Shadows of Deceit (A Series of Shadows)

by Mell Corcoran

  “Hey, Dillon.” Lou got his attention. “Your cell working?” She asked.

  He tossed his jacket over to her while the medic fished out the second bullet. “Inside pocket.”

  “You got Frank’s number in it?” She wondered if they had programmed his phone as they had hers. It would make things much simpler since she probably couldn’t remember her own phone number at the moment.

  “Not yet.” He said with a wince as the last bullet was pulled from his chest. “Abby is on speed dial though. Number one.”

  Lou was actually grateful that was the only number he had. If she asked Abby to keep quiet for a while and play it down, Lou knew that she would do her best to accommodate. Abby understood Max was very touchy when it came to Lou getting hurt and if Dillon was tossed into the mix, Abby would try to buffer things as best as she could. When Lou confirmed the phone was working, she hit the speed dial and waited to hear Abby’s perky voice answer.

  “What’s wrong?” Abby answered, apparently seeing that it was Dillon calling and immediately thinking the worst.

  “It’s me Abby, Lou.” She informed her.

  “OK, what’s really wrong?” Abby’s voice was intense. “Is he alright? Are you alright? What’s going on?”

  “Abby! Please tell me Max and Frank aren’t around you right now?” Lou asked her, knowing damn well if Max heard the worry in Abby’s voice he would demand answers immediately.

  “Of course not!” Abby shouted. “I’m alone at the hotel getting the last of our things packed up. Max and Frank are at an undisclosed location waiting for the guys to get back. Now tell me what the hell is going on?!”

  “OK!” Lou sucked in the pain as the medic began wrapping her torso to support her ribs. “We had a little incident and I need your help.”

  “Lou! You’re hurt! Where are you?” Abby was sounding panicked.

  “I’ll be fine. Our medics are working on me and Dillon now. We are fine.” Lou tried to reassure her.

  “She is not fine!” Dillon shouted so that Abby could hear him.

  “Put him on the phone!” She demanded. “Right now!”

  “Hey! Am I the Principate or not?” Lou grumbled and tossed Dillon a look that could kill.

  “Don’t pull that shit on me Lou, you’re still a newbie.” Abby called her out. “You put Dillon on the phone right now or I’m calling Max.”

  It was straight up blackmail and she knew it but Lou had no choice but to comply. She handed Dillon the phone and pouted while Dillon reassured Abby and explained the situation. The two discussed things for several minutes while the medic continued to work on Lou, working down her body and addressing each injury as needed. The man paused a moment and looked at her with a gentle firmness that got Lou’s undivided attention.

  “Your previous injury is fine.” He told her, clearly knowing that it was causing her pain and worrying her. “It’s not great, mind you, but it’s OK. You over extended those muscles too early in the healing stages so it’s going to hurt a lot like it did a few weeks ago. It’s a set back, surely, but your heart and lung are fine. You just need to follow the same routine you did before, until the tissue heals.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate the honesty.” Lou smiled at him but even that hurt.

  “The bad news is that the pain is going to be worse in a minute, but not in your chest.” He took a step back and placed a hand on her thigh. “You only fractured two ribs but not extensively so those are just going to take time as well. You ready?” He asked but before she could ask him what she should be ready for, the man placed his hand above her knee, extended the lower half of her leg with the other hand then proceeded to yank and twist in one quick and excruciatingly painful motion.

  Lou felt the pain explode up her leg, then the pop came as she cried out. “Shit!”

  The medic cringed. “Sorry, but there is no easy way to go about that. You dislocated your knee and I had to get it back in place.” He gently felt around her knee and put small amounts of pressure to make sure it had reset properly. “Frankly, I have no idea how you were able to walk on it at all. That had to hurt.”

  Lou could barely breathe. The torrid pain swept through her entire body before it finally started to subside. She supported her ribs with her left arm and hauled off and slugged the medic in the shoulder with her right. “Don’t ever do that again!” She yelled at him through gritted teeth. “Warn me first!”

