by Emery Hayes
But the same blood type gave Nicole hope of a connection. It made sense that Adelai would have looked for more out on the lake every night. Especially if that something more was her brother. And if there was a relation there, then it was only a small step to identifying what Adelai had that the BP wanted so badly that they’d chased her into the night.
“Next up,” Arthur continued, “the money.” He turned and walked them to a computer terminal. “One hundred thousand.” Found in the satchel recovered near Baker’s body. “It’s locked up, of course, but we have a plethora of fingerprints off the bills—all hundreds, by the way. One set of the prints are of interest.” He turned and faced Nicole and Lars. “Care to place your bets?”
“I know a losing hand when I see one,” Lars said.
“Green or Monte,” Nicole said.
“Neither,” Arthur said. “The money was meticulously counted, with the thumb and index finger appearing on nearly every bill.” He pressed a button on the keyboard, and the screen saver faded and was replaced by a photo and identifying information. “Agent Melody Baker, BP.”
“Could be that was her cut,” Lars posed.
“The satchel belonged to Baker. She purchased it at the outlet mall in Pleasant Falls two months ago.” He turned and regarded them both. “Jane is looking at bank statements, yes? What does she have to say about the money?”
“I’ll find out as soon as we’re done here,” Nicole said.
Arthur nodded. “Then let’s move along.” They followed him and stopped at a small glass case. “The pin Officer Watts found. It’s bronze and belonged to Monte. I did a little investigation there and discovered there were a total of six agents decorated with the pins. Helped that Isle of Royale and the year were inscribed on the back.”
He handed Nicole a computer-generated list. Green’s name was at the top, circled with a highlighter. The other names she didn’t recognize. She passed the list to Lars.
“They served together at Royale,” she said. “I didn’t know that, but I should have. Early on Green said he’s known Monte for sixteen years, but neither has been in Blue Mesa that long.”
“And now for the finale,” Arthur said. “The boot tread Molly pulled out of the windowsill. It came from Agent Baker’s boot.”
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“She was at the scene of the GSW. Did we recover her side arm?”
“Yes, but it’s still in ballistics.” He grimaced. “Untouched, I’m afraid. Ballistics don’t decompose, and we have a lot of evidence that does.”
“I want to know if she fired the shot that killed James Franks.”
“You’ll know by morning,” Arthur promised.
“What time did Adelai say she ran from the house?” Lars asked.
“Two AM,” Nicole said. And it fit. Agent Baker could have been one of the five agents chasing Adelai. She’d had time to make it back to the lake, encounter trouble, and die within the time frame given by the ME, but just barely.
22
The AG was waiting for her when she returned to the station. He was sitting in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs in reception with his feet up on the coffee table, cooling his heels. He was holding a used paper cupcake wrapper, pleating it over and over, and wasn’t quick to unfold his body and stand.
The man was bored to the point of frustration.
“Sheriff Cobain?” he asked. His hair was cut close, with some kind of design buzzed above his ear. “Yep, I recognize you from your picture.” He nodded as he considered her, then gazed toward the rows of photographs on the wall of all the sheriffs of Toole County, Montana, who had ever been. “That’s a little dated. I like the one on the department website better.”
His words were packed with powder, and she wondered if he was the type to explode or implode.
She followed his gaze. The picture on the wall wasn’t more than three years old, and Nicole doubted she’d changed much since it had been taken. She didn’t rise to the bait.
“Sorry you’ve been waiting so long,” she said.
“People both love me and hate me,” he returned, and stood. He was a solid six feet tall, with long arms and legs. “They have a schizophrenic approach to my arrival, a wish-you-weren’t-here/glad-to-see-me kind of reception. But they do, usually, receive me.”
Yeah, he was pissed. Nicole glanced at her watch.
“Two hours forty-seven minutes,” he said. “That’s how long I’ve been waiting. Save you on the math.”
“I’ve been working while you were”—she hesitated but said it anyway, knowing it would nudge him a little closer to the edge—“sitting.”
“On my ass.” He gave her that. “I think you left that part out.”
“Perhaps you don’t realize that we’re a very small department. I don’t do a whole lot of meet and greet. I wear several different hats around here.”
“I wouldn’t have been sitting on my ass if you’d met me on arrival. I would have been working alongside you.” He straightened his tie and rocked forward on his toes, which, she noticed, were shod in expensive leather. “That’s my job.”
Nicole had to choke that down. He was right, of course. And the description of his reception was equally on target—she wanted his help but didn’t want him. And it was impossible to separate the two. She was as territorial as the best of them and schooled herself on reining that in.
“You’re plugging a hole in an investigation that’s wallowing in deep waters,” he continued, summing up her current circumstances.
“Don’t flatter me,” she returned, falling back on humor to ease the situation. “But you’re only half right. As happy as I am to see you, I can’t wait for you to leave. True. But the slight wasn’t a complete deliberation. I haven’t had a moment to slow down.” And that was the closest she would get to an apology.
