by Marc Rainer
“Where’s our next stop?” Lynn asked.
“Charleston for a late lunch, if we can make it that far.”
“I can wait a while,” she said.
They passed a road sign informing them that a rest stop was a mile ahead. A series of plaintive whines from the center of the backseat told them that Boo might not be able to wait any longer. Trask pulled into the rest area and leashed the dogs for a walk while Lynn headed to the ladies’ room. He carefully lifted Boo down from the seat to the ground, the leashes for the other dogs around his wrist. He took his turn in the restroom after Lynn came out, handing off the leashes to her. After returning to the car and lifting the dogs back up into their beds, Trask climbed in and steered back onto the highway.
“Tell me again about our new home,” Lynn said. “I saw the pictures, but I’m not sure I understand the floor plan or where it’s located.”
He smiled. How many wives these days would trust their husband to pick out a house by themselves? He and Lynn had always been a good fit.
“It’s a little unusual,” he explained, “but I think we’ll like it. It’s in a subdivision called Raintree, in Lee’s Summit, southeast of KC. We’re lakefront, but not on the main lake. The house is on a feeder cove. We get to see the water—even the main lake across a little spillway and dam—and all the birds, but no powerboats, so it’s quieter. The place has a huge deck on the back and side, plenty of shade trees, too.
“The house has a living room, kitchen and master suite upstairs. There’s a finished, walk-out basement with three bedrooms, a family room and a full bath downstairs. I had a guy put in a doggy door in the basement, and it leads to a paved patio. The backyard has a good fence, so the pups can go in and out if we’re not home.”
“I’m worried about Boo.”
“I am, too, but I think she’ll surprise us. She’s a smart girl. She’ll figure everything out.”
“What about the stairs?” Lynn asked him.
“We can block them off at first. The basement floor will be cooler in the summer, and there’s a wood-burning stove, so it will also be warmer in the winter than the upstairs. We can put their beds down there, and she’ll just have the one big room and the doggy door to learn at first.”
“I think we can get her sight back,” Lynn said.
Trask arched an eyebrow. “Really?”
“I did a lot of research on it while you were in KC. There’s a good canine ophthalmologist there who specializes in the surgery for dogs with diabetes. It won’t be cheap, but the success rate is good. Our vet in Maryland talked to her, and she thinks Boo is a good candidate.”
“Whatever it takes, then,” Trask said. He remembered the big dog guarding against all the other dogs at an off-leash park to protect her smaller sisters, and even taking on a goon who had broken into their home to attack Lynn. The thug left missing a substantial amount of skin. “She has certainly earned every chance we can give her.”
“Yes, she has.” Lynn tapped a map app on her phone. “How far do you think we’ll make it today?”
“We’ll play it by ear, see how tired we get, how much the dogs can tolerate. This is certainly the longest trip they’ve ever had. Before, it was just fifteen minutes to the dog park, a few more to the vet. I’ve got some pet-friendly motels flagged in several spots along the way. We’ll go as far as we can today, probably hit St. Louis midday tomorrow and then roll on into Kansas City.”
“Will we see the arch in St. Louis?”
“Yep. But just remember. We’re Kansas Citians now. St. Louis isn’t the ‘Gateway to the West;’ it’s the backdoor to the east, and if you want to make those folks really mad, mention the ’85 World Series, or ask ’em how things are in southwest Chicago.”
“Okay. Got it.”
An hour later, they passed another sign for a rest stop, and Boo started whining again.
“I’m not sure she’s really blind,” Trask said as he pulled off the highway, “and I sure as hell didn’t know she could read. At this rate, we’ll make KC next week, and I may need to float a loan for motel bills.”
Lynn stared out her window. Trask could feel the wheels turning in her mind. She had a good one. She had enlisted in the Air Force and was initially trained as a medic. After several years working in military hospital emergency rooms, she became an Air Force OSI agent and then an analyst for one of the FBI’s terrorism task forces. She had told Trask that she just wanted to take it easy now and be retired for good.
“So, you just want to be the pack momma for the girls now?” he asked.
She nodded. “I feel guilty about not spending more time with them. They’re all getting old, and we owe them more time and attention. They’re such good girls. Besides, Boo’s going to need a good bit of attention after the eye surgery.”
“She’s smart like her mother,” Trask said. “She’ll adjust fast. It’s not like she’s never had sight before.”
“I know, but she’ll be wearing one of those big cones for a while. As far as any adjustment, she can help me adjust to being home.”
Trask smiled. “I have no doubt that she can handle that.”
Kansas City, Missouri
Mary Louise Monaco—Marylou to her few friends—sat in a metal folding chair on the cemetery lawn. She felt almost nothing.
It was her second experience with this pervasive numbness. The first time had been about sixteen years earlier, when she had watched them lower the casket containing the body of her husband, Steven, into his grave. Steve had been the love of her young life, a gentle and decent man who had been unable to ignore the attacks of 9-11 upon his nation. When he told her that he was enlisting in the Marines, Marylou had just nodded. She had known that any objection on her part would have been futile, so she waited for him to come home from basic training while she tended to their young son, Tommy, and then waved goodbye to him again as his unit was deployed to Iraq. It had been the last time she had seen him alive.
