reading the file I’d found in my dad’s shed while we’d been waiting for takeoff. “I’m not sure,” I said. “And I’m not sure what any of this has to do with Vince missing, or if it’s even related.” I showed her the key we found at the bottom of the file cabinet drawer.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Scarlet was snooping in my dad’s office and said she’d looked through the trash and the desk. She found the address for one of the storage lockers in Whiskey Bayou. I called and talked to the manager, and he said my dad has had an account with them for years. He said he paid outright for the space.”
“And this key opens the storage space?” Kate asked.
“I don’t know, but I’m going to try it when we get back home.”
“What’s the case file?”
“That’s the weird thing,” I said. “I don’t think this was an official case file. It’s my dad’s notes, but it’s not written like his other formal reports. Almost as if he were keeping track and making notes to himself.”
“That’s not unusual,” Kate said.
“Do you remember the de Salva case?” I asked. “We were kids when it went down. I don’t remember much. Just that Dad was gone more than usual, and there were a couple of times when cops did drive-bys to make sure we were okay.”
“I remember,” Kate said. “And then when I went through the police academy we studied the case. It was a joint task force operation with the FBI, DEA, and Savannah police department, and it was a RICO case involving Carmen de Salva and his whole operation.”
“Who’s Rico?” I asked.
“No, RICO,” she said. “Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations.”
“Oh,” I said. “So Dad and Vince were working this case with the Feds?”
“Them and a couple of other guys,” Kate said. “It was a huge case. Carmen de Salva had a monopoly on most of southern Georgia. Construction companies, garbage services, the dry-cleaning industry—you name it—de Salva owned it. But that’s what made it difficult to track. He owned what looked like on paper were competing businesses, so if Bob’s construction company and Joe’s construction company competed for the same huge contracts, one of them would bid at an exorbitant price range, and the other would bid even higher, making the exorbitant price not look so bad after all. You’re talking millions and millions of dollars the city was paying to Carmen de Salva.”
“How’d he get caught?” I asked.
“When drugs and bodies started littering the streets,” Kate said. “De Salva owned Savannah and all of the surrounding small cities and islands. They were bringing cocaine in, and then using some of the dummy corporations as a holding zone. And then the DA was killed execution style, and his wife and kids were found in their car inside their garage. They died of carbon monoxide poising. Except the locks to the car had been melted shut and their hands had been tied.
“The task federal task force was put together after the DA was killed, and the Feds kept your dad and Vince on the team since they’d done so much of the legwork. The de Salva organization went far and wide, and the task force started applying pressure to de Salva by targeting the higher-ups in his organization, most of whom were family members.
“They arrested two of his sons-in-law, his nephew, his son, his brother-in-law, and his uncle and charged them with every little thing they could throw at them. Of course, that pissed de Salva off and he started doubling down. The FBI special agent in charge died in a freak car accident. A DEA agent had his throat slit in a gas station parking lot in broad daylight. No one saw a thing. It’s no wonder your place had extra protection at night. De Salva was gunning for everyone involved.”
“Wow,” I said. “I don’t know how my mother did it, but she deserves a medal, because Phoebe and I had no clue we were in any kind of danger.”
“I didn’t know most of it until I was in the academy,” she said. “The only problem with the whole thing was de Salva maintained his innocence through it all. He swore over and over again that he never had anything to do with drugs. According to de Salva, someone else was using the situation to move the drugs in, and whoever it was killed the agents involved with the case. He even agreed to plead guilty to the racketeering