Sheepdogs: Keeping the Wolves at Bay by Gordon Carroll (tools of titans ebook .TXT) 📗

were true. Look, if you ever want to try and change your luck, give me a call. Or, if you ever get… too lonely.”

She’s such a teaser. “Thanks, Sarah.” I hung up. A few years ago, Sarah was raped in her apartment. A serial rapist the police couldn’t nab. This particular rapist had the especially mean habit of coming back a few weeks or months later for seconds. This should have made him easier to catch, but he was very sneaky. Sarah called me before he could get back to her. I got lucky and caught him. It was messy. He managed to poke me with a knife a couple of times before I killed him.

A silver, nineties Chevy pulled up to Pimple’s house. The horn beeped twice. It was the same car that followed me from Lisa Franklin’s; the one I took the trip down to Castle Rock in. And guess who was driving? Baldy.

Pimples slammed the house door behind him and strutted to the car. He had a cigarette dangling from his lips and his hair was a mess. He didn’t look like a morning person. He got in the car and Baldy peeled out. I let him go a ways before following.

I prayed they were going to where Tom and Amber Franklin were being held.

23

These boys were rank amateurs, they never checked for a tail or pulled over or even tried a wrong turn. They went straight to the drive-through at Del Taco, got their stuff and then sat in the car in the parking lot eating their food, drinking their drinks and smoking their cigarettes. Pimples ate and smoked at the same time. He even drank through a straw with a lit cigarette between his lips. When they were done, Baldy dumped their trash on the asphalt and Pimples stuck one leg out the passenger side window. One of them cranked on the stereo and a current screamo band, maybe Wolf:Speak or Too Close to Touch, poured from the car so loud that I could feel the pulse of the bass from across the street.

They were waiting for someone. I waited with them. Forty minutes later a car pulled up next to them and two black guys wearing red and black and sagging pants got out. Bloods. They both wore their baseball caps to the side and one of them sported a lot of bling. The guy wearing the bling wore an oversized black Raider’s Jersey and red shorts. The other guy wore an un-tucked, sleeveless, red button up shirt that was unbuttoned all the way. He had prison tats running both arms, his neck and chest, and couldn’t have been older than twenty-five.

Bling shook hands with Pimples, a complicated series of movements that would require cryptographic gear to decipher, and then engaged in a few minutes of small talk. After that came the exchange. Drugs of course. I couldn’t tell what kind from here, meth was the biggest sell in this part of the city, but Crips and Bloods tended to lean more to the crack side of the drug trade. Either way the deal was done, right there in broad daylight in a busy parking lot with no attempt to hide what they were doing. That made me a little mad. They should have at least a little fear of the police, after all this was Aurora, and Aurora is contiguous with Cherokee County, my old stomping grounds.

The Bloods got back in their car and drove off. I took down the plate and called another buddy of mine, Stan Lipton. He’s the lead trainer of Aurora’s K9 unit.

“Officer Lipton.”

“Stan the man,” I said, trying my best Michael Scott from The Office.

“Gil the pill,” said Stan. “What’s the hotshot PI up to these days?”

“I just watched a drug deal go down in your town.”

“Got some info for me?” I gave him the description of the car, its occupants, the plate and direction of travel.

Stan said, “I just sent out a BOLO to the cars in the area and I’m gonna start that way. My dog’s getting antsy, he could use a good drug sniff.”

“Let me know if you pop them, they sold to some guys who’re involved in a case I’m working.” He said he would and hung up as Baldy and Pimples drove out of the lot. I gave them a little space and followed.

They went north on Havana to 6th Avenue, took a left and drove into what used to be Lowery Air Force Base. The base was closed in ninety-four and some of the buildings and land have been redeveloped for residential and commercial use. But there are still a lot of the old hangars and buildings still in use. Baldy pulled into one of them. Big Bear. It’s a huge hangar that used to be designated as Building 1499 (isn’t the government inventive) but in 1997 was converted into Big Bear Ice Arena complete with two ice surfaces to help fill the rising demand in Colorado for hockey rinks once the Avalanche became Stanley Cup winners.

They both got out of the car. Baldy had a bruise on his forehead where I’d hit him with the shotgun, as well as a bandage that slipped below the sleeve of his short-sleeved shirt, thanks to Max’s bite. They went inside.

I parked a few cars over, left the engine running for Max and walked over to their car. They’d left both windows down and the doors unlocked so I figured they had the drugs on them. I wasn’t looking for drugs anyway. I got behind the steering wheel and closed the door. I didn’t know how long I had so I searched fast. I looked under the passenger front seat, found a beer bottle, two crushed beer cans, lots of cigarette butts, junk paper like fast food receipts and mangled pamphlets, moldy fries, a beer stained pink thong — stuff like that. There were a couple of blunt butts (blunts are hollowed out cigars