by Jo Robertson
Slater met them once they'd crossed over the barrier. He walked ahead of them down towards the lake. "Park ranger found them when he was making his late rounds," he said without preamble, gesturing with a nod of his head. "Down by the sand."
At the edge of the lake the scene had been cordoned off and the coroner hovered over a blanket, examining the bodies. Slater stooped to recover two glassine packets from the blanket. Each was partially filled with a white, powdery substance.
"What do you think?" asked Rafe. "Is it the high-grade stuff?"
"I'd bet money on it," Slater answered, examining the packets before he placed them in an evidence bag. "Take a look at the bodies. Looks like overdoses."
"That's right, Sheriff Slater," Dr. McKenzie, a small, precise man, interjected. "My guess is very high quality heroin because most of the drug wasn't ingested and appears to remain in the packets. Only high grade would cause overdose with that small amount."
He shook his gray head. "Autopsy will confirm, but see the blue lips and tinged skin?" He pointed to the blonde's mouth. "And the limb contortion indicates convulsion. If they'd gotten the Narcan, they might've made it, but ... " His voice trailed off sadly. "The cause of death undoubtedly will be respiratory failure."
Waylon Harris, Slater's deputy sheriff, pulled a wallet from the dead man's pocket and handed it to Slater who read aloud off the driver's license. "Jeremy Brown, DOB 6-15-90, credit cards, about ... " He counted the money. " ... two hundred in cash."
Another deputy, holding a woman's handbag, hurried from the Lexus. "You'll want to see this, Sheriff." He pulled out a ladies billfold from the purse and handed it over.
Slater opened it without a word and then groaned. "Holy crap hitting the fan."
"What?" Isabella asked.
"Joan Anne Welch." Slater sighed as if the weight of the world had just descended on him.
Rafe looked from her to Slater and back again. "So?"
"She's State Senator John Welch's little girl," she answered, her face pinched with worry. "Damn, Barrington's going to be all over this."
"Patch," Slater called over to the coroner, "can you get that autopsy report to me ASAP?"
"I always do, Sheriff," the coroner muttered with a grim smile. "I like the mommies and daddies to know right away what happened to their babies."
McKenzie was a dapper man whose voice had the stilted formality of a college professor. Slater enjoyed calling him "Patch," and the doctor enjoyed pretending he disliked the nickname.
"Jesus Christ," Rafe muttered. "They're bringing in this shit fast and in volume." He looked at Slater again. "Seven a.m., your office?"
"Yeah, it'll be that long for the autopsy even with a rush. The medics are taking the other girl to the hospital, but when she's stable we can interview her." He looked down at the dead girl. "I'll do the notification myself. Bella, you'd better contact Charlie."
Even though Bella was technically Slater's superior, she didn't mind taking orders from him. She'd never trusted anyone more, even her own brothers. He was smart, cool-headed, and would step in front of a bus for her. And she knew he hated the family notifications.
"I'll go with you," she offered.
Slater nodded once. "We have to know where they got the heroin," he said to Rafe. "What can your sources tell you? Maybe we should move on it tonight."
Rafe shook his head. "We'd better get a couple hours of sleep. It'll take that long for my contacts to find the dealer, and it's going to be one long day." He knew he wouldn't sleep tonight, not by a long shot.
Isabella's face was pale and drawn. He bet she wouldn't sleep either. They'd both be remembering what had happened on her sofa, what would've happened if they hadn't been interrupted by a gruesome death. Neither would find sleep for a very long time.
An hour later he parked the car in front of the motel unit he occupied. He hadn't spoken to Isabella when they left the lake, but he'd raised his hand in a farewell gesture as she drove away.
Christ, he thought, as he climbed the stairs to his room, he was tired of eating fast-food and living out of his suitcase.
Chapter Twenty-two
The call came in on Rafe's cell phone shortly after he'd finally evaded thoughts of Isabella and just drifted off into a dreamless sleep. "This had better be important," he muttered, rousing himself.
"Hashemi?"
