“He’s always wanted a dog. Allergies.”
“That tracks.”
I turned back to the wall, but the faces were starting to blur together. Suspicion had a way of spreading like a stain until everyone looked guilty. That was the danger of this work—paranoia was useful right up until the moment it made you see enemies everywhere.
But I slid everyone who’d been part of the raid from medium- to high-risk. Martinez, Briggson, Reeves. Even Vance.
Donovan didn’t argue.
He picked up one of the files on the counter, flipping through the pages Rawlings had provided. His finger stopped on a photo clipped to the inside of a folder. Not a cop. A businessman.
“Jonathan Porter,” he read. “Real estate developer. Owns half the commercial property in town.”
I nodded, turning away from the suspect wall. “Rawlings thinks he’s connected to the syndicate.”
“Based on what?”
I joined him at the counter. “Porter’s properties have been completely untouched by the drug crisis. No overdoses, no deals gone bad, no complaints from tenants about suspicious activity. In a town where this stuff is showing up everywhere, his buildings are clean.”
“Could be good management.”
“Could be.” I didn’t believe it. Neither did Donovan. “There’s more. Six months ago, an anonymous tip came in about suspicious activity at one of Porter’s warehouses out by the highway. Patrol unit responded, found nothing.”
“Nothing as in empty?”
“Nothing as inscrubbed. The responding officer noted in his report that the floors looked recently cleaned. Industrial grade.”
Donovan shook his head. “Sounds like the kind of cleaning you do when you’re eliminating evidence.”
“Yep.” I pulled out the report and handed it to him. “Tip gets logged, word gets out through whatever channel the leak uses, and by the time anyone shows up, there’s nothing to find. Case went nowhere. No follow-up.”
Donovan’s jaw tightened as he scanned the report. “Someone inside the department warned them. Gave them time to clear the place before officers arrived.”
“That’s Rawlings’s read.”
We both looked at Porter’s photo. The man had the polished look of someone who’d never worried about a bill in his life. Styled hair, expensive suit, teeth too white to be natural, and a smile that belonged on a campaign poster.
“What a prick,” Donovan said.
“Probably.”
Porter wasn’t our primary target. Finding the dirty cops was. But if Rawlings was right, whoever we identified inside the department would eventually lead us up the chain to Porter and the rest of the operation. Might as well take down as many people as we could.
I pulled another file from the stack. The county coroner’s summary on the drug itself.
“Drift,” I said. “That’s what they’re calling it on the street.”
“Drift. Sexy.” Donovan leaned in to read over my shoulder. “Designer fentanyl?”
“Fentanyl base with modifications that make it harder to detect with standard field tests. The name comes from ski culture—drifting down the mountain, floating, that kind of thing.” I flipped the page. “Also describes what happens when you overdose. Users drift away. Five deaths in the past eight months, all tourists.”
“Tourists,” Donovan repeated. “Convenient.”
“That’s part of how it’s stayed under the radar. Victims aren’t locals. Families don’t stick around to ask questions. Easy to write off as out-of-towners who brought their own supply and got unlucky.”
The cynicism of it sat heavy in my chest. A distribution network operating in plain sight because the bodies were easy to dismiss. Outsiders with problems. Not Summit Falls’s concern.
“Fentanyl variant,” Donovan said, reading over my shoulder. He was quiet for a moment. “You know what that means for Jolly.”
