Spartan to extremes.
Doing without creature comforts simply to belong.
Hutch shook his head.
“I got reporters out the ass,” Harry went on as he again guided them out and started them toward the back shed.“Meg’s had to call a town council meeting.The only good news is, Lacey Diever is pleased as all hell.No way that will is gonna hold up now.Not sure how all of this is gonna play out, since everything on this compound holds value.Thinking the DEA or FBI will impound it, eventually auction it.But luckily, that’s one thing I don’t have to deal with.”
“Any sightings of Enstrom or his crew?”
“Lots of sightings,” Harry answered.“None of them have panned out.Still looking, brother.”
They entered the shed.
The false floor was open, the hole it exposed empty.
Harry moved to the other side, pressed the wall with a gloved hand, Hutch heard a click, and a hidden door opened.
“On the other side of this is a gate through the outer fence,” Harry explained.“Drop off and pick up happened through here, from the other side of the fence, so no congregants would see what was happening.”
“The DEA getting anything out of the ones who were caught?”Hutch asked.
Harry clicked the door closed while shaking his head.“They’re not talking.I went to watch some of the interrogations, and they seem relaxed and just keep saying they’re members of The Lion and The Lamb, good, God-fearing people, and they know nothing about any drugs.The DEA then asked why their fingerprints are on those totes and some of the baggies of fentanyl.”Harry lifted one shoulder.“They’re totally flummoxed on how that could be.”
“So you got evidence even if you got no confessions,” Hutch said.
Harry nodded.“Including the women, and even the men reporting that they were not allowed in that shed.If they wanted something out of it, they had to ask one of the soldiers for it.Agents are still gonna work them.See if they can make any deals that might lead us to where Enstrom and Burress might be heading or hunkering down.Shit like that takes time, though.And these aren’t hardened criminals, but I bet they’ll go down, do their sentence and get right back into the game without a moment’s hesitation.”
“The thrill?”Hutch asked.
“Oh yeah,” Harry sighed.
They headed out and Harry nodded to someone beyond Hutch and came back to Hutch.
“Since you spent so much time looking at it from above, thought you might want to see it up close and get an update.But now I gotta get on.”
“Appreciate you, Harry.”
Harry clapped him on the arm and took off.
Hutch waited until after he was back under the crime scene tape before he tugged the protectors off his boots and pulled off the gloves.
He climbed into Mabel’s truck to do the errand, which was the reason he was driving Mabel’s truck.
Another reason: they were having dinner in town that night.Therefore, since he was already going to be there to deal with her truck, might as well just take her and pick her up.
She’d said, and he’d noticed, she was solitary.
Consequently, Hutch had to get his shit tight about what happened Saturday night.
In other words, he needed to back off.
He would have done it that day, but he’d asked her when she was going to winterize her truck, something he discovered an LA-then-Orlando girl knew nothing about.He then told her he’d do it for her while she was at the shop.
Though, yesterday he’d taken her to Mrs.Matthews.
Mabel had shared what Mark explained, and more about Mrs.Matthews was revealed when they went to her house.
She clearly loved family, because the place was full of heirlooms she’d protected when times got tight, just like she protected her son and herself.
