Brian Thiem - Shallow grave : a Matt Sinclair novel

ALSO AVAILABLE BY BRIAN THIEM:

Thrill Kill

Red Line

Brian Thiem

NEW YORK

This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, organizations, places, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real or actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2017 by Brian Thiem.

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Crooked Lane Books, an imprint of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.

Crooked Lane Books and its logo are trademarks of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.

Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publication data available upon request.

ISBN (hardcover): 978-1-68331-143-0

ISBN (ePub): 978-1-68331-145-4

ISBN (Kindle): 978-1-68331-146-1

ISBN (ePDF): 978-1-68331-147-8

Cover design by Andy Ruggirello

www.crookedlanebooks.com

Crooked Lane Books

34 West 27th St., 10th Floor

New York, NY 10001

First edition: July 2017

For

The fifty-one Oakland Police Officers who have given their lives in the line of duty.

And

For the thousands of officers in Oakland and around the country who do the job every day with the knowledge they may do the same.

The radio in Oakland homicide sergeant Matt Sinclairs unmarked Crown Vic crackled. Tactical commander to all teams. Execute.

Sinclair pressed the gas pedal to the floor, and his car rocketed down the block. He slammed on the brakes one house shy of their target, flung open his door, and rolled out, pulling a Remington 870 pump shotgun behind him. He racked a round into the chamber, the sound echoing through the early-morning quiet of the residential neighborhood.

He paused a few seconds to allow the officers in the next two cars to catch up. He then jogged down the street and up the houses cracked cement walkway. His partner, Sergeant Cathy Braddock, Officer Kurt Fletcher of the intelligence unit, and four other homicide investigators on the team followed. His eyes scanned the house and yard, looking for movement or something as insignificant as the flutter of a curtain in a window. Nothing.

Two of the investigators peeled off and ran down the side of the house, heading for the backyard where theyd establish a perimeter. Sinclair glanced back and saw Sergeant Jankowski, a huge man of nearly three hundred pounds, cradling a twenty-pound battering ram and jogging to catch up.

The street was quiet. No pedestrians. Morning newspapers were still lying in driveways. Although the sun had risen more than an hour ago, it was still fighting to penetrate the typical morning fog that blanketed the city.

Braddock and Fletcher followed Sinclair up four rotting wooden steps to the small porch and stacked behind him to the side of the door. Sinclair tried the doorknob of the metal security door on the off chance that Animals wife was careless. She wasnt.

Sinclair pounded on the door with his fist and yelled, Police! Search warrant. Open the door!

He heard raised voices. A chair or table screeched across the floor. The radio bud in Sinclairs right ear clicked. Bathroom light came on in the rear. Toilet flushing.

Although seizing narcotics was not the primary purpose of their warrant, Sinclair wasnt about to let them flush their stash. Hookkey, he ordered to the two men at the bottom of the stairs.

Jankowskis partner, Lou Sanchez, climbed onto the porch and jammed a pry bar between the steel door and frame. He yanked and the metal cage sprang open. Sanchez pulled it to the side, and Jankowski swung the battering ram, affectionately referred to as the key to the city, at the doorknob. The door splintered and flew open.

Sinclair followed the battering ram through the door into a tiny living room crammed full with a couch, coffee table, TV, and two occasional chairs. A man about Sinclairs height, dressed in plaid boxer shorts and a wife-beater undershirt stretched tight over a huge belly, shuffled his feet in the doorway of the hallway, unsure if he should retreat or attack.

Sinclair leveled the shotgun at his chest. On the floor, he yelled. Now! The man dropped to his knees, and Braddock rushed forward and shoved him to the ground.

While she was handcuffing the first suspect, Sinclair headed into the hallway. There was a closed door on his right. He grabbed the knob. Locked. Stepping back, he kicked the door. A rail-thin woman in her twenties hovered over the toilet, tearing apart plastic-wrapped bundles of white powder and dropping them in the toilet. Gripping the shotgun with his right hand, he grabbed the womans arm with his left and pulled her away from her task. She glared at him with bloodshot eyes, grabbed a butcher knife from atop the toilet tank, and slashed at Sinclair.

Sinclair released his grip on the woman. He stepped back as the knife blade swept past his neck, missing by inches. Sinclair grabbed the foregrip of the shotgun with his left hand, pivoted, and swung the butt of the shotgun at her head. The knife clattered to the tile floor, and the woman dropped in a heap beside it.

Sinclair signed the bottom of the statement form and handed it to the patrol lieutenant. In addition to the three unmarked cars belonging to homicide, a marked patrol SUV and a semimarked lieutenants car were parked in front of the small, pale-yellow stucco house. They were in a working-class neighborhood in the Melrose District of Oakland, which was seeing revitalization thanks to the booming Bay Area, pricing many people out of San Francisco and into the sketchier parts of Oakland.

Its not like I dont have enough use-of-force paperwork to handle with my own guys, the lieutenant said.

Sinclair leaned against his car and took a few puffs on his cigar. My LT wouldve handled it, but hes tied up at the Simbas clubhouse, he said, referring to the Savage Simbas Motorcycle Club, the primary target of the three search warrants the departments SWAT team and homicide unit had just executed. The house Sinclairs team hit and another private residence were secondary targets suspected of containing evidence of the murder and ties to the club.

The uniformed lieutenant turned and said to Jankowski, Are you finished with your supplemental?

Jankowski, the oldest investigator in the unit with more than thirty years in the department, handed him a sheet of paper. Not much to it. I stepped into the bathroom, saw the lady meth head swing a knife at Sinclair. He ducked and buttstroked her before she could take another swipe at him. MeI wouldve shot the cranked-up bitch.

The lieutenant slid the papers into his notebook and opened his car door. Hell, ignore my griping. Im just glad you guys are okay.

The patrol lieutenant drove off with the other marked car behind him, leaving the three homicide cars parked in front of the house. An ambulance had taken the woman Sinclair butt-stroked with his shotgun to the hospital an hour ago, where a patrol officer would guard her until she could be transferred to the city jail. She was the wife of the Savage Simba sergeant-at-arms known as Animal, the man who killed a fellow club member in a biker bar last night. Two other patrol cars had transported a club prospect that theyd found hiding in a closet and Animals brother-in-law, the man Sinclair encountered in the living room, to homicide.

Braddock and Fletcher came out the front door and walked to their cars carrying armfuls of paper bags. They were dressed in the departments dark-blue utility uniform instead of their normal plain clothes, as was Sinclair. They both wore Kevlar vests, leather boots, and their duty gunbelts. Long-haired and bearded, Officer Kurt Fletcher had been assigned to OPDs intelligence unit for ten years, where he was responsible for tracking gangs and had become one of the nations foremost experts on the Hells Angels.