As Chief Lopez’s Blazer rolled down the highway out of town, Gil Grissom, in the passenger seat, stared out his window, taking in the beauty of the night sky. He found it pleasant to be away from the constant glare of the Las Vegas lights, and commented, “Pretty out here.”
“Yeah,” Lopez agreed. He was wearing a white Stetson now, perhaps to announce his status as head good guy. “I never get tired of it. Not exactly the big city, is it?”
“Provides a whole new point of reference for ‘big,’” Grissom said, gazing deep into the black sky, searching for the farthest star. “Lived here your whole life, Chief?”
“Nah, started in LA. My folks moved the family out here when I was a sophomore in high school.”
“Tough time to change,” Grissom said.
“Wasn’t that tough,” Lopez said. “I was all-state in three sports—didn’t have to take as much crap as most new kids.”
Grissom turned to look at his new ally; small talk was not his forte, but he knew finding common ground with new colleagues was important. “Sounds like you were quite an athlete—why’d you give it up? Get hurt?”
Lopez shook his head. “Nope. I always wanted to be a cop.”
“Why?”
“Putting things right appeals to me.”
“We do what we can in a chaotic universe.”
“Is it really chaotic?”
Grissom smiled thinly. “As long as people are in it, it is…. How far?”
“Six, seven miles. The Predators stay at a campground, out in the middle of nowhere.”
“Little early in the morning for a visit. Or is that a little late at night?”
Lopez chuckled. “Either way, Doc, these type of people don’t sleep by any regular clock, and with what happened today? Won’t be in any mood to sleep.”
They had already passed the roadblock on the way out of town—two Highway Patrol cars making sure that no one, especially the Predators, entered Boot Hill without authorization. As yet the governor had not called out the depleted National Guard or instituted martial law; but this was the next best thing. The Highway Patrol had the town pretty well locked down.
Lopez had not enforced a curfew but had already told the CSIs that in the case of more trouble, virtually anything this side of jaywalking, he would not hesitate to impose one. Grissom agreed with this attitude. Various chamber of commerce members, however, had contacted the chief to beg him not to enforce a curfew. The Gold Vault, with its captive audience of Rusty Spokes under house arrest, was doing fairly brisk business, and with the Four Kings down, the smaller Boot Hill establishments were doing okay, considering the only potential customers were locals and the few tourists who hadn’t bailed after the gun battle.
The Highway Patrol had informed these bikers that none of them could leave; the state’s investigation division would question them when the Rusty Spokes back at the Gold Vault had all been interviewed.
Long before the Blazer got to the campground, the glow of the Predators’ bonfires lit the dark sky in a blush of orange, like an early threat of dawn. As Lopez and Grissom neared the camp’s entrance, they were greeted by the flashing lights of more Highway Patrol cars and a Highway Patrolman held up a hand for them to stop.
The chief lowered his window and offered half a smile to the middle-aged Patrolman.
“Jorge,” the officer said, offering up another half. “How’re you doing, now that Armageddon’s come to Nevada?”
“Hey, Bill, good as can be expected. We’re still sorting things out in town, at the casino.”
“I heard it was one righteous mess.”
“Oh yeah…. Still, it could have been worse—by all rights, we should’ve had a dozen dead bodies littering the place.” Lopez pushed his Stetson back farther, dragged a hand across a sweaty brow. “What’s the mood out here?”
The Patrolman turned from the Blazer and looked toward the camp. “They’re pissed, obviously…but so far, at least, they haven’t gone completely nuts.”
“Well, Bill, we’ll see if we can calm them down a little. Doc Grissom here is from Vegas—a crime scene expert.”
“Nice to meet you, Doc.”
Grissom nodded hello.
“Here’s hoping,” the Patrolman said to Grissom, “this whole damn campground doesn’t become a crime scene…. Good luck, fellas.”
The Patrolman waved them through the gate.