"Yeah." He didn't recognize the voice and few people contacted him on this line. "Who's this and how the hell did you get this number?"
"Banadoora." Arabic for tomato. That would be McNally, the red-faced Homeland Security agent who crawled up Rafe's ass so far he wanted to fart the bastard out like a giant turd. Rafe waited for the password question.
"Ma ismak?" What is your name? McNally loved the cloak and dagger pretense.
"Khiyar," Rafe responded, using the Arabic word for cucumber, a little Homeland Security cornball humor. The DHS boys thought that was hilarious because they said Rafe was always as cool as a cucumber. "What do you want, McNally?"
The agent rattled off the name and address of the contact. Homeland Security was already on this. That meant only one thing – they'd made the connections between the new drug routes and distributions to terrorist activities.
"The China White profits are being funneled right back into Thailand," McNally continued, "and then into an organization called Mohandis in the Golden Crescent."
That meant Afghanistan and Al Qaeda.
"Winters wants you to run a parallel investigation with the county D.A.'s office. Don't make waves, just get along with that woman ADA until we have the background intel we need. Then we'll assume jurisdiction over the investigation."
So it's begun, Rafe thought, snapping the cell phone shut. From their overseas intelligence, they'd expected this, but hearing the reality of it was like taking an icy bath. Torres would be royally pissed when the takeover happened, and he felt bad about that, but it couldn't be helped; he had no choice. National security trumped local charges, no matter how ugly the bad guys were.
#
The raid on the drug house lasted less than fifteen minutes.
Slater accompanied Rafe and four federal agents. The sun had barely begun to peek in the eastern sky, a hazy purplish-pink that indicated a high pollution day. Most people on the quiet, residential street were still asleep before beginning their workday.
Slater positioned himself at the rear, a motion Rafe appreciated, so that his team of agents could take the lead, approaching the front and back entries of the house with weapons drawn. His federal warrant didn't require an announcement, and Rafe had no intention of alerting possibly armed drug dealers of their imminent arrest.
With a nod to the agent opposite him, Rafe indicated the man should kick in the door. Then Rafe went in first, low and to the right. Complete, eerie silence filled the interior. No dogs, unusual for a drug house.
They crept in stealthily, clearing each room as they went. The three agents who'd taken the back found the animals, two Doberman pinchers and a giant black lab. Gunshot wounds. In a small rear bedroom, they found the home's occupant, a small, dark man, possibly Latino, though it was hard to tell because his face and the upper half of his body were saturated with blood.
Rafe crouched down by the body. "Knife?" he asked Slater.
"My best guess. Any body parts missing?"
"Torres told you, huh?"
"About your informant? Yeah. Sorry, man."
"Well, it looks like this scumbag has all his parts," Rafe answered, thinking of how Lupe had suffered while this piece of shit got a quick death.
Slater knelt beside him. "Looks like a swift, single slice to the carotid. That's why all the blood." He looked around the dirty carpet. "And the arterial spray blood spatter."
"Get the crime techs in here," Rafe shouted at the agent standing by the door. "See if you can find any trace of the drugs." He jammed his fist into his pocket. "How the hell did they get to him so soon?"
Slater stood, pulled on la
tex gloves, and walked around the bedroom, searching but not touching anything. "How good is your intelligence, Hashemi? Are you sure this is the drug dealer?"
"I'm sure," Rafe said shortly. "The guy would be alive otherwise."
Slater stepped close to Rafe and spoke low in his ear. "Looks like you've got a serious leak somewhere, Hashemi."
"Not necessarily." He waved a hand over the dead body. "Mr. Drug Dealer here could've told someone higher up."
Slater shrugged noncommittally and meandered around the room, poking here and there, curious like any good detective.
Rafe punched a number into his cell phone. When the person on the other end of the line answered, he asked the question. "What's the name?" A few minutes later he snapped the phone shut. He looked over at Slater, who was lifting up an edge of the mattress and bending to look underneath.
