Chapter 7
ATLAS LOVED quiet days, and the last few had been just that.
Even work seemed to be easier than usual.
He’d made a number of phone calls and coordinated with the other police departments to make sure that the information they’d received from Bazel was shared.
One area where they had made progress was the identity of their intruder, the so-called Breaker.
His real name was Wendell Horn. No wonder he used a nickname.
The FBI and their resources had come through with that piece of information.
Bazel was still at the house, and Atlas had gotten him an inexpensive phone, so at least they would have communications in case Bazel needed him,
“Are you and Evie ready?” the captain asked as they stood inside one of the huge warehouses just outside of town before six on Friday morning. The building was absolutely massive, with part of it being used as a distribution center for chocolate. So there were plenty of scents to throw Evie off.
“Yes.” Atlas had every confidence in her.
“Good. I hid a small amount of contraband somewhere in this building. You have thirty minutes for Evie to find it. The workers will start coming in then, so we’ll need to be done.”
“Evie, search,” Atlas said and let her off her leash.
She hurried forward, head moving from side to side as she tried to pick up a scent.
Atlas knew when she had something, and Evie made a beeline for the office area.
He followed her though the door and up the stairs.
She went down a hall and into a break room, then sat in front of a locker, her tongue out, looking up at him.
“Can I help you?” a man asked. “I’m the director of this facility.”
“I need to get into that locker,” Atlas explained.
“There is nothing hidden here. That was the one stipulation—the office area was to be off limits. I explained that to your captain.”
Atlas was all business. “That’s fine. I understand. But did the captain tell you that we are on duty? Please open the locker. Either that or I can get some tools from my car.” Evie had never failed him, and he wasn’t going to doubt her now.
“We have a set in the tool room,” the director said and left, then returned with a red-handled bolt cutter and handed it to Atlas. “You’d better be right about this.”
“Atlas,” the captain said as he joined them.
He snapped the lock with the cutter and opened the locker. It was empty except for a coat hanging on one of the hooks.
“I’d say your dog was wrong,” the director announced, glaring at him and then at the captain.
“Evie, show me,” Atlas said, and she pawed at the floor of the locker. Atlas checked around the edges and then pulled out the floor plate, revealing a brick of what appeared to be cocaine. “Good girl,” he said, stroking her head. “I’ll leave you to this. We have a test to complete.”
He tugged Evie back by the collar. “Evie, search,” he told her, and she went down the bay of lockers before leaving the room, heading down the stairs and out into the warehouse proper.
Atlas followed her, and within a minute, she sat in front of a bin of chocolate.
He opened it and pulled out a small bag of marijuana that had a sticker indicating it was what the captain had hidden.
He praised her and put the bag in a plastic bag he had brought with him.
Atlas knew the captain was calling in backup, so he held the pot and told Evie to search again.
She wandered down the aisle and then picked up her pace.
“Captain, we have yet another scent,” he radioed.
“This is the third one.” Evie led him to the loading dock and to one of the upright desks where, Atlas assumed, supervisors stood as they loaded trucks.
Evie sat next to it and then nosed the base.
Atlas pushed it over, discovering a box, addressed and labeled.
Pulling on gloves, he took pictures of where he found the box and how it was positioned, going into evidence processing mode.
Once a backup officer arrived, he and Evie made their way up and down the aisles of the massive facility, but Evie didn’t indicate anything more, so they joined the captain and the director.
“It looks to me like you have a real problem.” He showed the captain the images. “This was ready to be shipped out. All it needed was to be put on a truck.”
“Where did you find that?” the director asked, and Atlas explained.
“Both the locker and the workstation are used by the same person, Mack Cowling. I can check to see when he’s expected in, but it should be any time.”
The captain radioed directions for all cars to be moved out of sight.
“You more than earned your share of kibble and dog treats today,” Atlas told Evie.
“She’s pretty amazing,” the director agreed. “This is the first time you’ve trained here, but could you came back? I don’t want this sort of activity in my warehouse.” He seemed much paler than he had when Atlas first saw him. “Now I have to explain to management what’s been happening.”
