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AN HOUR LATER, I was standing next to the bronze pig sculpture underneath the huge neon clock at Pike Place Market. The fishmongers had already buttoned up for the day, and the usual crowds had started to thin, with tourists trading the open-air market for a tasty dinner at one of the many restaurants.
I checked my phone for the fifth time. Momo was ten minutes late. What if he didn’t come? My idea to make a buy from him wasn’t going to work. I’d have to figure out something else in order to make my way up the chain of command in Momo’s world. My fingers curled around the fat envelope in my purse. On the way I’d stopped at the bank to pick up the money. I had no idea how much counterfeit meds cost, but I wanted to make a big enough purchase so he wouldn’t have it on hand and would need to go to his buyer.
I also needed to give him enough that he wouldn’t separate the cash. I’d attached a round, flat disk about the size of a quarter to the inside of one of the stacks of bills. It was a small GPS tracker powered by a tiny but powerful battery. I’d be able to keep track of him for a few hours with an app I’d downloaded onto my phone.
After watching the market stalls close down one by one, I slid my phone back into my pocket and turned to leave.
“Kate?”
I glanced at the man in front of me. In his early thirties, he had dark, curly hair and a hard face, with small, deep-set eyes. His bright red coat looked new, and his tennis shoes were expensive. The purple ball cap didn’t fit.
“Momo?”
He gave me a quick nod. “Let’s take a walk.” Momo took my arm and steered me through the thinning crowd of pedestrians and along the street, sidestepping slow-moving cars as we picked our way toward a nearby alley.
Halfway down the length of the alleyway, he stopped and looked both ways. Satisfied that we were alone, he asked, “How much were you looking for?”
“Actually, I was hoping to get a large supply so I wouldn’t have to do this again for a while.”
“How big are we talking here? Fifty? A hundred?”
“At least a thousand.”
His eyes narrowed. “A thousand? You wouldn’t be thinkin’ of goin’ into business for yourself, would you?” He inched closer, sizing me up.
“No, no, no.” I put my hands up, palms out. “Believe me, I don’t want to do this for a living. I have a good job. Really. It’s for the pain.” I rubbed the side of my neck for effect. “I take at least three of those pills with the 6767 on the side a day—can’t remember what they’re called—sometimes four if it’s bad. Add it up. A thousand won’t even last a year.”
His shoulders relaxed a bit, but he still didn’t look convinced. “It’ll cost you twelve K.”
I widened my eyes in surprise. “Twelve dollars each? Are you serious? Last time I made a buy it was only seven.” I didn’t have a clue if I was supposed to haggle, but it sounded good.
He shrugged. “That’s the price. Take it or leave it.” He looked me up and down. “I’m gonna need a few thousand up front. That’s a big order, yo.”
“How do I know I can trust you? I’m not comfortable handing over that much to a complete stranger. What’s stopping you from taking off with my money?”
He smiled. “But I ain’ no stranger. We have a mutual friend.” Momo gave me an annoyed look and added, “And why in hell would I steal your money when you bringin’ more bank?”
Good point. “Tell you what. How about I give you five hundred now and the rest on delivery? That way, we both get peace of mind.”
He scoffed. “Ain’ no such thing as peace of mind.” He took out a pack of cigarettes, shook one free and lit it. Studying me, he exhaled a blue cloud. Then he said, “A’ight. For a friend of Ian’s I’ll see what I can do. Make it two thousand and we’re good.”
“Cool. Do I pay you here?”
He sighed as though he couldn’t believe how naïve I was. “Where else you gonna pay me?” He spread his arms to encompass the empty alley.
With an embarrassed smile, I dug in my purse for the money and slipped the stack of fifties with the GPS inside along with an additional thousand dollars into an envelope. I opened it to show him and then quickly closed it before handing it over. He took it from me and slid it into his coat pocket.
“When will you have it?”
“Should be early tomorrow. I’ll give you a call.”
I nodded. “Okay. And you’re sure you can get the same kind, right? The ones that say 6767? Nothing else seems to work as good.”
He took one more drag off his cigarette and flicked it against the brick building. It sputtered out in a shallow puddle. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Great.” I hesitated. “Are we done?”
One side of his mouth quirked up, and he shook his head again. “Yeah, we good.” He pushed off the wall of the building and sauntered back the way we came. I stayed behind and waited for him to turn the corner.
As soon as he was gone, I took out my phone, found the app I was looking for, and logged in. A little red dot blinked steadily.
