Lima
T hey were two days into the next DEA Partner Mission in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The target was a suspected drug house in the heart of the notorious ‘War Zone’ near Pennsylvania Street and Copper Avenue. They were set up with a high-powered camera lens a block away in a vacant 780 square foot adobe ranch that had a direct sightline to the target house’s back door, where the majority of the foot traffic came and went from. And so far, the foot traffic had been substantial.
The Shepherd Security Team was contracted to do the surveillance for three reasons. First, because the DEA did not have enough staff to assign to the massive scope of the operation. As soon as this drug house was identified, Espinoza, the agent in charge of the DEA team, knew they’d finally found a major distribution hub and he wanted to take down everyone associated with this stash house at the same time.
Secondly, the local police had leaks. In the past, whenever Espinoza’s team was about to make a bust with the backup of the local police, the bad guys had been clued in, and their operation was moved. Espinoza and his crew busted locations with no drugs in them. So, the decision had been made to completely cut the local police from the operation, hence the need for the additional resources the Shepherd Security Team brought.
The final reason the Shepherd Security Team had been brought on was because they could operate without the constraints of needing warrants before they acted. They could get the proof first and then the DEA Team could get the warrants. Less red tape, quicker results. And that was what Espinoza needed. Fast results to shut the stash house down and get those higher up on the food chain.
Espinoza provided the team with pictures of the known dealers. Those street dealers were not the primary targets. It was the source of the drugs that the team needed to track. The drugs had to be delivered to the house for distribution to the street dealers. But so far, two days in, there were no deliveries identified.
Wilson sat viewing the feed from the high-powered camera that was trained on the target building. Jackson slept on the cot in the bedroom, as he had pulled the overnight shift to watch the video feed. Lambchop and Mother were in cars a few blocks away, watching those who approached and departed from the target house. They were ready to roll on any suspected delivery person that may be identified, and Sloan and Sherman were at the hotel. They had the overnight shift to trail any potential delivery men. Espinoza’s team was running surveillance of the street dealers, keeping tabs on all the players.
Wilson’s phone buzzed with an incoming call from Garcia. He hoped Garcia found info on Rae’s missing student and her mother. He wanted Rae to be assured that the little girl was okay. He was still surprised Rae had reacted as she had, especially that she had actually gone into the vacant house and searched for any signs of them. The more he got to know her, the more surprised he was by her.
“Hey, hope you have something for me,” Wilson said, answering the call.
“Not much,” Garcia said. “This Carona woman is a ghost. Shepherd is going to reach out to St. Vincent with the Marshals to see if she was one of their identities. Her trail is solid on paper, but when you reach out to verify with actual people, no one remembers her, like at her last place of employment, a hospital in Minneapolis. And no one from the nursing school she attended remembers her. Dates verify, but not a single instructor can describe her.”
“Yeah, that sounds like a cover identity.” He chuckled. “Have you checked with Briana Woods? Maybe this woman was one of her clients.”
Garcia laughed too. “Yeah, I actually did run it by her. This woman isn’t one of hers.”
“Let me know what you find out. I promised Rae that I’d let her know what we found. She’s really attached to this little girl.”
“I guess it’s not out of the realm of possibilities that the Marshals stashed another protectee in the same town they put Rae in, but if they did, Rae can’t know that.”
“I know,” Wilson said. “I’d just tell her we looked into it, and all is well.”
“You might want to just tell her that now. She doesn’t need to be worried about this kid and her mom.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Wilson agreed. He didn’t want to lie to her, though. Rae had a valid concern, and he didn’t want to brush it off. He respected her too much to do that.
“I’ll be in touch when I know something,” Garcia said.
“Thanks,” Wilson said.
His vigil continued for the remainder of the afternoon. Mother dropped off dinner to them just after Jackson had woken and joined Wilson. Shift change would be in about an hour. Mother was getting as frustrated with their unproductive surveillance as much as Wilson was.
“What if the street dealers are delivering product to be packaged as well as taking away the drugs ready to be sold? It’s been two days and no big deliveries. I don’t believe the place was that loaded with product that they wouldn’t have needed to restock by now,” Wilson said.
“That’s what Lambchop was thinking too,” Mother said. “Let me get him on the phone.” He dialed Lambchop and put him on speaker. “We were just discussing a change in approach,” Mother told Lambchop. “Wilson agrees with you that it could be the street dealers delivering the raw product to the house, as well as taking away the packaged units.”
“What change in approach are you thinking?” Lambchop asked. “Do you want to take one down before he reaches the house?”
