"This entire tray is pressed heroin." Watson whistled.
Terrell shook his head. "No, I think this entire thing is pressed Grey Death. How much does this weigh?" Terrell carefully assessed the tray. "Four, maybe five pounds?" His captain glanced at him in question.
"Yeah, about two and a half kilos." He confirmed his boss' guestimate. He did the math in his head. "Fuck, this one tray has a street value of $750,000 if they package it into gram bags as is and don't cut it down further. If they have someone cutting it before it hits the streets, each one of these trays could be a million dollars on the street." Brody leaned away from the innocuous looking planter. "We need to seal this shit up. I don't feel like OD'ing today." He nodded to Rayburn. "In the kitchen, in the cabinet under the island, there's black electrical tape."
Rayburn hustled from the room. Watson glanced from him to Terrell. "So, we know the woman is definitely involved. What about the husband?"
"My gut is telling me no. He has no idea what he's been transporting up here. Hell, there is no way he'd give up a cool mil to the next-door neighbor. Nah, he doesn't know anything. He's guilty of bringing his wife the flowers she ordered. She knows, though. She gave Desoto four of these."
"It was five." Watson clarified. "I was able to run the recording through an over the counter digital enhancer. Five trays."
"Five million dollars of Grey Death on the street." Brody closed his eyes.
"That we know about. Who knows how much Edelman has flown up here." Watson added.
"But we have a way to Peña now." Brody glanced at his boss.
"We need to get to the husband before the wife comes home."
Brody glanced at the digital display of the time on his computer. "We've got three hours, maybe a little longer. I can text Amber to stop and pick up something on the way back. That might gain us a half hour or so."
"What do you have planned, boss?" Rayburn handed him the black electrical tape as Watson asked the question.
"We're going to catch Clare and Desoto and work them for a lead to Rubio and Peña. King, get Mozinga on the horn. I want the entire team in the briefing room in less than an hour. Rayburn, call Judge McClure, we need to put a tracer in the tray, and we're going to do it legally. Watson, help me seal this so King can get it to the greenhouse before Clare Edelman gets home. King, when you come back, bring Edelman with you. He's in for one hell of a Saturday.
Chapter 20
"Hey man, what's up?" Erik glanced through the screen door at the tray he was carrying.
"Yeah, dude, I went to put this in the garage and found Amber already had like five of them."
"Figures." Erik chuckled and stepped from his house. They both headed toward the greenhouse with the tray they'd sealed after Terrell had a warrant. Once they had the verbal authorization, Mozinga dealt with the paperwork, and they placed a GPS tracker inside the shrink wrap. The black electrical tape they used to seal the tiny cut blended well with the black tray and unless someone inspected it closely, they shouldn't notice the small square which sealed the corner of the tray.
Mozinga assigned two teams to the tracker and both were positioned and waiting outside the housing area. The tail would leap-frog in traffic and keep Desoto from knowing he was being followed. Of course, if things went as planned, the units and the GPS chip wouldn't be needed, but there was no way in hell they'd let almost two million dollars in drugs sit in a greenhouse or drive away with Clare's lover. Technology was great, but failures in equipment happened, so four detectives lived and breathed this shift for the sole purpose of keeping an eye on the damn GPS beacon embedded in this tray. If the GPS blacked out before they could execute the plan, they'd have to regroup. Until then, the detectives watched the blinking light on a screen.
Brody put the tray back where he found it, and Erik locked the greenhouse after him. "Hey, what do you say we take a ride in the jet? I figure since the girls are having a day, we can too." Brody shoved his hands in his pockets and nodded toward his hangar.