Now I just had to follow the money.
***
Rush hour was long since over and traffic was light. The streetlights glowed blue-white in the crisp evening air. I followed Momo south onto I-5, where he exited the freeway a few miles outside of Tacoma. The red light on my phone continued to blink, tracing Momo’s route. A few minutes later the red light stopped. I squinted at the screen. The map indicated a park.
Following the outskirts of the deserted park, I spotted Momo’s newer-model Acura parked next to an open-air pavilion. Stationary barbecues dotted the green space, with dozens of trees breaking up the expanse. Glowing light circles from the occasional street lamp peppered the area.
I pulled to the curb and turned off the lights. Reaching into the console, I took out my camera with the night vision zoom lens attached. After the last stakeout, I’d made sure to stash it and a pair of night vision binoculars in the Jeep. The directional mic was in the shop. The delicate hardware had been damaged from the collision with the van the night of Bobby’s murder, so I wouldn’t be able to listen to their conversation.
A dark-colored van sat several yards from Momo’s Acura, on the same side of the street. He climbed out of his car and headed toward it. I shot a number of photographs of both Momo and the other vehicle. The side door to the van slid open, and a man in a hooded sweatshirt got out. Momo said something to him and handed him an envelope, larger than the one I’d given him. The man in the hoodie disappeared inside the van, reappearing a moment later with a square bundle wrapped in plastic. He handed it to Momo, got back inside the van and rolled the door closed. Momo returned to his car while the other vehicle drove off. I glanced at my phone—the red dot was moving. My bundle of money was now inside the van.
I waited until Momo left before I shifted into gear and followed.
The van drove out of the park and back onto I-5, headed south toward Olympia. I wasn’t too worried about the men in the van catching sight of me following them. They had no reason to believe Momo had a tail. He was a small-time dealer. Within the larger distribution scheme he wasn’t important.
The van continued past the city of Olympia and exited the freeway. I recognized the neighborhood. A knot formed in my stomach as the van turned left onto a familiar street and pulled into a familiar driveway.
Where did you think you’d end up?
I turned around at the next intersection, drove past the house where Bobby had been killed, cut the lights, and pulled to the curb. The van was idling in the driveway. The windows were dark, and there were no other vehicles. Keeping my eyes on the van, I groped in the passenger seat for the camera.
According to my contact at the DEA, they were still at the gathering evidence stage and did not have plans to move on whoever owned the home. I would have thought that the man who ordered Bobby’s murder would have vacated the premises. He’d certainly heard about the car accident that killed the van’s driver that night. Whether he thought the timing coincidental or not, he had to have weighed the pros and cons of staying. But if there were no repercussions from the murder, why leave?
At that moment, the garage door scrolled open and the van moved forward into the darkened space. The night vision lens gave the scene an eerie green hue. Two men jumped out of the van—the guy wearing the hooded sweatshirt who had done the deal with Momo, and another, thinner man. They walked around to the side and opened the door to reveal multiple plastic containers stacked three and four high. I started taking pictures.
The men transferred the containers to one side of the garage, stacking them three high before starting another row. Fifteen minutes later, the two men had emptied the van, closed the cargo door, and went into the house. The man in the hooded sweatshirt hit the button to shut the garage door as he walked inside.
Without the directional mic, I wouldn’t be able to hear their conversation. I wasn’t in the mood to stay put and pull an all-nighter. Other than my 9mm, the night vision camera and binoculars were the only equipment I’d brought with me.
Conducting physical surveillance usually required more preparation, not the least of which was staking the place out beforehand to get an idea of the subject’s activity. I glanced down at my black shirt, black pants, black sneakers, and black jacket. It was a start.
I needed to find out what was inside those containers. Securing the camera around my neck, I slid my gun into a bellyband under my shirt and exited the Jeep.
The hydrangea bushes gave me the cover I needed as I skirted the house past the window where I’d heard Bobby murdered. There were no lights on that I could see, so I continued to the back. Normally, I would have done more reconnaissance, but I hadn’t tripped any alarms the last time, so I figured it was safe enough. A few feet from the hydrangeas, I came to a tall wooden privacy fence with a gate. I tried the latch but it was locked. I checked the immediate area for something to stand on to help me climb over the top. There was nothing. Rather than waste time looking, I pulled out my set of lock picking tools.
It was a simple mechanism, and two minutes later, the lock tumbled and I opened the gate. I stepped through and eased the gate closed.