  The slug barely phased the man as he looked down and grinned at her. “Next time, sure.” He chuckled, as did the other medic.

  Dillon passed the phone back to Lou. “Here, she wants to talk to you now.”

  “Yeah?” Lou groaned, trying her very best to stave off the tears that were fighting to get out.

  “Dislocated knee, two fractured ribs, a concussion and you ripped your chest back to square one, am I missing anything?” Abby’s question was dripping with sarcasm.

  “My phone is broken too.” Lou added.

  Abby snorted. “I’ll have a new one waiting for you when you get home. You should be aware that we are vacating the hotel tonight. I’ve had all the guys things brought to the rental house up by you, Max’s stuff is headed to your guest house and I am supervising the last of the tech gear being brought over to your place as well. You’re probably going to run into Max tonight but if you manage to skate without seeing him, he most certainly is going to see you tomorrow and you had best be prepared for him to go ape shit!”

  Lou knew Abby was right. Max and her mother were going to be furious. “I know I’m in trouble Abby. You don’t need to remind me of how much either. Can I just get through one disaster at a time? Please?” The tears started to come whether she liked it or not and she could hear Abby sighing through the phone.

  “Right. A containment team is already on it’s way. Once you’ve gone through the place, call me right away and let me know how bad it is.” Abby paused a moment before she continued. “Dillon said he’ll be fine to drive in about a half an hour so if you think he’s not, call me and I’ll send a car. I’ll be at your place by the time you get home. Max has his hands full tonight so it’s actually highly unlikely you’ll see him before the morning. I was lying before. Your timing on this little fiasco could not have been better with all the guys off the reservation.”

  “What am I supposed to do in the future to avoid this again?” Lou was being sarcastic now and she could hear Abby growl in response.

  “You have every agent on the coast at your disposal, Lou. You call for backup and you don’t go charging headlong into a potentially fatal situation when you do not have to!” Abby sounded exasperated. “Lou, yes, Max is the head honcho, then the guys, then you! You’re not going to get in trouble when you assert yourself as a Principate for the Sanguinostri as far as our law goes. Stop thinking you’re just an officer in a huge department like in the civilian world. You have resources. Use them!”

  The words were crisp, clear and spot on. Abby was right again and Lou knew that too. She wasn’t sure if it was force of habit, insecurity, or swimming in uncharted waters but Lou knew she had to start thinking and acting differently if she was going to be an effective Principate. Why hadn’t she called Callahan when they were leaving the office? He wasn’t just a fed from Homeland Security, he was a Sanguinostri agent, and to them, that was supposed to come first. So why wasn’t it for Lou?

  “Yes ma’am.” Was all she could say.

  “Lou, I’ll see you later. Stay safe until then, will you?” Abby softened her tone considerably, sensing Lou had gotten the point.

  “Will do.” Lou ended the call and stuffed the phone back in Dillon’s jacket pocket then noticed Callahan was heading their way. She wiped her face on Dillon’s jacket before she threw it back to him. He was finished being bandaged and was putting his shirt back on just as Lou’s medic handed hers back so she could cover up as well.

  “Let me get you something to help you walk.” He told her then jogged over to the ambulance.

  “Oh
for pity’s sake.” Lou grumbled then tried to scoot off the pallets but the moment she put weight on her injured leg she nearly collapsed to the ground. Dillon and Callahan both scrambled to catch her before she fell. “Whoops. OK, so that was a bad idea.”

  Dillon blew out a breath. “How the hell are we going to explain this? I’m not even going to think about your mom and Max, that’s a foregone conclusion. What the hell are we going to tell Vinny?”

  “Crap.” Lou looked at Dillon with wide eyes. “I never even thought about him.”

  “Before we start plotting a cover story, you two really need to see this.” Callahan interjected.

