You have it wrong,” Walter says, when the recording resumes. Tonya says they left Walter alone in the conference room, while the rest of them gathered in the corridor around Moses, complimenting him and Tonya, who’d done an epic good cop/bad cop on Walter. Moses remained utterly solemn. Linda Farro said, ‘Bet he talks,’ but Moses gave her a sharp look. He never bets on anything, for religious reasons.
After five minutes, Ingram went in to tell Walter it was decision time, and then from the doorway motioned everybody into the room, where they took the same seats. Walter immediately started speaking in a dry voice.
“It wasn’t murder. It was an accident, Frito dying. Ritz just wanted him to stick to the story, like he agreed to do from the start. With the Ritz, you make a deal, you gotta keep your end.”
“And the story was that the Chief forced Blanco to have sex?” Dan Feld asks on-screen. Now that there is no need to persuade Walter through a mix of intimidation and humiliation, it’s Feld who conducts most of the questioning.
“That’s what Frito was gonna have to stay with.”
“And why wasn’t Blanco willing to do that?”
Walter repeats exactly what Koob said, about Frito having decided to assert his constitutional rights, rather than turn over his phone. That incensed Ritz because he said Lucy would walk away from the whole thing and still be Chief.
“And why didn’t Vojczek want Lucy to be the Chief?” Feld says.
“You’d have to ask him. But for us, it would be even worse if Frito got immunity. If he told everything—and he probably would because he was such a fucking Boy Scout and that scared of going to jail—then Primo and me and maybe the Ritz, we’re looking at perjury.
“So we’d told Frito we needed to meet. Ritz brought in an electronics guru he had on retainer, a guy named Joe from Arizona, to delete all the disgusting shit on Frito’s phone. But Joe, he was definitely not happy to be there, and he got kind of pissy and was basically like, ‘Hell if I know’ when Ritz asked him whether a forensics guy would be able to see what had been erased.”
Don Ingram interrupts to ask a few questions about Joe, but Walter has no information about Koob, including what he was doing for Vojczek.
“After that,” Walter says, “Frito was not changing his mind. Ritz was pretty sure we’d be able to scare Frito back in line or even pay him off. But Ritz, he’s always got a plan, and our just-in-case was to inject Frito with that shit—the super fentanyl, that’s what Ritz called it—and keep him stoned nonstop for like maybe thirty-six hours, however long it took to make him into an addict. I guess the stuff is that strong. And Ritz, you know, if he tells you you’re an addict, you’d believe it anyway. Ritz figured that once Frito went into withdrawal, he’d be begging to get back in on Ritz’s sing-along. And we’d have Frito on a string after that.”
“Who got the carfentanil?” Feld asks.
“Ritz brought it.”
“In the injection pens?”
“Yeah.”
“Where did Ritz get these pens?” Ingram asks. “Is he diabetic?”
“Hardly. Well, at least not so I know. The only thing the scrawny bastard eats are sweets, so it doesn’t seem like it. He told me beforehand the carfy stuff is so powerful that it’s dangerous even to handle, so he would have it prepackaged in those pens. Plus, that made it a lot safer to carry around. No cop is looking for illegal drugs in a diabetic pen.”
“Any idea where he got the carfentanil in the first place?” Don asks.
“Where? Not exactly. But Ritz is a fucking junkie. He’s got plenty of connections.”
“And how was it that Lieutenant Blanco got injected?” Feld asks.
“After Joe left and we’d tied Frito up, the Ritz offered him money—you know, ‘Like how much will it take?’ But Frito wasn’t budging. The deal from his side was that there would be no chance of his, you know, interests getting exposed. And turning over his phone, you know, that put him at risk. He kept telling Ritz, ‘I’ve done what you asked, I’ve repeated every word from your script. I kept my end.’
“So Ritz made like he was thinking and walked behind Blanco, and then like a cobra striking, almost quicker than you can see, he gave Frito the first jab right through his shirt in the upper arm. Frito didn’t even get a full sentence out of his mouth before he nodded off. That seemed fine. But then about two hours later, Ritz injected him again, and that was it. Frito was dead in like thirty seconds. He vomited all over himself and then he was gone. I mean, Ritz was shocked. He kept feeling Frito’s pulse, and then we laid the chair back so Frito was on the floor, and I pushed on his chest and the Ritz tried to breathe for him, puke and all. He read me out about not having an EpiPen, or Nava-whoosy, the opioid antidote crap, like I even had a clue. The Ritz is the one who thought he knew all about that stuff, the right dosage—twelve micrograms, I think he said—and whatnot. Ritz said afterwards somebody gave him the wrong information on how long that shit would stay in Frito’s bloodstream. Or maybe the second pen was just loaded wrong and had too much. But killing Frito, that was a stupid accident.”
