A brief lift of one edge of the bin resulted in a lot of coughing and cursing, and Cole was glad his stomach was empty. It at least spared him the humiliation of treating everyone to one more gross indignity.
After clapping the lid back on the bin and securing it with a cord from the boat, the sheriff’s forensics team decided the whole bin and its contents should go back to their lab intact, where Cole suspected they’d foist its unpacking on some junior colleagues.
An hour later they arrived back at the workhouse, where Cole was surprised to find the sheriff and Jena’s lieutenant waiting inside. Nothing appeared to have been touched.
Ah, right. They wanted the forensics team here. Cole opened the big commercial fridge and freezer in back and showed them the bags containing the hide, skull, and feet of the gator on one shelf and, on another, the meat.
“How were you so damned sure that meat wouldn’t kill you?” the sheriff asked.
Cole shrugged. “I found a treble hook in the gator’s stomach, so I figured that’s what killed him and I had found him not long after he died. I didn’t think anything about that plastic bag in his stomach until I saw a picture in the paper the day after that kid shot himself. As soon as I realized what it might be, I called J—Agent Sinclair.”
Sheriff Brown crossed his arms. “You realize we’re cutting you some slack out of respect for your past history.”
If Cole hadn’t been sure before, he was now. “Yes, sir, I do.”
“But you’re still gonna take a ride with one of my deputies. We’re taking you to Houma, and we’re gonna ask you questions. Then we’re gonna ask you more questions. If you’re smart and you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ll go willingly. Up to this point you are not under arrest and you are not being charged with anything. Yet. You got that?”
Roscoe Brown got close enough in Cole’s personal space that he had to bite his tongue to keep from stepping backward. He wouldn’t be bullied. His time for running was done.
“Yes, sir.”
“You are not off the hook even if we do believe your story about finding that gator. At the very least you can be charged with hindering an investigation. You cost us days that might have helped us figure out these crazy gators and our traffickers might be somehow connected. Do you understand? Days! You got that too?”
Cole didn’t drop his gaze from that of the big man in front of him. “I understand.”
“Get out of here, then. Meizel!”
“Yes, sir?” A dark-haired deputy stepped in from the back, where he’d been overseeing the unloading of Cole’s cooler.
“Take our hippie friend to the justice center for questioning.”
Cole realized he’d be dead meat if he smiled, but being called a hippie was pretty funny. He’d never given much thought to how his appearance would strike someone like the sheriff—in other words, someone who looked and dressed a lot like Cole had looked himself once upon a time, only older and way more tightly wound.
Sheriff Brown’s voice had grown a few decibels louder with every word, so he and the deputy were back in the yard before Cole realized the man didn’t seem to think he was one of the traffickers. He gave a silent sigh of relief. So far, they believed him.
“Meizel, what’s going on?” Jena stood on the back stoop of the house, looking pale and beautiful but for the dark circles under her eyes. “Is Mr. Ryan under arrest?”
“Evening, Agent Sinclair.” Meizel smiled at her, and Cole got the impression they were, if not friends, at least not enemies. “We’re just taking Mr. Ryan in for questioning. If he isn’t charged he’ll be released later tonight or early tomorrow. Depends on how long it takes the sheriff to cool off.”
“I see.” Jena looked past them toward the workhouse. What was she up to? “I need to talk to the sheriff and my lieutenant about something, but will drive up to Houma afterward. For whatever it’s worth, Mr. Ryan is my friend and I believe him.”
“Duly noted.” Meizel had been holding on to Cole’s arm just above the elbow, but his grip loosened, or at least Cole thought so. The deputy still pulled him toward one of the jumble of squad cars. “C’mon, Ryan. Let’s spend some quality time at the Terrebonne Parish Detention Center.”
CHAPTER 23
Jena steeled her nerves and walked into the workhouse, interrupting a chaotic scene of movement and multiple voices. “Excuse me?”
Everything stopped, and Sheriff Brown turned a beady glare in her direction. Now there was a guy who intimidated her. “Agent Sinclair. Why is it that when something untoward happens involving both of our agencies, you seem to be involved?”
