A Time to Live and a Thyme for Murder! (Outer Banks Baker Mystery Series Book 3) (12 page)

Two days later, Operation Catch the Bad Guy (as coined by Logan) was put into action. Both Logan and Tanner were recruited to help out. Parental permission was necessary. Dr. Wiggins readily agreed, as long as Tanner was protected. Logan’s dad had needed a bit more convincing. John David knew his son could take care of himself, as proven over the last two summers with his Aunt Mel. However, he didn’t like the idea of intentionally allowing Logan anywhere near known drug dealers. After an hour on the phone with Logan, followed by a half hour with Melissa and Jason together, he gave his consent.

Things had been tense with Melissa and Jason immediately after the episode at the moving company. He really hated that she had taken his daughter in search of Derek McCallie’s drug dealing pals. However, Krissy intervened to explain the situation and that Melissa was not to blame. “Come on, Dad! Melissa just realized there was no stopping me from trying to find out the truth so it was better she and Cheryl go with me than let me go alone.” Melissa was surprised at Krissy’s defense of her, but also delighted. Perhaps there was a chance for them to have a positive relationship after all?

Tanner was pivotal to the plot to unmask Derek’s killer. He had the connections and had to be convincing in his role. Neither Melissa nor Jason was certain the young man could pull this off, but he was thoroughly excited at the opportunity to prove himself, especially to Krissy. He spent a lot of time down at the beach hanging with Hoss and his cohorts to re-establish himself as a stoner beach bum. Logan and Emily acted as lookouts. They were always close by, but never made contact with Tanner when he was with the group. Logan liked spending more time with his sweetheart, even if it was in the line of duty. Emily readily accepted the chance to work with Logan to solve a mystery. Although she wasn’t Krissy’s biggest fan because of the way the young woman treated Logan and his aunt Melissa initially, she appreciated her predicament and gladly offered to help.

Ricky Tavales had readily rolled over on his X15 drug dealing buddies. The cops had the names of at least eight known dealers in Kill Devil Hills. They were holding off making arrests until they could obtain more concrete evidence in the Derek McCallie murder. The eight all worked for the same moving company and were under close surveillance, but that was it for the moment.

It didn’t take long before Tanner made casual contact with one of the X15 dealers. The guy had been the one to insist he snort the stuff in front of them last time to prove he wasn’t a NARC. They agreed to meet the next day at the fishing pier.

Logan arrived at the pier first, well before dawn even though Tanner wouldn’t meet his contact until much later that morning. There were a couple other DEA agents posing as fishermen, too. Logan enjoyed his time reeling in the occasional puffer fish or even a skate, but his nerves were getting the better of him as he waited and waited. His hands shook as he tried to unhook a skate from his line and almost got the wrong end of its barbed tail. Although not poisonous like their stingray counterparts, skate tails have large thorns that can slice up an unwary fisherman. After releasing the creature back into the Atlantic Ocean, Logan took a deep breath to calm his nerves.

Four hours later, Tanner showed up with his Yeti cooler. A couple years ago, the cooler would be full of beer cans poorly disguised as sodas. Although Tanner had stopped this practice recently, for appearance’s sake he reverted back to the beer cans. He sat down on a bench just a few yards from Logan. Neither boy acknowledged the other. Right on time, Tanner’s drug dealer contact strolled up and slapped Tanner on the back. Logan inched closer by making it look like he simply decided to change his fishing perch. As instructed by the cops earlier, neither boy looked in the other’s direction.

Tanner and his new “friend” made minimal small talk. It was obvious the guy was not comfortable hanging out in such a public place, even if there were only a handful of fisherman on the pier at that time of day. He reached into Tanner’s cooler while covertly letting a small bag of powdered X15 fall from his clenched hand into the cooler and then extracting a disguised beer can along with a small plastic bag of cash. Shutting the lid, he immediately made to leave the pier, but Tanner stopped him. “Dude, you’ve been such a stand-up guy and all, thought I should let you know what I overheard last night when my dad was on the phone with one of his cop pals,” he began. That seemed to pique the other boy’s interest and he stopped in his tracks. Tanner went on to inform him that the cops had figured out how Derek had distributed the drugs so that everyone got sick. They also had a good idea where Derek got the drugs and that he had been killed because of it. His dad suspected the cops would close in on the suspect later that night. The news certainly rattled the young man. He thanked Tanner for the tip and immediately rushed away.

True to their recent training in covert operations, Tanner soon left the pier without so much as a glance towards Logan. The other young man continued fishing and whistling to himself. An hour later, Logan packed up his fishing tackle and headed back to his Aunt Mel’s house. The undercover agents on the pier texted a picture of the drug dealer to Agent Garland who was waiting with Jason and Cory in an unmarked car a few blocks away. A surveillance unit was put on the boy. He wouldn’t make a move without them knowing.

