Free Troubleshooter by Gregg Hurwitz

feet off from the group, finger in his ear, phone pressed to his head. He gave Tim a quick nod.
    Aaronson was squinting at a slug he held up before his face on tweezers. He was a slight man, prone to wearing crisply ironed, tissue-thin button-ups that showed off the lines of his undershirt. His crime-scene reports were filled out in a hand that looked like typewriting.
    "Explosives look to match?" Tim asked.
    "Those used on the transport convoy? Oh, yeah."
    "AR-15s again?"
    "Yup. They don't call 'em street sweepers for nothing."
    Bear jogged over, high-stepping through the wreckage, and beckoned Tim and Guerrera. By the time they reached him, he was holding a handkerchief against his mouth and nose.
    "So get this. I found out where Uncle Pete was after the funeral." Bear undercut his dramatic pause with a sneeze. "In church. He and the whole chapter rolled into First Baptist, scared the hell out of all the blue-hairs. Not the pastor, though. He thought he made the score of a lifetime."
    "The times line up?" Tim asked.
    "Perfectly. Before that the entire mother chapter was mourning peacefully under our surveillance. No way they had time in between to get out here. It was a nomad job, all right."
    "They got solid intel for this. They knew the route, which vehicles to rig."
    "Maybe they had someone on the inside."
    "With this rivalry? Doubt it."
    "They could've put the squeeze on one of the Cholos."
    "Can't interrogate them now." Tim surveyed the steaming landscape, the wooden box of the coffin resting untarnished amid the destruction. A mournful club mama sitting out the ride with a broken leg had turned over the restricted Cholo mother chapter's roster; a preliminary check matched a body to every name.
    "That's why they shot Chooch Millan," Guerrera said suddenly. He looked at them expectantly, then seemed to realize they were waiting for him to connect the dots. "What's the only thing that gets a whole club together in one place?"
    Tim bobbed his head--of course. "A funeral ride."
    "Right. Shoot someone in the rank and file, within a few days you'll have the entire club assembled right before your sights."
    Bear surveyed the scene with watering eyes. "Hell of a revenge for Nigger Steve."
    "This isn't revenge," Tim said. "This is extermination." He took in the baked tableau. "They're paving the way to something bigger."
    Bear made a muffled noise in his throat, and Tim started back to his car. Before driving off, he sat for a few minutes, staring at the wheel. He headed toward downtown in silence, stopping off at Forest Lawn.
    His phone chirped as he climbed out of the car.
    "Hey, babe. Jesus, huh?"
    "Yeah."
    He heard Mac shout something in the background, and then Dray said, "Shoot, I have to peel out. You think you'll be home?"
    He chuckled.
    "Right. Okay, the captain needs someone to pick up a few overtime parole hours--this case is stretching us thin on man-hours, too. I'll take 'em if it'll be a late one for you."
    "It will."
    "See you whenever. If it's before dawn, bring Yakitoriya."
    "Yakitoriya?"
    "Don't ask. I'm craving chicken neck." More distant voices. "Okay. Gotta run. Be safe."
    Tim folded the phone and got out, strolling among the gravestones. It wasn't hard to locate Palton's fresh carpet of sod. A blanket of lilies cascaded over a table laden with candles and bouquets. Frankie's decade-old credential photo from the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center had been blown up and placed in a gold frame, like a signed former-celebrity eight-by-ten at a dry cleaner. His pose, stalwart and uptight, didn't reflect his humor. He wore a suit and no smile, twenty-four years of tough with a shaving nick at his Adam's apple. He and Janice, high-school sweethearts, would have been six years into their marriage when the photo was taken. And now he lay six feet under, collateral damage in a biker gang war.
    Tim's mind pulled to the civilian killed in the explosion, the illegal guy in the Pontiac, but he couldn't produce a