Lieutenant Doucet saved her from having to come up with an answer. “Don’t forget, Roscoe. If not for Agents Sinclair and Griffin being smart enough to take that gator in for testing instead of having it put down, we wouldn’t know a damned thing about a possible link between the gators and the drugs. What is it, Sinclair?”
“My partner, Mac Griffin, and I got a couple of pieces of new information today and put together a theory,” she said, hoping her voice didn’t sound as shaky from the outside as it did from the inside. She was glad the DEA agent hadn’t been brought in or hadn’t thought it was worth his time. “Admittedly, it’s pretty far-fetched, but not when you consider we’re talking about the possibility of using alligators as drug runners.”
The sheriff crossed his arms and tried to stare a hole through her. She thought it was working since the simple act of breathing had become difficult.
“Let’s hear it,” Warren said. “Griffin’s off duty, so you get to do all the talking.”
Awesome. “Well, this morning we got the final results of the tests on that gator we took to Baton Rouge, the one that was caught here the same day Mr. Ryan found his gator,” she said. “It had a partially opened bag of Black Diamond in its stomach—a big bag with a pound of the stuff, minus a very small amount that had leaked from the bag into its system. Its front right foot had been marked in the same place with a tracking transmitter like the one Mr. Ryan found.”
Warren frowned at her. “One could be an accident; two, not so much. Still doesn’t make sense.”
“You heard of anything else odd around here? Anybody besides Mr. Ryan who doesn’t belong?” The sheriff had stopped glaring and started to look interested.
Jena leaned against one of the worktables, her arms crossed. “When Agent Griffin and I took Mr. Ryan’s statement, which we recorded”—she handed the sheriff a flash drive—“he said the same afternoon Doris Benoit called that alligator in, he saw a guy in a boat out toward the juncture of that same inlet off Bayou Pointe-aux-Chenes.”
The sheriff handed the flash drive off to a deputy, who put it in an evidence bag and left the workhouse. “What did Mr. Ryan remember about this guy in a boat?”
“Just that he was standing up and looking toward their houses with binoculars. Mr. Ryan thought he was probably a bird-watcher. He was medium height, wore a jacket with a hood—a light color. White or tan. The boat was a white skiff of some kind, a small one that has the captain’s seat in the middle. Maybe twelve or fourteen feet.”
“Well, that narrows it down to about a million men and boats in the parish,” the sheriff said. “Did he notice any kind of markings on the boat?”
Jena shook her head. She wished, for Cole’s sake, he’d seen something that could lead to an arrest of someone else. Then again, being too observant might make him look guilty. “He said when his neighbor began chasing that gator with a table leg, he started watching her instead. Next time he looked toward the bayou, the guy was gone.”
Warren leaned on the edge of the worktable next to Jena. “Anything else?”
“We also found a baited line up on the main bayou just north of the juncture with this inlet yesterday. Agent Griffin and I staked it out for a while, but when no one came we cut the line. We came up with a way that maybe the gators were being used to transport the drugs.”
“Explain.” The sheriff’s brown eyes had gone fro
m hard marbles to sharp and interested.
Here was the kicker, and she watched Warren. Jena knew him better and could better read if he thought their theory had any validity. “What if a trafficker catches multiple gators in one of those hundreds of inlets nearer the Gulf, feeds them the drugs and puts the transmitters on them, then releases them someplace like Pointe-aux-Chenes, which is easier and faster to reach? There’s little risk because law enforcement is focusing on the bigger waterways.”
Warren and the sheriff were both frowning, but she thought it was more out of interest than doubt. She plowed on. “Then a second person—maybe somebody who normally fishes the area anyway—finds the gators through their transmitters, hauls them in, and extracts the drugs for local suppliers.”
Sheriff Brown scratched his head. “That’s the craziest theory I’ve ever heard, Agent Sinclair. You’ve got two traffickers, some drugged-up gators, a buyer, and a distributor all involved. Not to mention whoever’s supplying the goddamned drugs in the first place. That’s too many people.”
