WOLF 2

by Jessie Cooke

  She was really pissed at her colleague, Richard Ware, too. He’d been seeing this guy since his induction into the Department of Corrections five years prior, and suddenly, he couldn’t see him today. Richard was supposedly sick, but Blair got a feeling that this guy must have scared him. So, Richard sent him to Blair. What a fucking gentleman Ware was. He was going to get a piece of her mind the next time she saw him. Today, however, she was going to do her job...if this asshole ever showed up.

  She almost hoped he didn’t. It wasn’t that she was afraid to tell him what she had to. She’d told many criminals in the six years she’d worked for CDCR that they weren’t ready for society, and society wasn’t ready for them. Some of them got aggressive, but Blair knew how to protect herself, and the first rule of self-protection that her father taught her, years before, was to never show fear. Inmates and parolees were like animals in that respect, they could smell it. If this guy didn’t show, she’d just have to notify his parole officer, and her part would be finished, at least for today. She could see her three other regular clients, go home, take a bubble bath...put her feet up...have a beer and watch some baseball. She loved baseball. She was a huge San Francisco Giants fan and they were on fire this year. It would be a perfect Friday evening.

  Blair’s father had wanted a boy. She grew up watching sports with him, riding motorcycles and ATVs, fishing, hunting, hiking...all the things he would have done with his son, her father did with her. Blair loved it, and she loved him. He was her favorite person in the world. But...she also loved her mother and thankfully, she’d taught Blair how to be a lady when the time came. Now, people looked at her like she was an enigma. She could dress up and go out on the town, looking like a million bucks from head to toe on Saturday night, and on Sunday morning, don her camouflage pants and jacket and sit in a tree for hours, stalking a three-point buck.

  She loved her life...for the most part. Sadly, however, she didn’t meet a lot of men that did. She either met the ones that wanted her to be that pretty lady all the time, or the guys that were looking for a fishing partner and someone to get kinky with in the sleeping bag afterwards. There didn’t seem to be any middle ground. She’d even dated Richard, her wimpy colleague, once. When she found out at the end of the night that he expected to get into her pants that quickly, she had tried at first to be understanding. A lot of women these days had no qualms about that...but Blair had a strict no-sex-on-the-first-date policy. She explained that to Richard, and he seemed to understand...until the next day when she started getting text messages from him that alternated between slightly angry, hurt, and acting like he’d been joking. He spent a month or so trying to get her to go out again, but she’d adamantly refused...and finally he’d given up. She hadn’t dated since, but that was okay; lonely or not, she didn’t need a man in her life to make it good. When the timing was right, and most especially when the man was right, she was sure she would know it.

  She sighed now and looked back down at the file in front of her. Richard’s assistant had contacted hers and said that Richard was ill and had gone home to visit his parents up north in Redding. His email to her was apologetic for dumping the case in her lap but didn’t explain anything about his mystery “illness.” She was annoyed, but if she refused to take the case, no telling how long it would sit and wait for another therapist to become available. In the meantime, this guy might be off parole and disappear into a society that was likely to suffer for it. Blair didn’t just like her job, she took her obligations to the community very seriously.

  The no-show was an ex-biker. He’d been affiliated with the Westside Skulls, a powerful MC in the Central Valley that ran mostly on the west side of Fresno. For the past several years, they’d been relatively quiet. There was the occasional arrest for a bar fight or disturbing the peace...and their clubhouse was always the first place Fresno P.D. checked when a car was reported stolen...but the new president seemed to do a much better job of keeping his club in check than the old one had. Blair had heard something a few months before about someone trying to kill him...but as far as she knew, that case was never solved. Not that the police were going to put too much effort into trying to track down a suspect in a hit on a gang member. The funny thing was, the parolee’s affiliation with the Westside Skulls worried her a lot less than who he currently ran with.

  Her client, Rick Crane, went by the street name “Mouse.” From his mug shot, she could see why. He had close-set eyes that were so dark brown they appeared black in the photo. His nose was long and straight, and he had whiskers underneath his nose that were hardly thick enough to even be considered a mustache. He looked almost exactly like a mouse, except for the shaved head and the big, black tattoo of a bird on his neck. That didn’t fit with the rest of him and she wondered if he’d gotten it trying to look tougher. It only looked out of place...at least in his photographs.

  Blair didn’t know the details of what happened leading up to his first arrest. Richard had simply documented that Mouse claimed his MC had set him up...left him to hold the bag...and he was pissed about that. What Blair knew about MCs was that setting up one of their own almost never happened. Mouse must have done something to really piss someone off, if that was a true story. However he got there, he had ended up serving five years on the Level IV yard of Corcoran State Prison because of it.

  Blair read over the file once again, locating the police report for that day, written by the officers that arrested Mouse. The Westside Skulls, run in those days by a man that went by the name of Coyote, had a meeting with a street gang that went by the name of the Nortenos. They were a Mexican gang that had migrated from Mexico to California years before. They were a strong gang both in and out of prison, but the police knew that the MCs were the ones that kept them supplied with the guns they needed in order to make that happen. In this case, no one had talked and although they suspected the whole mess started out as a drug buy, they had no real evidence of that, except for a bag full of cash left in the dirt and a dead old gangster.