The campground’s main building was a one-story concrete bunker at right. At left was a bivouac of RVs, pickup trucks, tents, pull-along trailers, and thirty-some small campfires aside from the huge bonfires that burned every hundred yards or so. Motorcycles were scattered everywhere, and men and women, most of them in black leather, were—despite the lateness of the hour—still walking around and talking and partying.
“You weren’t kidding,” Grissom said. “They don’t sleep.”
Lopez tugged his Stetson back down. “Probably more meth per capita in this camp than anywhere else in Nevada, about now.”
Grissom eyed the chief, asking a question without saying anything.
“And,” Lopez said, answering that question, “now would not be the best time to bust ’em for it.”
Grissom had no argument with that.
Two leather-clad bikers, each carrying a shotgun, approached the Blazer on either side. As the one on the driver’s side got closer, he racked the slide, pumping a round into the chamber.
“Help you, girls?” he asked, his accent soft and southern.
Lopez lifted his badge on its necklace, the star catching light from a nearby bonfire and winking. “You have a permit for that weapon, son?”
The biker grinned crookedly. “Yeah—but not on me.”
Waving a dismissive hand and smiling back, Lopez said, “Just checkin’. Jake around?”
The biker snorted. “Who should I say is calling?”
“Chief of Police Jorge Lopez and Dr. Gil Grissom from Vegas.”
Looking past Lopez at Grissom, the biker frowned nastily. “Nobody called for a doctor.”
“Nobody called for a chief of police, either,” Lopez said, neither threatening nor loud, keeping his eyes on the biker. “Does this have to turn into something, son?”
Grissom watched as the biker and the police chief sized each other up. The CSI could not get a real fix on the biker’s eyes as they kept darting from the chief to the entrance where the Highway Patrol sat, to Grissom, then back to Lopez and around and around.
His tone genial but with the faintest edge, Lopez said, “You’ve got a lot of questions floating in your head, don’t you?”
The biker stayed silent, his grip tightening on the shotgun. Working carefully, Grissom unsnapped his holster, hoping no one had noticed his tiny movements.
“You’re trying to figure out if you can get away with killing us,” the chief was saying. “You’re wondering if the good doctor can do anything before you cap him, too. You’re wondering what the Highway Patrol will do when you fire that shotgun. You’re wondering if Jake will give you a promotion for knocking off a cop, or maybe tear you a new asshole. All these things you wonder, and more.”
The biker’s knuckles were turning white on the gun and to Grissom, the guy seemed about to make a move. Grissom gripped the butt of his holstered weapon.
“What you didn’t consider, son,” Lopez continued, “was where my gun was while your mind was runnin’ through all the other possibilities.”
Tensing, the biker got the shotgun maybe a half inch higher when Lopez’s pistol seemed to blossom from nowhere, his right hand going through the open window, pressing his pistol’s snout to the man’s forehead.
Grissom’s gun came out and the biker on the other side, whose shotgun nose had stayed down throughout the prior exchange, shook his head as if to say I’m not part of this and lowered his weapon to the ground and left it there.
“Why don’t you stop trying to think about anything,” Lopez advised the belligerent biker, whose eyes tried to look up at the
gun barrel pressing into his forehead, “and just go get Jake.”
The biker’s eyes were wide and his mouth hung open. He managed to nod his head with the barest minimum of movement. He drew away from Lopez’s gun, a circle in the flesh of his forehead.
Lopez stopped him with, “Leave the shotgun.”
Obeying, the biker eased the gun to the ground and took off to get his boss, his pal falling in with him, looking irritated with what the other sentry had nearly initiated.
Holstering his weapon, Grissom said, “By the way, I hate guns.”
Lopez grinned. “Me too. That was kinda hairy, for Boot Hill, anyway.”
“That would have been ‘hairy’ in Vegas, too,” Grissom said with a relieved smile. “Chief, you handled it well.”
“Thanks, Doc,” the chief said, almost embarrassed by the praise. “But that’s what the paycheck’s for.”
