distance? Or…”

“A lot of them hang out at the saloon on Main,” Brandenburg said. “A place called the Dusty Thorn.”

Wolf sat back. “What did they tell you happened?”

“They said a gunman came in shooting up the place,” Brandenburg said.

“A single man?”

“Yes.”

“Thirty or forty men and nobody got a well-placed shot off?”

“They only had a few others there that night,” Brandenburg said.

Wolf nodded. “And they didn’t tell you who it was.”

“Nope.”

“Description?”

“They didn’t have a good one. They just told us it was fast. Bam-bam-bam, in and out.”

“What about the vehicle?”

“They didn’t see one,” Brandenburg said.

“That’s it?” Wolf asked. “No other specifics?”

Brandenburg chuckled under his breath, his neck wobbling. “These guys are cagey. They just wanted the ambulance. That was pretty clear.”

Wolf folded his arms. “I told you we found a GPS unit and a duffle bag.”

“We figure that’s why they didn’t tell us anything,” Nichols said. “They wanted to keep the chase to themselves. They wouldn’t want cops finding them first and taking the money.”

Wolf looked at Brandenburg and raised an eyebrow. “You think it was money?”

Brandenburg hesitated, a hint of annoyance at his deputy showing for the first time. “I think it was drugs, guns, or money. Like I told you before, that’s what they deal with.”

“And people,” Nichols said.

“Thank you, Deputy,” Brandenburg said.

Nichols appeared unaffected by his boss’s admonition.

“Our ME found traces of money fibers inside the bag,” Wolf said.

“Oh, okay then,” Brandenburg said. “My deputy’s assessment makes sense then. They were keeping the man's identity quiet so they could get their money before anyone else did. Is that your assessment?” he asked Wolf.

Wolf nodded. “We also learned from the cabin owner down in Ashland that the man paid cash to rent the place for a week. A lot of cash.”

Brandenburg’s eyes narrowed. He folded his arms on his belly and rubbed his chin. “And this cabin owner didn’t get a name?”

“The man told him to call him Adam.”

“So, he was using a pseudonym.”

Wolf nodded.

“And what was this cabin owner’s description of the man?” Brandenburg asked.

“Vague. Gray, black hair and a beard of the same color. The gas station owner told us pretty much the same. The cabin owner described a dark-blue Ford F-150 truck. One with a large scratch and dent in one of the rear sides. ”

“So we heard,” Brandenburg said, “and read on the APB you guys put out.”

They sat in silence as Wolf scanned the photographs again.

“Well,” Brandenburg said. “You’re here. What would you like to do with your time?”

“I think the only thing we can do that makes any sense is visit the Sons of the Void compound.”

Brandenburg’s eye twitched. Nichols’s chair creaked.

When neither spoke, Wolf realized fear had dropped into the room. “We found two of their members,” he said. “Shot dead. We found their duffle bag. They’ll want to know about it. I haven’t told them. Have you?”

Brandenburg nodded, his jowls wobbling as he sucked in a breath. “You’re right. They’ll be grateful we’re delivering the news at least.”

Wolf nodded, then scooted forward to stand, noting it took a full second longer for Brandenburg to snap out of his thoughts and do the same.

“You’ll ride with me,” Brandenburg said. “Nichols, you can hold the fort down.”

“I can go, too, if you want more men,” Nichols said. “Larkin’s coming in this morning.”

“No. Stay here.”

Nichols nodded, looking slightly disappointed.

“Refill before we leave?” Brandenburg asked, lifting his coffee mug and walking out of the office with quick steps. Whatever hesitation he had before was long gone.

“Yes, please,” Wolf said as he followed him out.