She looked past the newly dug grave toward Steven’s tombstone on the other side of the hole. Tommy was being laid to rest beside his father. There was another plot reserved for her—the last piece in a package Steven had bought as he tried to take care of everything he could think of before leaving—but she would not be using it. She had already decided upon cremation and had been given a partial refund for returning her plot rights. Nobody would be there to visit her gravesite anyway. She had been an unadopted orphan when Steven met her. He had left her a widow, and now Tommy had left her childless. She shrugged.
If God made me from dirt, he can put me back together again from the ashes. He may not want to do that anyway.
They had given her a flag at the end of her husband’s burial ceremony—a flag and the thanks of a grateful nation. She had managed a nod and a weak smile as she accepted the flag with one hand and held Tommy’s hand and wiped the tears from his eyes with the other. Her own tears had stopped flowing by then, her reservoir drained empty.
She would not be getting a flag today. There was no honor in this ceremony, only death. They told her that Steven had died a hero, firing until he had no ammunition left, trying to defend his friends during an ambush. She never doubted the official account of the action, knowing that her husband would have never surrendered to the enemy. Tommy, on the other hand, had finally surrendered to his own nemesis.
Marylou watched her son’s coffin being lowered into the grave next to his father’s. She had wanted to believe that he was getting clean, that he was starting to break the chains that the heroin had locked around his soul. Whenever he left the house, she had checked his room relentlessly, gone through every drawer. When he was sleeping, she had gone over every inch of his car. The tracks on his arms had started to heal. Then she got the call.
The police told her that the heroin he injected had been laced with a new and even more potent poison: Fentanyl. The synthetic opioid was fifty times stronger than the heroin Tommy had thought he was shooting, fifty times as deadly.
<
br /> She never really heard the words the priest was saying over her son’s grave. She shook off the numbness when he finally came over to offer his condolences after the ceremony. She nodded meekly, then walked back to the neighbor’s car and climbed back into the backseat for the ride home.
She opened the door of the little bungalow and looked around as she entered the front room. Steven’s mother had left them the house when she died. Marylou had wanted to move—to one of the newer neighborhoods farther out from the city center—but the economics of living mortgage-free had kept them here. She paused as she took inventory, a habit she’d formed ever since the crime rate had started to rise on their block. Everything was just as she’d left it, and nothing would ever be the same again.
There was the couch where she and Steven had sat for so many evenings, the bedroom where they had slept and loved. She sat on the bed for what seemed like forever, staring blankly at nothing.
She forced herself to stand, dreading the next destination. She walked slowly back through the living room, stopping for just a moment to look at the framed photographs on the mantle. Her favorite was in the center. It showed a happy Marylou holding baby Tommy while her husband wrapped his arms around both of them, his own happy eyes peering at the camera from behind her as he looked over her shoulder. In past years, even after his death, the photo and the happy memories had made her smile. She could not smile this time.
The steps to Tommy’s room were even slower, but she forced herself to take them. She stopped in the doorway, staring at the remnants of a life that she had brought into the world. The posters, Little League trophies, unmade bed, half-open closet, and stack of computer games refused to answer her as she mentally called on them to come to life again. Only the cluttered desk in the corner spoke to her.
It was in the top drawer of the desk where she’d first found the needles and the black tar four years ago, after the doctor had refused to refill the pain meds prescription. She involuntarily glanced toward the closet and saw the bottoms of the aluminum crutches protruding from under some hanging shirts.
I never should have let him ride Steven’s motorcycle. I should have sold the damned thing when he died. I just couldn’t. It made me think Steven would come home one day, to polish it and ride it again. If Tommy hadn’t shattered his leg in the wreck, he wouldn’t have needed the pills. If he hadn’t got hooked on the pills, he never would have tried the heroin.
Marylou wondered for a moment what she would do with Tommy’s things. A solution floated out of the fog that clouded her mind.
I won’t have to worry about that.
She left the bedroom and walked to the rear window, staring out across the small backyard, over the top of the chain-link fence, and into the parking lot of the building directly behind her house.
That’s where he got the poison that killed him.
Kansas City, Kansas
Tyler Cannon pulled his white pickup into the bay at the rear of the building and waited for the garage door to drop behind him. He grabbed the duffel bag from the passenger seat beside him and hopped down through the driver’s door. He watched closely as the crew—all Hispanics, mostly Mexican, he guessed—elevated the truck on the rack and began to work quickly on the underside. The gas tank was off in minutes. It was lighter than usual, because Tyler had been careful—as he always was—to pull in with a minimum of fuel left.
The tank was not original factory equipment, although it appeared to be. A special dividing wall had been installed inside the tank, along the side away from the tube to the refueling door. Along the top of the tank—normally invisible when the contraption was in place under the truck—a door had been cut, an opening allowing access to the secret compartment which kept the cargo separated from the gasoline. The device restricted his driving radius, but it hid the cargo, and its proximity to the odor of the gasoline made it less likely to be detected by K9s.
