Chapter Ten
Bone
Three days after dinner at Ma’s, I was sitting at the clubhouse bar, staring at a laptop screen while Taco argued with Dealer about whether a taco technically counted as a sandwich.
This was my life.
“It’s folded,” Taco said.
Dealer stared at him from the other side of the bar. “That doesn’t make it a sandwich.”
“Bread. Meat. Toppings.”
“It’s a tortilla.”
“Which is basically flat bread.”
Humpty took a drink of coffee. “By that logic, a burrito is a sandwich.”
Taco pointed at him. “Exactly.”
“That wasn’t agreement,” Humpty replied.
“It sounded like agreement.”
Humpty shook his head. “It wasn’t.”
Dealer looked at me. “Prez.”
I didn’t take my eyes off the laptop. “I’m not getting involved.”
“You’re supposed to settle disputes,” he insisted.
“Not stupid ones,” I muttered.
“This isn’t stupid,” Taco argued.
“It’s about a taco being a sandwich,” I pointed out.
“Exactly.”
I finally looked up. Taco was dead serious. Dealer looked like he wanted to punch him. Munch was sitting at the end of the bar, eating cereal straight out of a mixing bowl and watching the argument like it was premium entertainment.
Bull had a stack of paperwork in front of him that he’d been pretending to work on for the last fifteen minutes. Breaker was at the other end of the bar with a calculator, ignoring all of us.
Hose had his boots propped on the stool beside him. And Myth sat next to me, waiting for something to happen.
Normal morning at the Wisconsin Grave Prowlers clubhouse.
“Ask Google,” I told Taco.
“That’s cheating,” he cried.
“How the fuck is that cheating?” Dealer asked.
“Because Google has opinions.”
Dealer slowly turned toward him. “Google doesn’t have opinions.”
“You don’t know that.”
Dealer pushed away from the bar.
Taco immediately held up both hands. “Violence because you lost an argument is childish.”
“You haven’t won shit,” Dealer scoffed.
“Agree to disagree.”
“Sit the fuck down,” I muttered.
Taco sat. Dealer stayed standing for another second before dropping back onto his stool. Munch spooned another mouthful of cereal into his mouth.
“You got any more of that?” Rowdy asked as he walked in.
Munch looked down into his bowl. “No.”
“You’ve got half a box right next to you,” Rowdy pointed out.
“But this is mine.”
Rowdy grabbed the cereal box off the counter behind him.
Munch twisted on his stool. “Hey.”
“Club above everything,” Rowdy threw in his face.
Munch glared at Rowdy. “That doesn’t apply to my fucking Cinnamon Toast Crunch.”
“Pretty sure it does.”
Munch looked at me.
I stared back. “You’re on your own.”
He shoveled another spoonful into his mouth. “Leadership around here is bullshit.”
Humpty cuffed him across the back of the head.
Munch nearly dropped his spoon. “The fuck?”
“Prospects don’t criticize leadership,” he grunted.
“I was joking,” Munch insisted.
“Joke quieter,” Myth told him.
I shook my head and looked back at the laptop.
The club could be dealing with a decomposing corpse mysteriously delivered to our warehouse, and these assholes would still find time to fight over cereal.
Maybe that was why we worked.
Bad shit happened, then life kept moving.
Nobody sat around wringing their hands and asking how everyone felt about it. We figured out the problem. We handled it. Then Taco said something stupid and Dealer threatened to kill him.
Balance.
The laptop chimed.
Myth leaned forward. “Finally.”
I clicked the call.
Shadow’s face filled the screen.
“About fucking time,” I said.
Shadow frowned. “Good morning to you too.”
“You said nine.”
“It’s nine-oh-seven.”
“Exactly.”
“Jesus, Bone,” he grumbled.
Another face appeared beside his. Dave. Minnesota’s tech guy and the closest thing the Grave Prowlers had to a computer genius.
Dave looked like the least likely man in the club to be called Dave.
Big beard. Tattoos crawling up both sides of his neck. One eyebrow pierced. Built like he spent considerably more time lifting shit than sitting in front of computers.
Still just Dave.
I’d asked him years ago why everybody had road names and he was simply Dave. He’d told me to mind my fucking business.
I had.
“You find him?” I asked.
Dave nodded. “Pretty sure.”
The chatter behind me died immediately.
I picked up the laptop and carried it from the bar to one of the tables.
Myth followed. So did everyone else. Even Breaker left his calculator behind.
Within seconds, I had the Wisconsin chapter crowded around me.
Shadow looked at the screen. “You fuckers throwing a party?”
“Taco thinks a taco is a sandwich,” Dealer said.
Shadow stared at us, then looked at Taco. “It’s not.”
Dealer pointed at the laptop. “Thank you.”
Taco threw both hands up. “This is fucking bullshit.”
“Can we talk about the dead guy?” I asked.
Taco muttered something under his breath and shut up.