“We’ll see what we can do. The truth is that we have a glut of locations that allow us to use their facilities for training. But I will definitely add you to the list.” The captain was pleased, but Atlas was even more pleased and proud of Evie.
“You are so good.” He opened a bag of treats and gave her a few.
She had more than earned them. And twenty minutes later they had a suspect in custody, the evidence bagged and tagged, and the captain was already requesting a search warrant for the suspect’s home. All in all, it was already a great day.
ATLAS STOOD outside the suspect’s home with Evie.
The other officers served the warrant to his girlfriend and cleared the run-down house before Atlas took Evie inside, but she didn’t make it past the living room.
The other officers removed the light switches, bringing up cocaine on strings from behind the walls.
In the end, they ended up stripping most of the walls, finding nearly fifty pounds of hidden drugs that they used a field test to verify.
“What am I supposed to do now?” the girlfriend groused as they got ready to leave, late in the afternoon.
“I don’t think it matters,” Atlas told her.
“You’ll be in a nice warm cell.” He waited while Carter and Red, the plainclothes officers who’d conducted the search, took her into custody.
“All we need to do is find one of your prints on any of the packages and you’ll be going down.
” There was just too much product in the house for her not to be aware of it.
“You son of a bitch,” she snarled as Red clapped the cuffs on her, screaming as they got her in the back of the car.
“Did anyone find a basement?” Atlas asked as the guys finished cataloging everything they found.
“I don’t think so,” Carter answered before he got ready to head to the station with Red. “Why?”
“From the outside, it looks like it should have one. There are windows.” He took Evie into the kitchen, the only room that Evie hadn’t indicated as having anything in the walls.
“The door should be in here.” He checked the walls, but it was the floor that caught his eye. “Pull out the refrigerator.”
Officers each took a side, but it glided out easily, revealing a partially closed-up doorway to the basement. He let Evie go and followed her down the stairs, then turned on a light at the bottom. “Guys, get down here,” he called, shining his flashlight on tables filled with money. “Holy shit.”
“What?” the captain said as he came down.
“Jesus,” he added. “There has to be hundreds of thousands down here.”
“Yeah. Looks like we found a pretty major distribution hub. Our friends in custody got the drugs here, parceled them out, got paid, and shipped their shit all over the country using the damned warehouse. Can you imagine? The shipments looked like chocolate, and no one would think anything different.” Atlas patted Evie on the head.
After all, she was the one who had found all of it as part of a simple training exercise.
Atlas’s phone rang, and he pulled it out of his pocket. “It’s Bazel,” he told the captain.
“The guy you found in the back of the truck?”
He nodded and answered the call. “Are you okay?”
“I work in yard. Men outside gate,” he said quietly. “I hear them.” He sounded frightened.
“Go inside and stay out of sight. If you need to go to the shelter I showed you. I’ll get home as soon as I can.
” He told the captain where he was going and hurried to his cruiser.
He got Evie in the back and drove as fast as he dared, with the lights going.
Once he reached the house, he parked in front and let Evie out, allowing her to go inside first. She stayed quiet and went right to her dish, so at least he knew there was no one inside.
“Bazel,” he called, but didn’t hear anything. The first thing he did was check the dining room to see if the indicator under the sideboard had been tripped. “Bazel,” he called louder.
“I sorry,” he said, coming out of the back room. “They leave after I call. I thought it was him come back.”
“It’s all right. Is the gate still locked?”
“Yes. I check at gate. Not open.” Some of the color had returned to Bazel’s face, but he was still pale and shaking. Atlas hugged him carefully, and Bazel went right into his arms, holding him tightly. “I want be strong.”
“Hey. It was just a few days ago. The police are still trying to find him, but we have a name now, and that’s been given to all the police.
We will find him.” Damn, Bazel felt so good in his arms, and he didn’t want to let him go, but Atlas backed away anyhow because it was either that or he’d end up coaxing Bazel upstairs, and if that happened, there was no telling what he’d do.
“I know you will. I hope he here so you could catch. I hid and watch, but no one come in yard.” He seemed to stop shaking. “You go back work?”