Dog Warrior

  Dog Warrior

  Book 4

  The Ukiah Oregon Series

  Wen Spencer

  Copyright © 2004

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Dedication

  To David G. Kosak, little brother of my heart

  Acknowledgments

  Gail Brookhart, George Corcoran, W. Randy Hoffman, Kendall Jung, June Drexler Robertson, Andi Ward, Aaron Wollerton

  Special thanks to Ann Cecil

  Chapter One

  Ludlow Service Area

  Massachusetts Turnpike,

  Massachusetts

  Sunday, September 19, 2004

  Atticus smelled the blood first.

  He'd parked the Jaguar under the floodlights, and he had just paused, door open, his cup of hot cocoa on the roof, in order to pull off his leather jacket before climbing back into the still-warm car. A blue Honda sedan came cautiously into the rest stop from the dark highway. The bitter cold wind blasted over the Honda and brought him the reek of slaughter.

  He tracked the car's movements without looking directly at it. It paused at the decision point of turning into the parking lot or going on to the gas pumps, the right turn signal flashing a yellow warning. There were four people in the car, three men and a woman. The woman was leaning over the front seat, pointing toward the retro-styled McDonald's with the large yellow arches. Atticus turned his back to the Honda as the driver scanned the parking lot.

  On the other side of the Jaguar, Ru picked up on his unease. "The Honda?" Ru pretended to ignore the sedan, seemingly focused on the coffee cup in his hands, tracking the car only with his dark eyes.

  "Yes." Focusing on his sense of smell, Atticus grew aware of the Jaguar's hot engine, oil spilled on the asphalt nearby, food cooking in the McDonald's, the taint of the ocean a hundred miles away, and massive amounts of old blood. "They've got something dead in the trunk."

  "Ah." Ru sipped his steaming coffee. "Things like that are always a bitch to explain."

  "Do you see anything weird about it, Ru?"

  The car cooperated and turned into the parking lot. The driver carefully used proper signals and slowly pulled into a nice dark corner of the parking lot, tucked behind an RV.

  "Nada." Ru shrugged one lean shoulder, his black bangs falling into his eyes. "Maybe I need a closer look." Ru finished his coffee and walked to a trash can across the parking lot.

  Atticus leaned into his car to place his hot cocoa into the front cup holder.

  The woman all but bolted from the Honda, hunched over, clutching at her stomach, her face set in pain. She concentrated on walking, eyes focused on the ground. The men followed, intent on the woman, worried. All four were in their early twenties, wearing black running suits with jackets zipped over pistols in shoulder holsters. They smelled faintly of gunpowder, smoke, scorched hair, burned flesh, and blood.

  The men had ignored Atticus, half-hidden in the Jaguar, but glared at Ru as he casually stuffed his empty cup into the trash can. Ru read the bulges under the jackets and the tense body language and didn't play any mind games with them. He studiously ignored them, walking back to the Jaguar, pulling on his leather gloves.

  "A seriously scary foursome." Ru unzipped his jacket slightly, giving him access to his own gun, as the four vanished into the McDonald's. "I say we see what they've got in their trunk." He made a show of sniffing. "I'm sure I can smell blood now."

  Atticus scoffed at the claim, while he considered the car parked upwind. More than the blood, there was a weird niggling feeling that something was drastically wrong with the car. It seemed to exude terror. How could a car feel afraid?

  Ru rapped on the roof, his lock picks in hand. "They're not going to be in there very long!" he sang.

  Atticus glanced toward the McDonald's. "Let's do it."

  He shut the Jaguar's door and walked after Ru, keeping watch on the building.

  Ru had the trunk open before Atticus even reached the car, murmuring. "Bingo: one body." Ru stripped off his right glove and reached bare fingertips to the body's neck. "Question is, is he really dead or just—Oh, fuck."

  Atticus looked then. The trunk light shone on a young Native American face, battered and bloody, vaguely familiar.

  I know this person, Atticus thought with a lurch.

  "Atty," Ru whispered. "This is you."

