his instep. He yanked his foot to safety. “Absolutely. Sure,” he said, hoping it was a sensible answer to whatever he’d been asked.
“So what’s the plan from here on out?” Halliday rocked back in the conference room chair. “What’s our next step?”
Dante answered as if his foot weren’t throbbing. “Surveillance around the clock. Even with all the agencies involved, we still don’t have the budget to follow the comings and goings of every person up there, every day. It’s hit or miss.”
“Let’s hope we get lucky,” the U.S. Marshal said. “Maybe someone will eventually take us to Ramirez or Apodaca.”
Dante nodded slowly. “More likely they’ll take us to the middleman, whoever has been hooking up Cataloochee County with the cartel. He’s out there somewhere, and it’s probably the same dude the Spiveys used. I don’t think a town this size could support more than one.”
“Any thoughts on who that might be?”
“Yes and no,” Dante answered the state police narcotics detective. “As I mentioned in my final field notes from the Spivey case, we never discovered his identity. In all my road trips to the Florida border with finished product, I only met up with low-level Ramirez men. Our tails on Bobby Ray Spivey gave us shit, and following Gerrall only led to his job at the old folks home and to small-time foragers selling raw ingredients.”
“You really think this middleman is from around here?”
Dante considered Halliday’s question for a moment, then nodded. “I do. The Spiveys called their contact the ‘Fat Man,’ which could apply to a good bit of the population of the state, I realize, but I always got the feeling he wasn’t an outsider.”
“And why would you think that?” the federal prosecutor asked.
Dante shrugged. “A hunch.”
“Hunches ain’t evidence,” the deputy U.S. Marshal said.
“This is very true,” he admitted.
O’Connor folded her hands on the conference table and smiled at the deputy marshal as if he were soft in the head and didn’t know any better. “In Special Agent Cabrera’s career, he has participated in hundreds of raids and successfully gone undercover in twenty-six narcotics operations, obtaining evidence that led to the conviction of a dozen traffickers, keeping more than seventy-five million in illegal drugs off our streets, and saving countless lives. What might that tell you?”
The deputy squirmed in his chair. “Um, well, that his instincts are good?”
“No,” O’Connor corrected him. “It tells you that his instincts are impeccable. You know why? Because Special Agent Cabrera is still alive. If his instincts had failed him even once during the course of those twenty-six investigations, he would be in a box.”
An uncomfortable silence fell over the room. Now this was the O’Connor Dante knew and loved, and he couldn’t help but smile.
“Then our job is to turn Dante’s hunch into evidence,” Halliday said matter-of-factly.
O’Connor winked at him. “Damn right it is.”
The FBI agent raised an eyebrow at Halliday. “You know, Sheriff, if Bobby Ray and Gerrall Spivey hadn’t died in the raid, we’d have something more to go on than a hunch. Might’ve been nice.”
It was Dante’s turn to be uncomfortably silent. He wondered how Halliday would handle this obvious jab. Everyone knew the primary objective of the Spivey raid changed when Gerrall took the sheriff’s girlfriend and the retirement-home administrator hostage. Their rescue was the priority. Bringing in suspects alive became an afterthought.
Besides, it wasn’t Halliday’s bullets that killed the Spiveys. The father and son had turned weapons on each other before the doors to the trailer could be kicked in. It wasn’t like Turner Halliday could have prevented it.
“Yes, it would have been nice,” Halliday replied diplomatically. “But that’s not how it is.”
“Well…” O’Connor looked up from her folded hands and smiled softly. “We might not be completely lacking in witnesses.”
Dante turned a narrow gaze on his boss. Was O’Connor referring to that kid, the only person from the Spivey compound who was still breathing and hadn’t lawyered up? That was almost laughable. If Dante didn’t have a clue who the Fat Man was, that skittish little girl sure wouldn’t.
And even if by some miracle she did, how the hell would they get past the granny to get to the girl?
“Agent Cabrera,” O’Connor said sweetly, “I think I’ll take you up on your generous offer to pay Miss Fern Bisbee a visit.”
Dante raised an eyebrow. “I don’t recall offering—”
“Meeting adjourned,” his boss said, standing. “We’ll reconvene in two weeks.”
* * *
“You’ve hardly said two words to me since we left the Girls Club, Fern.”
The Newberry chick smiled