Later that night, the unit followed the drug dealer back to the moving company building. He went inside the office for a few minutes, but then left in a hurry. Another surveillance crew picked up the trail a block over. They would follow this guy while the original unit stayed behind at the building. Another unit in a SUV with blacked out windows had joined the stake out with a couple civilians in tow – Logan and Tanner. They needed the boys there for a positive identification of the suspect and in case they met up with someone else the boys may recognize. Agent Garland, Jason, and Cory were a couple blocks over as well, waiting on someone to make a move.

A few minutes later, a dark figure exited the building at a fast pace. The person was headed in the same direction as Tanner’s drug contact. Logan tried to get a better look at the guy with binoculars, but it was too dark to make an identification. One of the DEA agents handed him another set of binoculars. These had infra-red technology so he could see in the dark. Adjusting the magnification, Logan nearly dropped the binoculars when the face of the man came into focus. The person chasing after the other drug dealer was Kyle Vega. Both Logan and Tanner knew Kyle. They thought he was a really nice guy. He worked at the moving company, so it wasn’t unusual for him to be there. Perhaps it was just a coincidence Kyle was leaving so shortly after the drug dealer, and in the same direction. When Logan informed the agents he knew the guy and that the young man’s sister was still in the hospital in a coma after accidently ingesting the X15, one of the men radioed the information in. The second surveillance vehicle tailed Kyle just to see where he went, while the other unit stayed behind at the building.

A few minutes later, a call came over the radio informing them that Kyle Vega had indeed caught up to Tanner’s drug contact in the back alley behind a local convenience store. Another undercover vehicle pulled up to the building with a handful of squad cars waiting a couple blocks away. The vehicle with Tanner and Logan, as well as Agent’s Garland’s vehicle, raced off to the store. Nothing good ever happened in back alleys at that time of night. Sure enough, before they reached the store, another call came over the radio for an ambulance. There had been a stabbing.

When they arrived at the scene, Logan and Tanner were instructed to stay in the car – no matter what. Still not having learned their lesson to obey orders, especially when it came from those in authority, Tanner jumped out of the car with Logan hot on his heels. They were shocked to see the drug dealer being carted off to the ambulance. He was alive, but bloody. Tanner walked into the alley where he witnessed one of the local uniformed cops gently placing a nice-looking, but bloody switchblade into an evidence bag. Looking around, Logan caught a glimpse of Kyle in the back seat of a squad car that had arrived before they did.

The whole story wouldn’t come out until much later that night. The drug dealer recovered from his injuries and gave his statement to the police. After informing his dealer buddies at the moving company about the cops closing in on their operation and whoever killed Derek, there had been a huge argument with Kyle who overhead their conversation. He was angry because the X15 they were dealing had made his sister sick. She was still in a coma at the hospital. He knew Derek was behind the drugs getting into the bread, but hadn’t known how many of the others were also involved. Kyle had caught up to the dealer in the alleyway and had pulled a switchblade out. Lucky for him, the cops showed up before he received any truly life-threatening wounds.

The more intriguing tale came from Kyle himself back at the precinct. With tears streaming down his face, the young man related a sad, tragic story. While he worked at the moving company, he stayed away from the druggie crowd until his sister became ill. Then he decided to try to find out what he could about the drugs and who was responsible for his sister’s coma. It had been easy enough to discover Derek’s involvement and he assumed Krissy had been in on the operation too. Kyle swore that he hadn’t intended to kill Derek, just scare him into confessing. However, with Derek’s confession Kyle only became angrier and couldn’t control himself. Before he realized what he had done, Derek was nothing but a bloody, nearly unrecognizable mess.

The young man laid low for a while hoping the cops would pin the death on the rest of the drug dealers or even on Krissy. The more he thought about it, the more Kyle convinced himself that Derek’s girlfriend had to know what was going on and had to be held responsible for his sister’s condition, too. After getting drunk one night, he snuck into her house to leave the threatening note. When he discovered she’d gone to the cops, but not to confess her own misdeeds (in his viewpoint), he texted her from a disposable phone. He chillingly described how he intended to find her that night and use the switchblade to induce her into confessing. However, he had been sidetracked when he heard the cops were closing in on Derek’s killer.

Agent Garland debriefed the entire group around 1 a.m. after getting a full statement from Kyle Vega. The undercover agents that had stayed behind at the moving company office brought in everyone that had been there, and a couple others whose names were already on their watch list based on Ricky Tavales’ previous statement. All in all, it had been an eventful and productive night. They had most, if not all, of the X15 dealers downstairs in cells waiting for processing. Kyle Vega would be formally charged in court the next morning for the murder of Derek McCallie, the assault on the drug dealer, and making threats to Krissy Payne. No one would’ve guessed the quiet young man was capable of such violence. Everyone assumed one of the other dealers or a drug addict had killed Derek. Regardless, the DEA had their drug ring bust and the local cops had their murderer. Best of all, Krissy was cleared of all wrongdoing and could go home with her father.