Dark River Rising

by Roger Johns

  “Has the pallet been moved?” he asked, pointing at the apparatus that had been Ronald Overman’s last carnival ride.

  “No. They were scheduled to take it away this morning, but after you and I spoke last night I told them to leave it until you had a chance to see it.”

  Wallace walked him through the scene, showing him where they had found the monitor, the knapsack full of powder, and the likely means of entry and exit the killer might have used. Mason wandered around the rest of the warehouse, looking into the other rooms and the main storage area that took up most of the building. Broken furniture and tattered, oil-stained cardboard boxes filled with bundles of paper were scattered around the floor. Sunlight poured in through large wire-glass windows high up near the ceiling. After a few minutes they made their way back into the office where the body had been found.

  “Hold my feet,” he said, as he lay down on his back on the pallet, assuming the position Overman would have been in.

  Wallace moved to the raised end and took hold of his ankles. It felt like a strangely intimate act with a man she had spent less than half an hour with—a man with excellent taste in shoes.

  Mason craned his head around. “Overman’s field of vision would have been approximately the upper half of the wall my feet are pointing toward, the ceiling, everything to his left and right, and, to the extent he could tilt his head backward, the wall behind me.”

  “So?” Wallace asked.

  Mason’s head was tilted so far back his shoulders were elevated and the top of his Head was pressing against the pallet. His gaze was locked on the wall-mounted grill covering the air duct in the hallway across from the door to the office. “So … his last word—ingrate—might have been two words—in grate.”

  “You bastard,” she laughed, letting go of Mason’s ankles. He slid off the pallet and watched as she used a car key to carefully lift the grate from its mount. Behind it was the up leg of an air shaft just wide and deep enough for someone to stand in. A set of blurred shoe impressions was visible in the puddle of dust at the bottom of the shaft. She pulled her phone from her pocket. “This is Detective Wallace Hartman. Have one of the crime-scene units call me ASAP.”

  11:00 A.M.

  “Are you always so clever?” Wallace asked, around a mouthful of breakfast burrito.

  “Couldn’t be a federal agent, otherwise,” Mason deadpanned.

  Wallace smirked. “So, what exactly makes this case so important that you needed to come all the way to Baton Rouge to look around and talk to me and my people?”

  “About a week ago, one of my analysts developed something that puts a really dark spin on things.”

  “Like what?”

  “It may be nothing, but it could be meaningful,” he said, biting into his sandwich.

  “Like what?” she asked again.

  “Statistical stuff, which means it could be just an aberration in the numbers or an artifact of the methods we used, but … on the other hand—

  “Like what, for Christ’s sake?”

  “Sorry—like a turf war, a full-scale turf war, here in south Louisiana—just like the ones that’re ruining northern Mexico.”

  Wallace’s eyes got big as Mason walked her through the worrisome data and its implications.

  “I thought the basic territories were settled,” Wallace said. “Skirmishes every now and then, sure, it’s a violent business, but a war? Here? That seems so … excessive.”

  “Agreed. But the territories are only as valuable as the money the cartels can squeeze out of them. Every location has a maximum profit potential, which always declines over time, so they look for new markets to improve their take.”

  “Would that be enough to draw a big shot like Echeverría up here?” Wallace asked.

  “This part of Louisiana has been profitable for him. He paid for it with a lot of other people’s blood and he’ll fight for it again if he has to.”

  “So you see Overman as the first high-profile casualty?”

  “Could be. Could be we’re completely wrong about everything I just told you, and we just don’t have enough information, enough data, to suggest the right way to think about it.” He shrugged and turned his palms up in a who-knows gesture.

  Was this guy for real? she wondered. Never in her many encounters with federal law enforcement had she ever come across one who didn’t act as if he knew everything, much less one who was willing to admit he might be wrong. “Would you like another sandwich? Your first two didn’t last very long.”

  “No, thank you. But this is really good. I think I’ll stop here again on my way back to DC.”

  “How long do you plan to be here?”

  “Until we can figure out who slipped Overman the snake. And I need to get a read on which cartel this new supply is coming from. Any luck putting together something with your narcotics officers?”

  “All set for today … at one,” she said, furrowing her brow.

  “You seem unsure,” Mason said.

  “Not about the meeting. It’s this whole business. I obviously don’t have your expertise on these kinds of things, but it seems so unlikely that the actual head of a cartel would take such a huge risk and come here himself,” Wallace said.

  “You’re right, of course. And I don’t mean to imply that I’m looking just for him. It’s the snake—his signature method—that bothers me. If it’s a genuine signal that he or someone important in his organization was here, that says there’s worry at the top. That tends to validate the war theory.”

  “Does your office maintain a list of those people—his inner circle?”

  “We do. Other agencies do, as well. I checked them all. None of his known lieutenants entered the U.S. using commercial transport. But we shouldn’t rule out Echeverría, himself, just based on some low probability.”

  “For a professional statistician, you seem awfully skeptical of statistics,” she said.

  “People with blind faith in the numbers are called politicians, not statisticians.”

