“SAPD won’t let our people anywhere near the case.”
“Has Nate been arrested?”
“No. The ASAC and Rachel are both with him now talking to the assistant chief of police. They’re working out something, but I don’t know the details. No one is back, no one is returning calls or texts, and I have a bad feeling. With Lucy out—oh.”
“I know about Sean.”
He sighed in relief. “I don’t know what I can do. I doubt they’ll let us within a hundred yards of this case. They’d reach out to your office first.”
“They haven’t, nor have they pulled in Narcotics and Vice, which seems odd.”
“You said it yourself, it’s about that fucking prick Eric Butcher.”
She’d never heard Zach swear before.
“SAPD knows that Brad and Nate are tight, they’re not going to share anything. Where can we get the forensics report? Anything you can get, but Brad specifically asked for photos.”
Silence.
She feared he was going to tell her he couldn’t help. “Zach?”
“I know how to get them. I’ll call you.” He hung up and Aggie released her breath.
She could get them, too, if she violated federal law and hacked into the police database, but Brad said everything up to the line, and she knew what she could and could not legally do. Zach had far more contacts than she did, so she was happy he was going to help.
She turned back to her computer and ran through the rumor mill, as she called it—virtually every piece of information that agents collected was put into a closed database. Dealers, alliances, who was dating who, family connections, who was arrested, who was released, how they connected to other players on the street, international contacts, gang relationships, anything that might be useful when they had a big case. They tracked arrests and detainments outside of their jurisdiction as well, because it might connect to one of their cases. Any chatter also went into the database, rumors ranked by veracity. Most agents didn’t know how to pull out any data in a relevant way. Raw information was confusing to most people, but Aggie saw patterns where most people saw chaos and knew how to pull out what she needed.
She went with the assumption that someone had planted the drugs on Nate. She liked Nate a lot, he had a good rep among people she respected. Didn’t mean he couldn’t be corrupt, but if Brad had such faith in his integrity that was good enough for Aggie.
If someone planted the drugs on Nate, why sixteen kilos? Maybe a baggie wouldn’t be enough to get him in trouble, but a kilo stuffed in the glove box would cause him problems. But then he might find it …
Under the truck liner, Brad had told her. That meant someone had access to Nate’s vehicle. It wouldn’t take much time to pop the liner and plant the coke, but they’d need at least five or ten minutes uninterrupted. Where did he live? Was his truck accessible to the public? She really wanted to talk to him, that would help her find out when and where the drugs were most likely planted. Maybe there were surveillance tapes, something to look at. A potential witness.
But the big question was, who would be willing to give up sixteen kilos of coke to frame a cop when one kilo would be more than sufficient? It had to be someone with access. Someone who could afford to lose a quarter million in gross profit.
No one wanted to lose a quarter million dollars …
Brad was right—if they could see how it was packaged and test the drugs, they might be able to trace it. They could find usable prints. With SAPD taking lead, she wouldn’t be able to get those reports.
Aggie skimmed through the rumor mill, figuring that the drugs were planted within the last week. That might be a faulty assumption, but Brad had hinted that this could be connected to Sean’s arrest, so Aggie was confident in her theory.
And then she saw it.
A rumor, nothing provable, but it was so unusual that it jumped out at her.
Ten days ago, in Travis County, just outside Austin, a drug house was hit by a rival gang. The sheriff’s office responded, found no one, and had no probable cause to search because the neighbor who called it in said the shots came from the property, not the house. She also said that everyone left quickly. The lease was in the name of Rosa Merides. She was