Steve and I gave statements to the Wilmington PD. Steve’s hands were trembling; he’d never shot someone before. My hands weren’t the steadiest, either—I’d never been shot before. Neither of us mentioned the president playing games on his BlackBerry.
Dan wouldn’t be mentioning him, either. The fact that Dan had died instead of entering the Delaware penal system was probably for the best. The Marauders would have surely put a hit out on him once they found out what he’d done to Taylor.
Esposito approached me after I’d finished giving my statement. “I should apologize for being so hard on you,” she said.
“You should, but…”
“But I don’t believe in apologies.”
I shook her hand. “I appreciate the gesture nonetheless.”
She promised a full internal investigation into Detective Capriotti’s illicit activities. I didn’t blame her or her department. I believed that the Wilmington police force did the best they could with the tools they were given. Police officers were, by and large, good people. A single bad egg, however, was all it took to spoil the bunch. At least as far as public perception is concerned. It would be up to Esposito to clean up the mess.
A pair of DEA officers—one man, one woman—introduced themselves to me. I recognized their names from the search warrant for the Donnellys’ home. “Do you have a moment to chat?” the female agent said.
An EMT was wrapping a blood pressure cuff around my upper arm. “As long as you don’t say anything to spike my numbers,” I said.
They explained to me that the Marauders’ trafficking encompassed the entire eastern seaboard. The scheme involving Finn Donnelly had been just one piece of a larger pie they were tracking. I apologized for royally screwing their investigation, but they told me not to sweat it. When they realized Dan Capriotti was crooked, the entire DEA operation had been thrown into disarray. The DEA couldn’t trust Esposito or anyone else in the Wilmington PD. They didn’t know how far the conspiracy to “tax” the Marauders’ local chapter went, or if Finn Donnelly had truly gone into business for himself. For a while, everyone who crossed their radar had been suspect.
“Including me,” I said.
The agents looked at each other, but didn’t deny the charge. “We had an undercover operative and an informant to protect,” the female agent said. “We couldn’t trust anyone.”
“Jeremy was the undercover operative. Who was the informant?”
“Alvin Harrison,” she said. He was dead now and the operation had fizzled out, so there was no risk in revealing his name. “He’d turned in a tip that Finn was smuggling something.”
“So rather than confront Finn directly…”
The male agent cleared his throat. “There was a reward involved. A substantial reward.”
It couldn’t have been easy for Alvin to turn in one of his railroad brothers. I wanted to believe Alvin had been motivated by more than money. A sense of justice, perhaps. I assumed that Alvin had his reasons for doing what he did, just as Finn had his reasons for doing what he did. Whatever the reasoning behind Alvin’s actions, I now understood the pit of despair he’d fallen into after the accident. Even though Finn was already dead when Alvin’s train hit him, Alvin had killed him, in a way. And he’d known it. The weight had been too much to bear.
Even though the good guys ultimately prevailed, the bad guys had landed some hard punches. Dan’s betrayal stung. We were entering a new age, one where there were no absolutes like right and wrong. The worst part was that it felt like everyone else had already been living there for a long time. I was finally just catching on.