Unseen (8 page)

Amanda quipped, “Confidential source.”

Branson didn’t look at Amanda. “Same source who turned you on to Big Whitey?”

Amanda said, “That’s how it usually works.”

Branson kept ignoring her, asking Will, “And that’s why you agreed to play lookout on the so-called robbery last night, to build your bad-boy cred with Dell?”

Will nodded.

“Well, that all makes sense. Thank you for your time.” Branson picked up her briefcase from the floor and held it in her lap again. “You know how to get in touch with me, Deputy Director.”

Amanda was seldom thrown, but Denise Branson had managed to surprise her. “That’s it?”

“You’re obviously not going to tell me anything else and I’m sure as shit not going to share anything with you.” Branson stood. “If I’d wanted to get fucked around with this morning, I would’ve stayed in bed with my vibrator.”

The woman knew how to make an exit. She kept her head held high as she left the office, her briefcase gripped close to her side.

Will looked at Amanda, who silently stared at the empty doorway.

“Wow.” Faith broke the silence. “That was quite a show.”

Amanda played with the stem of her reading glasses again. “She knew Lawrence fired the shotgun that took down Long. I expect we’ll find she ordered some tests.”

Will had picked up on that, too. “She was in the house at some point before it got locked down. She knew Lawrence had meth sores on his face, but he doesn’t have them in the booking photo. She called Dell Tony, not Anthony.”

Amanda said, “She had about two hours before Charlie and his team got to Macon. She’s obviously running a parallel investigation.”
Amanda shot Will a pointed look. “And hell will freeze over before she tells us what—if anything—she finds in Dell’s car.”

Will nodded at the rebuke, which was deserved.

“I doubt the car will be useful.” Faith flipped back through her notes. “Branson obviously fingerprinted the bodies to get their IDs. Zachary and Lawrence weren’t stupid enough to go in with their wallets. They probably left them in the van.”

Will said, “Dell’s probably sold their credit cards by now. He’ll keep the licenses for his own use. The van’s probably been stripped for parts.” Leaving the Kia at the scene had been a risky move, but Tony Dell wasn’t the type to pass on an easy score.

Amanda asked Will, “Dell’s criminal record is petty—am I correct?”

“Yes,” Will answered. Tony Dell had been very lucky up until now. “He’s done jail time off some misdemeanors, but he’s never made it to the big house.”

“What’s your story when you see him?”

“I’m angry. Why did he lie about the job? What did he tell the cops? Should I leave town? Do I still get paid?”

“Good. Don’t oversell it.”

Will nodded again.

Faith sat back in her chair. “Why didn’t Lena tell Branson you were there?”

“I have no idea,” Will admitted. “I buy that she was in shock. Her pupils were blown. She was dripping sweat. She’d just killed one guy with her bare hands and was about to take out another.”

“Yes, how about that?” Amanda asked. “Let’s keep in mind she was fully prepared to commit cold-blooded murder.”

Will said, “Branson’s right about the Castle Doctrine. Two people came into Lena’s home and tried to kill her. She thought her husband was dead. She feared for her life. You could take it to trial, but there’s not a jury on earth who would convict her.” This was the problem with Lena Adams—or at least Will’s problem.
He didn’t condone her actions, but at a gut level, he understood them.

Amanda’s tone was brisk. “I said let’s keep it in mind. I didn’t tell you to lock her up for it.” She told Faith, “See if you can get Will and Lena in the same room together. She might talk more openly with him.”

“That should be easy with Sara right down the hallway.” Faith stared her displeasure into Will. “And don’t forget who we’re dealing with. In case it’s not obvious, it still rankles me that Lena got away the last time. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit to find out this time around that she knows exactly why this happened and who ordered it. Maybe she skimmed cash from the wrong bust. Took kickbacks from the wrong bad guys. That could be why Major Branson’s doing her own investigation. Lena’s one of her team. Branson doesn’t want to look like the idiot who didn’t realize she had a dirty cop on her hands.”

“Lena’s not working the other side,” Will countered. He’d spent a lifetime dealing with damaged women like Lena Adams. Their motivations were easy to read once you knew what to look for. “She’d never take a bribe. She does bad things, but she always thinks she’s doing them for the right reason.”