“I can talk while I walk and chew gum at the same time.”
She expelled a breath and didn’t care if he realized she was running short on patience. “How long are you going to be upset about this?”
“Men don’t get upset. We get pissed.”
She smiled, because the AG was too tight to be anything more masculine than peeved, but kept that thought to herself.
“Well, let’s try not to let that get in the way of good work.” She headed for the back offices. The desk sergeant hit the buzzer that released the door, and Nicole pushed through it. She looked over her shoulder. “What’s your name, anyway?”
His nose flared. “Devon Gates, special agent.”
This time, Nicole managed to keep a straight face even while she was rolling film through her head—Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery. She hoped Devon Gates was at least a tad more competent. And that was a sobering thought.
“Are you coming, Agent Gates?”
She held the door for him, then led him through an arrangement of desks and past dispatch to her office.
“Have a seat,” she offered as she walked around her desk and took one herself. He was still standing. “Or not.” She sat back and regarded him. “Is this where we rock-paper-scissors for who goes first?”
“This isn’t a game, Sheriff.”
“No, it’s not, so stop acting like you weren’t chosen for sides and start cooperating.”
That about blew his whistle, but Nicole stopped any outburst—unfair or not—by raising her hand. “I’ll go first. This is what we know.” She told him about the call from Monte in the middle of the night, about the dead and the missing, about the evidence at BP that was lost or stolen—but the AG already knew all about that, and in far greater detail than she did.
“Over thirty million dollars in missing fentanyl,” he said. “A drop in the bucket in terms of supply, but someone’s making a pretty penny off of it.”
“And someone else got off easy.”
Gates nodded. “That’s right. Cases were thrown out and drug dealers walked right back into life as usual.”
�
�A small price to pay,” Nicole said.
“Right? Next up, cash. Best count places it at three million dollars. And that’s not from sales; that’s confiscated cash in the wind.”
Nicole’s eyebrows lifted. “We recovered a hundred thousand of it.”
He waved that off. “Chump change,” he said. “You know what’s more precious than drugs or money to these people?”
That was easy. It came down to their inalienable rights. To the human condition. To the greatest common denominator. “Life and liberty?” she said.
“You got it. Blue Mesa BP made the arrest of the century. Marius Bernard. And he disappeared. We don’t think he was in custody more than forty-eight hours.”
She remembered hearing about the arrest right before Christmas. She’d had her hands full then, with the murder of a fourteen-year-old girl and with her son’s life in peril. Still, if she had heard he’d disappeared, she’d have remembered. She questioned Gates about it.
“We’re not advertising,” he said. “We’ve tried to keep it hush-hush, and the Canadian authorities are cooperating.”
“Canadian?”
“Bernard is a citizen of Quebec and a major drug dealer. He doesn’t play nice and keeps his circle small, but we think he’s involved in our little problem.” Gates paused and considered his next words. “We think BP is pipelining the drugs, the money, the men up over the border.”
“We do too.”
“What kind of evidence do you have?”
“Witness testimony.” She told him about Adelai and her surveillance of the lake.
“We have better than that,” he said. “We have a man on the inside and enough physical evidence to turn that place inside out.”
“Then why aren’t you?”
“We were waiting on the big payout. One that stretched over the border and involved multiagency cooperation, including the support of Canada’s Mounted Police.”
“And when is that happening?”
“That was two nights ago,” he said, and waited for that to settle in. “Yeah. That same night.”
“You didn’t get your man,” she said. All hell broke loose instead.
“If we had, I wouldn’t be sitting here and you wouldn’t be knee-deep in carcass and cat shit.”
“How long have you been investigating BP North?”
“From afar, a few years. But once Bernard disappeared, I swooped in.”
“You’ve been here since December?”
“Christmas Eve,” he confirmed.
“I haven’t seen you.” Nor had his office given any kind of courtesy call to let them know he was in town.
“That’s the special part of special agent,” he said. “We’re supposed to be unseen.”
“You didn’t help much,” she said, giving him no quarter. “What happened to Monte?”
Gates shook his head, disgusted. “Things started falling apart early. Monte’s partner didn’t show, but he put out anyway. His lights were spotted, or the sound of his engines, and they turned on him—men from his own department. That’s the best we can do figuring out what happened to Agent Monte.”
“Where were your agents?” Monte’s backup. The net that would catch him when he plummeted.
“We had a seven-man team in the field. It should have been enough.”
“Where?” she pressed. “We’ve been over every square inch of the lake and its surrounds, and there has been no sign of your guys.”
“Hail of gunfire,” Gates said. “An ambush from the inside—maybe Baker, we’re not sure. Two of our men were hit. Another tangled with their men on the ground. It was short and not so sweet. We took a beating. Meanwhile, there was movement on the lake, and that drew our attention. One boat, possibly loaded with fifty pounds of fentanyl—that’s a street value of thirty million dollars—was headed north. We knew from diligent surveillance that they would put in at one of three docks and move the drugs on the backs of refugees, up and over the border.”
