"Maybe he's found himself a girlfriend," the homicide sergeant suggested. "They could be down in the basement, where it's cooler."
"Yeah, that's always a possibility," Lightstone conceded, "but it doesn't sound like him. You sure your guys saw a red Four-Runner in that garage?"
"Pretty sure that's what they said," Hardwell nodded. "I'll find out. Need to check in with those guys anyway."
"Yeah, where the hell are they?" Lightstone asked, looking around as he realized that he hadn't seen any other vehicles with the distinctive police radio antennas in the area.
"Up in the hills, where they've got a better view," Hardwell said, glancing toward the upper slope. "The way Pete described these characters, I figured we ought to maintain some distance until you guys got here."
"Yeah, probably a good idea," Lightstone said absentmindedly.
Reaching over to the dash-mounted console, Hardwell unhooked the coiled cord mike and brought it up to his mouth. "Delta Seventeen and Delta Twenty-two, request confirmation you spotted a red Four-Runner in the subject's garage."
"If it's like our place," Hardwell said as he put the mike down on the seat next to his leg, "it's hard to hear the phone in the basement."
"I don't know," Lightstone said uneasily. "Last place this guy had, he put a phone in the john and one at both ends of his workbench so he wouldn't have to get up."
"Oh."
Two of Hardwell's detectives cautiously approached the house from the blind garage side, shotguns out and ready, while Larry Paxton and Dwight Stoner slowly worked their way down the road on their crutches.
"Couple of characters like that, I'm surprised we haven't heard from every housewife in the neighborhood," Hardwell commented dryly. He started to say something else, but then realized that he hadn't received any response from his surveillance team.
"Delta Seventeen and Delta Twenty-two, check in," Hardwell repeated into the mike in an irritated voice.
Silence.
Lightstone and Hardwell looked at each other briefly, and then Hardwell brought the microphone up to his mouth again.
"Delta Fifteen."
"Fifteen, go."
"Did you spot Kenny or Jim on your way in?"
"Negative."
"Shit," the Washoe County homicide sergeant cursed.
"You give them authorization to follow if anybody left the house?" Lightstone asked, watching Larry Paxton readjust the miniaturized radio speaker in his ear as the two injured agents began to move at a faster pace toward the house.
"Standard procedure is that one guy follows while the other stays in place and calls for backup," Hardwell replied in a distracted voice. "Dispatch, this is Delta Three. Any call-ins from Delta Seventeen or Twenty-two during the past hour?"
"Negative, Delta Three," the dispatcher's raspy voice came out over the car speaker. "No radio contact."
"Delta Fifteen," Hardwell ordered, "break off, get up the hill and check on those two."
"Ten-four, on my way," the detective acknowledged.
"Delta Twenty and Twenty-one, move in on that garage window, tell me what you see," Hardwell directed his other two investigators. Then he and Lightstone watched as one of the shotgun-armed detectives knelt down to provide a cover while the second casually dressed investigator ran forward in a low crouch to the garage, flattened himself upright against the cream-colored stucco, and quickly peered in through the side window.
"It's empty," the detective's voice echoed clearly over the radio static.
Hardwell swore again as he looked over at Lightstone.
"Let's get in there," Lightstone said, releasing his seat belt and drawing the 10mm Smith amp; Wesson automatic from his shoulder holster.
"All units, move in now!" Hardwell said and then dropped the mike on the seat and accelerated the unmarked detective unit toward the distant driveway as Larry Paxton dropped his crutches and limped toward the far side of the house and Dwight Stoner hobbled furiously up the brick walkway toward the front door.
Henry Lightstone was out of Hardwell's detective unit and running up the brick walkway when Stoner lifted a huge decorative rock out of Mike Takahara's carefully landscaped garden and heaved it through the wood-and-glass door. Lightstone lunged forward past Stoner with the 10mm Smith amp; Wesson automatic clenched tightly in both hands.
"Oh, my God!" one of the detectives coming in behind Lightstone and Stoner with a shotgun whispered when he saw the blood.
Even to Henry Lightstone, who had worked over three hundred homicide cases during his police career, the sight of the blood splatterings that seemed to cover every square foot of the off-white walls jarred at his soul. But he kept on moving through the living room, searching the doorways, because the body that lay facedown in the middle of an irregular pattern of congealed blood on the white carpet did not belong to Mike Takahara.
Not unless the Japanese-American agent had started to dye his hair blond, lose weight, and take hormone shots, Lightstone told himself, noting the insignia on the uniform of the sprawled female figure as he continued to search for movement.
"Mike, where are you?" Lightstone yelled, even though he knew that anyone within fifty yards who hadn't heard the rock going through the front door was either deaf or dead.
They found the second body in the kitchen. The coal- black hair gave Lightstone a momentary scare until he realized that the victim was still a good fifty pounds lighter and three or four inches shorter than Takahara.
Hardwell came in with a. 357 Magnum in one hand and a packset radio in the other. He glanced down at the body of the Oriental, who had lost massive amounts of blood from deep and gaping slashes in his arms, face, and chest.
"That him?"
"No." Lightstone shook his head.
"Then what the hell-" Hardwell started to say when the radio in his hand began to squawk.
"Clint, I found Jim and Kenny," the choked voice said. "They're up here on Twin Springs Road. Both of them dead. Small-caliber shots to the side of the head."
Homicide Sergeant Clinton Hardwell was still cursing when they heard the crashing sound of wood breaking.
"Where-" Hardwell demanded, his eyes widened with rage, but Lightstone was already out of the kitchen and heading toward the basement stairs. He got there just as Dwight Stoner lunged at the door with a savage roar. His full-body forearm shot tore the door completely off its hinges as the half-crippled agent staggered forward. But the impact of a vicious side-thrust heel kick just below his left ear sent him tumbling to the floor.
When Henry Lightstone came through the splintered doorway right behind Stoner, he saw the reverse kick coming and blocked it with his left forearm. He started to bring the butt of the 10mm Smith amp; Wesson around in a deadly variation of a palm-heel strike that would have shattered Mike Takahara's jaw if Lightstone hadn't recognized the blood-smeared and swollen face that looked down at him.
Lightstone quickly reholstered his pistol and stepped forward to support the agent's dangling body while Larry Paxton used a sharp-edged pocketknife to cut away the medical gauze and tape that tied the Japanese-American agent's hands and wrists to the three-inch cast-iron pipe overhead.
Once loose, Mike Takahara dropped down in front of Stoner, who was just starting to come up on one knee.
"Dumb-ass jock… told you… supposed to wear a helmet when you kick a door," Takahara said between deep, gasping breaths.
Stoner glared at his ex-partner. "Before I go ahead and stomp the shit out of you," the huge agent rasped, "you mind telling me why you had to do that?"
"Over there, to your right," Mike Takahara said weakly. The ex-Oakland Raider tackle turned his head back the other way and stared at the dangling and horribly mutilated body of ICER team-member Felix Steinhauser.
"I don't understand. You sure these guys weren't working for Alex?" Lightstone asked as the four agents sat in Mike Takahara's blood- splattered living room. The homicide investigation team was working around them, trying to reenact the sequence of events that had led to the death of two of their detectives, before the state investigators got here and took over the scene.