“I think we need to track one from the moment he leaves the house until he returns,” Wilson said. “We intercept him before he arrives at the house, and all kinds of red flags may go up with the bad guys.”
“Agreed,” Lambchop said. “Let me get Espinoza on the line with us. Hold on.” There was a pause. A minute later, Lambchop was back on the line. “Espinoza, you still there?”
“Yes,” he answered.
Lambchop filled him in on what they suspected and made the pitch for stepping up surveillance.
“These guys are so fucking paranoid that shadowing one of them for twenty-four hours isn’t going to be easy,” Espinoza said.
“We’ll use trackers and long-range surveillance. We’re not going to be following them down the street. They won’t see the same three cars on their tails,” Lambchop said.
“Who would you like to start with?” Espinoza asked.
“You identified that Angelo douchebag as being pretty high up on the food chain. He’ll be our first target,” Lambchop said.
“We’ll have Sloan and Sherman acquire him tonight. He normally hands off to street dealers throughout the War Zone before midnight and then flops at one of his baby momma’s apartments,” Mother said.
Later that night, as he lay in the bed Jackson slept in earlier, Wilson messaged Rae. “Hey, we’re still looking into your missing mom and child. Right now, we’ll say no news is good news.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we haven’t found anything worrisome. Look, sorry, I have to go, work stuff. I’ll be in touch soon,” he said, to end the messaging and her questions.
“You’re working late,” she messaged. “Thanks for the update.”
He let that last message hang and didn’t respond to it. His thoughts at that moment again went to Rae and that she’d entered that house alone. That could have gone horribly wrong for her. What had she been thinking? He had to talk with her about being more careful at a later time.
The next morning, Wilson was again monitoring the video feed. Sherman and Sloan had acquired Angelo the night before. They tracked him over the course of five hours, delivering product to a half-dozen street dealers and collecting the proceeds from previously sold stock before he turned in at midnight at the apartment of one of his known baby mommas, one of five in the War Zone. Angelo was a busy boy.
Mother and Lambchop had taken over surveillance at zero seven hundred. It was eleven hundred and Angelo was just leaving the apartment. Wilson’s phone chimed in a text message. It was from Shepherd with a request for a video chat.
“Things are getting hot here, Shepherd. Can this wait an hour or two?” he replied back.
“You let me know when is better,” Shepherd replied. “We’ll do it then.”
“Affirmative,” Wilson replied, and then turned his attention back to the communications between Lambchop and Mother.
He also kept them apprised of the comings and goings from the target drug house. He identified three more higher-level dealers arriving with what could have been backpacks full of product, which in that neighborhood would be methamphetamines and fentanyl.
The surveillance scored them what they hoped was the location of the next house up in the food chain, another home just a few blocks away. It was another small adobe ranch also built in the early fifties. The Digital Team at HQ ran the house and discovered that it had been sold at auction, a foreclosure, less than a year earlier. Just like the house they’d been surveilling. The names of the buyers didn’t matter. They’d all be fake.
“We need to rotate you into the surveillance, Taco,” Lambchop broadcast. “Our boy is looking paranoid, not sure if he made Mother or I.”
“Affirmative,” Wilson replied. “Big Bear wanted a video chat with me.”
“Wake Jax and have him take over the surveillance. Do your call with Big Bear and then advise me of your availability,” Lambchop ordered.
“Roger that,” Wilson acknowledged.
Wilson messaged Shepherd and then woke Jackson. Shepherd set the time for the call in ten minutes. Wilson brought his phone into the bedroom and connected it to Shepherd’s video room at the ten-minute mark. The feed displayed showing Shepherd and Garcia sitting at the conference table in Shepherd’s office.
“St. Vincent confirmed the woman going by Ashley Carona is one of theirs,” Shepherd said.
“That is, of course, not to be shared with Rae,” Garcia added.
“Of course,” Jimmy acknowledged, a little annoyed that Garcia felt he had to tell him.
“St. Vincent asked if we could give him an assist. He can’t interview Rae, but we can ask the questions and report back to him.”
“So, from that, I gather the Carona woman went dark on the Marshals,” Wilson said.
“She’s off the grid entirely. And she wasn’t an innocent witness in protection. Her remaining out of jail is incumbent on her cooperation. Moving in the middle of the night with no forwarding address to the agency is not cooperating,” Shepherd said.
“What about the little girl?” Jimmy asked.
“The child is hers,” Shepherd confirmed. “I’ll send the list of questions for Rae Ella Easton over to you, Wilson. I need the interview completed within the next few hours.”
“She’s at work until eighteen hundred,” Wilson said. “She won’t answer her phone while she’s at work.”