  "What? Well, there's a resemblance—"

  "Atty, I've seen you dead enough times to recognize your body. This is you. Look, there's blood mice."

  This was directed at small forms darting for new cover as Ru shifted the body slightly.

  They're just normal black mice, Atticus thought at first. He'd long resigned himself to being a freak of nature; the one-in-a-trillion result of the genetics game played with billions of combinations over millions of years. Like the Elephant Man, he'd been oddly malformed, only his monstrosity remained hidden down on the cellular level.

  Then he realized that he could feel the mice—little motes of terror moving through his awareness.

  They're why the car feels afraid. He looked again at the dead body with the familiar face. His face—just at an angle he wasn't used to viewing. He's like me? Atticus laid his hand on the boy's cheek. The flesh was cold to touch, but it was his skin, his cells, his DNA. It felt like half his body was dead and being examined by a part still alive. He jerked his hand back.

  "We've got to get him out," Ru was saying. "And into the Jaguar."

  He's not "like" me, he is me! Numb, Atticus slowly shook his head. "We call nine-one-one."

  "Atty, if we call nine-one-one, they'll take him to the morgue and do an autopsy."

  Atticus shuddered at the idea of being not completely dead, but entirely helpless. "We don't know if he'll come back to life."

  Ru shook his head. "If he's like you, it's going to take him hours to heal up from this kind of damage. But if he can recover, and we let the coroners take him . . ."

  "Oh, fuck." That didn't bear even thinking through. "Okay. Get the Jag."

  Atticus would guess the boy to be twenty at most, but Atticus had aged strangely, still looking to be in his teens when he was nearly thirty. Even now Atticus could pass for mid-twenty. Hair as crow black as his own, but long enough for a braid down past the shoulder blades. Boots with a crease mark from shifting motorcycle gears across the top of the left foot. Blue jeans incrusted with road dirt and dead blood. A black T-shirt with small bullet holes punched into the chest. Powder burns indicated the boy had been shot at close range. His arms were handcuffed behind his back, where the bullets had shredded part of the design on the leather jacket. Only the words "Dog Warrior" remained.

  Who the hell is this? Why did they kill him?

  The damage had been done by more than just bullets. Road dirt, abrasions, paint, and shattered bones indicated that the boy had been hit by a car first. Judging by the angle of entry for the bullets, he'd been lying prone when shot. Oddly, his killers had bound his feet and handcuffed him after he'd died. They'd done a thorough job murdering the boy, but if he was like Atticus, it wouldn't be enough to keep him dead.

  Pulling on his leather gloves, Atticus took the handcuffs and jacket off the boy, leaving them as evidence on
the bloody carpet. Ru pulled the Jaguar in beside the Honda and popped the trunk but left the motor running.

  "Good compromise," Ru said of the jacket and handcuffs. "I need to move the bags. Here." He held out a small cage. "Don't forget the mice."

  Some of the Dog Warrior's blood had dried on the carpet—totally lifeless. The rest had survived spilling out of the boy's body by changing into mice. They scurried out of Atticus's reach as he shifted the body around, a dozen in all, little bundles of fear and worry.

  Come here. He called to them as he would to his own mice. Come on. Hurry.

  He didn't expect it to work, but they scurried forward and let him scoop them into the cage.

  Ru had shifted their bags into the Jaguar's backseat, tucking in the mouse cage last. "Let's get out of here before someone calls the police on us."

  Atticus lifted the body up and out of the trunk. As he settled the boy into the Jaguar, Ru tugged his right glove back on and closed the Honda's trunk tightly.

  It took two minutes to steal the body and stow it safely away. Certainly not what Atticus expected they'd be doing when they stopped for a stretch and something warm to drink. It felt weird driving away, knowing what was in their trunk. Atticus supposed that Ru was used to the feeling, all things considered.

  Ru was getting "the grin," enjoying the adrenaline high of doing something outlandishly bold without breaking a sweat. "What do we do about his friends in black?"

  Atticus handed Ru his cell phone. "Anonymous tip time."