  What the police pieced together, without the cooperation of either gang, was that one side or the other hadn’t been playing fair. Someone pulled a gun and one of the Nortenos was shot in the face. In the midst of the chaos, even while the police were arriving, everyone scattered, except for the dead guy, and Mouse. That was because someone had shot a hole in the gas tank of Mouse’s bike. The police report said they caught him running down the road and at first, he refused to cooperate. He almost got himself killed by not putting down his weapon when the police ordered him to. The report said it looked like he considered suicide by cop, but finally laid down his gun and then knelt in the dirt while he was read his rights and handcuffed.

  He was charged with the murder of the Norteno right off the bat. His attorney, who was a public defender, was able to convince the DA to drop the murder charge, thanks to the fact that ballistics proved the gun in his possession was not the murder weapon. He was charged with possession of an unregistered gun, his knife they found in his boot was illegal, he had drugs in his saddlebags, not a lot, but just enough that they could say they were for sale and not personal use...but the biggest charge of all was the money in the bag, left behind in the dirt. The bills were traced to a robbery at a check-cashing business in a small town in the south valley. They were able to charge Mouse with armed robbery because of that. But nevertheless, the DA’s case was mostly circumstantial and eventually Mouse was offered a plea deal. He pled guilty on the gun, knife, and drugs, and did five years of an eight-year sentence.

  His time in prison was rocky at first, with him spending much of it in the security housing unit thanks to his affiliation. But after a year in prison, he joined up with a skinhead gang and denounced his affiliation with the Westside Skulls. He did the rest of his time uneventfully and received an early parole thanks to new laws California passed in the hopes of reducing the prison population. In the three years he’d been out and on parole, he had consistently missed appointments with his PO. Althou
gh it looked like he regularly kept his appointments with Richard, which was strange, considering. It also looked like for a while, Richard had nothing but good things to say about him. That had only changed over the past few months and suddenly Richard was saying he wasn’t ready to be left out on his own with no one to report to.

  Mouse had been given a violation once for carrying a hunting knife and spent six months in lockup again, and most recently, he had gotten into trouble for domestic abuse charges toward his live-in girlfriend, who later denied everything she’d told the police the night she called them. Maybe those incidences were why Richard had flipped. Either way, all it took was one read through the file, for Blair to know what her recommendation would be...and that Mouse was probably not going to like it.

  “He’s here,” her assistant said, sticking her head in the door. Blair curled her lip, and her assistant Susie smiled and said, “If you don’t mind, I’m going to take off now.”

  “Of course, Susie, go. I’ll see you Monday.” Susie had already asked Blair if she could leave early on that Friday morning. She had two kids that her mother-in-law cared for and her in-laws had a trip out of town planned for the weekend. Susie wanted to pick the kids up early to give them time to prepare. Blair had originally told her to not even come in, but her assistant was a dedicated one. She’d shown up before Blair even arrived and had everything in order for her day. Blair didn’t want to see Mouse, but there was no reason Susie had to spend her Friday morning listening to the litany of names he was probably going to call Blair.

  “You feel safe, seeing this new one alone?” Susie asked her.

  Blair smiled at her motherly assistant. She had a concealed carry permit, but it was only at times like this that she thought she might have occasion to use the gun that was always in her purse, or the hunting knife she always carried in her boot. The only time she didn’t have one or the other of them was when she visited the inmates in prison, where no weapons were allowed. She did hope if she ever had to use the gun or the knife at work, that Susie wasn’t there. Her assistant was sweet, and in some ways very innocent. Blair worried that seeing something like that might traumatize her for years. “I feel perfectly safe,” she told Susie. It might be stretching the truth just a little. She had a tickle of anxiety in her belly that she couldn’t explain...but she trusted herself to handle things. “You can send in Mr. Crane before you go.” Blair looked down at the file again, not looking up until she heard the outer office door close. Susie was leaving, but Mr. Crane, “Mouse,” hadn’t come in. Curious, she got up and went over to her office door and opened it.

  Blair didn’t even see the big fist coming toward her face, but as she flew backward, she saw his face...he was smiling. She wondered if that image was the last one she would ever see, just before her head struck the table behind her.

  3

  “Weird dude put up a fight,” Manson said. They were standing in the center of Granite’s posh living room and Wolf had to agree. Granite’s expensive furniture had been upended, and in some cases, destroyed. There were holes in the walls and blood on the white carpet. Whoever took him out of there had drugged him. There was an empty syringe on the floor near the blood, and the center spool of a duct tape roll. At least they knew he was probably still alive. Wolf couldn’t for the life of him figure out who the hell had taken him, though. As far as he knew, and he made it his business to know, the club didn’t have a beef with anyone, and Granite lived such a low-key life...at least as far as he knew. Wolf had to admit that he didn’t know everything about his brother, but he’d tried to run the club like a business, allowing his men to have their private lives as they saw fit, as long as that life didn’t infringe on the club in any way.