Jake Hanson materialized out of the darkness, a group of half a dozen pissed-off Predators moving up behind him, like a posse. Backlit by the firelight, the tall, handsome Hanson—brown hair parted on the left, blue eyes gleaming with anger, chest bare under a Predators leather vest, abs hard and lean—looked almost like a rock star, but the persona worked fine for a leader of men and motorcycles. To Grissom, Hanson’s theatrical appearance did not bode well, considering that this man might be the only thing standing between peace and an all-out biker gang war in a tiny desert community.
“Chief Lopez,” Hanson called out as he approached. “I hope you’re here with news that you’ve caught Val’s killer….”
A series of whoops and shouts went up behind him, the group growing to a dozen, then doubling almost instantaneously.
“The Predators demand justice,” Hanson said, his voice carrying over the crowd, and he wasn’t even shouting.
Lopez jumped out of the Blazer and, fearless, marched toward Hanson. Grissom questioned the strategy of leaving the vehicle in favor of being afoot, but followed, getting out and coming around the Blazer fast, to provide a united front, even though the pair were outnumbered about fifty to two.
“We haven’t arrested anyone yet!” Lopez announced to the crowd.
Boos cascaded and shouted epithets and calls for the Predators to “burn the whole fucking town down!” burst from the back of the crowd.
Addressing them, but close enough to Hanson to knock heads, Lopez said, “We’re doing everything we can, and we will bring the killer to justice.”
The response was more boos and shouts of “Kill the pigs,” which struck Grissom as a nostalgic but nonetheless sinister touch.
Hanson’s upper lip curled back in what was, technically at least, a smile; but the biker chief also held both hands up over his head, not in a surrender fashion, but to silence the crowd.
“We’re not animals!” Hanson yelled to his people, his eyes still burning into Lopez. “We’ll trust the police to do their job. We are law-abiding citizens who were attacked in a public establishment—we did nothing wrong. We’ll give the police a chance to do the right thing.”
Some in the crowd muttered, but mostly there was just a sort of stunned silence.
“We need to talk,” Lopez said quietly.
Hanson shrugged elaborately. “Feel free.”
“Without an audience, Jake.”
Signaling for the group to remain behind, Hanson accompanied Lopez and Grissom into the darkness to a spot behind the bunker building. The soil here was sandy, giving slightly under the pressure of their steps, sparse vegetation springing up here and there. A breeze, far warmer than it probably should have been for this hour, swept over them, bringing with it the promise of an impossibly hot day to come.
“Talk about what?” Hanson asked when the crowd was far behind them.
“If you continue inciting your people like that,” Lopez said, “a tragic incident will escalate into full-scale tragedy.”
Shrugging, Hanson said, “You say inciting—I say I’m consolidating my position.”
“Why? Aren’t you in line to succeed Valpo?”
“I’m at the head of the line, yeah,” Hanson said, still walking slowly, aimlessly. “But there’s others behind me, and none of them have my restraint. If I weren’t standing here, it’d be a free-for-all.”
“Expecting a coup?” Lopez asked.
“If you don’t expect that,” the biker said with a fatalistic shrug, “you’re not ready, if it comes.”
This seemed a perfectly reasonable position to Grissom.
Lopez asked, “Did you see who shot Val?”
The abrupt change of subject caused Hanson to stop. “No. Hell no.” He sighed, shook his head. “One minute he was there, next he was down.”
“And you didn’t see—”
“Hey—Chief. It was a little hectic in there.”
Grissom asked, “Mr. Hanson, where were you when it started?”
Hanson frowned at Grissom, seemingly assessing him for the first time. “You’re Vegas?”
“Yes. Crime lab.”
That seemed to satisfy the biker. “I was sitting at a table next to Val, playing blackjack.”
“Then you have a problem,” Grissom said with a raise of the eyebrows. “You see that, don’t you, Mr. Hanson?”
Hanson sneered. “You think I capped him? What are you, high? Val and me were tight! What kinda crap—”
Unfazed, Grissom said, “You had opportunity, means, motive—”
“I had motive?” Hanson exploded.
“Who’s leading the Predators now?”
The biker’s eyes and nostrils flared. “Screw you, man! Nick Valpo was like a father to me.”