“Whatever.” Faith had never been a fan of nuance. “Major Branson thinks the hospital pharmacy theft is the reason you ended up in Macon. She’s not going to stop until she finds out who your informant is.”

Amanda stated the obvious. “She’ll only know if someone tells her.”

Will said, “Don’t you think it’s strange she asked if we had a photo of Big Whitey?”

“Yes,” Amanda answered. “A picture isn’t the first thing I would ask about.”

Faith said, “She didn’t do that weird thing with her mouth when she saw it, but who the hell knows?” She closed her notebook. “What else do you think she’s not telling us?”

Amanda said, “More than we’re not telling her, which I find highly annoying.” She raised her voice. “Caroline, get me Gil Gonzalo at the FDLE.”

“He’s on central time,” Caroline shouted back. “Give it another half hour unless you want to talk to a junior officer.”

“I guess they work when they please down there,” Amanda grumbled. “Will, your report said Dell approached you around eleven-thirty last night. He took you straight to the job?”

“I was just coming off my hospital shift. He stopped me in the parking lot.” Will hadn’t considered the timing until now. “Maybe he needed me to fill in for someone else.”

Faith asked, “How did Dell pitch the job?”

“He asked if I wanted to make five hundred bucks cash for keeping my mouth shut and my eyes open.”

Faith said, “Five hundred bucks is a lot of money for being a lookout. You could get a guy killed for less than that.”

“You’re right.” Will was beginning to think he’d missed a lot of things last night. Adrenaline and sheer panic had never enhanced anyone’s short-term memory.

He said, “I noticed when they were outside Lena’s house that they all shook hands. Not the shoulder-bump bro thing, just a formal handshake, like they didn’t know each other well.”

Faith twisted her lips to the side as she considered the situation. “So, the plan was thrown together at the last minute. They didn’t have a crew in place.”

Will said, “Dell hangs out at a place called Tipsie’s just about every night. It’s a strip joint off the highway, caters mostly to bikers and ex-cons. I went with him a few times to build a rapport.”

“A rapport?” Faith echoed.

Will ignored her sarcasm. “If you’re looking for a guy to help you kill a couple of cops in Macon, Tipsie’s is the place to go.”

“I’ll check it out,” Faith said. “Hopefully, Macon PD will be more helpful than Major Branson. There’s something a little too go-getter about her for me. Who wears all their ribbons for a
downtown meeting? And what was that snickery smile on her lips?”

Amanda told them, “This sounds like a character-building exercise. Attempted murder on two cops, one man dead, another critically wounded, and the chief sends her to brief us? That’s not a plum assignment.”

“Especially if she’s been up since one-shitty in the morning,” Faith pointed out. “For what it’s worth, Branson sounds to me like she’s on-side with Lena. Could be an ‘us against the world’ thing, like they’re both the same kind of bad.”

“Maybe,” Amanda allowed. “Misery loves company.”

Will tuned out their voices. He thought about last night, the drive to Lena’s house. Dell had been fidgety, but that was pretty much his default. He’d played with the radio, tapped his fingers on the dash, the steering wheel, his leg, as he drove one-handed toward what they both thought was an easy score. Dell had talked the entire time: about the weather, his ailing mother who lived in Texas, a woman at the hospital he was dying to sleep with. All Will had to do was nod occasionally to keep him going. Dell didn’t need any more encouragement. He actually talked too much for his own good. Major Branson had been fed the story backward. Tony Dell was the original target of Will’s investigation. His first day undercover, Dell would not shut up about a big-time dealer named Big Whitey.

Will realized that Amanda and Faith had gone silent.

Faith asked, “What is it?”

Will shook his head, but he still told them, “Big Whitey.”

“It can’t be coincidence,” Amanda said. “You’re down there for Dell. Dell turns you on to Big Whitey. Big Whitey kills cops. A little over a week later, two police officers are attacked.”

Will said, “It’s the timing that’s bothering me. If I’m going to kill some cops, I don’t do it on the fly. I plan it out. I follow them around. I figure out what their habits are. It would take several days, maybe a week, to get a team together. There must’ve been a
clock ticking on the hit, otherwise they would’ve never used Dell and they sure as hell wouldn’t’ve hired me sight unseen.”