  Humble, agreeable, and a quick wit. How had this guy slipped past Uncle Sam’s guardians of the infinite grimness? And why was she keeping score?

  “Besides, if the information Echeverría needed was something he wanted to keep close to his vest, something he was afraid spies inside his organization might reveal to his rivals, he might have done the deed himself,” Mason said. “Just to limit who was in the know.”

  “Were you able to dig up anything on Arthur Staples?”

  “Yes and no. No, because I ran into the same brick wall you did. But, yes, in the sense that I’ve seen this wall before, when the government is trying to shield its lethal operatives.”

  “Is it possible to get past this wall?” she asked.

  “Not unless you know someone really important in the intelligence community.”

  “You’re my most important someone,” she said, utterly dismayed at her choice of words.

  “Then you’re out of luck, unless this case becomes a matter of national security.”

  “I’ll interpret this veil around his past to mean that whatever he did for Uncle Sam, somewhere along the line he picked up the skills necessary to do what was done to Overman.”

  “Him and several thousand other former spooks out there with the same skill set.”

  “That’s scary,” Wallace said.

  “Or comforting, depending on where you presume their loyalties lie.”

  “I’m not presuming anything. But if Arthur Staples is capable of doing what was done to Overman, then it’s possible that he did it … either for his own motives—”

  “—or on behalf of Echeverría. I thought of that after we hung up.”

  “Then surely you looked at his passport records, to see if he’s been out of the country. Maybe you talked to your friendly neighborhood NSA agent, to get a look at phone, email, credit cards?”

  “I’m trying, but it’s not just push a button and there it is. Applications have to be filed. Passport rec
ords come from the State Department, and they’re slow and suspicious of every request. And you can forget about help from the NSA,” he said, solemnly. “What?” he asked, when he saw her smirking. “Yeah, okay. I get it, I get it. The NSA bit was a joke.”

  SIX

  12:30 P.M.

  After dropping Mason at his hotel, Wallace returned to the Homicide Division. Mike Harrison was nowhere to be seen. And maybe that wasn’t so bad. While she needed him to be around, she didn’t like being around him. But in spite of his absence, he had done what she asked and tracked down the source of the bags. He had left a write-up on the desk. They were osmosis bags, used in laboratories to equalize ion concentrations in adjacent fluid compartments—whatever that was. The name and web address of the manufacturer was at the end of his notes.

  Wallace got the telephone number from the company website and called the sales department. After a bit of wrangling she convinced the person on the other end to tell her whether they had shipped any of the bags to customers in Louisiana. They had. To two customers—a researcher at the Tulane medical school in New Orleans and a scientist at the Tunica Research Laboratory, a federal facility in Bayou Sara, a small community northwest of Baton Rouge. She was about to call the Tulane med school when Mason came strolling into the bullpen.

  “Detective Hartman,” he said. “Long time no see.”

  “You’re early. Did you have trouble finding a place to park?” She had known he would be showing up, but it wasn’t until he walked in that she realized she had been feeling a sense of anticipation.

  “It’s such a nice day and the hotel is so close, I decided to walk over. We still on for one?”

  “We are. But since you’re here so early, you can earn your keep. Feel like throwing your weight around?”

  “What have you got?”

  Wallace showed him the information Mike had left and what she had learned so far.

  “This seems almost too easy,” Mason said. “I suppose you want me to wrestle with the federal lab.”

  “If you insist.” She handed him the information she had on the lab.

  “You ever heard of this place?” He set his shoulder bag on the floor next to her desk and pulled out a tablet.

  “Nope. It’s in the Felicianas, a fairly remote part of the state. A bit … feral, but historically interesting. Briefly British, then Spanish, and for about five minutes in the early 1800s it was part of the Republic of West Florida. Some people there still fly the old flag, the Bonnie Blue.”

  “You seem to know the area pretty well.”

  “Just the grammar school history,” she said. “Nothing about the day-to-day.”

  “Well, let me see what I can dig up on this lab,” he said, heading for an empty cubicle across the room.

  Wallace called the med school and, after getting bounced around a few times, finally spoke to someone in the research group that had ordered the bags. The person on the other end assured Wallace that all of the bags had been used for their intended purpose, and that they would not be ordering more.

  While she waited for Mason to finish his part, she scrolled through her phone calendar. A “Call Lex Today” reminder stared up at her. Her thumb was poised above Lex’s number, but at the last second she moved the reminder out one more day—again.

  “I just got my office to send me a description of this Tunica place,” Mason said, as he returned to Wallace’s desk. He showed her his tablet. “They’re trying to genetically engineer groundcover plants that will pull chemical pollutants out of contaminated soil and turn them into harmless organic molecules.”

  “Are any of the bags missing from their inventory?” Wallace asked.

  “To find that out, they’ll have to go lab to lab and do an inventory, which will take time. Which means somebody will call me back … someday. I say we just go out there and look for ourselves.”

  Something about his offhand way of suggesting the trip as a joint effort was appealing to Wallace. He seemed untroubled by the territorial jealousies that plagued so many in this business. He was definitely not cut from the same stiff cardboard as the typical Washington lawman. “Can we get in?”