"His name's Enrique Salazar. Ties to the Norteños."
Slater looked up. "Which means Diego Vargas."
Rafe nodded, suddenly tired of the confining room, needing fresh air. He could hear the coroner and crime scene techs arrive. They'd be hours and he and Slater had better things to do than hang around. He knew the sheriff was right about an inside job, and it was what Max Jensen had suggested. But he'd thought it was a C.I., possibly Lupe or another informant. This looked like a serious breach in security at a much higher level.
Christ, this looked like one of their own had betrayed them.
#
Bella had been with the girl ten minutes when Slater and Rafe entered the hospital room. The girl's dark eyes widened to the size of saucers when she saw the two men, one dressed in a dark suit, the other a uniform, both wearing sunglasses, and looking like bad-ass criminal types.
"It's okay, Shelby," Bella said. "These men are here to help. They need to hear your answers to the questions I'm asking."
"I don't know anything," the girl protested.
Rafe crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed, taking the girl's hand in both his own. "Sometimes you know something and don't even realize it," he said gently. "Don't worry, we'll help you remember."
Shelby nodded dumbly.
The tenderness with which he approached the girl surprised Bella, and she looked at Slater who made a who-knew facial expression. She cleared her throat. "Let's start again, okay? Can you remember what time you left the bar – the Shady Shack Bar, right?"
Shelby had already told her she'd gone to the trendy bar with Joan Welch and hooked up with a guy whose name she couldn't remember. Probably didn't ever know.
"It was kind of early, I think, because ... well ... " She paused and looked soulfully at Rafe who still retained her hand.
"It's okay, Shelby. We're not so old that we don't remember going to a bar and getting hammered." Rafe's smile was almost bashful, a peer confessing a secret. Damn, he was good, Bella thought. Where did all this charm come from?
"We were pretty wasted," the girl admitted. "That's why we left early, because we didn't want to get carded." She realized what she'd implied and quickly amended. "I'm sure Joanie was sober enough to drive. She wouldn't screw around with her dad's Lexus." Huge, fat tears welled in the girl's eyes, but didn't spill down her blotched cheeks.
"Do you remember any stops between the bar and the lake?" Bella asked.
Shelby frowned, her shapely dark brows knitting as she concentrated. At last she shook her head. "I'm sorry. I think I crawled in the back and passed out because I don't remember anything after leaving the Shady Shack. And I can barely remember that."
"That's okay, don't worry." Rafe patted her hand and ruffled her hair as if she were a child. "If you think of anything else, give me a call." He removed a card from his jacket pocket and put it in her hands. "Take care of yourself, Shelby."
When the three of them stepped outside the door, Bella protested. "That's it? No more questions? She might know something about the drugs."
"Nope." Rafe shook his head. "She's scared shitless, but she doesn't know anything else. Probably never woke up until the EMTs got to her."
"But we won't know unless we ask her more questions." Bella hurried to keep up with Rafe's long-legged strides.
"Besides," Slater said as they walked toward the hospital elevator doors, "we found the dealer."
Irritated, she snapped, "Why didn't you say so?"
Rafe's face was blank as he stared at her. "I thought that was obvious. I didn't want to upset the girl."
Bella felt her face flush at the implication that she cared less than he did about what Shelby had been through. She punched hard at the elevator button. When it arrived, they stepped inside without a word.
She pushed down her temper. "How did you find the dealer so soon?"
"My contacts," Rafe answered, "are really good." He paused and then dropped the bomb. "But the dealer's dead."
"Oh my God! How?"
"Looks like a professional hit. Much like Lupe." The mention of his confidential informant brought a distant look to Rafe's eyes and Bella knew he still suffered from guilt over Lupe's death. "Without the torture."
"The house was ransacked," Slater added, "probably making sure the drugs were gone. The techs will look for traces of the heroin."
"If they find anything, we can match that up with the quality found with the two victims," Rafe said.
"Three," Bella corrected with determination. "It'll be the same and it'll trace back to Vargas."
