Shards (16 page)

Then I began to have trouble finding guys with dope, but I met a guy who was willing to pay me for sex. I met with him in a parking lot and gave him a blowjob. The deal was for sex, $250 for sex, but we stopped after a blowjob. He paid me anyway and after that he called me constantly, wanting to meet again for sex. But I had already gotten my money and was looking for dope, so I never called that guy back or saw him again.

I had been gone from Maui for two weeks when Wilkes called. I had run out of vacation time and was eating into my sick days. He asked me for a doctor's note.

“Sure,” I said.

“We should have gotten this from your doctor here, but if you're seeing someone in Seattle now that's good.”

“I'll get it right away,” I said, “and bring it back with me.”

“Can you fax it?” Wilkes asked. “We need it right away. I'm sure it's the last thing you have time for now, but—” He sounded uncomfortable and I let him talk for a bit before I said, “Okay, no problem. I'll fax it to you.”

The whole time we were talking I was on the computer looking up random Washington doctors online. When I found an oncologist with a good website, I cut and pasted his logo onto a Microsoft Word document to create the doctor's note. I printed it out and forged the doctor's signature before faxing it to Wilkes.

•  •  •

Money for sex was easy to get, but dope was harder. I was always on the Internet, trawling, hoping to find one steady supplier.

Finally, I found him.

I met him on Craigslist after all the other men.

Earlier that particular night I had gone to meet a different guy, but he didn't have any dope so I was headed back to my sister's house with the money I got for a blowjob. A man called and I agreed to meet him. He said his name was Craig. I had been emailing with so many guys, I had no idea which one he was, what he looked like, if he was a cop, a murderer, anything. And I didn't care. All I wanted was dope, he said he had it, and I knew what I had to do to get it.

We met for the first time in his red truck in a valley near my
sister's house. The truck reeked of nicotine but was otherwise clean and well cared for. He looked about the same as the other guys—white, bald, about forty, nondescript. But big. And strong. He wasn't thin and weak like most meth addicts. He told me he worked as a specialist carpenter, and that's how he kept his muscles. At first I thought he might be a cop or a fed, but when he smoked meth with me I knew he was neither.

We had fast sex in his truck. I spent maybe twenty minutes with him.

“I don't have much dope on me,” he said, “but if you come back to the house we can fix that.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I'm good.” I knew better than to go to his house.

He had great dope, and back at my sister's house I was craving more of it. I emailed him, setting it up to meet him at his house that night. I knew by his mannerisms, the quality of meth, and how he had it packaged that he was a dealer. And a dealer was what I wanted.

That night, I drove to the address he gave me in Everett. I knew it was stupid going to a dealer's house, but at that point I didn't care. Or mostly didn't care. I cared enough to write his name and address on a small piece of paper and leave it in my sister's house. I guess I thought if something really bad happened, if she didn't hear from me right away, she would search my room and find the address and know where to find me.

Outwardly, the dealer's house was just another suburban split-level. Well kept, with good landscaping, on a quiet cul-de-sac in a nice neighborhood. I surveyed the neighborhood before I went in. It was the perfect location for a drug dealer. Around the back of the house were some woods and a lake as opposed to another house or street—any kind of surveillance would have been very, very difficult
for law enforcement. For him, monitoring the street traffic would be easy, and if he ever had to run, he could go on foot through the wooded area behind the house.

I was already sensing that he was highly intelligent for a dealer, especially for one who used meth. Usually dealers don't touch the stuff because it interferes too much with running the business.

He opened the door as I came up the walk.

“Hi, Alli,” he said, as if I were an old friend coming for a visit. “You found the house okay?”

“Sure.” I nodded. “Good directions.”

He led me inside. The place was clean and well decorated and definitely didn't look like any drug house I had ever busted. Little did I know the horror of that house.

In the living room there was a leather couch and two easy chairs. A guy about the dealer's age sat in one of the chairs. On the couch was a girl, maybe a year or two younger than I was.

