by Roger Johns
“He told me that. An overdose.”
“Cynthia was smart and charming, and as a young girl she had Arthur wrapped tight around her little finger—a place he considered more exalted than the right hand of God. There’s something so magical and so beautiful about some fathers and daughters.” A wistful smile lit up Wanda’s face. “Were you close to your father when you were a girl?”
“I’d like to think I still am.”
“Then you know how that can be.” Wanda stopped to collect herself. “But adolescence was difficult for Cynthia. It triggered things in her that neither Arthur nor I were prepared to deal with. She was changing faster than we could keep up with and she became hard to handle and impossible to understand.”
Wanda’s eyes glistened and she stared off to one side, fighting for control.
“Mrs. Staples, are you sure you want to do this?”
“I am. This is what you came for. Just give me a moment.”
After several seconds of silence, Wanda began to speak again.
“This sort of thing … losing a child … it’s a shattering experience. It ruined our marriage. When Cynthia started to run wild Arthur blamed himself.…”
“And you?” Wallace asked, filling in the blank Wanda left hanging.
“And me. But mostly himself. He adored her and she adored him. When she seemed to lose her devotion to their relationship, Arthur assumed it was because her idol had fallen. He was devastated. He was sure he’d failed her.”
As the story unspooled Wanda grew smaller, tucked deeper and deeper into a corner of the couch. The breaks in her narrative grew longer and she stopped looking at Wallace altogether.
“At some point, after Cynthia was gone, he started his disappearing act at night.”
“And you really have no idea what he’s doing?” Wallace asked.
“He’s rescuing people. Or so he thinks. He drives around searching for kids who look out of place. Sometimes he even goes in where the kids get high, where they’re screwing the meth man for their next hit, places like the one Cynthia died in. And he physically hauls them out and takes them to shelters, hospitals, churches, any place that’ll have them.”
“This is a very dangerous thing he’s doing. Surely he realizes it’s suicidal.”
“And surely you realize he’s just trying to get someone else to pull the trigger,” Wanda said plainly, finally looking Wallace in the eye again.
Wallace hadn’t seen that coming, but the man’s odd behavior at the warehouse suddenly made some kind of sense—the needless cultivation of suspicion, his hand darting into his pocket raising the fear he was going for a weapon. Wallace had seen her share of self-destructive people and she knew they sometimes tried to enlist others in their grim enterprise. Enough of them had managed to put themselves in the path of enough official gunfire to make police-assisted suicide a depressingly common term. She didn’t know if that was Arthur’s goal at the warehouse, but she knew from her own experience that grief and self-blame caused people to do irrational, unpredictable things.
She was also personally familiar with the strange logic of the penitent’s mind and it didn’t make sense that Arthur would jeopardize his kamikaze rescue missions—his chance at redemption—by putting himself behind bars on a murder rap, or getting himself killed. Arthur Staples was starting to look less like a suspect and more like a sadly mixed-up man.
“Don’t judge him,” Wanda whispered.
“I don’t,” Wallace murmured, rising to go. “Here’s my card, if he thinks of anything.”
As she drove away from the Staples house, Wallace wondered whether Arthur might not be doing more good with his crazy crusade than she was as a cop. He certainly seemed to be going about his business with the zeal of a true believer—something she had not felt in a long time.
MONDAY AFTERNOON
Mason Cunningham was the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Intelligence at the DEA. He had begun his DEA career as a special agent at the El Paso Intelligence Center, working the front lines of the war on drugs, so he had a badge and a gun. But the only time he drew his weapon, anymore, was on the occasional trip to the firing range. These days he rarely left his office.
Some years earlier, his regular interactions with the intelligence analysts at the Center had exposed him to the power of using mathematical tools to uncover the hidden engines of cause and effect that powered the drug underworld. To his surprise, he had become fascinated with how things like unemployment rates, wage levels, and climate change could be used to predict the magnitude and pathways of illicit drug flows. He became so enchanted with numbers that he had gone on to earn a doctorate in statistics, then made the jump to full-time analyst. After that, he had climbed the ladder in the Intelligence Division and now he occupied a nice office at the national headquarters in Washington, where he specialized in strategic intelligence.
Most of his time was spent overseeing the construction and operation of gigantic databases from the rivers of data generated by information gathering and drug enforcement activities across the country. He and his analysts devised algorithms that sifted the data, hunting for the sinister currents that flowed through the drug trafficking economy, with an eye toward policy planning and resource deployment. The patterns in the data were the important things. Individual events were just threads in the tapestry and rarely of any particular significance—until yesterday.
Yesterday, a very powerful system the agency operated—the National Drug Pointer Index—had kicked out a cross-match on a case in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. A cross-match meant that a person of high interest to the DEA also appeared to be the subject of a local investigation.