Dave leaned toward his camera. “Hose sent me everything he had. Photos. Approximate age. Height. Old scars. Tattoos. Anything we could use.”
Hose crossed his arms. “And?”
“The condition of the face made normal image matching pretty useless.”
“Figured,” Hose said.
Dave nodded. “But you got a decent picture of the tattoo on his left shoulder.”
I remembered it. Nothing particularly memorable. Some kind of compass with coordinates underneath it.
“Coordinates helped,” Dave continued. “They pointed to a little park outside Waukesha.”
Bull leaned closer. “That’s what those numbers were?”
“Yeah. From there, I started looking through missing-person reports and public posts from the last couple weeks.”
I didn’t ask exactly what else Dave had looked through. There were places he could get into that the rest of us had no business knowing about. Better that way.
“You got a match?” I asked.
Dave tapped something offscreen. A photograph appeared. Alive, the dead guy looked completely ordinary. Brown hair beginning to gray at the temples. Clean-shaven. Average build.
The kind of man I could’ve passed in a grocery store and forgotten five seconds later.
“Name is Owen Mercer,” Dave said. “Forty-four. Lives in Waukesha. Married. Two kids.”
The room got quiet. That wasn’t what I’d expected.
I wasn’t sure what I’d expected. Gang member? Dealer? Some asshole with a mile-long criminal record who’d pissed off the wrong person.
Not somebody’s husband with a normal family picture.
“When was he reported missing?” Myth asked.
“Eight days ago. Wife filed it after he didn’t come home from work. Apparently, that wasn’t something he did.”
“Criminal record?” I asked.
“Nothing worth mentioning. Speeding ticket. One disorderly conduct charge in his twenties that got tossed.”
Taco frowned. “So why the fuck was Mr. Suburban Dad decomposing in one of our coffins?”
“That,” Dave said, “is where it gets interesting.”
I leaned closer. “What’d you find?”
“Owen worked for Northline Security Systems.”
I waited. Dave apparently wanted us to ask.
Dealer did. “What the fuck is Northline Security Systems?”
“Commercial security company,” Dave said. “Cameras, access controls, alarm systems. Warehouses. Distribution centers. Office buildings.”
Something started moving in the back of my head. “Freight yards?”
Dave pointed at the camera. “Exactly.”
Myth looked at me. “Milwaukee.”
“Yeah.”
Dave clicked again. A company page appeared. “I found service records showing Northline does contract work at the Milwaukee transfer facility.”
Nobody said anything for a second.
Then Bull muttered, “Well, shit.”
“When was Mercer there?” I asked.
“Eight days before his wife reported him missing.”
My jaw tightened. “Doing what?”
“Work order says camera maintenance and access-control inspection.”
“Which cameras?” I asked.
“Doesn’t say.”
“Can you find out?”
“Working on it.”
I sat back.
That was something.
Not enough, but something.
Owen Mercer had been at the exact freight yard where our coffin supposedly appeared.
A week later, he was missing, then his body showed up inside one of our caskets.
Coincidence wasn’t a word I used often. Mostly because I didn’t believe in it.
“Did his job bring him there regularly?” Myth asked.
“Looks like it,” Dave answered. “Northline has had the service contract for about eighteen months. Mercer worked multiple calls there.”
“So he knew the place,” I said.
“Probably pretty well,” Shadow agreed.
“Could he access surveillance?”
Dave shrugged. “He serviced it. Doesn’t automatically mean he could pull stored video whenever he wanted, but he’d know the system.”
Hose leaned against the table. “You think he saw whoever put him in the coffin?”
“Hard to see shit after you’re dead,” Taco muttered.
Hose stared at him.
Taco frowned.
“You know what I meant.”
“No one did,” Taco grinned.
“I mean before he died,” Hose corrected.
Taco pointed at Hose. “Thank you for clarifying.”
I rubbed a hand over my beard. “Who was his last call at the yard for?”
Dave shook his head. “That’s where I’m stuck. I’ve got the service date, but not the internal details.”
“Get them.”
“Already trying.”
Shadow leaned closer to his camera. “What about whoever loaded the coffin onto Jackson’s truck?”
“Myth and I went through that,” I said. “No dock employee admits knowing anything. No return entered in the system. No paperwork.”
Shadow frowned. “So somebody walks a coffin with a corpse into a busy transfer facility, and nobody sees shit?”
“That about sums it up.”
“Bullshit,” Shadow scoffed.
“Yeah.”
Dave glanced toward Shadow. “I’m trying to pull archived yard information from the days around Mercer’s service call. Might give us something.”
Shadow looked back at me. “You want us down there?”
“Not yet.”
“You sure?” he asked.
“Yeah. Keep Minnesota running. If this touches your side, I want you there.”
His face hardened. “If it touches Minnesota, you’ll know.”
“I know.” That was the thing about Shadow. We didn’t always agree. Didn’t always handle shit the same way. But if I called and told him I needed Minnesota in Wisconsin tonight, they’d be on the road before I hung up.
