Chapter 12
By the time Coop pulled into the jail parking lot, the rain had slowed to a drizzle. Streetlights glared off the slick pavement as he hurried inside. The flag rope hit the pole with a steady clink-clink in the still-gusty breeze.
He shook the rain from his hat as he walked through the door. Then he felt the quiet.
O’Reilly stood near the booking desk, more reserved than usual.
“You saw them?” Coop asked.
“Yeah,” he said, face grim.
“You can hang back.”
He straightened, shaking his head. “I need to get used to it.”
“You don’t get used to it,” Coop said, moving past him.
“Yeah,” he repeated.
Two county deputies escorted them inside. No one was talking. There was no sense of urgency either, which was worse.
“What happened?” Coop asked.
“My guess is a suicide pact,” the older of the two guards said.
“You don’t know?”
“Cameras went down for eleven minutes,” O’Reilly said, handing him a pair of latex gloves.
Of course, they did.
They moved through the sally port, the first gate clanging shut behind them before the second opened.
Behind bulletproof glass, a deputy sat at a bank of monitors.
Another kept the main gate open for them, standing stiff and silent, like a sentinel.
Behind them, the doors cycled shut with mechanical finality.
Coop doubted he’d ever get used to that, either.
A deputy outside of Holding logged entries while cameras flashed and techs moved in and out in protective suits. Everything here was on schedule. A surveillance glitch was too convenient. Before he ever entered the cells, his gut told him someone with access had planned this then waited.
Coop signed in and grabbed boot covers from an open kit, pulling them on before he stepped through.
The air inside hit differently. Warmer, closer, smelling of sweat and familiar crime-scene chemicals, pungent enough to sting his throat. He didn’t react. Didn’t let himself. Two decades of this shit didn’t make it easier.
Moving from cell to cell, he kept to the perimeter, tracking details in sequence. Three bodies, different positions, same fatal ending.
In the first cell, the ticking had been stripped from the mattress and twisted into a noose knot, anchored cleanly to the upper bunk. No signs of a struggle.
The body in cell two slumped on the bench, head tipped to the side, blood streaming from the puncture wound in his throat, the bloody pencil still protruding.
The third body in the last cell looked the most suspicious. On the floor, the body lay straight, placed, not dropped, the neck angled wrong for a fall.
Coop had seen enough. He returned to the corridor. “What’s the estimated time of death?”
“Preliminary puts it around twenty hundred,” a tech answered.
Before he could ask a follow-up, the metal doors at the end of the hall opened. “Jesus,” a voice snapped. “What a fucking mess.”
The sheriff came in like a storm front, already tearing into the jail supervisor trailing him.
Already sweating through his collar, the man stammered, “We’re not sure what happened. There was a storm, but the power didn’t so much as flicker. And no disturbances—”
“No disturbances?” the sheriff barked. “Three men are dead in Holding under our noses. How does that happen?”
He pulled off his gloves and moved forward. “That’s what I’d like to know.”
The sheriff turned, eyes narrowing. “And you are?”
“Texas Rangers. Lieutenant Cooper. I’m the lead on this case, which your jail has compromised.”
Conversation halted. Even the techs turned to look.
The sheriff’s nostrils flared. Embarrassment under his anger. “This is unacceptable. We’ll get answers.”
“Investigating your own house won’t cut it,” Coop said. “This was staged.”
The supervisor bristled. “You think one of my people did this?”
“They either did it or facilitated it,” Coop replied calmly, although he wasn’t feeling it. “Not that it matters,” he went on. “Accessory to murder carries the same sentence.”
“Let’s not start pointing fingers,” the sheriff insisted, a tremor of rising panic in his tone. “We’ll cooperate, but we can’t have it getting out that three trafficking suspects died in county custody. I’m up for reelection. This”—he gestured helplessly at the cells—“won’t poll well.”
Contempt kindled in his chest, the kind that came from too many years watching politics outrank victims. He kept it buried. “Your election isn’t my concern. Securing this scene is.”
O’Reilly came up beside him, tension coiled beneath the surface as if bracing for trouble. “The wing’s locked down, as ordered, Lieutenant. No one in or out until Crime Scene and IA clear it.”
The sheriff’s gaze snapped to him. “You can’t—”
Coop met his stare without blinking. “I can, and I did. This was a coordinated hit tied to the warehouse raid. It’s not only a county problem. Frankly, I’m surprised the feds aren’t already here.”
The sheriff’s face hardened. “You think I’d let anything compromise this department? You think I don’t want the truth?”
“Then help us,” Coop said. “Give us access to logs, sign-in sheets, vendor deliveries… all of it. Let us see who had clearance during that eleven-minute window.”
The sheriff’s mouth flattened into a thin line. “You want a scapegoat. To make this political.”
He met his accusation without hesitating. “I want answers. If there’s a leak, we’ll find it. If someone’s compromised, we find them. You want to protect your campaign? Stay out of my way.”
The sheriff stared at him, weighing his options, then turned away. He barked an order at the supervisor. “Give them what they ask for.”
When the doors closed behind him, Coop exhaled. Not with relief, with focus.
The techs returned to documenting, cataloging, and preserving what remained. But the part that mattered, the eleven minutes that would tell the truth, was already gone.
The message was delivered. Kedrov’s reach was wider and more lethal than he would have guessed. Before he flexed that reach again, Coop had to prove it.