38. Podcast

Riggs

It was that night, Ledger was in bed, and Riggs and Nadia were hanging in front of the TV watching Only Murders in the Building, when his phone rang.

He pulled it out, saw it was from Harry and took the call.

"Yo, brother," he answered.

"Hey, Doc. Nothing to be alarmed about, and sorry it's late, but I need you to trust me and come to the access road."

He felt Nadia's fingers curl around his thigh, so he knew she felt his vibe, and he looked at her.

"Trust you about what?" he asked suspiciously.

Her brows shot up.

"You'll see when you get here," Harry replied.

Shit.

"Be there in a few," he said.

"Right, see you then," Harry returned then disconnected.

"Harry wants me to come to the access road," he told Nadia.

"Oh boy," she replied. "Do you need to take Gia?"

"I don't think so. He didn't sound alarmed. But he sounded evasive, and I'm curious, so I'm gonna go."

"Okay."

He touched her lips with his, bent and nabbed the boots he'd taken off earlier, put them on, then he hauled his ass out of the couch, grabbed his keys and went out the door.

When he got to the access road, he honestly didn't know how anyone could find it in the dark. It had seen some activity recently, but the entrance and the road were so overgrown, there were only two thin patches of worn dirt to guide the way, and no indication it was there from the street.

He turned in and drove all the way down, stopping only when he pulled up behind Harry's cruiser.

And beyond that was Bubbles's truck.

Topping that, Bubbles was sitting outside his truck in a camp chair, a cooler beside him, a Bluetooth speaker and a lit camp lantern on top of it, another camp lantern on the ground beside the cooler. A folding camp table was on his other side, with a pizza box from Luigi's on top of it.

Oh yeah…

And Bubbles had his shotgun resting across his thighs.

Slowly, Riggs got out and walked to Harry, who was leaning against the side of the cruiser, arms and ankles crossed.

"What the fuck?" Riggs asked.

"We got this road on radar, doing random stop ins," Harry explained. "Raul stopped in, found this, called me, I drove out, had a chat with him, he won't leave."

"I know you're talking about me!" Bubbles yelled.

Dammit.

Riggs moved to him.

"You can stay away," Bubbles said, and Riggs stopped. "And technically, I'm stayin' away. Tell your woman that. But heard someone is fuckin' with you and your woman, and they're usin' this road. So they can fuck right the fuck off or face the wrong end of my shotgun."

Holy shit.

"Bubs—" Riggs started.

"This is not a marker," Bubbles interrupted him. "Not me paying one, not me expecting one from you. Friends don't hold markers. And I know you're not my friend anymore, but I'm yours, and no one is messing with you on my watch."

Riggs dropped his head and looked to his boots.

He lifted his head when Bubbles continued.

"Got my pizza. Got my podcast. Got a six-pack. I'm set. You can go home."

Bubbles had done the unforgiveable, but pure Bubbles, he was so intent on doing what he could to make friends, it made it impossible not to like the guy.

Riggs had to think on this and talk to Nadia about it, so all he said was, "Be careful."

Bubbles lifted up his beer can to Riggs.

Riggs went back to Harry, and Harry pushed away from his cruiser to walk Riggs to his truck.

They stopped and faced each other when they hit the driver's side door.

"Update," Harry began. "The powers that be in Seattle have no interest in opening a closed case. Especially not a high profile one. That detective also hasn't done anything on his own time. So either they went after Nadia last night in their fifteen-year commitment to keep people off this land, or Rus and me tweaked Sharon."

"Right," Riggs said.

"And Sean, Raul and Karen are all considering resigning because they've spent hours today going through your feeds, but it was worth it."

Riggs's attention spiked. "Yeah?"

"Shadowy figure. It was night. They were wearing dark clothing, including a hoodie with the hood pulled up. Kept their head down. Maybe noted Nadia's Range Rover wasn't there, and they had a flashlight, which fucked us, because they caught a string of luck and shined it right into the camera when they looked at the house. Obscured the view, didn't see a face. The light went away, they were running from the house. Sharon Swindell is attractive, tall, slender, but built tough like any mountain woman should be, and fifty-four years old. I wouldn't swear the person wasn't her, but whoever it was, was taller than her and moved more like a man, and definitely someone younger."

"Bryce or Evan?" Riggs asked.

Harry shook his head. "Not Evan. He's five ten. This person was more around your and my height. But again, it was shadowy. And they weren't built, so it wasn't Evan, but could have been Bryce. We're pulling him in tomorrow after school to have a talk."

"Casey's gonna love that," Riggs muttered.

"Casey can leave my town and go somewhere where they pamper their kids to the point they grow up thinking the world revolves around them. Because I know you agree that it is a thousand shades of fucked up to do that to any woman anywhere, but one who's in my town to find a peaceful place to grieve the violent death of her mother is unconscionable. He might not have known that at the time, but he knows it now, and bottom line, it doesn't matter. What he did was fucked up."

Seemed Harry was getting more impatient with all this shit than Riggs, and Riggs had zero patience for it.

Then again, Harry was right there at nine thirty at night, dealing with this shit, and not at home, shaking it off.

His friend needed to get home and do whatever he did to decompress from his day so he could face the next one.

"Thanks for the callout, brother," Riggs said, clapping him on the arm.

"What are you gonna do about Bubbles?" Harry asked curiously.

Riggs sighed.

Then he said, "He's right. I got Ledger out of his shit. But I also just dropped fifteen thousand dollars on a dog, and I'm facing attorney's fees because Storm and I are suing for full custody. Onward from that, probably occasionally having to eat shit for a lifetime and watching my son do it, because Angelica is Angelica. But they've said I was smart since the second grade, and I still can't figure out why, no matter the crap he pulls, Bubbles is so fucking likeable."

"That was what I was chewing on the entire time it took you to get here."

"Gotta say," Riggs muttered, "I feel safer, him sitting out here."

"Yeah," Harry replied quietly.

"Get home, man," Riggs urged.

Harry nodded and headed to his cruiser.

You could hear the faint drone of a podcast in the distance, so Riggs looked that way to see Bubbles munching a slice of pizza.

Christ.

Bubbles.

He got in his truck, reversed to a safe spot he could do a three-point turn, then headed home.