by Paige Tyler
Bodine shook his head. “More than that. The coroner was of the opinion that the amount of blood at the scene indicated both of those people would have bled out in something like twenty or thirty seconds. But their bodies weren’t at the scene, meaning there were at least three attackers and that whoever was left removed the bodies of the two who’d been killed. Why the hell someone would hang around to drag off their bodies but not the body of the person they’d killed is frigging beyond me. The coroner’s theory is also supported by the fact that ballistics showed three distinct large-caliber automatics used on your father. None of the weapons were found at the scene or anywhere nearby, though.”
“Three people shooting large-caliber handguns in the middle of the night and no one heard a thing?” she asked in disbelief. “It’s not like Dad’s club was in the middle of nowhere.”
Bodine shrugged. “My guess is that they used silencers, which is kind of scary, since it likely means that these men were professionals. Common criminals don’t walk around the street carrying silenced weapons.”
Professionals, huh? Something else the NOPD detective had never mentioned to her and her mother. “They were professionals, but Dad was still able to kill two of them?” She felt a completely stupid sense of pride at that. Her dad had gone down swinging, the way he’d always told her to face any obstacle life put in front of her. “I didn’t know he’d even kept a weapon at the club.”
Bodine looked around the diner again, making sure no one was eavesdropping on their conversation, then lowered his voice. “That’s where things get interesting. Those men weren’t shot. The coroner and crime scene techs were sure of that. The only guns fired in that club belonged to the men who attacked your father. There was blood found on the tips of all of your dad’s fingers though, implying that he ripped the men’s throats out with his bare hands. I have to admit, that conclusion makes me wonder if the crime scene techs didn’t mess something up during the collection. I know your dad was big, but I’m not buying the idea that he was able to rip two people’s throats out while getting shot multiple times.”
Triana wasn’t so sure of that. Her dad had never been one to mess with. As much as she loved him, she knew he was ornery enough to do something like that.
“So, is there anything else the police didn’t tell me about my father’s death?” she asked, not sure what to do with all the information she already had.
“Actually, there is.”
He hesitated as the waitress came by to drop off the checks. True to his word, Bodine grabbed hers and paid for it. Triana reminded herself to check the next expense report just in case. She waited while the PI calculated the tip down to the sixth decimal place. When he finally looked up at her, his expression was cautious.
“To tell the truth, I have no idea what to make of this last part, but it’s strange, so I think it’s something we should dig into,” Bodine said. “When you read the report, I’m sure the chemical names will mean more to you than they did to me, but bottom line—someone pumped your father full of animal tranquilizer just before he was shot. Again, I’m not sure how they’re connected, but the report said the levels would have been lethal to a human in minutes. Essentially, someone tried to poison your dad to death before they shot him.”
Chapter 8
“How bad do you think this is going to be?” Remy asked the room in general. Talking about the upcoming ass-reaming had to be better than sitting around stewing over it.
“On a scale of one to ten?” On the other side of the table in the small NOPD headquarters conference room, Lorenzo’s mouth tightened. “I’m figuring about a twelve, maybe even a thirteen since I’m feeling so lucky today.”
Remy looked at Brooks, then Drew, hoping one of the other SWAT officers might offer up something to give the narcotics detective a little hope. But both men were sitting there with the same tight, concerned expression on their faces.
Okay. That must mean this meeting with the captain of narcotics major case squad and the assistant district attorney responsible for prosecuting Aaron Lee, if the man ever saw the inside of a courtroom, was going to be just as awful as Lorenzo feared. Not that Remy expected anything less after the absolute catastrophe of a morning they’d had at the freight storage warehouse owned and operated by another one of Lee’s shell companies.
Remy and his pack mates had barely walked into the SWAT facility that morning when Drew stuck his head out of his office and said they had a call. He hadn’t given them any details, just simple instructions to get their gear ready, load up the operations vehicle, and roll. Not that Remy needed much in the way of details to figure out they were going after Aaron Lee again. That was the only reason Drew would have been so mum about the whole thing.