“St. Vincent needs these answers ASAP. Do whatever you can to get her to answer your call. This interview is a priority.”
“Will do, Shep,” Wilson answered, not sure how he’d accomplish it.
He took out his phone and tapped out a text to Rae, asking her to call him immediately. Then he waited. Fifteen minutes later, he received the reply from her he expected.
“I’m at work. Can’t talk until after 6:00,” she tapped out.
“Rae, this is really important,” he pressed. “Can you go to the bathroom or out to your car for five minutes?”
“Jimmy, I can for about three or four minutes after the classroom teacher gets back. I’m alone in here with the kids right now and can’t be on my phone.”
“Okay, I can stand by and wait. Call as soon as you can,” he messaged back. It was a full twenty minutes before his phone rang. “Hi Rae, thanks.”
“I’m in my car for a few minutes. What’s going on?”
“I’m sorry to have made you leave work to talk to me,” Wilson said. “I have some questions regarding Ashley Carona and her daughter that I need to ask you.”
“I thought you said everything with her was okay.”
“Rae, I can’t tell you what’s going on. I have to ask you to trust me.”
“Is Lilly Carona okay?” she pressed. “It’s a simple question. Yes or no, is she okay?” She had a really bad feeling.
“I don’t know, Rae. I don’t know,” he admitted. “That’s why I need to ask you these questions, to determine if she is.”
The tone of his voice was alarming to her. “Okay, shoot.”
“Did anyone other than her mother ever pick her up from school?”
“No, but she did have two emergency contacts for pickup as that’s required for all our students,” Reina pointed out.
“Yeah, we looked into them. They’re bogus.”
“So, had Lilly’s mom not shown up one day we never would have reached someone?”
“Yes, that’s the gist of it,” Wilson confirmed.
“How irresponsible of Ashley!” Reina exploded. “To put her daughter in that position.”
Wilson was impressed that Rae was such an advocate for the little girl, but given her childhood, it didn’t surprise him. “Did Ashley Carona always pick her daughter up driving the same vehicle?”
“Yes, of course she did. Jimmy, she was a single mom with only one vehicle.”
“Did the little girl ever talk about anyone else, her father, an aunt or uncle, a friend of her mom’s, anyone?”
“No, she never did. I got the impression it was just her and her mom.”
“Did she always come from work dressed in scrubs?” Wilson asked.
“Yes, no wait, there was one day the week before they suddenly disappeared that she was dressed in street clothes at pick up, jeans and a black sweater with a different coat on, a nice leather jacket. When she came from work, she wore her scrubs and a parka.”
“Which day was that? Can you remember?” Wilson pressed.
“I don’t know,” Reina said. “But it was definitely that last week.”
“Is there anything else you can think of that either the little girl or Ashley Carona said that at the time you didn’t find odd but now do?” he asked.
Reina thought about that for a minute. “I honestly can’t. Ashley Carona was not one of the parents that are chatty and friendly when picking their kid up. Other moms talk with us. They talk amongst themselves, planning playdates for their kids outside of school. But not Ashley Carona. She pretty much came at the last moment, or late, and she didn’t talk with anyone.”
“Was there any kid that the little girl was especially close to, played with most days, maybe told secrets to?”
“There are a couple of kids in the class that Lilly was closer to, played with more often than the others.”
“Rae, this is important. Is there any way you could quietly ask them if Lilly told them any secrets or if Lilly mentioned anyone besides her mom, anyplace she goes, or that she was going to move?”
“Oh, Jimmy, I hate to do that. These kids are only four years old. I’m not sure if anything they say is reliable, plus to use them,” she began, a list of other objections primed in her thoughts.
“Rae, your answers will be helpful, but one of those kids might know something, something that will help us find her.”
“Jimmy, what’s going on?” Reina asked. She had such a bad feeling. She’d been worried about Lilly, but this new feeling that had settled in the pit of her stomach was something different. The worry had turned to fear. It made her feel nauseous.
“I’m sorry. I can’t tell you. Please trust that your concerns have been taken seriously and we’re looking for the little girl and her mom.”
“Okay, I’ll ask a few of the kids Lilly played with regularly.”
“Call me after work and let me know if you find out anything,” Wilson said. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“Bye,” she said. She took a few deep breaths to calm her nerves, and then she returned to the classroom.
***
Reina took advantage of every opportunity that Kay, the classroom teacher, was out of earshot to talk with the three children Lilly played with most often. Her friends missed her. That was all Reina learned. None remembered Lilly ever mentioning another person besides her mom. As Reina expected, their four-year-old attention spans and their limited conversation skills didn’t provide any help.