“Joe and Tiffany,” he said. “This is Alli.” It sounded like he was introducing me as his girlfriend.

“Hi,” I said, starting to sit down in the second easy chair. Everything felt so weird, like a goddamn party.

“Why don't you sit next to Tiffany,” the dealer said.

Tiffany moved her feet so that there was room for me.

Okay, I thought, he's a CI and these are cops. But that couldn't be right. We never arranged a sting in someone's house.

Then a pipe was produced, and I started to relax. The dealer let me have one hit, then motioned for me to follow him upstairs.

I counted four bedrooms upstairs, and he led me to his at the end of the hallway. A tabby cat wafted by us. I love animals, but I prefer dogs to cats. Still, I bent to pet the cat.

“What's her name?” I asked, but he didn't answer.

I figured he was either a married man whose family was out
of town or a pretty decent-size dealer. What man needs a four-bedroom home? It definitely didn't seem like a bachelor pad.

I fucked him to get the dope and then we smoked together. He gave me as much as I wanted, which I loved.

Toward dawn, I said, “I've got to get going.”

“I don't want you to leave,” he said. “Stay here with me.”

“I'd like to, but I can't. I have to get back to my sister's before she wakes up.”

“Stay.”

I shook my head. “I'll come back, though,” I promised. “I'll come back tonight.”

He gave me enough dope to smoke during the day, and I made it home before anyone was up. My phone rang as soon as I walked into the house.

“Shit,” I said, trying to silence it. It was him.

“I miss you,” he said. “I want to make sure you're coming back.”

“I said I'd be there tonight,” I said, annoyed. He was starting to remind me of one of the other guys I had met online. I didn't need somebody who wanted companionship, a girlfriend. I needed dope.

“What time?”

“I don't know. Late. Eleven or twelve.”

“Alli?” my sister said, flipping on a light in the dark kitchen where I stood. “Who is that? Why are you on the phone so early?”

“I gotta go,” I told the dealer, and then turned to Carol. “It's the Everett PD,” I told her. “There's a big vice case they've got going down this week. It's going to be most nights, I'm sorry to say.”

“Do you have to?” Carol asked. “We barely get to visit with you.”

“It's an awesome opportunity,” I said. “The chief has me in line for sergeant, you know. This is exactly the kind of stuff I need to do to show him that I can make it.” Carol was looking at me oddly, and for about the thousandth time I thought,
She knows; she's about to
tell me she knows.
“Of course if it's inconvenient,” I said, “they'd be happy to put me up in a motel.”

It worked. She bought it. “No, don't do that,” she said. “You know you're always welcome here. I just—miss you, that's all. It's like you're here and you're not here.” She moved to hug me, something I tried to avoid. She could
see
how thin I was. I didn't need her to
feel
it too.

I smoked all day at Carol's, and when I got to the dealer's that night, it was wonderful. I liked his dope, and unlike the other guys, he gave me all I wanted.

He seemed to want me to be his girlfriend, so I acted the part. It was easy enough to do, and if it got me more dope, great.

I carried on for four or five nights like this. Sometimes Joe and Tiffany were at his house when I went over, sometimes just Tiffany, sometimes different people. They all seemed to be drug friends, nothing more. Tiffany was about my age but lived with her parents, on probation after failing a drug test. She was always asking me for money.

As the nights went on, I learned a little about his business. He didn't own the house, so nothing of his could be seized if he ever got busted. He was a long-term renter, and he had the owners over now and again to show them the renovations he did. He kept them happy, and they didn't suspect a thing. He never sold from the house, though sometimes he had people over to negotiate. He would leave at odd times to “do a deal.” He only had one bank account and kept very little money in it. I didn't know where he kept the cash. I couldn't figure out where he kept all the dope, but he was very careful to never keep more than an ounce in the house. He kept all the paraphernalia separated and in different areas of the house where it would blend in. He stored the dollar baggies in the shop where he had little parts and screws that the baggies
could be used for. He was even smart enough to have Joe keep his scales for him. He didn't have a large number of lighters or anything that could be used against him legally. He did keep pipes in the house, but only two, and they were hidden in the best hidden-compartment drawer I have ever seen. That drawer impressed me, and that was hard to do. No one walking into his house would know it was a drug house.