Drew had given them an extremely basic mission briefing en route to the warehouse. According to their narcotics informant, the crime boss had the crystal meth stored in there and intended to start breaking it down today. Since Drew and Lorenzo didn’t want to risk the operation getting compromised again, they’d accelerated the normal timetable for a raid like this as well as limited the number of people involved. They’d hoped by moving fast and light, they’d hit Lee’s warehouse before word of the raid leaked out to the man.
Unfortunately, it hadn’t worked that way.
Remy had known there was something wrong before he’d even kicked in the back door of the warehouse. The approach to the structure had simply been too easy, the lack of exterior guards was a blaring alarm that they were walking into a setup. His inner wolf had gone into alert mode, sure there were going to be shooters in the place waiting to mow them all down the moment they stepped inside.
Drew had sent his teams into the warehouse through multiple entry points, much the same way Remy would have done if he were running the show. They’d even blown out two windows, so they could get officers into the rearmost storage areas, where they were sure the drugs were being held. But there hadn’t been any drugs in the place, even though Remy was able to pick up a clear scent telling him the crap had been there no more than an hour ago.
Even more embarrassing than the absence of meth was the obvious fact that the people running the warehouse had known they were coming. Instead of the normal bustling crew of twenty or thirty men that should have been working, there were only a handful of men who claimed to know nothing about the drugs.
On the bright side, Aaron Lee and his lieutenants hadn’t shown up to crow at them. But on the not-so-bright side, Drew and Lorenzo had gotten a call about twenty minutes later, telling them to come downtown to police headquarters and to bring Remy and Brooks with them.
Remy felt bad that Drew and Lorenzo were in hot water, but he was also a little worried about why he and Brooks had been pulled into this mess. They were merely visitors here. No way in hell was he going to let the NOPD brass try and lay this shit sandwich at their feet.
He swiveled around in his chair as the door to the conference room opened. An older man with captain bars on the shoulders of his uniform and a name tag that read Barron walked in, followed by a harried-looking guy in a suit and tie that had to be the ADA. One look at him and Remy could already tell they weren’t going to get along.
Captain Barron walked over and shook each of their hands. “You must be Senior Corporal Brooks and Officer Boudreaux. I’m Corey Barron. Thanks for coming down to talk to us.” He motioned at the lawyer. “This is ADA Russo. He’d like to ask a few questions and see if we can get to the bottom of our current predicament.”
Barron gave Russo a nod, then took a seat at the table beside Brooks. Russo didn’t sit. Instead, he swept a glare over all of them.
“You realize that I’ve gone to Judge Thibodeau twice now for warrants, right? And that in order to get the one signed this morning, I had to go over to his house before sunrise with one of his clerks in tow and wake the man and his wife up?” He scowled at Lorenzo. “Do you know how much I hate waking
up a judge at six o’clock in the morning? Do you?”
When Lorenzo didn’t answer his question, Russo took a deep breath and ran his fingers through his tousled blond hair. “Thibodeau wasn’t real keen on going up against Lee to begin with, so I had to talk him into it. He’s coming up for reelection soon, and Aaron Lee can bury him easily enough if he wants to. But I’d promised him we had a solid source inside the old man’s organization. I can’t imagine the judge puts much stock in my promises now, seeing as we’re oh-for-two on these damn raids. I swear, I don’t know what’s worse, the fact that Judge Thibodeau will probably shoot me the next time I walk into his office, or that I can forget about ever getting another search warrant signed by the man.”
Remy wasn’t generally fond of lawyers, and Russo was working his way steadily higher on his list of disliked people. So it wasn’t really his fault he couldn’t hold his tongue. “Since I’ve been shot a few times before, I think having the judge shoot you would be worse than having to go find another judge to sign your search warrants. But then again, maybe that’s just me.”