  "You don't suppose they are his friends? Certainly I've driven around with you dead in the trunk enough times. We could be leaping to the wrong conclusion."

  "No. They murdered him. The mice are too afraid for them to be friends."

  "Ah," Ru murmured. "I suppose I always take the handcuffs off you."

  "Thank you."

  "You're welcome." Ru flashed him a grin, and made the call to weave a mix of truth and fiction.

  Atticus hated the house. They crossed Massachusetts on I-90 in a nearly straight shot, dropped down, bypassing Boston until they reached Cape Cod, and then followed increasingly narrower roads until they hooked around a sharp curve and the road stopped altogether. The house sat on a windswept hill, surrounded by sand dunes and nothing else; a contemporary designed for views, it had walls of glass and sprawling, multilevel decks to extend the living space.

  All the houses they had seen thus far had been dark on the cold autumn weekday evening. This one, however, was bright, throwing slants of light out into a yard mostly of sand. Kyle's Ford Explorer filled the carport. Obviously they were in the right place.

  "You've got to be kidding," Atticus said. "This is Lasker's place?"

  "It's all about appearances." Ru zipped up his leather jacket. "Got to have flash."

  "Maybe while Lasker was alive. Whose bright idea was it to use his house?"

  "I think Sumpter's."

  Atticus sighed and got out of the Jaguar. The ocean rumbled close by, like a monster hidden by the darkness, scenting the air with salt. Atticus stood in the freezing wind until he accustomed himself to the bombardment of vastly different stimuli. New places tended to overwhelm him.

  The Dog Warrior was still dead. While Ru held the front door, Atticus lifted the body out of the trunk and carried it into the house.

  The downstairs was basically one open area with only furniture to denote where one "room" ended and the next started. A forest of support columns held up the second floor in the absence of load-bearing walls. To the left a series of French doors gave access to a sprawling deck. To the right, a sleek marble fireplace anchored the house. Perhaps Lasker had used the house merely as flash—bare as a hotel room, it smelled like one too, tainted only with sea spray, ancient wood fires, and propane cooking gas.

  Kyle was in the kitchen area, counting money. The L-shaped, granite-topped island was a disarray of computer equipment, weapons, surveillance cameras, and stacks of twenties. Despite it being after midnight, he smelled of fresh soap, and his hair was damp from a recent shower. Somehow, though he was being stylishly dressed in a charcoal turtleneck sweater and gray slacks, Kyle managed to look scruffy. It was more than his perpetual five-o'clock shadow and uncombed hair—there was a way he held his body, something between a slouch and a sulk, that defeated all of Ru's fashion tips.

  "You hate the house," Kyle called without looking up from his counting. "It's too isolated, too open, too many windows, too many doors, and not enough cover. Lasker was an idiot. You're going to kill Sumpter next time you see him."

  "Yeah, something like that." Atticus paused, considering where to put the dead body.

  "I was starting to worry—the Weather Channel shows a big storm coming in." Kyle licked his fingers and continued to count, bobbing his head as he mumbled, "Six hundred, twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, seven hundred."

  "We had a delay." Ru carried in the mouse cage and set it on a desk built into the kitchen cabinets.

  Kyle paused to frown at the mice. "Atty got hurt?" He turned to look at Atticus and started at the dead body in Atticus's arms. "Holy shit, who the hell is that?"

  "Good question." Upstairs, Atticus decided, out of sight, would probably be the best place for the boy. He started up the stairs. "Where's a bathtub?"

  "Master bathroom." Kyle followed him. "Top of stairs, to the right, at the end of the hall—but you're not going to put him in there. It's a Jacuzzi!"

  "You want him in the shower?" Atticus knew the answer would be no. God forbid they desecrate a shower.

  "Oh, gross, no—Shit! I've got security running." Kyle dashed back down the steps.

  "Wipe the memory!" Atticus called after him.

  The master bedroom looked out over the gray, shifting ocean. The master bath was all black marble and sleek white fixtures. Water still beaded on the glass surround of the dual-person shower. The massive tub sat tucked into a bay window alcove with a foot-wide surround of marble.