There is another heavy silence, both on-screen, among the people in the room witnessing Cornish’s interrogation, and here in Greenwood County, watching later. We’re all thinking about poor Blanco and the all-out stupidity of how he passed.
“You know enough about the law,” says Dan Feld, “to realize, Mr. Cornish, that what you took part in is still murder. You can’t inject someone with a drug that dangerous and say, ‘Not my fault,’ when he dies. You subjected Lieutenant Blanco to the risk of grave bodily harm and intended to do that.”
Walter’s face knots up in confusion. “Are you changing the deal?”
“Hardly,” says Moses. “We’re explaining why you’re getting a very good one.”
“And why do you think Ritz is a user?” Ingram asks.
“That’s what everybody thinks. Him using, that goes back to our time on Narcotics. Sometimes on a bust he’d pinch off something and say, ‘A little takeout.’ I’ve never seen him shoot up or anything, but now and then he closes the door to his office and says, ‘Time to get happy.’ So yeah, my opinion, he’s an addict. I guess you’d say addict. Although he never has to worry about where the next dose is coming from.”
“Why is that?” Ingram asks.
“You mean where does he get the shit from? I have no idea. You heard the saying about how the left hand don’t know what the right hand is doing? That’s how Ritz organizes stuff. I collect rent, I hire the janitors and the repairmen. Now and then somebody needs some persuasion on one thing or another, hiring our company, for example, Primo and I have done that. But with Ritz, there ain’t no channel surfing. You stay strictly tuned in to what he told you to watch. So I don’t know about him and the dope.”
“Is the Ritz a dealer?” Tonya asks.
“You can’t prove that by me.”
“Do people say he’s a dealer?” says Ingram.
“Listen, people talk so much wild shit about Ritz that if you believed it all, you’d think he could start his own religion. He’s smart, super-duper smart. And hard. And really careful. If he’s on that stuff, he’s got a lock-certain supply. So maybe he deals to be sure it’s around. But I bet there’s a stone wall between him and wherever it comes from. You’ll never catch him dealing hand-to-hand with anybody.”
Moses and Feld and the agents are all scribbling notes.
“If Vojczek is that careful, why was he there with Blanco?” Moses asks.
“I had got nowhere with Blanco, talking, threatening, whatever—nothing. His mind was made up. Ritz was out of his skull that this whole long plan with Lucy was about to unspool. And he knew he was the one guy who’d really scare the shit out of Frito. I was surprised he was willing, but that’s how much he hates Lucy.”
“Had Blanco met Ritz before?” Moses asks.
“Never.”
“So who recruited him to this scheme in the first place?” asks Moses.
“Me. I mean, I did what Ritz said. Somebody—this Joe character, I think—drilled into Frito’s computer while he was using it and did quite a tap dance on Frito—even used the camera in Frito’s computer to take pictures of him in front of the machine diddling himself. And a dozen screenshots of what he was watching.”
I’m startled by this information, and immediately honked off that Koob held out on me and never said he had hacked Blanco. But then I remember our deal. He promised to tell me only about what happened the night Blanco was murdered. The full details on the jobs he’d been hired to do for Ritz were off the table. He made exceptions for what mattered to me directly—spying on me and penetrating the Chief’s computer—but only on the condition that I would not pass that on to Tonya, and I still haven’t. I’m still not sure if he felt obliged to keep Ritz’s secrets, or if his actual motive was to hold back any information that might make it easier for the FBI to identify him. But when I replay what Koob said when I asked what Frito was looking at on his computer, he said something like, ‘I can’t say,’ meaning one thing and me understanding another.
“Ritz told me to go over and show all those pictures to Frito. When we did, I really thought we were gonna have to dial 911. He didn’t quite faint, but we actually had to find him a paper bag to breathe in. Once he could listen, we told him he had an alternative, just an hour on the witness stand and nobody would ever know.”
“When was this?” asks Moses.
“Early March?”
Moses looks to Feld to give him back the floor.
“Let’s return to the night of Blanco’s death,” Dan says. “What did you do once you realized Blanco had passed?”