Jena had been thinking about that very thing. “Maybe not, if the buyer and supplier were the same person. A gator processor, maybe. Like Don Gateau, who might be retiring because he had another source of income, or Amelia Patout, who had cancer and was worried about how to provide for her kids if she didn’t make it. Or one of the nuisance hunters, who’d be able to catch gators out of season without anybody questioning him.”
Jena didn’t like pointing fingers at people without evidence, but she wanted Warren and the sheriff to understand this theory—crazy as it sounded—might have legs.
Jena was pleased to see Warren’s eyes spark with real life as he propped his elbows on Cole’s worktable. “You talk to Raymond Naquin or any of the other nuisance hunters? You talk to any of the buyers?”
Jena nodded. “Mac and I were following up on the aggressive gator attacks and talked to Ray first, then Amelia Patout. Don Gateau’s closed till gator season, but I’ve reached out to him. Waiting to hear back.”
“And?” Brown crossed his arms over his chest. “We can’t go accusing some of the parish’s important businesspeople without something more substantial than a theory and a couple of interviews that weren’t even related to drugs.”
Jena blushed. “Parts of Ray’s and Amelia’s stories didn’t add up, so we intend to talk to them again.”
“Not about drugs, you won’t.” Brown practically bristled. “My detectives will talk to them. Your business is alligators. Anything else you stumble across about the drug case goes to your lieutenant or me and nobody else. You got that, Sinclair?”
Feeling properly put in her place, Jena mumbled, “I got it. Thanks for listening,” and edged past the sheriff and into the cool night air. It soothed the heat burning her cheeks to ash.
“Hey, Sinclair.”
She turned to see Warren exiting the workhouse. “It’s an interesting theory, and if he didn’t agree, the sheriff wouldn’t have claimed it as his investigation. Good work. Now, go home and get some rest.”
Jena nodded, but went into Cole’s house first to make sure everything was okay. She was pleased to see that the deputies searching the place were putting things pretty much back where they’d found them.
She ended up walking back to her truck with Gentry, EZ, and Paul. Gentry hung back when the others reached their vehicles and joined the procession leaving Sugarcane Lane.
Gentry leaned against Jena’s truck, and even though his face was illuminated only by the moonlight and the faint glow from Cole’s windows, Jena knew those dark-brown eyes were filled with concern. Gentry was her best friend, even more so than Ceelie; all the stuff that had happened last fall had forged a bond between them that went way beyond partners or fellow agents. “You doing okay?”
“I’m hanging in there.” She wasn’t sure if he wanted to gauge the status of her emotional state or was trying to confirm anything he might have heard from Mac about her relationship with Cole Ryan. Not that she knew what kind of relationship they had, exactly.
Gentry looked back at the house. “You might not be able to save him, Jena. Ryan has been isolated from people so long it’s hard for him to even carry on a conversation.”
“Not with me.” Those words told Gentry more than Jena had intended, but they were true. With her, Cole lost a lot of his awkwardness.
Gentry’s posture tensed and he leaned forward. “What are you telling me? That you and Ryan are involved?”
“No. Maybe. I don’t know.” Jena scratched through the dirt with the toe of her shoe. “There’s some kind of connection between us—has been from the first time we met, even before I knew who he was.”
Her voice softened. “Cole is a good guy, Gentry.”
He stared at her a few moments and she held his gaze. Finally, he shrugged. “Hell, I’m the last one to talk about keeping a professional distance, as you well know. Just be careful. Grief and loss can change people. So far, he mostly seems socially awkward, but he’s been out here alone a long time. The guy’s probably got pain he hasn’t even begun to deal with, much less put behind him.”
Yeah, well, they all had pain they’d never dealt with, didn’t they? Cole had come clean with her, or at least she thought so. His tears had been real, and his raw emotion transparent. Which is more than she could say for herself.
She needed to fix that.