All the time I was in Washington, I was on the phone with Bryant constantly. Soon it became clear I was going to have to get back to Maui. I had been gone almost a month. I had to send Wilkes another doctor's note, and when I set out to forge it, I couldn't remember the name of the doctor I had used before. I also couldn't remember what type of cancer I had told everyone I had, cervical or ovarian, so I made up a new one to add to the mix. Lymphoma.

I knew it was only a matter of time before they figured it all out.

My last night with the dealer, I told him I was leaving in the morning. He was acting so possessive that I had no intention of getting back in touch with him. I was going to have to dump him and find a new supplier.

He barely let me go that night, and I was glad to get back to Carol's.

The next morning there were lots of calls from him on my cell phone. I sent them to voice mail, wanting to get rid of this guy as quickly as I could. Then the home phone rang and Carol told me it was for me.

I accepted the phone nervously, worried that it might be Bryant or my sergeant.

“Hi, Alli.”

The dealer.

Shit, how had he gotten this number?

I was panicking but tried to play it cool.

“I just wanted to make sure you got what I left you,” he said.

“Oh, what was that?” I asked.

Just then, my brother-in-law came in with flowers and a card.

“This was on the front steps. It's addressed to you, Alli,” Tim said uncertainly.

“Yeah,” I said on the phone. “It just arrived. I'll call you later.”

“Who knows you're living here?” Tim asked.

“Well,” I said, opening the card slowly. It was a homemade card, some sort of insane bullshit booklet about how much he loved me. How much he was going to miss me. How he would love me unconditionally. How he would love me forever. How—

I tried to shield it from Tim's eyes.

“It's this cop I've been working with in Everett,” I said hurriedly. “That was him on the phone too. I knew he was a wack job, but apparently he's fallen in love with me.” I tried to laugh it off as I continued manufacturing the lie—he was on the rebound, his girlfriend had jilted him unexpectedly, I'd helped him get over it by talking to him, and now he'd fallen in love with me, ha ha.

“It's kind of weird that he knows where we live,” Tim said.

No shit.
I had no idea how the dealer knew my sister's address. And phone number. I hadn't even told him I was staying with her. Had he followed me? Watched me? Was he doing surveillance on the house?

Fuck.

In a panic, I sent the dealer an email. I told him I was in law enforcement and that I couldn't see him anymore because of what I did for a living. I figured that would scare the shit out of him and he would never contact me again.

I was so wrong.

As soon as my flight
landed in Maui, I turned on my phone. Four voice messages from the dealer, full of love and threat in equal measure.

When was I coming back, he wanted to know. He loved me more than anything on earth and needed me in his bed. We were soul mates and destined to be together. Every minute apart was torture.

Then: he knew I worked for MPD. He'd known since the beginning.

And by the way: he had a video of me smoking meth and having sex with him and he would send the video to MPD and Keawe if I didn't come back to Washington and see him that weekend.

How had he found out where I worked? How on earth did he know about Keawe?

Clearly, he had hacked into my email. I didn't believe him when
he said he had a video, but that wasn't really important. How was I going to explain some drug dealer from Washington calling Keawe or MPD?

I was terrified. For the first time I saw that the career that I loved might not hold up against my using. Until now all I cared about was dope. Getting it, using it, doing whatever I had to to make sure I wasn't found out. Now I saw what I had done to my life.

Things were out of control. I was going to have to tell Keawe. MPD. Someone. I was going to have to get out of this web of lies.

Keawe called just as I walked in the door of my apartment. Part of me—a large part—wanted to break down and tell him everything. Instead, I sent his call to voice mail. I went into the bathroom, curled myself in a ball on the floor, and started to cry.