  Lou’s medic returned with something she had never see before. She was expecting a standard crutch but what he had in his hand was far less obtrusive and lean looking. “What is that?” She asked him.

  “It’s an ergonomic crutch. Let me make sure I have it adjusted for you correctly.” Dillon steadied Lou while the medic placed the crutch under her arm and checked the placement of the handle. It was a single piece of metal with an arm saddle at the top and a handle a little less then midway down. It looked like a long, bent walking stick. “Now see if you can stand up on your own with it.”

  “This is pretty cool.” Lou was pleasantly surprised that she wasn’t going to be stuck with the standard and extremely obvious normal crutch. “If you could rig this with a concealed gun inside, I’d be totally sold.” They all laughed. Lou was able to stand and walk on her own with the assistance of the crutch though it still hurt a great deal. She figured with a little practice she would be able to easily play it down. “Thanks a lot, for everything.” Lou thanked her caretaker.

  “It’s my honor.” The man smiled at her and Lou finally noticed the name embroidered on his shirt.

  “Pierce?” She asked him. “Like Hawkeye Pierce from the show? How appropriate is that.”

  The man grinned. “Not too many people pick up on that. Actually, I was named after the character. My dad was a huge fan.”

  “No kidding?” Lou grinned back. “Very fitting. Your dad should be proud.”

  “I’ll get some pain medication for you before we leave.” Pierce gathered up his gear. “Don’t try to argue either. You will thank me in a few hours.”

  “I thank you now.” Lou gave the man one more smile then hobbled towards Callahan. “OK, so what kind of mess do we have here besides the one I made?”

  “Follow me.” Callahan said as then led them into the warehouse.

  The portable lighting made a huge difference. Lou’s vision wasn’t perfect but she took in the scene now that everything was out in the light. The open space of the warehouse had numerous crates and what looked like oil drums lined up, stacked and piled all over the place. There was stenciled writing on all of them but some were in English while others were in different languages. One stack appeared to be in Russian Cyrillic while another was in Arabic. Crates from all over the world it seemed.

  “What the hell is in all of these?” She asked as they made their way to the back.

  “We’ve started by opening one crate from each region.” Callahan informed them as they approached one of the opened crates. “See for yourself.”

  Lou hobbled towards the crate with Dillon right behind her and an agent lifted the cover away so Lou could see the contents unobstructed. Inside the heavy wooden crate was some straw packing but that only cushioned the interior for the smaller crate within. The internal casing appeared to be made of aluminum or some other metal sheeting. The agent lifted off the lid that was previously bolted in place and she could see steam or mist billow from within. Once the second lid was completely removed, Lou could see what appeared to be wine bottles carefully cradled in some kind of ice packing, which explained the fog. Lou reached in and grabbed one of the bottles to take a good look. This was not wine at all. It was blood. Blood bottled in the same fashion as wine, complete with fancy label, date and type.

  “Seriously?” Lou was horrified. She staggered back and looked at the Cyrillic stenciling on the outside of the crate. “Are you telling me someone is importing Russian blood?”

  “That is what we are finding.” Callahan confirmed. “Twenty five bottles each layer, ten layers deep which means if every one of these crates is packed the same, there are two-hundred and fifty bottles in each crate.”

  “At the minimum black market price of a hundred dollars a bottle.” Dillon added.

  “A hundred bucks a bottle? Are you kidding me?” Lou gaped at him.

  “Sadly, no. That is a cheap estimate too.” Callahan responded. “Black market blood is a big problem. Much like the weird endangered species market is in foodie circles. People pay big money for exotic things and there is a nefarious element among us that drinks this stuff up, literally.”

  “I must be missing something.” Lou shook her head. “I thought turned Sanguinostri sustained on blood that was given willingly. The gifting thing, right? Isn’t it like a sacred and holy thing?”