He opened his mouth to add that Russo getting shot might not be such a bad thing if the ADA could convince the judge to shoot him in some noncritical part of his anatomy like his ass or his brain, but beside him, Brooks laid a hand on his arm and squeezed until the bones started to creak.
Russo glared at Remy but didn’t say anything, much to Remy’s disappointment. Instead, the lawyer turned his attention to Captain Barron.
“You’d think this day couldn’t get any worse, right? Wrong,” the ADA said. “Want to know what I get to do next?”
No one answered this question either, but Russo didn’t seem to notice. He stood there, jaw clenched, his heart beating so fast Remy thought the lawyer was going to blow a gasket. Shit, this guy needs to take up yoga or something.
“I get to spend some quality time with Mr. Lee himself,” Russo said, his heart thumping even harder. “Yeah, that’s right. He is on his way here right now with his entourage of lawyers. They want to talk to me about why they shouldn’t be suing the department for property damages and harassment. And guess what? The DA has left me to deal with this on my own. You want to know what he told me? You’re the one who wanted to go after the big fish. Guess you better figure out how to reel him in on your own.” The ADA shook his head. “The man is flat out going to offer me up as fish bait if this goes wrong. And right now, it’s going pretty fucking wrong. I mean, shit, guys, did you have to blow out his fucking windows?”
Russo grabbed a chair and quickly sat down, like he’d suddenly run out of gas—or might faint. His face did actually look a little pale. Remy almost felt bad for him. Not that bad, of course, since the guy had almost certainly jumped on this case because he saw some future value to be gained if he could take down a criminal as big as Aaron Lee. Political careers in this city had been started on far less. Now the weather vane was turning the other way and poor ADA Russo realized that maybe he’d made a serious tactical error.
“What the hell happened, Corey?” Russo finally asked, sounding totally defeated as he sat there pressing his fingers to his temples and making circular motions. “You said you had a man on the inside of Lee’s organization. I get why you don’t want to tell me anything about him, but I have to ask—is this informant incompetent or did he just get paid off?”
Captain Barron shook his head. “The leak is not our informant. They’ve been in the old man’s organization for three years now and are in a position to know exactly what Lee is doing. This person is risking their life for us. There has to be someone in the NOPD or the DA’s office who’s selling us out to Lee.”
Russo considered that for a moment, then pinned Remy and Brooks with a calculating look. “How do we know it’s not the SWAT team you brought in from Dallas? It can’t be a coincidence they’ve been on both operations and they’ve both gone bad.” His eyes narrowed at Remy. “In fact, didn’t you used to work in one of the local parish sheriff’s offices a while back? For all we know, you’ve been in Lee’s pockets for years.”
Remy snorted. “Yeah, that’s right. I orchestrated this entire SWAT cross-training exercise that took months to set up so I’d be in town just in time for Drew to send me out on a mission I had no idea I’d be allowed to go on, so I could tell a criminal I was on the way to bust him. Wow, that’s fucking brilliant. Tell me, Russo, how many cases have you won? With an intellect like yours, you must be up to, what? Two or three by now?”
Russo jumped out of his chair to charge at Remy, who was already on his feet and ready to meet the asshat halfway. Brooks and Lorenzo quickly put themselves between Remy and the man. Not that the ADA looked too serious about taking a swing at Remy, now that he’d seen how much taller and bigger Remy was.
“That’s enough,” Captain Barron said sharply. “We’re wasting time here, Russo. It’s extremely unlikely that one of the SWAT officers from Dallas is our leak. They simply didn’t have access to enough information to compromise either operation.”
Russo looked like he wanted to argue, but then finally shook his head in disgust. “I know. But if it’s not them, what the hell are we going to do? How do we find this leak and plug it?”
“I’ve asked the public integrity bureau to look into the situation, but the chances of them finding anything in the near term is unlikely,” Barron said.