"You're probably right," Rafe said. "The drug dealer, Enrique Salazar, had ties to the Norteños."
When they reached the underground parking area, Bella watched as Rafe and Slater jumped into their vehicles and headed back to the precinct. Even though mountains of paperwork were piled up on her desk, she wasn't going to return to the D.A.'s office.
First she needed to do something. She knew Hashemi wouldn't go for any kind of plea bargaining. And Barrington was a spineless jerk who wouldn't stand up to the feds no matter what. Bella was going to have to reach out to Santos first, feel him out about making a deal, even though every fiber in her body screamed against it. ñ
She shivered, but not from the cold. Thinking of approaching Santos was like contemplating walking into the jaws of a ferocious beast.
#
Santos pulled the Cadillac CTS up to the gate of Vargas' house and entered the code to open the barriers. He stood on the wide porch landing and rapped on the door. Usually Magdalena answered the door. He always liked seeing El Vaquero's wife, gauging by her demeanor if Vargas was in a bad or good mood. Determining how much Vargas had hurt her by grief or joy in her dark, expressive eyes.
Today the door swung open and Santos dropped his eyes from where he expected to see Magdalena to the slender form of her daughter Corazon. The child's large dark eyes, so like her mother's, looked very serious and a little fearful. Too serious and too fearful for such a little girl.
"Hóla, little one, where is your madre today?"
Cory shook her head silently as Santos peered around her into the spacious foyer.
"Is she sleeping?"
Cory looked down at her feet, digging the toe of one shoe into the cement. "She's gone."
"Gone? Some shopping?" Santos laughed and gently caressed the girl's head. "Ay, mothers are always going shopping."
She shook her head and glanced over her right shoulder as if she expected someone to reach out and grab her. "Not shopping," she whispered.
Santos crouched down so that his massive size seemed smaller and his eyes did not look down on her from his enormous height. "How long has your mama been gone, pequena bebé?"
Large tears welled up in the girl's eyes but she did not allow them to drop. "Since Sunday." She swiped at her nose. "I miss her."
So long? Santos knew that something was very wrong. Magdalena would not be gone so many days from her child if she could help it.
Chapter Twenty-three
In Torres' office on the second floor, the three of them speculated about the death of the drug dealer. Isab
ella relaxed behind the desk, her feet propped up on one edge, her shoes off. Pretty red-painted toenails peeked from the hem of her slacks. She'd removed her jacket and slung it across the back of the chair, and the firm outline of her breasts showed beneath the sheer white blouse when she locked her fingers behind her head.
"Why murder the drug dealer, someone so low in the organization?" she mused aloud.
Rafe slouched against a wide bookcase filled with law books and case law journals to the right of the desk. He found it easier on his imagination to think of Isabella by her last name and he figured it bugged her a little. "Someone was worried we're getting too close, Torres, that we'd squeeze information out of him."
"Or it could be retaliation for the botched buy," Slater suggested. The sheriff lounged in a comfortable arm chair that he occupied with annoying familiarity.
Torres bit her lower lip. "But he wasn't killed in the same manner as Lupe."
"Close enough," Slater answered. Rafe had already filled the sheriff in on the details of the hit on his C.I.
"The message they're sending this time is for us, not the other dealers in Vargas' network." Rafe added. "This murder was a cover-up, not retaliation. The dealer's death was efficient, smooth, and quick, and not nearly violent enough. Someone didn't want us getting to him."
"Bloody, though," Slater argued.
Torres' phone rang and she reached for it before Slater could comment further. "Torres." A moment later she grimaced and shook her head in disgust. "What can I do for you this morning, Mr. District Attorney?"
She made a finger-down-her-throat barfing motion, and Slater patted her shoulder, mouthing to Rafe, "Charles Barrington."
Rafe speculated again about the care-free relationship between Slater and Torres. He couldn't figure out if they were an item or had been an item. Maybe they just had a brother-sister relationship, but whatever it was, he felt a surge of jealousy at their easy-going friendship.
