“I wish I’d shot you,” she muttered behind him, but he didn’t turn around to acknowledge the words.
Instead, he headed back to the station. It felt good to be at work in plain clothes. He was off the clock, so he wasn’t going to worry too much about appearances. And he thought better when he wasn’t in uniform. There was something about beige polyester that made his brain sluggish.
It took him about two minutes to decide he wasn’t going to share his visit with Kayla or the feds. He hadn’t uncovered enough to be useful to them, and acknowledging that he’d known the person in the cabin and that she possibly hadn’t shot him because she knew him would just be another reason for the feds to think he was crooked, or at least that he had ties to the wrong kind of people.
No, he wasn’t going to tell anyone what he’d been up to, but he wasn’t careless enough to only store his intel in his brain. He planned to stay alive and healthy enough to share as needed, but it was best to take precautions. So he took twenty minutes to type up some notes, saved them on his desktop, and emailed a copy to himself on his work account. Surely that would take care of it.
Then he gave in to temptation and jogged down the stairs to find Deputy Garron still at the front desk.
“You holding down the fort?” Jericho asked, trying to sound casual and friendly. Garron had been a deputy when Jericho had been a rebellious teenager, and their historic relationship had been based on mutual antipathy. But surely they could move past that, now. Especially since Jericho wanted the older man to give him information.
Garron just lifted an eyebrow and looked around, making it clear that the answer to Jericho’s question was too obvious to bother with.
Jericho smiled. “Yeah, okay. You don’t go out much anymore, do you? Out in the field. Is that by choice, or are you stuck in here?”
“Is there a reason you’re asking?”
“Just making conversation.”
Garron lifted the same eyebrow again, but didn’t say anything. This conversation was going about as well as the one with Nikki. Time to try a different approach.
“You must be really happy to see the feds back,” Jericho said with a positive smile. “You guys are a bit—not over your heads! You know what you’re doing, I’m sure. There’s just, well, there’s some crazy stuff going on. You guys are used to dealing with break-ins, domestics, car accidents. All this drug-smuggling crap,plusthree bodies showing up? Damn, it’s a good thing the feds are here.”
“You think so?” Garron didn’t sound as if he was actually asking a question. “They were here for seven months last time, didn’t make a single arrest.”
“Okay, but last time there were complications. There were people in their agency actually acting against them. This time, though? No one could ever think Hockley and Montgomery are dirty.” He waited, so hopeful of a rebuttal that he had trouble maintaining his cover, but Garron didn’t give him what he wanted.
“They’re too uptight to be dirty,” he said dismissively. “But that doesn’t mean we need them.”
“Three bodies to process. We could use their crime-scene guys for that, couldn’t we?”
“Three execution-style killings? The site is clean, and everybody knows it. Those guys were killed by someone smooth enough to not leave a trace.”
Jericho nodded knowingly. “Well, the feds helped with the IDs, didn’t they?”
“My six-year-old granddaughter could have IDed bodies with the wallets still on them.” Garron frowned at Jericho for a moment, then said, “Three out-of-state wiseguys, all of them from Chicago with records as long as your arm, turn up dead here in quiet little Mosely. Larry DeMonte and his bikers are buzzing around like spring bees on crack, but they’re not saying a damn thing. The feds are chasing down some decade-old drop site because they don’t have any idea where else to look, and you’re hanging out down here trying to pump me for information because the feds don’t like your friends and have cut you out of the loop.” He leaned his impressive bulk back into the wooden desk chair and raisedbotheyebrows this time. “Anything I missed, there? Anything else you think the feds would be able to help us with?”
Busted. Jericho tried his innocent smile, but Garron had clearly seen it too many times in the past to be impressed by it now. “That was a great summary,” Jericho admitted.
“Next time, just ask.” Garron shook his head, and if he’d been outside, he probably would have spit on the ground. “You’re a punk, but you’reourpunk. The feds have no right to freeze you out, especially not when you took a fucking bullet protecting local kids fromtheirfucking ‘colleagues.’”
Jericho was genuinely touched, but he knew Garron would wince at any acknowledgment. So instead, he said, “Well, while you’re feeling so open-minded—what did they have Wade Granger in for today? Just the insurance fraud stuff?”
“Closed-door interrogation. I don’t know what that was about. But Hockley’s definitely got a hard-on for busting Granger, so he’ll probably be dragging him in for questioning on every damn thing that happens in this town. That’s what he did last time he was here.”
Jericho nodded thoughtfully. A federal agent gunning for Wade. A wise man would take it as a reason to lay low, but Wade had never been known for his wisdom. No, Wade would see it the way he saw everything else: as an opportunity. Jericho wasn’t sure he wanted to discover whether Wade planned to use the situation for profit or just amusement.
“Three dead out-of-staters,” he mused. As long as Garron was being cooperative, Jericho might as well take advantage. “And the bikers are agitated. Clean killings—what level are our bikers at? Do they have guys capable of pulling a tidy execution?”
Garron nodded grudgingly. “Probably. When you were here they were strictly small-time, but Larry DeMonte’s ambitious. He’s been pushing pretty hard, and he’s done some . . . I guess you’d call them exchanges. Sending local guys to work at bigger chapters for a year or two, bringing in some outsiders to work with his locals. Something like this would be a step further than they’ve gone in the past, but it’s more or less the direction they’ve been heading.”
Jericho had seen notes to the same effect in the files he’d been reviewing, but it was good to confirm them with a cop whowasn’tcurrently suspended or incarcerated for corruption. “Larry DeMonte. He related to Mike DeMonte?”
“Larry’s the uncle. Mike’s working his way up through the organization now.”
Damn, another high school acquaintance on the wrong side of the law. That was what happened when a town ran out of legitimate industry. After the mines ran dry, lots of people left Mosely, but those who stuck around either fought for the few straight jobs left or found other ways to make a living.
“You have an address for Mike?” Jericho asked.
