Ambush (Michael Bennett #11)(47)

“You said your boss approved it.”

I hefted the tracking device. “It’s not my boss I’m worried about.”

Mason scratched his head. “But whoever’s tracking you on their computer can’t see who’s in the cab.”

“Maybe he isn’t just tracking me on his computer. Maybe he’s parked out on the street, and he plans to follow me. I don’t think he means good things, Mason.”

Mason grunted. Then shrugged. “Okay.”

After he left, I walked out to the tracks. I slapped the tracker in its magnetic housing underneath a coal car that would be leaving in an hour for the US-Mexico border. The Alpha’s men wouldn’t be fooled for long. But if I got lucky, it might take them an hour or two to figure it out. By then, I’d be buried in the city.

I wedged the Land Cruiser between some utility vehicles so that it was out of sight on the north side of the garage, then grabbed a few personal belongings—the contents of the glove box, the polar fleece jacket I’d appropriated from Cohen, Clyde’s and my Kevlar, my toolbox and backup pistol—then locked up. When Mason pulled up in a dark-blue Ford Expedition, I nodded my approval. This was the first brand-new vehicle I’d ever driven, and as I circled it and kicked the tires, I felt like a grown-up.

“Check it out, Clyde.”

Mason left the engine running.

“Tank’s full,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t let ’em get you,” he added and stalked off.

I opened the rear hatch to show Clyde his designated area. It was roomier than the old Ford, with a removable padded bed, built-in food and water dishes, and some pretty sophisticated environmental controls.

“All you need is a screen and a Wi-Fi connection,” I told him. “You could catch up on The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin.”

Picking up on my excitement, Clyde barked. He was a big fan of the crime-fighting German shepherd. In Iraq, Dougie had found the old episodes online. He and Clyde and I used to watch them together.

“I’m kidding, pal. You should be catching up on training videos. Let’s check out the cab.”

I opened the front passenger door and was delighted to see that someone had installed a dog harness in place of a regular seat belt. I wondered if that bonus had come from my boss or Mason.

I signaled Clyde to hop up and buckled him in. “Try not to shed too much.” I walked around and got in behind the steering wheel. I opened my duffel and took out my work laptop, popped it into the swivel mount near the dash, and powered it up. The internet came up along with an application to link to dispatch and another program that would run searches on a slew of databases.

“Welcome to the twenty-first century,” I told Clyde. “You think this will make it easier to catch bad guys?”

Clyde cocked his head at the screen, unsure. He was more of a traditionalist, I think. Teeth and claws.

I fist-bumped his paw.





CHAPTER 12

A war in five senses. Blood, sweat, tears, dust, pain.

—Sydney Parnell. ENGL 0208 Psychology of Combat.

Union Station, where Kane had been murdered, was overseen by the Regional Transportation District. Their cameras would have caught Kane’s death from different angles. I planned to force myself to watch the recordings as many times as it took to get something to shake out.

The Transit Watch Command Center served as the RTD’s headquarters, and that’s where Clyde and I headed next. We’d been there a few times before. Denver Pacific Continental and the RTD share information and data, and we have a Memorandum of Understanding to help each other out. DPC was especially interested in using some of the RTD’s camera technology to monitor critical areas on our own lines.

I’d called on the drive over and offered my help to Transit Police Chief Ryan Taft. I told him I knew a lot of the homeless, and maybe I would recognize our killer if I saw him in motion. It turned out I didn’t need to sell myself. Taft muttered something about me being a celebrity and said he was happy for the help.

He met us at the door to the single-story, bland brick building situated in a quiet neighborhood of small businesses. In his early sixties, tall and well built, with a thick head of gray hair and kind eyes, Ryan had a way of leaning in when he talked that made you feel like his coconspirator. Today his expression hovered between harried and pissed, but he waved us in warmly, bent and shook Clyde’s paw, and—good man that he was—said absolutely nothing about my black eye. He led us through the warren of offices to the center of operations.

“Anything specific on this case caught your eye?” he asked as we walked.

“I haven’t seen anything yet but newspaper articles.”

“Let’s fix that.”

The control room was a high-ceilinged space, dimly lit, with workstations and a bank of monitors showing all of Denver’s railway stations, the interiors of buses and trains, and key points along the commuter tracks. The RTD—Denver’s mass transit system—was a network of commuter lines, light rail, and buses that served much of metro Denver and the airport.

All five of the workstations were manned. Normally, this time of day would only require a couple of people on task. But Kane’s death had everyone on high alert. Taft introduced Clyde and me to the men and women watching the monitors, who barely looked away from their screens, then led me to a door in the back and ushered me into their computer room.