“Thanks for the heads-up,” Nicole said. A multiagency effort, involving the AG and almost certainly the DEA and possibly the feds too, and no one had thought to clue in the locals.
“BP is infected, and we didn’t know how far it spread.”
Nicole felt a wave of heated anger sweep through her. “There has never been even the smallest indication of corruption within my department.”
“No,” he agreed, “and so we hoped, if needed, we could fall back and rely on your help.”
Enlightenment dawned on her. “That’s what you’re doing now.” The only reason the man was in her office, spilling his guts. “Did you draw the short stick, Special Agent Devon Gates? Or did the DEA and the FBI and all the other acronyms simply bully you into crawling into my office, tail between your legs and hands open?”
“Oooh, you get mad like a man,” he said, sitting back in his chair and folding his hands over his midsection.
“And that’s supposed to make me warm up to you?”
“No, not at all, but this kind of mad I can deal with. You’re not throwing things and you’re not crying, and in the end, you’ll have to work with us anyway—that’s your job, and you’re even lower on the chain of command than I am.”
That was bitter going down, and Nicole nearly choked on it.
“If it makes you feel any better, we were pretty impressed with your performance. You’re a good cop and you do what’s right.”
“You’ve been watching from the beginning.”
“We were out on the water when you approached the BP skiff,” he admitted.
“I felt you.”
“We thought so. Your defensive movements, blocking for your men when they were on the ice, coming around when the skiff went under.” He nodded. “Risking your own life to pull them in. We knew then we could trust you, but we had to know you’d do us good.”
“You waited until we had something you wanted,” she charged. “I’m no fool, Gates.”
“No, you’re not. And you have a few things we’d like to get our hands on. But there are more important pieces still missing, and we’d like your help with those too.”
“The fentanyl and Monte.”
“The fentanyl,” he corrected. “The shipment never made it to the border. It’s out there, somewhere, in that vast wilderness. We figure you know the region as well as BP. We’re hoping better. We counted three refugees and four BP agents on board when the shipment made land at the northern rim of the lake.”
“And Monte wasn’t one of them?”
“Monte’s clean,” he said. “He’s a good agent probably laying low.”
“Or dead.”
Gates didn’t even think about that. “We believe he’s alive and off the board.”
“And why do you believe that?”
“When the smoke cleared, he was gone. We looked,” he assured her. “That and Isle of Royale.”
Monte was good and he was courageous. He was the kind of agent who found a way.
“What happened to Baker?”
“She was ours to begin with. With BP cooperation at the highest level, we moved her to Blue Mesa after the first evidence went missing.”
“She and Monte became close.”
“He was suspicious. He kept notes and poked into a few things, and Baker noticed.”
“And brought him on board?”
“We believe that.”
Two against the world. No wonder they became lovers.
“We recovered her body this morning, but of course you know that.”
He nodded. “She was aboard the boat with the fentanyl.”
They’d lost Monte and Baker. And the drugs. “So far, the AG doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in me,” she said.
“We’re hoping to rebound.”
“Baker died from drowning.”
“Yes, that seems to be the MO,” Gates said.
“Whose?”
“We’re working on that.”
“Surely you have some suspects,” Nicole
pushed.
Gates nodded. “Green and a handful of his agents. And maybe Baker.”
“You think she double-crossed you?”
“We’re entertaining it as a possibility.”
“Based on what?”
“Erratic behavior—big pieces became bread crumbs and the time between communications came to a trickle.”
“But you don’t suspect Monte?”
“Not at all. He doesn’t fit the psychological profile. You know, that single act of heroism followed by a life of integrity. Guys like that fall, but less than one percent of the time, and more often than not take themselves out of the game.”
Suicide and sometimes murder-suicide. She knew the predictability and the numbers.
“You profiled Monte?”
“The FBI did.”
And that was as good as gold as far as Nicole was concerned. Profiling at the federal level stood on years of training and experience. The wait list for outside agencies sending in personnel for training was years long.
“Who do you think has the fentanyl?” Thirty million dollars’ worth.
“Green. He’s our number-one pick. Possibly Franks.”
“Luke Franks?” Nicole asked.
Gates nodded. “What do you know about him?”
But it was her turn to ask questions. “What do you know about Adelai Amari?”
He hesitated, debating what to say and what to keep squirreled away in a dark corner. The problem with that was that sometimes squirrels went rabid and bit you in the ass. She pointed that out.
“Full disclosure,” Nicole said. “I won’t walk into anything blindfolded, and neither will my men.”
He nodded. “There’s a shaded connection there,” he admitted.
“Because she’s involved with Luke Franks’ brother.”
“Yes. Maybe more important, there’s a connection between the girl and the vic your people cut out of the ice.”
“What do you know about the ice man?”
“His last name is Amari,” he revealed, and that raised Nicole’s eyebrows.
“You know that for sure?”
“Faris Amari didn’t end up in Blue Mesa by accident. He followed his sister here.”