For the life of him, Holland couldn’t figure out why the mules always used rental cars. Maybe they thought not owning the vehicle would make it harder to hold them accountable at trial. Of course that wasn’t true. A man gets pulled over with two kilos of powder heroin stashed in the trunk, it doesn’t matter if he owns the rig outright or it’s a forty-five-dollar-a-day economy car from Enterprise.
An informant provided intel that something was about to move, but the timing wasn’t right to kick down the door. Instead, they let the deal play out. They let the runners leave the stash house and waited to pull the cars over until they were an hour and a half outside of Atlanta, just north of Ellijay, entering the Chattahoochee National Forest.
The mules were running a two-car convoy with a clean vehicle in the back to keep the law from getting behind the lead car. When the local PD hit the blue lights on the rear vehicle, the driver pulled over and gave some rehearsed spiel about taking his girlfriend up to the mountains for the weekend. What he didn’t know was that a mile up the road a pair of police interceptors had the lead car stopped, and a Belgian Malinois named Sparkles was working her way around from bumper to bumper. It took the dog all of two seconds to hit on the trunk, maybe another minute for officers to dig the package out from under the spare tire.
Agents had video of both cars leaving the stash house together. No how-did-that-get-there, never-seen-him-before-in-my-life bullshit would keep either driver from catching a bid. They knew that the same as the officers, which was why both of them lawyered up just as soon as they were in handcuffs.
The passenger, though, she didn’t know her ass from a hole in the ground.
Makayla Thompson was dating the man driving the rear car. She was a freshman in college studying hospitality management, going to school while her grandmother looked after her three-year-old daughter. She came from a working-class home and had never gotten so much as a speeding ticket. What started as nothing more than a thrill-seeking joyride with her boyfriend had the potential to ruin her life. In a few short minutes she’d watched her future melt through her fingers. She was the type of person Holland knew would play ball.
Holland walked into the interrogation room and slid a box of tissues across the table. Makayla looked up and he could see the innocence and vulnerability unearthed in her eyes. She was a pretty girl, dark skinned with shoulder-length hair in corkscrew curls. She wore a choker necklace and a dark red blouse that cut a low V to mid-chest. Mascara bled down her cheeks like drips of paint. She was entirely out of place.
“Makayla, I’m Agent Holland. I was going to see if I could talk with you a little bit about what went on today.”
She nodded her head, but even that was enough to unravel her. Her face crumpled and tears trickled from the corners of her eyes.
Holland pulled a tissue from the box and offered it to her. “How do you know the person you were in the car with today?”
“He’s my boyfriend.”
“And what’s his name?”
“Marcus.”
“Now, when you got in the car with Marcus, did you know where he was taking you?”
“Yes.”
“Where did he tell you y’all were going?”
“He said we had to follow somebody upstate.”
“And did you know who you were following?”
“Yes.”
“What’s his name?”
“Sean.”
“And did you know what was in that car?”
Makayla buried her face in her hands and sobbed.
“Makayla, I know you didn’t have anything to do with what those two were doing. You were just along for the ride. But you’re in a lot of trouble right now and the only way I can help you is if you talk to me. You need to answer my questions.”
Holland despised the game of good cop. Fact was, she knew what she was doing when she climbed in the car. That might not have made her as guilty as the two driving, but right was right and wrong was wrong and our lives were the summation of every choice we ever made. What was a world without consequences?
“Did he tell you who you were going to meet?”
“No.”
“Did he mention where exactly you were going?”
“Not really.”
“Makayla, I need you to think about this. If you want me to help you, you’re going to have to give me something. If you want to watch that little girl of yours grow up from the front porch rather than from behind glass, you need to tell me what he said. You give me something I can work with and this all goes away. You go right back to class on Monday and this wasn’t anything but a bad weekend.”
“All he said was that we had to follow Sean to the state line and then we’d turn around and come home.”
“And who were you meeting at the state line?”
“We weren’t meeting anybody.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we was just supposed to follow him to the state line and turn around. That’s it. I don’t know where he was going after that.”
“So y’all were supposed to turn around, but the other car was supposed to keep going?”
“That’s right. They kept bragging about how once they got to the state line they were home free. Said they had police escorts once they got there. They make these runs every couple weeks. They split a grand and take turns driving whichever car—this time Sean drives lead, next time Marcus. They always talked about how there wasn’t anybody pulling them over once they were out of Georgia.”
“Police escorts?”
“That’s what they said.”
“And where exactly were they going?”
“I don’t have any idea. But last time Marcus went up there I know he stayed at a casino somewhere. Came home talking about how he’d won all this money. He hit two hundred dollars on a slot machine. You’d have thought he’d won the Powerball the way he was talking. Took me out to eat at the Red Lobster and his cheap ass was wrapping up cheddar biscuits in a napkin and making me hide them in my purse.”
Holland tried not to laugh, but couldn’t help it. Luckily it seemed to relieve the tension for a moment. Makayla wiped the tears from under her eyes with the sides of her index fingers. She shook her head and a slight grin lifted her cheeks for a split second. She held her arms together straight in front of her with her hands locked between her knees like she was cold. Holland took a sip of coffee and let what she’d said roll around.
The idea of police escorts was an unsettling thought. If the runners were meeting someone at the line who could provide that type of protection, then it had to be state troopers or county lawmen, and either way made working a case damn near impossible. The agency was used to pulling local resources for support when they went into small communities. A handful of crooked cops tainted an entire department. US-74 snaked its way up the mountain and crossed the line into Cherokee County. A new casino had opened there a year before in Murphy on tribal land. Holland remembered that afternoon in Asheville and what that boy had said. Cherokee.
At the time he was so pissed and tired and ready to get home that he hadn’t given a second thought to that little cocky son of a bitch. A few days later when Rodriguez called with some harebrained theory about all of the dope moving from west to east, two routes from Atlanta into western North Carolina both passing through tribal land, and the possibility of using casinos to launder the money, Holland had nearly hung up the phone. All of a sudden that didn’t seem like such a wild idea. Using jurisdictional protections of a sovereign nation as sanctuary. It was brilliant.
He wondered if Rodriguez had any leads on anyone who might be dirty. If it was, in fact, tribal police, Holland would catch hell trying to prove it. Decades on the job had shaped him into a cynic. He was not one to fall for gut reactions. Still, there was something about the whole thing that felt right. Sometimes when everyone was pointing in the same direction, the smartest thing a man could do was look.