  The body left a smear of dead blood on the white acrylic when Atticus settled it into the tub. "What a mess."

  As Atticus cut off the boy's bullet-tattered shirt, Ru came up with the luggage.

  "Here. I brought these up." Ru held out a plastic bag for the black T-shirt. There had been white lettering on the shirt's back, but the exiting bullets had shredded the design; the only thing readable was "Benne" in a thumb-sized font under "Priva" in larger letters. "How is he?"

  "Still dead."

  As Ru gingerly carried away the bloody shirt, Atticus undressed the body down to underwear. He was always the subject of this exercise—the dead person needing to be nursed back to life. It was a weird, out-of-body experience to be on the caregiving side.

  The murderers had stripped the boy of all belongings; at one time, he had carried a wallet, cell phone, keys, change, a Swiss army knife and a pistol—all now missing. Only microscopic traces of them tainted the cotton fabric of his clothes. The bare basics that remained showed that the similarities between Atticus and the Dog Warrior went past genetic makeup and outward appearances. They both preferred the same hiking boots, cotton boxers, blue jeans, soap, deodorant, and shampoo.

  From such an identical foundation, how different could they be?

  The biker jacket suggested the differences could be huge.

  Kyle reappeared at the door with the first-aid kit. "Ru said to bring this up. What are we going to do if he doesn't come back?"

  What a fucking mess that would be. But you didn't say that to Kyle. While Ru got off on danger, Kyle liked to feel safe. Kyle had driven straight to the Cape instead of joining Atticus and Ru in Buffalo, just to avoid the mess they were dealing with there. "I'll deal with it."

  "We've got the buy going down tomorrow night." Kyle glanced at his watch. "Tonight actually."

  "Kyle, I know." Atticus opened up the kit and found the antibiotic cream. While the bullets probably lodged foreign material into the wounds, his body usually expelled such matter while healing. Hopefully—on all counts—
the boy was the same. "I'll figure something out if he stays dead, okay. Do we have all the money?"

  "Yeah, I was just counting it for a second time." Kyle fidgeted while he watched Atticus apply cream and bandages. "I'm completely jacked in. Phone and cable are up, and I've got security running. We're set for anything—well, almost anything." Not counting miscellaneous dead bodies that might or might not come back from the dead. "I also stocked the fridge, and put fresh linen on the beds."

  "Great! Okay, do me a favor." Atticus told him where and how they'd found the dead body. "Find out, if you can without drawing attention to us, who killed him and what happened after we left."

  "Do you have an ID on him?" Kyle pointed to the boy in the tub.

  "No. He was wearing colors." Atticus described the biker jacket. "The club name was either Dog Warrior or Warriors."

  "Bottom rocker?"

  The city named at the bottom of the patch identified the chapter that the member belonged to. Club enforcers, who drifted from chapter to chapter, collecting dues, would have "Nomad" printed in place of a chapter name.

  "There was none." Now that Kyle mentioned it, Atticus realized how odd it was. Perhaps the jacket hadn't been a true "gang" jacket.

  "See what you can pull up on the name."

  "Right." Kyle left in his abrupt manner, locked onto something new.

  Having covered the gaping bullet holes, Atticus strapped the broken ribs and splinted the shattered arm; apparently when the car had hit the boy, he had taken the brunt of the damage with his left side. Finally done repairing what damage he could, Atticus washed his hands, and caught sight of himself in the mirror. He studied his reflection for a minute and then looked down at the boy, trying to judge whether they were as identical as their genetics as Ru claimed them to be. While he had stopped being carded long ago, he didn't look the thirty-six years that his driver's license reported. If he seemed solidly in his mid-twenties, what age was this boy who looked only in his late teens? The differences between them were slight. Atticus kept his hair in a short, stylish cut instead of the boy's long braid. The boy seemed to have another inch or two to grow before reaching Atticus's height; his youth showed in his chin, the column of his neck, and the depth of his chest. Atticus could remember, though, having this build, this face.