Faith asked, “You think some of their original crew chickened out?” She answered her own question. “It would make sense that they wouldn’t tell you and Dell what they were really up to after their first choice walked away.”

Will said, “That would explain the five hundred dollars. You overpay to keep the questions down and buy an easy yes.” He went back to the timing. “Bad guys don’t play the long game. This was something recent. The hit was put out in the last two weeks, maximum. So, we figure out what happened in the last two weeks.”

“Macon is in Bibb County now.” Amanda tapped some keys on her computer. “That’s region …?”

“Twelve,” Will supplied.

Amanda raised her voice again. “Caroline, get me Nick Shelton on the phone.”

Will said, “I’ve been reading the Macon paper every day.” He ignored the surprised looks they gave him. “About a week ago, two cops were hurt raiding a shooting gallery that was selling mostly meth and pills. The details were sketchy. One’s still in the hospital. The other’s taking disability.”

“Anything else?” Amanda asked.

“They netted some cash under the drug seizure rule. Paper didn’t give an exact number, but Macon PD was talking about using it to buy new cruisers, some AKs for SWAT.” Will shrugged again. “The rest was just the usual blotter stuff—missing teenage girls, pot bust at the school, a guy died on the toilet.”

Amanda clasped her hands together on the desk. She was obviously done with talking. “All right. We have a plan?”

“My hospital shift starts at eleven.” Will told Faith, “You’ll have to figure out a way to get me and Lena in the same room without blowing my cover.”

“I’m sure she’ll cooperate.” Faith sounded skeptical. She asked
Amanda, “Do you think it’s worth me going to the trailer park where Zachary and Lawrence lived?”

Amanda shook her head. “Branson’s probably flipped the place upside down by now. Give it a day or two. Go in soft so there’s a nice contrast.”

“All right,” Faith agreed. “Speaking of Branson, I’ll double-check the information she gave us, run down the records on Zachary and Lawrence, make sure there’s nothing she’s leaving out. Might as well run Adams and Long while I’m at it. I’ll send everything to data analysis so they can track down bank accounts, mortgages, known associates, family members, whatever else pops up.”

Amanda said, “That’s going to be a lot of information to sort through. Pull some help from the field office. Make them do the bulk of the work on Jared Long so we have a long paper trail if this goes to trial. We don’t want to be accused of prejudicial thinking.”

“You mean again?” Faith pushed herself up from her chair. “I’ll call the cell phone company and get a list off the towers near Adams’s house. Midnight in a rural area, there can’t be that many active calls.”

“Let me know if they give you any push-back,” Amanda said. Cellular providers were getting stingy about data mining lately. “If we need a warrant, it’ll take a few days.”

“Amanda?” Caroline yelled. “Nick Shelton’s on line two.”

Amanda picked up the receiver, but she put it to her shoulder instead of her ear. “Will, be careful. Keep your phone on you at all times so we know exactly where you are.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He followed Faith toward the door.

“Also—” Amanda waited for them to turn back around. “Will’s right about the timing. Whatever set this off had to be recent. Faith, put together a timeline. Start with last night, then go backward day by day, minute by minute if you have to. Find out whatever the hell it is Lena Adams did to put all of this into motion.”

D
awn turned the morning light a cobalt blue as the raid van roared down a gravel road. There were ten cops in back, five on one side, five on the other, all jammed shoulder-to-shoulder so that every bump of the tires made them jerk in unison. The radio speakers were blaring Ice-T’s “Cop Killer.” The air inside the van vibrated with the raging beat.

Cop killer. Better you than me
.

Lena Adams steadied her shotgun as they hit another rut in the road. She checked the Glock strapped to her thigh, made sure the Velcro held the gun tightly in place. The voice in her head screamed along with Ice-T’s as they got closer to the target. She took a few quick breaths, not to clear her mind but to make it spin, to amp up the adrenaline and the absolute high that came from knowing she was a few moments away from the biggest bust of her career.

And then everything stopped.

The music snapped off. The red light came on over their heads.

Silence.

Two minutes until arrival.

The van slowed. Gravel crunched under the tires. Guns were drawn, magazines checked. Helmets and protective glasses were adjusted. The smell of testosterone got thicker. Nine men and one woman. All of them suited in Kevlar vests and black fatigues, loaded up with enough ammo to take down a small army.