“Did you pull his juvenile record?”
He huffs like it was a stupid question. “Who do you think you’re talking to? His first arrest was when he was fourteen. He broke into a shaved ice shack in the middle of the night expecting there to be money in the till. After that, it was breaking into cars, and then he graduated into marijuana possession.”
“Was he in the system? Foster care?”
“Nope, he had a good home life. He just got involved with the wrong people.”
Fucking figures.
Opening another attachment, I look over his involvementwith our heroin supplier, Jessup, who settled in Tulsa about ten years ago. “When did he get mixed up with Jessup?”
“Hard to say, he was arrested when he was nineteen with a large amount of pot, but then he was caught again when he was twenty with black tar. I’m not sure that his arrest for pot was connected to Jessup, or that they connected after that, but there was a connection sometime in that year, for sure.”
Black tar, also known as Mexican black tar heroin, is a major Mexican export and has gained major traction in the Tulsa area. It’s cheaper than powdered heroin, but just as strong. The misconception among users is that it is less potent because of its form, resulting in an increase in overdoses.
Swan goes on. “According to his arrest record, he was one of Jessup’s street guys for a while, but they cut him loose almost two years ago.”
“Is that when he got involved with the Ghost?”
“Yep.” Swan pops the P. “For about a year he was busted with small amounts of fentanyl, but he’s been dealing the combo for the past five months.”
Ghost is our new dealer, aptly named because we can’t fucking figure out who he is. Fentanyl first showed up about five years ago, but the major dealer who brought it to Tulsa was found dead in his car with a bullet between his eyes - something else that we have yet to solve.
Then, three years ago, fentanyl deaths skyrocketed. This new guy keeps himself buried so far away from the public that we can’t get an ID on him. We know the two guys who stabbed Trendell work for Ghost, but we can’t seem to get anything to stick to them.
Catching them would have gotten me some answers I’ve been desperate for.
We’ve had a guy undercover in Jessup’s close circle, but he’s been MIA for a few weeks, which is a whole other issue.
“Do you think they killed him because he was double-dipping and selling on the side?”
“I’d bet my left nut on it.” Swan says as his desk chair squeaks over the line.
Trendell’s dabbling in mixing the heroin he bought from Jessup and the fentanyl he bought from Ghost to sell on the street was his downfall. The increase in deaths because of his ignorance was drawing unwanted attention, so they had to get rid of him.
Ms. Harlow’s intrusion the other night set my case back at least five steps and my promotion by years, if it’s even on the table still at all.
After I wrap up my conversation with Swan, I scrub my hands over my face. What a fucking cluster fuck.
Later that evening, I’ve moved to the couch that was my bed last night and have been reading and comparing notes. The sound of bare feet on wood in the short hallway pulls my attention from my work as she walks across the living room.
Her perfect peach of an ass in short, thin shorts walks through the kitchen into her studio with papers from a spiral notebook in her hand. Her long wavy ponytail is swaying between her shoulder blades.
I’m not sure if she is teasing me with her clothing choices or if she always dresses like this, but her patched-together shorts are paper thin and look like they were cut from an old quilt with a drawstring in the front. Her tiny tank top looks like it was crocheted and is layered over a lace camisole bra that clings to her ribs. Both the top and the bra have thin spaghetti straps.
Part of me thinks she is who she is without a care about what anyone else thinks, but the part of me that’s trying to stop my dick from standing at attention thinks she’s doing it on purpose. That part of me also enjoys looking at whatever golden skin she wants to show me.
She walks back through the kitchen with something in herhand and barely glances at me on her way to the front door.
“Where are you going?” I ask, the piece of paper I was about to flip to the back of the stack frozen in the air.
Her eyes cut to me as she grabs the door handle. “To get some air.” When I set my papers on the couch as she pulls the door open, she says, “Alone.”
I stand up anyway, and she huffs and rolls her eyes as she walks through the door and pulls it closed before I get to it. If there were a lock on the other side, I think she would lock me in.
Her bare feet thump on the wooden planks as she walks across the front porch and disappears around the corner to the side deck. I walk to the corner and lean against the house with my hands in my pockets and watch her sit on a lounger next to a fire pit.
The sky is black and full of stars, and I can hear the stream moving over the rocks at the edge of the deck. There is a tree frog close to the deck battling with the crickets to see who can be the loudest.
