So she and Cherie hacked their way into the police report, and it looks like he was … fuck …”
Hawkins waited through a moment of silence, then jumped in. “Fuck what?”
“Eaten.”
“Eaten?” Geezus. He flashed back on the bite taken out of King’s arm. This was starting to piss him off.
“Yeah,” Dylan said, “a real gruesome crime scene. The report also had a list of the files on Dr. Patterson’s desk at the time of his demise.”
“LeedTech?” It had to be.
“Specifically, the file on J. T. Chronopolous, a.k.a. Conroy Farrel. The Thai cops matched the bloody fingerprints on it to Scott Church, but they can’t find the Frogman.”
“Because they’re not looking in Denver.” He swore again. “Maybe we should give them a call.”
“No,” Dylan said. “The bastard is ours. If you so much as get a glimpse of this asshole, you take him out. No introductions, no warning, no questions. There’s a damn good chance he’s after our boy. Any questions we’ve got, we’ll ask Randolph Lancaster. No one on my team gets torn apart like King and Rock, or goddamn eaten. Nobody. Got it?” Dylan’s voice was hard, uncompromising.
“Loretta ain’t gonna like it,” Hawkins felt obliged to point out, no matter how much he agreed with Dylan. “She’s going to want to cuff him, read him his rights, print him, and lock him up, all legal-like and prosecutable.”
“Nobody’s going to get this guy in front of a judge,” Dylan said. “Think Red Dog with another hundred pounds of muscle and less than half the usable brain space, flood it with testosterone and a freaking boatload of psychopharmacueticals. Scott Church is the first soldier Patterson didn’t kill. All the other men Lancaster sold to him died under the knife. From what we’ve seen, this Monk guy is barely human, and I mean that genetically. I want him dead.”
“Copy.” Hawkins glanced over at Creed, who wasn’t any happier in this damn urban jungle behind Bagger’s Market than he was right now. Dropping a .45 into the guy wasn’t the problem. He and Creed would both happily take the shot and let the boss go mano a mano with Lieutenant Loretta over the fallout, but finding the inhuman bastard was proving to be one helluva problem.
“I want you and Creed to quit dicking around out there and get the damn job done,” Dylan said. “Make it so, Superman.”
Dicking around?
“Yes, sir.”
The radio went silent, and Creed gave him a questioning look. “What’s up?”
“We’re supposed to quit dicking around.”
Creed nodded. “Good idea.”
Yeah, a damn good idea.
“Navy SEAL, huh?” Creed said.
“Scott Church,” Hawkins told him. “The guy was called Monk, so the doctor who fixed him up in Bangkok gave him the ID of MNK-1. But all that anybody has seen of the doctor lately is a bunch of gnawed-on bones in his lab.”
Even the Jungle Boy blanched at that. “Kill on sight, I hope?”
“You got it,” Hawkins said, looking around at the dumpsters and the trash and the loading docks and the dozen or so police cruisers and all the cops. “This trail is cold.”
“Maybe we should call in Red Dog,” Creed said. “She could track the bastard.”
Hawkins looked over at him. “Or we could track the guy he’s tracking.”
“J.T.?” Creed asked.
He nodded. “Looks like Con Farrel is the reason Monk is in town. King and Rock just got in the way.”
“So it’s back to the restaurant … or not …” Creed’s voice trailed off, and he turned and looked to the west.
Yeah, they were both on the same wavelength here.
“I know where I’d go if I was in trouble on this side of town,” Creed continued.
Hawkins knew where he’d go, too.
“Alazne’s.” The witch had some definite mojo she’d worked for the chop shop boys over the years. He didn’t claim to understand it, but he’d sure as hell benefited from it. They all had. “Do you think J.T. remembers Alazne?”
Creed looked at him like he had to be kidding.
“It was a long time ago,” he said in his own defense.
“It was sex,” Creed said. “Wild, witchy-woman sex. No guy forgets that.”
Hawkins wasn’t so sure. “He doesn’t remember anything, total amnesia.”
“Bull,” Creed said. “We’ve been chasing him all over Denver, and he hasn’t made a wrong turn yet. He knows this town inside out and backward, the same way he always did. He was here at Mama’s and got into one helluva fight. He’s in trouble. He’s still got Jane. He’s lost his transportation, and Alazne’s is just up the hill. This is a no-brainer,