Cross-matches were hardly rare, but this one was unusual because it implicated a cartel-level player—the kind of person who would almost never fall under the scrutiny of local law enforcement. It was also unusual because the cross-match hadn’t been generated by the person’s name. It was based on his distinctive modus operandi. Mason hoped it was just a grisly coincidence, a copycat. If not, then Fernando Echeverría, a Mexican physician who had retired from the practice of medicine to pursue a new career as a cocaine kingpin, had left his calling card—a two-foot emerald tree boa—in the belly of one of his big-time distributors.
If Echeverría or one of his associates had entered the United States and done this thing, then an irritating little riddle that had been rattling around in Mason’s head now had an answer.
The riddle had surfaced months earlier, when the data from south Louisiana started to look odd. It was nothing huge, but it was a change in the pattern, and the economics of it were all wrong. The number of cocaine dealers getting arrested had suddenly gone up. With more dealers off the street, the supply should have gone down and prices should have risen. But prices had fallen, instead. Mason took the problem to Don Brindl, his most talented analyst. Ten weeks later, Don walked into the analyst meeting and dropped a bomb.
“I might have found something,” Don droned, paging through his notes.
Regardless of what he was about to say, every one of Don’s presentations started the same way, with the same low-key delivery and the same unreadable face. In terms of mannerisms, Mason credited Don with the makings of an excellent poker player, which, in fact, he was. The occasional Friday night games among the analysts were usually object lessons on the futility of gambling—for everyone except Don. Tales of the man’s casino exploits were legendary.
“Only might have?” Mason asked.
“I hesitate to be too emphatic,” Don said. “But here’s the bottom line. More dealer arrests should have reduced supplies and increased prices. And that would have happened if all these arrests had actually driven down the number of dealers. But it didn’t. More dealers are getting popped because there are more dealers on the street—a lot more, even after all these arrests. And it’s happening in new parts of town where the dealers haven’t learned how to handle the cops.”
“That would mean the street supply is going u
p, not down like we thought,” Mason said. “Where is it coming from?”
“Practically speaking, there are only two places it could be coming from. Either the cartel that supplies the area is sending more or…”
“Or a rival cartel is moving into south Louisiana,” someone finished.
The room went dead quiet.
“No way,” a voice boomed from the back of the room. “A cartel war, in the States? Never gonna happen. The cartel in control is just moving more of its inventory into Louisiana.”
“Exactly,” another analyst agreed. “The energy business is big down there, and drilling is up. More people will have more money to spend on everything, including recreational drugs, so the incumbent cartel is just catering to rising demand.”
Don faced the analysts with the same place-your-bets expression he had used to bluff so many of them into losing their money on so many occasions.
“Do you have any evidence that a new cartel is moving in?” Mason asked.
“The surrounding states are all controlled by rival cartels and street prices in those states have gone up. That means the supply in those states went down—went somewhere else. And the most efficient somewhere else would be someplace nearby—like Louisiana.”
The room erupted into a buzz of geek-speak as Don’s conclusions were debated.
“If a new cartel is moving in, then why aren’t we seeing a spike in drug-related violence?” Mason asked over the rising din.
“I assume they’re going in low and slow,” Don said. “Until their position is strong enough to withstand any pushback from the entrenched players.”
Mason knew a sneaky approach wouldn’t last. Cocaine was a street-corner by street-corner business. Eventually, things would speed up and south Louisiana would become a flashpoint.
At one time, the Mexican cartels had more or less respected each other’s territories but over time, as competition increased, turf wars had become just another cost of doing business. Until now, though, the fighting had stayed south of the Rio Grande where the traffickers still had law enforcement outmanned and outgunned. If the cartels were now willing to fight each other on United States soil, south Louisiana would not be the only theater of war.
“If you’re right, this will mean serious changes in our tactics,” Mason said. “It’ll affect agencies outside of DEA and if we don’t move fast enough, it’ll get bloody before we can react. But we can’t go around shouting that the sky is falling until your work’s been independently verified.”
On Friday, four days after Don’s presentation, a second analyst had verified his work. Two days after that, Ronald Overman stumbled onto the front lines of what looked like the start of a cartel turf war and got caught lying down on the job. Then, late last night, the cross-match between the Overman case and Echeverría’s snake trick had popped up. At that point, Mason decided there was a better than even chance the sky actually was falling. Now, he had to do something he hadn’t done in a long time—saddle up and ride into town for an up-close, personal look at the situation.
The stakes were too high to rely just on data analysis. Statistics and cross-matches could tell you a lot, but some things had to be slogged out the old-fashioned way. Like who had actually put the snake inside Ronald Overman? Were the dealers who were getting busted by the boatload selling Echeverría’s wares or were they the advance team for a new crew? Had anyone actually seen Echeverría or any of his top lieutenants in Louisiana?
If Mason just went with the numbers and said war was coming when it wasn’t, he would end up wasting a ton of money and looking like a fool, with egg on his face. But if he read the numbers to mean the status quo was safe and sound, and the DEA got caught flat-footed while wholesale cartel violence ignited on United States’ territory, he would look like a bigger fool, with blood on his hands.
FOUR
TUESDAY MORNING
“Hartman.”