As soon as she turned her car over after work, she dialed Jimmy. He answered on the second ring. “Hi Jimmy, is this a good time?”
“Yes, I have a few minutes,” he replied, his gaze still on suspected stash house number two across the street. He was parked in the parking lot of a bar from which the house Lambchop and Mother had identified earlier could be seen. “But I may have to go suddenly. If so, I’ll call you back when I can.”
She was pretty sure she knew what that meant. He was working. It was only then that she realized he was doing the same dangerous job Smitty had been doing when he was killed. That thought made her heart ache not only for Smitty, but also for Jimmy. “Okay, sure, well, I talked to the kids. No one knew anything helpful. They’re only four years old,” she reiterated.
“I know,” he said. “I was hoping for something, even something small, a confirmation of a guy in Ashley Carona’s life or a friend. There had to be another adult in this little girl’s life.”
“What about at her job? Did Ashley have friends at work that might know what happened to her?”
“I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but no. Ashley Carona kept to herself at work, too. No friends. She’s officially on an unpaid leave of absence pending FMLA paperwork,” Wilson said. “She told her employer that her mom was just diagnosed with inoperable stage four cancer. She told her supervisor she was temporarily moving back home to be with and care for her mother, who doctors have given a matter of weeks.”
“Could that be true?” Reina asked.
“It’s not,” Wilson said.
Reina was surprised by the matter-of-fact way he’d said it. He knew for sure it was not true. “You know things about Ashley Carona.”
“I’m sorry, Rae, I’m not at liberty to share any details.”
“And I guess if it was a temporary move, she wouldn’t have cleared everything from her house,” Reina thought out loud.
“No,” Wilson agreed. “Thank you for trying to get info from the kids. If anything comes to light, let me know.”
“You mean if one of them suddenly remembers something?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” he said. “Look, try not to worry about this kid too much.”
“You’ll let me know if you find anything out?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’ll let you know what I can.”
She was left feeling disappointed. Let her know what he can? That wasn’t good enough. She needed to know that Lilly was okay, that Lilly was safe and with people who would take good care of her. Reina did not think Ashley Carona fit into that category.
“Rae? Are you there?” he asked when she didn’t respond.
“Yeah, I’m here.” She knew her voice sounded pissy.
“Rae, I promise I’ll tell you what I can, probably more than I should. Please understand, Ashley Carona has a right to her privacy, just as you do.”
“That’s different,” she complained.
He couldn’t tell her it really wasn’t that much different, except for that Rae was an innocent who was relocated, and Ashley Carona wasn’t. And the fact that she’d gone dark on the Marshals meant that she was either in trouble or up to old tricks. He wasn’t sure which scenario was worse for the little girl.
Just then, he saw one of the other higher-ranking dealers who’d he’d documented visiting the first house earlier that morning approach the front door of this new location they’d named stash house number two. “Hey, I’m sorry, I have to go,” he said. He ended the call and then immediately rang Lambchop. “Got Gustavo approaching the target location.” He zoomed in with the camera on his phone and took a few pictures.
“I’m moving towards your location,” Lambchop said. “When he leaves, we let him get a few blocks away from the house and then we take him down. Espinoza thinks it’s worth the risk and Gustavo just drew the short straw.”
“Roger that,” Wilson replied. Finally, some action, something concrete to move the case forward. If Espinoza was ready for one of the players to be taken down, that had to mean they were close to moving on the entire network.
Fifteen minutes after Gustavo went in, he exited the house. Lambchop was near the alleyway that ran behind the bar, pawn shop, and little corner store on the block. Gustavo had arrived by cutting through the alley before crossing the street. He’d been observed cutting through backyards and favoring alleys when they were available, rather than walking on sidewalks or streets.
“Target just left the house,” Wilson broadcast. “Crossing the street. Ducked into the alley.”
“Roger that. Got him behind the pawn shop,” Lambchop reported. “He just went in the back door into the pawn shop. This is new. Taco get back here. Leave the car. We’ll grab him up when he leaves.”
Wilson exited the vehicle. He rushed around the back of the building. Lambchop already stood with his back to the brick building beside the door to the pawn shop. Wilson took up the same position on the other side of the door. They waited.
“We don’t identify ourselves,” Lambchop said. “We just scoop him up.”
Wilson nodded. It was a familiar tactic.
“Espinoza will set the tone. We follow suit,” Lambchop added.