“Duncan was like a father to MacBeth,” Grissom said.
“Maybe,” Hanson said, with a dangerous smile, “but I’ve got no Lady MacBeth pushing me into doing stupid shit.”
Grissom smiled, pleased that his instinct was right: Hanson was a literate, intelligent person.
“Anyway,” Hanson was saying dismissively, “I told you, man—I loved Val. And I didn’t go into that casino looking to kill anybody.”
The crackle of bonfires provided percussive punctuation to their conversation, but the partying seemed to have died down to a rumbling murmur.
Grissom said, “But you were armed—and you did shoot back, didn’t you?”
Hanson didn’t reply—he wasn’t anxious to cop to anything in front of the Boot Hill chief of police, even on Predator turf.
“Confirm it or not, Mr. Hanson,” Grissom said. “We’ve got video of the whole shoot-out.”
Hanson’s laughter was a short, mean burst, like machine-gun fire. “Then you haven’t seen it, or you’d already know I didn’t kill Nick.” His eyes narrowed, and he lowered his voice. “But if you have that footage…you have pictures of whoever did this thing. Why aren’t you going after them?”
“We’re still looking,” Grissom said.
A nasty edge undercut Hanson’s attempt to sound matter of fact. “Do you know who you’re looking for?”
Grissom did not play games with the man. “We have stacks of security cam tapes to review. We do not know who we’re looking for…yet.”
Abruptly, Hanson started strolling again and they fell in with him as he changed subjects. “Look, I can keep the lid on this camp, but I need something from you boys.”
Lopez asked, “What’s that?”
Just as abruptly, Hanson stopped and turned his gaze on the chief. “The Predators want Val’s body.”
“You can’t be serious,” Lopez said.
“I’m as serious as a heart attack.”
“You can’t have it, not yet,” Grissom said. “It’s still part of a criminal investigation. His body is evidence.”
“His body,” Hanson said, “deserves a Viking funeral. And some of these Predators think that oughtta be sooner than later.”
“When we can release the body,” Lopez said, “we will release it to the next of kin or whatever rightful claimant—but in the meantime, you have to
calm your people down, Jake.”
“Don’t know if I can,” Hanson said. “Between them wanting their funeral and champin’ at the bit to rip the lungs and guts outta every one of those Spokes, well…this party’s about to turn real ugly.”
“‘Heavy lies the head that wears the crown,’ Jake,” Grissom said.
Hanson’s features contorted. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
Grissom found that amusing, but Lopez seemed singularly unamused, saying, “Doc here’s the one telling you, in his own unique way, that you’re the leader of this outfit…so you better start leading, Jake. Somebody’s got to talk them down.”
The biker spat. “What, for the sake of your two-horse town?”
“Not entirely for the town’s sake, no.” Lopez leaned toward the biker. “Truth is, Jake, more cops are coming here by the hour, and if the Predators and Rusty Spokes go head to head, plenty will die on both sides. You survived a skirmish in that casino, but a war? The governor is not about to let two motorcycle gangs annihilate one of his towns.”
They were all considering that when Grissom heard an unmistakable whirring: a rattlesnake warning them they’d chosen a bad spot to stop and chat.
The other two heard it, too—Hanson froze and Lopez slowly reached for his pistol. Grissom could barely make out the coiled snake, but there it was, under a bush…less than a foot from Hanson’s left leg.
For the first time in memory, Gil Grissom found himself drawing his weapon for the second time in one night, firing once, next to the snake, kicking up sand…
…and convincing the reptile to slither off into the night to search for a quieter, friendlier spot.
Hanson let out a nervous chuckle and he grinned wolfishly. “Looks like you missed, Doc.”
“Did I?”
Hanson’s smile disappeared as Predators came running from every direction, their guns out, dozens of metal fingers pointing accusingly at Grissom and Lopez.
Hanson held up his hands. “It’s all right, it’s all right! He shot at a rattler—probably saved my sorry ass.”
The crowd did not want to buy this answer and milled there, looking surlier than ever.
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