Rounding the back corner, I came upon an expansive patio with a lap pool and an outdoor barbeque. The blue light from the pool cast amoeba-like shapes on the trunks of the trees surrounding the perimeter. I skirted the patio and caught a glimpse of a lamp through a pair of French doors to the left of a huge window. I hugged the wall and crept closer.
It was a cavernous room with an entertainment center lining the back wall and a U-shaped leather sectional oriented toward a big-screen television, but there was no one visible. Somewhere inside, a dog barked, quickly joined by another.
That wasn’t good. I eased away from the doors in case someone came downstairs to investigate. Remembering what Quinn had taught me in the Yucatán about reconnaissance, I kept to the shadows, moving from cover to cover, always keeping something between me and the place I was surveilling.
I cleared the backyard and made my way along the far side of the house. This time, there were no hydrangea bushes to hide behind, only a massive HVAC system and a pump house for the pool and hot tub. The distance between the fence and the house was much narrower than the other side. A sturdy six foot-high privacy fence stood between me and the neighbor’s side yard.
The windows on that side of the house were above my head, so I climbed on top of the pump house roof and eased to a standing position to peek in the nearest window.
Inside was a mudroom-slash-laundry room, with two doors. The door to my left sported a deadbolt and more than likely led to the garage. Another door, which was open, led to a hallway. Hanging cabinets filled one wall, with a front-loading washer and dryer underneath. Open shelving with a bunch of cleaning products stood near the back, and a deep utility sink took up space nearby. Two of the plastic tubs I’d seen in the van were stacked in the corner.
Shadows fell across the open doorway. I stepped back as two men entered the laundry from the hallway. Neither of them looked up. One was the guy in the hooded sweatshirt from the van. Of medium height, he had a buzz cut and a bolt through his earlobe. The other one was tall and thin and had spiky blond hair. He wore ripped black jeans and a black T-shirt underneath an old army jacket. His bone structure was pronounced—sharp cheekbones and bony shoulders gave the impression of a man on the verge of starvation. An indeterminate amount of piercings and tattoos covered what I could see of his body.
They went out to the garage, returning a few minutes later carrying two more tubs from the van, one stacked on top of the other. They set them down next to the others and went back through the door, returning with two more. This continued until the containers took up most of the space in the room. The guy with the hoodie left through the door to the hallway. The one with the spiky blond hair stayed with the tubs.
Spike crossed his arms as he waited, then crossed and uncrossed his legs. He cracked his neck first one way, and then the other, and scratched the side of his face, his fingernails leaving a trail of red welts. Unable to keep still, he shuffled from foot to foot, and yawned dramatically. He raised both hands in the air in a stretch that ended with one hand casually draped across a stack of tubs. A few seconds later, Spike craned his neck to look out the door into the hallway. Then he sauntered into the hall and checked both directions.
He walked back into the room and headed for one of the stacks of tubs, where he eased the top off a container, checking behind him like he was afraid of getting caught.
A slow grin spread across his face as he removed the lid. The tub was filled to the top with plastic baggies that contained what looked like hundreds of white pills. My heart beat faster as my camera quietly whirred, recording the contents.
That was a lot of meds.
Were the pills the same kind that killed Jason and put Lisa into a coma? I could only guess. Either way, I was now one step closer to keeping them from ending up on the street. I’d contact the DEA as soon as I got back to my Jeep.
Spike checked behind him once more before grabbing one of the baggies and stuffing it into his jacket pocket. He replaced the lid and turned as his friend in the hoodie walked into the room, leading another man behind him.
The new guy was older than the other two by at least a decade—his salt-and-pepper hair gave him a more distinguished appearance, as did his long-sleeved shirt, pressed slacks, and shiny leather shoes. But the heavy gold chain around his neck didn’t do anything for his ensemble. Neither did the gaudy gold pinkie ring.
But that could just be me.
They exchanged words, and then the three of them walked out of the laundry room and into the house.
The show was over. Slinging the strap across my body, I slid the camera around my back to keep it safe and then eased away from the window and climbed down from the pump house. Somewhere in the backyard a door slammed followed by a chorus of barks and the scrabble of claws on patio bricks.
I’d forgotten about the dogs.
Panicking, I scrambled back onto the roof of the shed, frantically searching for a way to escape. Except for the laundry room window, this side of the two-story house was all smooth siding with no handholds anywhere. With the barks getting louder, I eyed the distance to the fence.
And jumped.