The NOPD Public Integrity Bureau—or PIB—was similar to the internal affairs division in Dallas. The fact that Barron was willing to turn this effort over to the cops in the PIB meant he was serious about finding this leak. But like he said, it would take time.
“What’s the plan if the PIB can’t find the leak in the next day or two?” Remy asked.
The captain sighed. “If we can’t plug the leak before our informant sends us another tip, I’m pulling them out.”
Lorenzo swore. “Dammit, Captain. We’ve been after Lee for years. We’ll never get this close again.”
“Don’t you think I know that? I won’t risk our informant, not even for Lee.” Barron got to his feet. “If you want to put Aaron Lee away, then you need to figure out a way to do it fast—without exposing our source.”
Giving them a nod, the captain walked out of the room.
Remy noticed the captain had been careful to never mention the gender of their undercover informant throughout their entire conversation, or whether the person was a cop or not. His promise to pull the informant rather than put them at risk was something Remy could appreciate.
No sooner had Barron walked out than a uniformed officer stuck his head in the open door. “Mr. Russo, those people you’ve been waiting to talk to have arrived. They’re in the interrogation room at the end of the hall. And by the way, the deputy superintendent will also be sitting in on the meeting.”
Russo’s face turned a few shades paler, but he nodded. “Okay. I might as well get this over with.”
As the ADA left the room, Remy wondered if the man was even going to make it through the meeting with Lee and his lawyers. Russo’s heart was pounding like a drum.
“You guys want to listen in and see what Lee and his lawyers have to say?” Lorenzo asked. “It might be interesting.”
Remy doubted that but nodded anyway. “Why not? If nothing else, it’ll be fun to see Russo squirm.”
It turned out that watching Russo get grilled by Aaron Lee and six of his high-priced lawyers wasn’t fun at all. In fact, it was kind of painful to see. From where he stood behind the one-way glass with Brooks, Drew, and Lorenzo, Remy winced as Lee and his lawyers eviscerated the ADA.
Russo tried to trip him up, but the old man was too good. Lee wouldn’t have said anything incriminating even if his lawyers hadn’t been there. The worst part of having a front row seat to the whole thing was watching Lee gloat about the fact that the police hadn’t found anything to arrest him for and never would. He was even threatening to sue the NOP
D and the city of New Orleans for everything he could get. The man was thumbing his nose at the ADA like it was all a game to him.
Beside Remy, Drew let out a snort of disgust. “As long as Lee has someone inside the department, we’re never going to get close to him. Even if the informant is able to get word to us on where Lee is keeping the meth, the son of a bitch will know we’re coming before we get there.”
“Then why do we keep chasing our tails by trying to play whack-a-mole with this guy and his stash of crystal meth?” Remy asked. “Isn’t there a way we can get a step ahead of Lee and hit him someplace he’s not expecting? Where does he run his business from? I mean his legitimate business, not his shell companies.”
Drew shook his head. “He’s got a big old plantation to the west of Kenner, up near the lake. Everyone in this city knows he’s got more incriminating evidence there than we have in our entire NOPD evidence warehouse.”
Remy remembered driving around that part of the shores of Lake Pontchartrain when he was younger. There were some pricey properties up there. “If everyone knows, why can’t we get a warrant for that place?”
It was Lorenzo who answered. “Never going to happen. He’s too well connected with the right people in this city and even more in Kenner. The fact that we’ve gone after him twice and missed both times would make it even harder.”
Remy ground his jaw as he continued to watch Russo flounder in his battle of wits with Lee. They needed to do something completely different, or the next raid would end up the same as their first two. Worse, it might end up with them finding the narcotics squad’s informant dead in a swamp somewhere.
He turned away from the carnage in the interrogation room to look at Lorenzo. “I know my guys and I are outsiders here, but what if I told you I had a plan that had a good chance of taking down Aaron Lee and keeping your informant alive?”
The narcotics detective regarded him thoughtfully. “What kind of plan?”