Same went the other direction.
Separate chapters. Same patch.
“Send me everything you have on Mercer,” I told Dave.
“Already did.”
“And keep digging into Northline.”
“Yep.”
“I want to know who he worked with, who assigned him that job, and whether anybody else from that company was at the transfer yard around the time our coffin showed up.”
Dave nodded. “On it.”
Shadow lifted his chin. “Call me when you’ve got something.”
“Same.”
The call ended.
For a few seconds, nobody moved.
Then Taco spoke. “So.”
I closed my eyes. I already knew whatever came next wasn’t going to improve the situation. “What?”
“Are tacos sandwiches?”
Dealer lunged and Taco shoved back from the table laughing. “Jesus Christ!”
Dealer caught him by the back of his cut before he got two steps.
“No grabbing the cut!” Taco yelled.
“Then stop running,” Dealer jeered.
“I wasn’t running. Strategic retreat.”
Rowdy nearly doubled over laughing.
Munch abandoned his cereal to get a better view.
I stayed in my chair. “Break his nose and you’re both cleaning the shop.”
Dealer released Taco immediately.
Taco straightened his cut. “You see that? Abuse of power.”
“You’re still talking,” Dealer warned.
Myth dropped into the chair beside me. “Mercer being at that transfer yard isn’t nothing.”
“No.”
“Could’ve seen something.”
“Could’ve.”
“Could’ve been involved.”
“Could’ve,” I agreed.
Myth looked at me. “You’re conversational today.”
“We don’t know enough.” That was the problem. Every answer opened another fucking door.
We knew the body. Great.
Now we had to figure out why a security technician from Waukesha had ended up dead in a Grave Casket coffin.
Had he seen something? Done something? Helped whoever was behind this and gotten cleaned up afterward? Maybe the man had nothing to do with us beyond being unlucky enough to work at the wrong place.
This was about the Grave Prowlers.
I just didn’t know how yet.
“Hey, Prez.”
I looked over.
Rowdy had finally stopped laughing.
“What?”
“What are we doing Friday?” he asked. He spread his hands. “It’s Friday. Couple of us were talking about going out.”
Taco immediately forgot Dealer had almost punched him. “Bing’s.”
My attention shifted too quickly.
Taco leaned against the table. “Bing’s first, then maybe O’Malley’s.”
“Bing’s smells like piss,” Dealer said.
“It does not.”
“The bathroom does,” Dealer grimaced.
“All bar bathrooms smell like piss,” Humpty pointed out.
“That doesn’t help your argument.”
Rowdy pointed toward Taco. “I vote Bing’s.”
Munch raised his hand.
“You don’t get a vote,” Humpty said.
“I wasn’t voting.”
“What were you doing?”
“Can prospects go?”
The entire room answered at once. “No.”
Munch stared at us. “That felt personal.”
“It was,” Taco said.
“Asshole.”
“You’ve got prospect shit to do,” Taco replied.
“What prospect shit?” Taco asked.
Taco looked around. “You guys got anything?”
Breaker came over from the bar. “My underwear needs washing.”
Munch’s face fell.
“There.”
Taco slapped him on the shoulder. “Purpose.”
Munch looked at me.
I shrugged.
He’d learn.
Rowdy pulled his phone from his pocket. “Bing’s around eight?”
Bull nodded. “Works.”
Hose pointed at him. “I’m not driving any of you assholes home.”
“You’re the medic,” Taco said.
“Not an Uber,” Hose insisted.
“Similar skill set,” Dealer shrugged.
The conversation moved on without me.
Friday. Bing’s.
Being Prez didn’t mean I needed to sit at the clubhouse every night like a fucking guard dog, but the second Taco said Bing’s, one person had popped into my head.
Hazel.
Myth bumped his shoulder against mine.
I looked at him.
He didn’t say anything.
Just had that look on his face. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Then quit looking at me.”
“Didn’t realize looking required permission,” he chuckled.
“It does when you look like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’ve got something to say.”
Myth smiled. “I don’t.”
Bull called from across the room, “Bone, you coming Friday?”
Every head turned toward me.
I looked around at my brothers.
Taco. Rowdy. Dealer. Humpty. Hose. Bull. Breaker. Munch, who apparently still hadn’t accepted he wasn’t invited.
Then I thought about everything sitting on my plate.
Owen Mercer. Northline. The Milwaukee dock.
Friday was still two days away. “I’ll decide Friday.”
Taco nodded. “That’s Prez speak for yes.”
Dealer leaned toward him. “You ever shut the fuck up?”
“Nope.”
I leaned back in my chair and listened to them start another argument.
I looked toward the laptop again.
Owen Mercer’s picture was still on the screen.
Whatever happened Friday didn’t matter yet.
Right now, I had a dead man, a security company, and a transfer yard that had suddenly become a hell of a lot more interesting.