“Whatever we could. We cut off the zip ties on his arms and legs, and I actually went to an all-night pharmacy to get some alcohol and those gloves so we could wipe the place down for prints. By the time we were done, the Ritz had kind of talked himself into thinking this wasn’t all bad that Frito had croaked. You were right—he knew they don’t screen for that drug on the autopsy, and he thought most pathologists wouldn’t see the needle marks where they were. And we were done worrying about what Frito might say if he got immunity. No way I was seeing anything good about Frito dying—I was just all messed up about this—but Ritz, he was like, ‘Shit happens, Walt, make sure nobody ever sees this stuff.’ He took the SIM card out of Frito’s cell and told me to get rid of the phone and the used injection pens.”
“What happened to the phone and the card?” asks Ingram.
“Ritz told me he was going to melt the SIM with a lighter. The phone, Ritz said to throw it in the river. You know, because the water would kill the thing. I did it soon as I left. But we both knew the damn syringes would float. Ritz’s idea was for me to find some public restroom where they have those red plastic boxes on the wall—what do they call them, ‘sharps containers’?” After she got the autopsy results and learned about the injection sites on Frito’s shoulder, Tonya identified every sharps container within a mile of Blanco’s apartment, but the disposal pickups had all taken place by then and the contents had been incinerated. Once I got the bag from Paulette, we all realized that even if Tonya had thought of the containers sooner, it would have turned up nothing. Instead, Walter explains why he ignored Ritz’s direction.
“Am I gonna stand in some men’s room,” Walter says, “where anybody can walk in any second and see me with the shit in my hands that killed Blanco? No chance. I had to get home to my kid, so I just took that stuff with me.”
“And where did you dispose of it?” Tonya asks.
Walter smirks at her. He’s definitely not buying her act about Paulette.
“I dropped my kid off at my ex’s the next morning, and the bins were out front, it was garbage day. I still had the bag with the needles and the gloves in my trunk. I thought it was pretty funny, putting that shit in her can. It wouldn’t go wrong, but if one in a million it did, guess who’s getting hotboxed?” He’s not in a laughing mood, but he still manages a smile. If you ever want an advertisement against getting married, it’s Walter and Paulette, bound in shared hatred.
Ingram asks, “And Blanco’s phone went in the river, as planned?”
“Exactly,” says Cornish. “Threw it out the car window as I was going over the Bolcarro Bridge.”
Moses has heard enough. He announces that everyone should take a break and the agents will get Walter a sandwich or something. Moses and Feld are leaving, but they will see Walter again. Later today, agents Ingram and Ferro will ask him more questions. The tape ends.
The Chief is still staring at the monitor.
“Ritz,” she says, like it’s the worst word in the English language.
Rik asks Tonya to step out so we can discuss the point Moses wanted the Chief to consider, whether she should resume command of the investigation. The answer is clearly no. The Ritz’s and Walter’s role in framing her—trying to end her career, maybe even put her in prison—means she has too clear a motive to get even with them. She’ll need to stay far away. Tonya will continue to report to the commander, the HI department’s number two.
“You think the Bureau is going to run Walter in wired on Ritz?” the Chief asks Tonya when she comes back.
“They aren’t sure he’s got the stones to get away with it,” Tonya says. “And the Ritz is probably too smart to say anything incriminating anyway, no matter what Walter tells him. You don’t really want the Ritz against Walter in a think-fast contest.”
The Chief nods emphatically.
“The Ritz will see through Walter from a block away,” she says. “Ritz will babble a bunch of exculpatory shit, no matter what kind of pretext the Bureau cooks up for Walt.”
Rik, however, believes that the Bureau will have no choice but to try something in that vein. A case built only on accomplice testimony is not strong. Ritz will trot out the standard defense, discrediting Walter by claiming Cornish killed Blanco on his own and is just offering up a big name like Ritz’s to shift the blame and reduce his time. No matter how trite or typical, that story might work. As they say, for the jury it is always opening night. The G needs corroboration for Walter.
“And by the way,” says the Chief, “what the hell is carfentanil, and how’d it get into my city?”
“It’s starting to turn up here and there,” Tonya says, “because there’s a shortage of illegal fentanyl. The Chinese got shamed into cutting off the manufacturing of the precursor chemicals. Apparently, the dealers have started cutting what they get with small doses of carfentanil. It’s a tranquilizer, but not for humans.”
It hits me quick.
“Let me guess,” I say. “It’s intended for large animals like rhinos and elephants?”
Tonya gives me a weirded-out look.
“That sounds like you’re not just guessing.” she says.