Five minutes later, the door opened. “Yeah, no fuck,” Gustavo called back into the store, his back and the black backpack sticking out the door. He laughed with whoever was within the building. Wilson and Lambchop both heard two sets of male voices laughing. Still facing inward, he took another half step out the door. “Just don’t sell it before I get back.” He was still laughing as he stepped all the way out of the building as he pulled the door shut. It was at that moment that he saw Wilson as his head was turned in that direction. “What are you fucking doing there?”
“I’m not the one you need to worry about,” Wilson said. “It’s him.” He pointed to the other side of the door, where Lambchop was now reaching for him. It only took two seconds for the two men to have Gustavo pinned to the ground. Wilson secured his hands in zip ties behind his back as Lambchop put tape over his mouth before the man had a chance to scream out or struggle.
They lifted him to his feet and dragged him over to the car Lambchop drove, a silver twenty fifteen Subaru Forester that had seen better days but blended into this neighborhood well. They laid him on the floor of the backseat, his feet in the air kicking, his body wriggling.
“That looks uncomfortable, my friend,” Wilson said to him. “But you chose that position.” He closed the back door and positioned himself in the front passenger seat.
Lambchop drove to a slightly better part of town where the DEA had a house set up as their base of operations. With a phone call to Espinoza, they pulled up to the residence and the garage door rolled open. They drove in. After the door was closed, they pulled Gustavo from the back seat. He wasn’t any more cooperative than he’d been. They sat him on a bench facing Espinoza, holding him in place. Espinoza went behind him and unzipped the backpack. He pulled out the football size lump of pills that could be anything in shrink wrap.
Wearing plastic gloves, Espinoza slit the wrap with a knife and pulled out one pill. He dropped it into a test solution and shook it. It tested positive for fentanyl. “This is a lot of money right here,” Espinoza said to him, holding up the package of pills. “Your boss isn’t going to be happy you lost it.”
Gustavo mumbled something behind the tape that was still over his mouth.
Espinoza nodded to Wilson. Wilson pulled the tape off.
“You don’t know who you’re fucking with, motherfucker. You’re dead, all of you are fucking dead!”
“No, you will be when your organization hears how you cooperated with the DEA,” Espinoza said. He pulled the chain from inside his shirt that his badge dangled from and let it fall on the outside of his shirt.
Gustavo’s eyes went wide. Evidently, he hadn’t figured out these guys were the cops, must have thought they were some other crew moving in on their territory. It must have been the fact that they hadn’t identified themselves as cops or read him his rights.
“You have a choice,” Lambchop said. “Cooperate and get a deal or be tossed back out onto the streets with thanks in a very public way.”
“Yeah, we’ll all be wearing our badges and be thanking you and wishing you well,” Wilson added. “We may even throw out the locations and people we know about.”
“You can’t do that. And this arrest won’t stick. You didn’t say you were cops, didn’t read me my rights,” Gustavo said.
“Oh, you’re not being arrested,” Espinoza said. “My friends just gave a friend a lift here and we’re just having a conversation.”
Wilson patted his shoulder, which he still held, holding Gustavo in place. “That’s right. It was so nice of you to offer up your drugs to us. You shouldn’t have. It’s bound to get you into a lot of trouble with your homies.”
Gustavo let out a long string of curses. He was fucked, and he knew he was.
“So, we know about the stash house off Copper and Pennsylvania, of course the one across from the pawn shop, and we’re pretty sure that place is being supplied from a warehouse over on the north side, just off Second and Slate,” Espinoza said.
Wilson was surprised by this new location. Espinoza and his team had been busy.
“But we’re greedy. We also want to get the part of your crew supplying that warehouse, need the date and time the next shipment will be coming in there,” Espinoza said.
“Fuck you, man! You’re not getting shit from me!”
“That’s unfortunate,” Espinoza said. “Isn’t it, gentlemen?” he asked, his gaze sweeping over Lambchop and Wilson.
“Yes, very unfortunate,” Lambchop agreed. “I had hopes for you.”
“We thought you were the smartest of the guys, Gustavo. We could have made this offer to Angelo, but thought you were smarter than he is,” Wilson said.
“I ain’t no fucking snitch,” Gustavo said.
“Won’t matter to your boss if you snitched or not. You’ll still be executed,” Lambchop said.
“We’ve seen it a hundred times. Those motherfuckers assume you’re guilty if you’ve talked to cops,” Espinoza said.
“Very unfortunate,” Wilson said. “No matter what, this isn’t going to end well for you.”
Gustavo’s gaze darted between the three men. It was almost as though Wilson could see the steam rising from his head like in a cartoon as his brain worked overtime, trying to figure a way out of this. “What deal?”
Lambchop patted his shoulder. “Now that’s being smart.”