Wallace looked up from her desk. It was her boss, Chief of Detectives Jason Burley, cruising through the bullpen.
“My place,” he said over his shoulder, as he strode into the hallway.
Wallace followed him into his office—a glass-walled affair that was utterly free of the usual sediment that builds up after a lifetime with the same employer. Despite being born decades before the dawn of the personal computer age, Burley had embraced the paperless office like it was a long-lost child. What little space he had was given over to old comfortable furniture and mementos from his and his husband’s travels. Burley had been handsome once, but the stress of the job had stolen his looks.
“Close the door.” He stood in the far corner of his office and used his right index finger to spin the smudged, school-room globe that sat on the scuffed credenza behind his desk.
“Sit.” He pointed to a side chair as Wallace pushed the door shut.
“It makes me nervous whenever you spin that thing,” she said, staying on her feet.
“Why’s that?”
“Because you only do it when you’re about to fling something into the fan.”
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said.
“That just means you’ve already flung it. This is about my new partner, isn’t it?”
“Think of this as a promotion—to senior partner,” he said in the unctuous tone that always marked the boundary between the calm and the storm.
“Oh, Jesus. Just tell me who it is.”
“Michael Harrison.”
“Medicated Mike?” She slouched against the wall and lifted her eyes toward the ceiling.
“Don’t you call him that,” Burley said, heatedly, motioning for her to keep her voice down.
“What should I call him? He never met a prescription pill he didn’t like—a lot.”
“He’s been through rehab. He’s been in front of the disciplinary board. He’s done everything he’s supposed to do, before he goes back on duty. And he’s passed the test for detective,” Burley said, ticking off each item on his fingers.
“That doesn’t mean he has to be my cross to bear.”
“You’re an open pair.”
“I happen to know there are two other open pairs—one longer than me. And, unlike me, neither has a chance of the gone partner coming back.”
Burley gave her a steady five seconds of the don’t-kid-yourself look that parents gave children who, six months after the dog disappeared, still believed it was coming home. “Those two open pairs are about to be joined in holy acrimony,” he said. “That leaves you and Mike Harrison. Unless you’d rather go with one of those open pairs. In which case I’ll put Mike with the other one.”
It wasn’t a serious offer and Wallace dismissed it, instantly. Both of the unpartnered opens were trouble. LeAnne Hawkins was a serial temporary because her personality was so exasperating she could make the Buddha lose his cool. The other was a grievance artist who had been retired on active duty longer than Wallace had been an officer. Putting them together was obviously Burley’s clever way of attempting to drive at least one of them off the force, and make Medicated Mike look attractive by comparison.
“There’s no reason I can’t go solo for a while longer,” Wallace insisted. “I’m doing fine on my own.”
“Not an option.”
“Why not?”
“If you repeat what I’m about to tell you, I’ll find a way to ruin you. Understood?”
She stiffened, sensing she was about to be handed an opportunity, wrapped in a turd, inside of a bomb. Her mentor, when she had become a detective, had taught her to be alert to the good fortune that being asked to do a favor represented. He had also counseled her not to mistake good fortune for a free lunch.
“Mike Harrison has a … sponsor … if you will.”
“It just hit the fan,” she said, slumping into Burley’s side chair.
“Wallace, think for a minute. If I put Mike Harrison with either of the two fuck-ups I’m about to force on each other, there will be trouble in paradise before sundo
wn. And Mike’s guardian angel is in a position to make our upcoming budget review feel more like a cavity search.”
“So I’m babysitting the third fuck-up?” She threw her hands in the air.
Burley flashed her a smile that came nowhere close to involving his eyes.
“Mike’s obviously got the goods on somebody in City-Parish government and that somebody is squeezing you to keep Mike employed when he should probably be indicted, instead,” she said.
“Everybody’s entitled to a second chance,” Burley said. “Mike Harrison included.”
Typically, Wallace had enormous respect and affection for anyone who overcame difficulties that had been thrust upon them, but it was common knowledge that Mike’s drug problem sprang from troubles he had manufactured for himself. Saddled with a family and colleagues that didn’t share his undying devotion to himself, he had turned to amphetamines and painkillers—friends that reliably made him feel good and asked nothing in return.
“This is just temporary, right?” She tucked her dark brown hair behind her ears and stared at the floor, shaking her head.
“Provisionally temporary.”
“Where do you learn to talk like that?” Wallace asked, half groaning, half laughing. She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. She admired Burley’s gamesmanship. He hadn’t been chief of detectives for as long as he had, and successfully avoided every attempt to promote him, by being a dimwit. But she was getting tired of being moved around on somebody else’s chessboard. Especially when there were landmines under the surrounding squares.
“Look at me,” Burley said, suddenly serious. “This is a delicate thing. It’s got to be handled by somebody who’s got their head screwed on straight and tight.”
Wallace stared at him, waiting for the punch line.
“And, you’re the closest I’ve got.”
Sensing that Burley might feel a bit of gratitude for helping him square away a problem, Wallace decided to see if she could wring something for herself out of the situation.