  “Of course we can.” He flashed her a smug smile. “This afternoon, as a matter of fact. I had meetings set up with investigators from the state police, but I’m pushing those until this evening.”

  * * *

  As one o’clock approached, Wallace did a quick tour of the floor, looking for Mike Harrison. No one had seen him and he wasn’t answering Wallace’s calls or texts.

  After that, she and Mason looked through the evidence reports that had come back on the Overman scene. Presumably Overman had been armed, but no weapon was found. All of the blood at the scene belonged to Overman. And, except for the bags of powder, which were confirmed to be cocaine, the only other testable material had come from the air shaft a few hours ago.

  The report from the canvassing officers was also uninformative. No vehicle registered in the name of Ronald Overman was found near the scene, nor were there any abandoned vehicles in the area that could be connected to him. The officers had done a door-to-door in the residential neighborhood near the warehouse but, in many cases, no one had been at home. And none of the residents who had been home had anything useful to offer. Addresses for the people they spoke to were included with the report.

  “Looks like there’s still a lot of ground to go over,” Mason said, reacting to the skimpy results of the canvass.

  “I’ve got a new partner,” Wallace said. “You’ll meet him in a few minutes. I’ll put him on it.” If he ever shows up, she thought. She called Mike’s cell again, but it went straight to voicemail. She left yet another message reminding him about the one o’clock meeting, then she and Mason walked to the conference room.

  The officers lounging around the room looked more like bikers and gang members than police officers and they presented a strange contrast to the clean, sleek, board-room–style furniture. Some sat at the table, others milled about. Wallace half expected Mike to be in the room already, schmoozing with some of his buddies from the earlier part of his career, but he wasn’t there.

  David Bosso, the narcotics officer Wallace encountered at the warehouse, opened things with a rundown on Ronald Overman and their unsuccessful attempts to dismantle his operation.

  Overman had been under surveillance for years, but he was a clever operator who brought a true entrepreneurial spirit to his work. Starting as a street dealer, he had become a minor distributor and from there he had methodically taken over the territories of less gifted and less far-sighted players.

  After that Overman had launched a business development campaign that would have merited a write-up in the Harvard Business Review had he applied it to a legitimate trade. He had aimed his efforts directly at the beating heart of the communities around him—youth softball and soccer coaches, scout masters, and even lay leaders in the churches—and he had been incredibly careful. No prosecutor had come close to getting a drug-related indictment against him, much less a conviction. It had been easier to jail some of the state’s highest-ranking politicians.

  Bosso was of the opinion that just before Overman was killed, his organization had been in the midst of an evolution—a change that exposed a brief vulnerability—and that someone unafraid to use harsh methods had seen it as a chance to strike.

  “What made you think a change was coming?” Wallace asked, taking a swig from a bottle of water.

  “Couple a things,” Bosso said. He leaned back in his chair and put his booted feet up on the table. “First, he’d go off the radar for longer and more frequent periods. It’s like we’d be watching him while he’s tooling around with his people, then suddenly he ain’t with ’em. His guys and his vehicles are there but he’s gone. Plus, his organization occasionally leaks a little information. There was a fear on the inside that he was taking some … unnecessary risks.”

  “What do you think it all means?” Mason asked. He pulled the cap off
his pen, ready to take notes.

  “Sometimes when guys like this start doing stuff like that, it means they’re trying to hide something from their own people. They don’t want anybody to be able to see what their move is gonna be before they make it.”

  “Was this his first time to go to that warehouse?” Mason asked.

  Bosso shrugged. “We don’t know.”

  Beverly Drysdale, another of the officers, spoke up. Beverly was a master of disguise. At the moment, she looked homeless. Tomorrow she might look like a prostitute or a banker. “Look, Overman was a very cautious man. For him to go any real time or distance without his most trusted muscle around, it would have to be worth a lot of money—money he wouldn’t necessarily want the people upstream in his supply channel to know he was pulling in.”

  “He was two-timing his suppliers?” Mason asked.

  “He mighta been,” Bosso said, gnawing the cuticles of his left hand. “He mighta been getting tutored for his GED exam or playing doctor with the mayor’s wife. We just don’t know.” He eyed his cuticles with disapproval, then resumed chewing.

  “Do you currently have anyone who was close enough to him who might have information they’d be willing to pass our way?” Wallace leaned forward in her chair, resting her elbows on her knees, looking at the floor. Bosso’s hands were filthy and his toothy manicure was grossing her out.

  “Not at the moment,” Beverly said. “Our last useful source seems to be no longer employed with the Overman organization.”

  “Is he still among the living?” Mason asked.

  “It’s a she, and we don’t know that either,” Bosso said. “What about your side of the fence?” he asked, commencing operation cuticle-chew on the fingers of his other hand. “You got any federally funded tattletales inside Overman’s crew?”

  “If there were, I wouldn’t need to be here, punching a hole in your day.”

  “Mr. Cunningham, Wallace told us you have some specific questions you wanted to ask,” Beverly said. “This would be the time.”