  “Yes. By law and tradition, yes.” Callahan frowned. “But there are some bad apples in every bunch. Some who think blood varies greatly when obtained by different methods. Take this batch from Russia for instance.” Callahan took the bottle from Lou’s hand. “Here, on the back of the label. Since I speak and read Russian I’ll read it for you.”

  Lou frowned. “I appreciate that.”

  “This bottle is called Siberian Summer Cuvee and on the back it basically gives a romanticized description of the source and how the blood was harvested.” Callahan was having trouble reading the words aloud. “It literally says: A delicate maiden flower chilled for months in the Siberian summer. Her nectar flowed thick like honey. The unique manner in which this elixir was harvested is clearly felt on the palate as it is warmed on one’s tongue.”

  Lou wasn’t quite sure what to say. “Are you freaking kidding me?” She knew she needed to expand her vocabulary but it was all too shocking.

  Callahan set the bottle back into the crate. “I wish I were.”

  “So some poor girls were strapped down, frozen, while some sick bastard drained them of two-hundred and fifty bottles of their blood like a human slurpee machine?” She could barely comprehend the depravity. “Do we know where in Russia this came from or who the hell is selling it? Where is this going?”

  “Those are all things we need to figure out but there is more you need to see.” Callahan motioned for them to follow him again.

  He led them around to the far side of the warehouse and through the sliding door of a storage hold. As they approached, Lou could smell coffee and her heart began to race. When she hobbled around the door, Lou saw the back of the large storage area was piled to the rafters with jute sacks of coffee just like the ones Dillon had said Arcano packed their coffee beans in. Lou knew this was where those cargo containers of coffee ended up when she got a good look at the sheer volume of sacks packed tight against the walls and up to the ceiling.

  “Look here.” Callahan said and walked over to a cluster of bags they had pulled out. A few of them were opened and spilling beans on the floor. “See what we found inside?”

  Dillon and Lou approached the sacks and saw that buried within the beans was what appeared to be cellophane wrapped brown bricks, the size of loaves of bread. There appeared to be five of them in each sack.

  “Is that heroin?” Lou looked at Callahan with excitement.

  “That is exactly what it is.” He nodded. “Each brick appears to be four kilos so that’s twenty kilos in each sack.”

  “Forty kilos of coffee, twenty of heroin.” Dillon muttered. “If that’s pure, we are talking around four million dollars a sack, street value.”

  “Holy shit!” Lou was starting to freak out. “There is no way in hell we can cover this up! This is like the largest drug seizure in freaking history! I worked narcotics! I know! How do we cover up the blood? What the hell are we going to do?”

  “Lou, I hate to break this to you but...” Callahan was chuckling. “Thi
s is your call. You are the Principate.”

  “Oh for crap’s sake!” Lou hobbled out of the storage room cursing under her breath. “My first freaking week out and you think I could get a simple fang flasher? No! I get a multibillion dollar blood and heroin smuggling ring! Nice! Real nice!” She leaned up against one of the crates and waved her new crutch around as she continued to rant. “We need to get all this blood out of here regardless of what we do. Do we have some sort of storage facility for crap like this? Where we can stash it and figure out where all of it came from and where it was supposed to go later?”

  Callahan smiled. “We do.” Now she was thinking like a Principate.

  “Then do it.” Lou went to scratch her head but winced, forgetting her multiple injuries. “Shit! Ow. OK...” She tried to hoist herself up onto a crate but only succeeded in dropping her crutch. “Dammit.” Dillon raced and grabbed it for her then carefully picked her up and sat her down on the crate. “Thanks.” She grumbled. “Alright, is that the only room we have to deal with or is there more?”

  “That’s the only one.” Callahan grimaced. “Which means we have no idea where the contents of the other Arcano containers went. The reason we were late getting to you was because we were at the original address you gave me, down the road. Those are the eight containers you were looking for but they are all empty now. That camera trained on them is offline too. There is nothing in either of those warehouses and it doesn’t look like there has been for a few years.”