Cannon saw the crew chief look his way, so he held up two fingers. The man nodded and reached into the tank, pulling out two hard bricks that had been wrapped in layers of duct tape. He walked over and handed them to Cannon, who stuffed them into the duffel bag. He turned and handed five, twenty-dollar bills to the older, bearded man who he knew would be standing behind him. The man with the beard smiled.
“Be careful now, amigo.”
“Yeah, I know. Watch the speed and stoplights. I will. Thanks, Papi. See you next trip,” Cannon said.
He opened the metal toolbox installed along the front of the truck bed and tossed the duffel inside. The crew raised the door, and Cannon backed out. He made a quick stop for gas at a convenience store, and moments later he was back on the interstate, crossing into Missouri. Cannon glanced repeatedly at the speedometer.
The old man’s right. These are the worst parts of every trip: the delivery legs, when the dope is out of the tank and more exposed. Can’t afford to get stopped now. Watch the speed, don’t roll through any signs.
He drove past the skyline of Kansas City, Missouri, and took the exit for Van Brunt Boulevard before turning north.
Kansas City, Missouri
Trask pulled into the underground garage of the courthouse and turned right toward his designated parking spot. It was one of the perks of being the office’s senior litigation counsel. Trask’s office only had a few of the parking slots in the garage; being one of the privileged few saved him about seventy-five bucks a month. Another plus was that he could leave his gun in the car.
Trask kept seeing the differences between D.C. and “flyover country” everywhere he looked. He already had a concealed carry permit in Missouri that had been easy to obtain. Prior permit? Prior military? No problem then. Several of his fellow prosecutors in the office also carried guns when they were not inside the building. The ones without underground parking checked them in a locker in the lobby, just like the cops did when they came to court.
Trask shook his head as he remembered his former office. The District of Columbia used to be one of the crown jewels of the nation’s urban love affair with gun control before the Supreme Court struck down its gun ban. Like Chicago, its laws had only made sure that the crooks were armed instead of any potential victims. Even after the law was overturned, it had still been a major pain to get a permit. Trask had been allowed to carry there when the office could document a credible threat against him, a situation that had seemed to be a recurring condition. The irony was not lost on him. He was safer in Kansas City even without the weapon, but the weapon had been easier to get and easier to carry.
Trask’s distance to the new office from his new home was exactly the same—to the tenth of a mile—as it had been in D.C. In the District, he had been forced to allow up to two hours for the commute, and sometimes that still wasn’t enough. On the way, if he was in the right-hand lane, he’d had to straddle the shoulder line to keep some clown from trying to pass on the shoulder if things got too slow. His drive in the morning from Lee’s Summit was a comfortable thirty-five minutes, he didn’t have to guard the shoulder of the road, and the drive time included a stop at a fast food joint for some breakfast. Trask was already liking life in Kansas City.
He walked through some basement hallways to an elevator that took him up one floor to the lobby, where he caught the main elevators to the fifth floor. Trask waved at the receptionist through her bulletproof glass and heard the click as she unlocked the main doors for him.
There were two visitors waiting for him in the hallway as he unlocked the door to his new office. Special Agent John Foote and Detective Billy Graham said hello, and Graham was holding a healthy stack of paper. Trask waved them in and hung his suit jacket on a coat tree.
“Morning, counselor,” Foote said, flashing his Santa Claus grin. “We have one that we think is ready for your attention.” He nodded toward the papers in Graham’s hands.
“Tell me about it. The CliffsNotes version,” Trask said, taking the papers from Graham. “It looks like that will be a lot faster than reading th
is tome.”
“It’s a complaint affidavit,” Foote replied. “About 200 pages. We’ve been up on a bunch of Michoacano coke and meth dealers for several months . . .”
Trask went into his mental files as Foote filled him in. “Up” meant that they had a wiretap approved and monitored. “Several months” meant that they’d had extensions granted, since wiretaps were generally only approved for thirty-day periods. “Michoacanos” referred to immigrants—legal or probably otherwise—from the Mexican state of Michoacán, an area of rampant corruption and drug trafficking on the Pacific coast southwest of Mexico City. Michoacán was so corrupt that the somewhat less corrupt federal government of Mexico had essentially taken it over after it became a national, out-of-control, embarrassment.
“How many defendants are named in those 200 pages?” Trask asked, cutting to the chase.
A look of some reservation came over Foote’s face for a moment.
“Sixty,” he said.
Trask didn’t flinch. He had known that a test would be thrown at him, the new guy on the block, at some point. He just hadn’t expected it to come this hard and fast. He just nodded.
“How many of those do you think we can indict?” Foote asked him.
Yep, Trask said to himself. Here it is. Let’s see how these guys do with their own test.
“How many of those sixty do you have hard evidence on, between your wiretaps, physical surveillance, street buys, seizures, and corroborated informant information?” Trask asked.
Foote didn’t hesitate for a second.
“All of them, Jeff.”
“Who was handling the wire here? The assigned prosecutor?”
“Your predecessor: Marshall Peters.”
Trask flinched. The guy was on the streets now, a problem resolved by his termination. Trask wondered if Peters had left any legal land mines, and whether the investigators would even know that.
