Triana wasn’t so sure of that. Her dad had never been one to mess with. As much as she loved him, she knew he was ornery enough to do something like that.
“So, is there anything else the police didn’t tell me about my father’s death?” she asked, not sure what to do with all the information she already had.
“Actually, there is.”
He hesitated as the waitress came by to drop off the checks. True to his word, Bodine grabbed hers and paid for it. Triana reminded herself to check the next expense report just in case. She waited while the PI calculated the tip down to the sixth decimal place. When he finally looked up at her, his expression was cautious.
“To tell the truth, I have no idea what to make of this last part, but it’s strange, so I think it’s something we should dig into,” Bodine said. “When you read the report, I’m sure the chemical names will mean more to you than they did to me, but bottom line—someone pumped your father full of animal tranquilizer just before he was shot. Again, I’m not sure how they’re connected, but the report said the levels would have been lethal to a human in minutes. Essentially, someone tried to poison your dad to death before they shot him.”
Chapter 8
“How bad do you think this is going to be?” Remy asked the room in general. Talking about the upcoming ass-reaming had to be better than sitting around stewing over it.
“On a scale of one to ten?” On the other side of the table in the small NOPD headquarters conference room, Lorenzo’s mouth tightened. “I’m figuring about a twelve, maybe even a thirteen since I’m feeling so lucky today.”
Remy looked at Brooks, then Drew, hoping one of the other SWAT officers might offer up something to give the narcotics detective a little hope. But both men were sitting there with the same tight, concerned expression on their faces.
Okay. That must mean this meeting with the captain of narcotics major case squad and the assistant district attorney responsible for prosecuting Aaron Lee, if the man ever saw the inside of a courtroom, was going to be just as awful as Lorenzo feared. Not that Remy expected anything less after the absolute catastrophe of a morning they’d had at the freight storage warehouse owned and operated by another one of Lee’s shell companies.
Remy and his pack mates had barely walked into the SWAT facility that morning when Drew stuck his head out of his office and said they had a call. He hadn’t given them any details, just simple instructions to get their gear ready, load up the operations vehicle, and roll. Not that Remy needed much in the way of details to figure out they were going after Aaron Lee again. That was the only reason Drew would have been so mum about the whole thing.
Drew had given them an extremely basic mission briefing en route to the warehouse. According to their narcotics informant, the crime boss had the crystal meth stored in there and intended to start breaking it down today. Since Drew and Lorenzo didn’t want to risk the operation getting compromised again, they’d accelerated the normal timetable for a raid like this as well as limited the number of people involved. They’d hoped by moving fast and light, they’d hit Lee’s warehouse before word of the raid leaked out to the man.
Unfortunately, it hadn’t worked that way.
Remy had known there was something wrong before he’d even kicked in the back door of the warehouse. The approach to the structure had simply been too easy, the lack of exterior guards was a blaring alarm that they were walking into a setup. His inner wolf had gone into alert mode, sure there were going to be shooters in the place waiting to mow them all down the moment they stepped inside.
Drew had sent his teams into the warehouse through multiple entry points, much the same way Remy would have done if he were running the show. They’d even blown out two windows, so they could get officers into the rearmost storage areas, where they were sure the drugs were being held. But there hadn’t been any drugs in the place, even though Remy was able to pick up a clear scent telling him the crap had been there no more than an hour ago.
Even more embarrassing than the absence of meth was the obvious fact that the people running the warehouse had known they were coming. Instead of the normal bustling crew of twenty or thirty men that should have been working, there were only a handful of men who claimed to know nothing about the drugs.
On the bright side, Aaron Lee and his lieutenants hadn’t shown up to crow at them. But on the not-so-bright side, Drew and Lorenzo had gotten a call about twenty minutes later, telling them to come downtown to police headquarters and to bring Remy and Brooks with them.
Remy felt bad that Drew and Lorenzo were in hot water, but he was also a little worried about why he and Brooks had been pulled into this mess. They were merely visitors here. No way in hell was he going to let the NOPD brass try and lay this shit sandwich at their feet.
He swiveled around in his chair as the door to the conference room opened. An older man with captain bars on the shoulders of his uniform and a name tag that read Barron walked in, followed by a harried-looking guy in a suit and tie that had to be the ADA. One look at him and Remy could already tell they weren’t going to get along.
Captain Barron walked over and shook each of their hands. “You must be Senior Corporal Brooks and Officer Boudreaux. I’m Corey Barron. Thanks for coming down to talk to us.” He motioned at the lawyer. “This is ADA Russo. He’d like to ask a few questions and see if we can get to the bottom of our current predicament.”
Barron gave Russo a nod, then took a seat at the table beside Brooks. Russo didn’t sit. Instead, he swept a glare over all of them.
“You realize that I’ve gone to Judge Thibodeau twice now for warrants, right? And that in order to get the one signed this morning, I had to go over to his house before sunrise with one of his clerks in tow and wake the man and his wife up?” He scowled at Lorenzo. “Do you know how much I hate waking up a judge at six o’clock in the morning? Do you?”
When Lorenzo didn’t answer his question, Russo took a deep breath and ran his fingers through his tousled blond hair. “Thibodeau wasn’t real keen on going up against Lee to begin with, so I had to talk him into it. He’s coming up for reelection soon, and Aaron Lee can bury him easily enough if he wants to. But I’d promised him we had a solid source inside the old man’s organization. I can’t imagine the judge puts much stock in my promises now, seeing as we’re oh-for-two on these damn raids. I swear, I don’t know what’s worse, the fact that Judge Thibodeau will probably shoot me the next time I walk into his office, or that I can forget about ever getting another search warrant signed by the man.”
Remy wasn’t generally fond of lawyers, and Russo was working his way steadily higher on his list of disliked people. So it wasn’t really his fault he couldn’t hold his tongue. “Since I’ve been shot a few times before, I think having the judge shoot you would be worse than having to go find another judge to sign your search warrants. But then again, maybe that’s just me.”
He opened his mouth to add that Russo getting shot might not be such a bad thing if the ADA could convince the judge to shoot him in some noncritical part of his anatomy like his ass or his brain, but beside him, Brooks laid a hand on his arm and squeezed until the bones started to creak.
Russo glared at Remy but didn’t say anything, much to Remy’s disappointment. Instead, the lawyer turned his attention to Captain Barron.
“You’d think this day couldn’t get any worse, right? Wrong,” the ADA said. “Want to know what I get to do next?”
No one answered this question either, but Russo didn’t seem to notice. He stood there, jaw clenched, his heart beating so fast Remy thought the lawyer was going to blow a gasket. Shit, this guy needs to take up yoga or something.
“I get to spend some quality time with Mr. Lee himself,” Russo said, his heart thumping even harder. “Yeah, that’s right. He is on his way here right now with his entourage of lawyers. They want to talk to me about why they shouldn’t be suing the department for property damages and harassment. And guess what? The DA has left me to deal with this on my own. You want to know what he told me? You’re the one who wanted to go after the big fish. Guess you better figure out how to reel him in on your own.” The ADA shook his head. “The man is flat out going to offer me up as fish bait if this goes wrong. And right now, it’s going pretty fucking wrong. I mean, shit, guys, did you have to blow out his fucking windows?”
