GATOR: Wolves MC (Riding With Wolves Book 2) Read Online Free Page A

was reflecting rather brightly off of his nametag, but regardless, I nodded in recognition.
    “Wait ‘til you see this one,” he added, lifting up the crime tape for me to duck under. I followed him over to the body, which was covered by a sheet. As soon as another officer near the body saw me approach, he pulled the sheet back… and what was underneath was quite alarming.
    There, lying on the ground, was a dead, shirtless junkie. He had three hypodermic needles stuck in each of his arms, his throat had been slit, and a large “W” had been carved into his tattooed chest.
    “Wow,” I said, examining the body from where I stood. The same sunlight that made it hard to read the first officer’s nametag was now reflecting off of the dead junkie’s nipple rings. “Coop was right. This is brutal … What did you find? Do we have anything yet?”
    I glanced at the body again, trying to avoid the glare, and focused on the space around it. For as brutal as this slaying was, there wasn’t much blood around the body, which again indicated that the junkie hadn’t died here but had been left here—and given the careful way he was sprawled out on the ground, with the needles still intact in his arms, it obviously wasn’t a drop and roll. He’d been placed here like this for a more important reason.
    “We got an identification on the victim,” a third officer said from behind me. I knew who it was… immediately. His name was Mario Ramirez, and he spoke with a thick Chicano accent.
    “Vic’s name is John Berry,” Ramirez continued. “Standard junkie rap sheet—a few possession charges, two assaults, a handful of drunken disorderlies, and nothing else surprising there… But there is a little surprise—he’s not from San Fran. He’s from L.A.”
    “L.A.?” I asked, still eyeing the body. “Maybe he decided to relocate?”
    “Well, if he did ,” Ramirez answered, “he either relocated right into the heart of trouble, or someone followed after him as soon as he left. The boys in L.A. said they had him in their station yesterday afternoon, questioning him about a recent, unsolved attack on a biker.”
    “So he was running on that rap?” I asked, trying to work things out off-the-cuff with Ramirez.
    “Maybe, maybe not,” Ramirez answered. “Think about the timeline here… He left the police station around four thirty yesterday. Say he decides to run. He goes, gets his shit together, covers his tracks—whatever. At best, he leaves L.A. around six that night or so. If he drives here himself or gets a ride, that means he can be in San Fran by, what? Midnight? If he hops a bus, it’ll take even longer.
    “Now this murder isn’t just a bullet wound or a knife to the gut. There’s overkill here—and it’s obviously a message of some sort. And whoever is behind that message clearly took some time with the body and took some time and care placing it here .
    “We don’t have a time of death yet, but this body is obviously not fresh. It’s stale, and there isn’t a lot blood around it. This guy was dead for a while before he was placed here… So think about it.”
    For a beat cop, Ramirez sure had a lot of insight, I was both jealous and proud of him for it.
    “So this guy either got killed as soon as he got into town,” I replied, putting together the puzzle pieces Ramirez had so painstakingly presented, “or someone killed him in L.A. and brought him here?”
    “Exactly,” Ramirez answered. “And whichever it was, it means we’ve got more than a simple junkie murder on our hands here, and it’s gonna be a ball-breaker.”
    I shook my head in the affirmative, despite the fact that I didn’t have balls. “Sure is,” I said. “Did you get any prints off of anything?”
    “Not the needles,” Ramirez replied. “They’re clean out of the box, unused, and don’t even have a partial fingerprint on them—which again shows the great care with which this murder was executed.”
    I leaned down