“Hey, don’t worry,” she said. “Go home and tell Ceelie I said no pink bridesmaids’ dresses.”
Gentry grinned, but then it faded. “You aren’t going home, are you?”
“No, I’m going to the justice center and check on Cole.” He knew her too well.
Gentry sighed. “Do what you have to do, Jena. Just don’t hand over your heart too easily. You’ve been through some shit of your own, remember?”
Like she could forget. “I want to make sure Cole’s being treated fairly, that’s all. I don’t plan to bring the man home and ravish him. At least I don’t think so.” In another place and time, before scars and hurts and wounds, that might have been a good idea.
Gentry laughed. “Unless you run into trouble and need my help? That’s way more than I wanted to know, Sinclair.”
CHAPTER 24
Cole had never been run over multiple times by a tractor-trailer rig but imagined it must feel something like this. Too many emotions had been dragged all over the map since this morning, and his head pounded from the incessant questions. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth from having to answer those questions.
He’d cried in front of Jena, sharing things he never expected to put into words, even with himself.
He’d voluntarily opened up his home to not only strangers, but strangers who could destroy everything he’d built here, strangers he hadn’t learned to trust because he was so out of practice.
Now he’d spent hours running the gauntlet of questions posed by different people and worded in different ways, but they all led to the same place: to see if Cole would trip up in telling his story from different starting points and in a different order. He hadn’t. Truth was truth, and it was all he had.
Finally, they’d released him with a warning not to leave the parish while the case was still open. He was tired and had no idea how he’d get home, much less flee the hounds of justice, truth, and the American way.
Until he walked into the lobby and saw Jena sitting on one of the chairs lined up along the wall. She looked as exhausted as he felt, but it didn’t make her one bit less beautiful. He felt a foreign warmth fill his chest but tamped it down before it could reach his tear ducts. He’d be damned if he was going to cry in front of her again—at least not today.
Yet some part deep inside him, a part he’d been afraid to acknowledge until now, had hoped she would be here, waiting for him. “You came.”
She stood up and walked toward him, pausing for a brief, awkward moment before wrapping her arms around his neck. He circled her waist and held on tight, pulling a new sense of energy from the
ir closeness. He felt as if they’d known each other forever. Or at least as if their souls had.
“I thought you might need a ride home,” she said, stepping away too soon. His arms, which had been empty too long, wanted her back. But however fragile he felt, she was more fragile. He sensed it, and would never push her.
“Yeah, I was just thinking I might have to sleep in an alley before I tried that long walk in the dark without my gear. Or I might grow old waiting for a deputy to have time to take me home. So thank you . . . I had really hoped you’d be here.”
Pathetic, but it had made her smile.
They walked into the parking lot, got in her truck, and were mostly quiet on the ride down the deserted eastern parish highway. She filled him in on her theory and the fact that the big dogs—the sheriff and her own lieutenant—seemed to think it was at least plausible. She didn’t mention any names, and they wouldn’t have meant anything to Cole anyway. He was just glad she felt comfortable using him as a sounding board for her theory.
They finally reached the cutoff and headed through the old cane fields toward the dirt road leading to Cole’s house. Even he had trouble finding the road at night after five years, yet she slowed and turned with one smooth motion. “You navigate really well in the dark. That turnoff is hard to find.”
She laughed. “Enforcement agents spend a lot of time driving in dark places with our lights out. It’s the best way to catch poachers and illegal hunters. Your eyes adapt to it eventually, or else you find another job.”
“Poachers and illegal hunters . . . and drug traffickers?” He looked out the window. As hard as the interrogation had been, at least his questioners had never made him think they considered him a trafficker. Like the sheriff, they were mostly pissed off that he hadn’t come forward earlier. Maybe they realized, on learning his background, drug trafficking would be the last crime he’d commit.
“Was it bad?” Jena’s voice sounded small amid all the gear filling most of the closed truck cab. It was a chaotic jumble of radios and wires, weapons, and equipment.
Black Diamond (Wilds of the Bayou Book 2) Page 16