  “Looks like he was playing his violin,” Bruf said, standing next to a white, wing-backed chair that looked undisturbed. The violin was lying out of its case, bow on top, against the matching white ottoman. It was a fancy, handmade instrument that Granite once told Wolf had cost him upwards of twenty grand. That made him look around again. Things were disturbed, but there was a lot of expensive art on the walls and vases and things that could probably be fenced pretty easily. This wasn’t a robbery. They’d come here specifically for Granite, and they’d taken him.

  Next to the white chair was a white-and-gold marble table with a glass top, and on top of that sat a half glass of red wine, undisturbed. There was also a small china plate with a few pieces of cheese and prosciutto. Granite had been doing what he did, enjoying his alone time...indulging his expensive tastes...and then his world had been upended. Wolf was reminded of the day he was making love to his wife when he heard the door of his room being kicked open and felt a bullet rip through his shoulder. He’d gotten lucky more than once and was alive to remember it. Hopefully Granite would be too.

  “Looks like he let whoever it was in,” Bruf said. “There are no signs of forced entry.” Wolf pictured it...a knock on the door and Granite putting down his violin to go answer it. Had he looked through the peephole and seen someone he knew? The door was intact, and the struggle looked like it happened all in the living room, not in the entryway. Which meant he’d probably invited him, or them, inside. At some point, someone had hit the glass-topped coffee table. There was glass shattered all over the carpet and pieces of it were streaked with blood. There were bloody handprints on the white couch as well. It looked like someone had used it to pull themselves up off the floor. Whoever came in caught him so off-guard that although his gun was lying out in the open on the granite island between the living room and the kitchen...it didn’t seem that Granite had even gone for it. It lay there, undisturbed, next to his kutte, which was draped over one of the stools. The most damage was done to the wall next to the couch. It looked like Granite had tried to pull himself up, and was body-slammed into the wall, causing the drywall to dent and crack. The syringe was used then, and as Granite lay succumbing to whatever had been injected into him, the duct tape came into play.

  “Let’s go see what the neighbors have to say,” Wolf told Bruf. Looking at Manson he said, “You and Smoke check out the rest of the place. I know it all looks undisturbed on the surface, but check drawers and cabinets, closets...everything.”

  “You got it, Boss.” As Manson and Smoke went to work, Wolf and Bruf headed out the door.

  “You go right, I’ll go left. Try to remember these people pay five grand a month to live here, they’re not like us...and they probably scare easily. You’re a scary-looking fucker.” Wolf smiled when he said that. Bruf laughed. He didn’t laugh often, and he’d been even more reserved since Wolf’s newly discovered little sister had left for Haiti. Wolf was looking forward to getting to know her better when she came back, but for now, he was glad she was gone. He loved Bruf like a brother, maybe even more, but there was something dark inside of him, and although Wolf had only just met his sister Sabrina, darkness wasn’t what he wanted for her.

  “Yeah, I’m scary,” Bruf said. “You look like a fucking werewolf. Good thing it’s not a full moon.” Wolf chuckled and gave Bruf the finger, but he knew his SA was right. He’d hit puberty hard at fourteen, he was able to grow a full beard by sixteen, and he grew four inches in high school. No matter how often he shaved, the next morning it would be thick again...so he’d finally given up taking it off. He just trimmed it and his hair every so often, but his hair grew almost as fast. His Dad was the one that started calling him Wolf and it stuck. His real name was Xavier Lee. He’d been named after his grandfather, and growing up, his mother had called him “X”. He liked that better than Wolf, but it seemed weird for anyone to call him that now. His mother had been gone for a long time and the only person that had occasionally used his given name since she died was Amara, his ex-wife. That thought made him wonder...

  “Hey, Bruf, where was Amara last time we checked up on her?”

  “Michigan or some shit. I’d have to check the messages Hunter sent, but it was one of those M states.”

  “Okay, we better
make sure she’s still there. I hope I didn’t make a mistake letting her go.” Wolf had ordered her to stay away from him, his club, and his territory and he didn’t think she’d be stupid enough to try anything else...but then again, he’d never expected her to try to have him killed in the first place. While Bruf sent a text, Wolf knocked on the door to the right of Granite’s apartment. The hole in the wall had to have caused considerable noise and possible damage to the apartment that adjoined his. There was no answer after a minute, so he knocked again, louder. Finally, the door was pulled open a crack. The chain that held it locked was apparent, and a blue eye appeared through the crack. “I’m sorry to bother you,” Wolf said, in as non-threatening a voice as he could muster. “I’m looking for my friend. He lives next door to you...Michael Parker...”

  “He’s not here.” The little woman’s voice was shaky and her answer terse. She tried to slam the door and Wolf just put his hand against it lightly. He really had no desire to scare anyone. For one thing, the people in this neighborhood called the cops often, which made him wonder why the apartment complex wasn’t crawling with them at that moment.

  “Miss, can you just tell me if the police have been here today?”

  “No.” Again, she tried to close the door.

  “I’m sorry, but my friend’s apartment looks like there was some trouble there. I’m just wondering why no one heard what was going on in there and called the police.”