Chapter Eighteen #3
“I know!” His voice rose.
“I know. That’s why I didn’t call sooner. I don’t know who killed Owen. I don’t know how his body got into that coffin. I don’t know who put it in the return area. I don’t know why it got sent to you.”
“Then what do you know?”
“I know Owen was alive at that facility. I know I watched somebody shoot him.”
My eyes shifted to Myth.
“And I know a few days later your VP showed up asking questions about a coffin nobody had a record of.” Eli breathed out. “Then I put it together.”
Nobody said anything.
Owen Mercer had been at the transfer facility. Somebody killed him there, then his body ended up in one of our coffins and got sent straight back to Grave Casket.
“Eli.”
“Yeah?”
“You tell anybody else about this?”
“No.”
“Your wife?”
“No.”
“Cops?”
“No.”
“Anybody at work?”
“No.”
“Keep it that way.”
He went silent. Then, “Are you threatening me?”
Dealer grinned.
I closed my eyes for half a second. “No. I’m telling you that if whoever killed Owen doesn’t know you saw him, you probably want to keep it that fucking way.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh.”
“Okay.”
“I need to talk to you in person.”
“No.” The answer was immediate.
“You called me.”
“I know.”
“You wanted to talk.”
“On the phone,” Eli pointed out.
“I need you to show me where you saw Owen.”
Another long pause. “I’ll think about it.”
“You do that.”
“I’ll call you.”
“When?”
“I don’t know.”
“Eli,” I called.
The call disconnected and I stared at the phone. “Motherfucker.”
Rowdy finally laughed. “He hung up on you.”
“I fucking noticed.”
Taco leaned back. “I kinda like him.”
“No one asked.”
“He’s got balls.”
“He’s terrified of us,” Myth pointed out.
“Still called,” I pointed out. I picked up my cigarettes and stuck one in the corner of my mouth.
Dealer leaned forward. “So somebody killed Mercer because he saw something.”
“Maybe?” That had to be it, but what the fuck did he see, and why was it tied back to us?
“Our shipments.”
Nobody spoke.
They didn’t need an explanation.
Everyone sitting at this table knew what sometimes traveled inside Grave Casket coffins.
Guns. A lot of fucking guns.
Myth rubbed his jaw. “He could’ve caught one being moved.”
“Or opened one,” Humpty said.
“Or saw somebody accessing the compartment,” Bull added.
Breaker shook his head. “We don’t have guys loading guns at Milwaukee.”
“No,” I said. “But people on the other end know what they’re receiving.”
Dealer leaned forward. “So somebody involved in the gun runs realizes Mercer knows what we’re doing.”
“And handles him,” Myth finished.
It fit.
Too fucking easily, though.
If he’d stumbled onto one of our shipments or figured out what we were moving, somebody could’ve decided he was a liability.
One bullet.
Problem solved.
Except... I looked at my phone again.
“No.”
Myth turned toward me. “What?”
“It doesn’t make sense.”
“What doesn’t?”
“The casket.”
Nobody spoke.
I looked around the table. “If Owen found out about the guns and somebody killed him to keep him quiet, why the fuck send him back to us in a fake casket?”
Myth frowned. “They could’ve been making sure we knew the problem was handled.”
“Then call us,” I sighed.
“Maybe they didn’t want the connection.”
“They put the dead fucking connection inside a Grave Casket coffin and shipped him to our door,” Taco ranted.
I stood and started pacing. “If Mercer knew about the guns, killing him makes sense.”
“Yeah,” Humpty said.
“Getting rid of the body makes sense.”
Another nod.
“Dump him somewhere. Burn him. Bury him. Throw him in the fucking lake. Whatever.”
Dealer watched me.
“But they didn’t.”
“No.”
I stopped. “They put him in a coffin connected directly to us and made damn sure Jackson brought him here.”
Taco frowned. “So the body was a message.”
“Maybe.”
“What message?”
I looked at him. “That’s the fucking problem.” I didn’t know.
There was a piece missing.
Probably more than one.
I looked at Myth. “Get Dave back on this.”
“What do you want him looking for?”
“Everything on Owen. I want to know why the fuck he was at that facility that night when he wasn’t scheduled to be there.”
Myth nodded.
“Bull,” I called.
“Yeah?”
“Go through every shipment that moved through Milwaukee for the last six months. Anything fucked up, I want to know.”
“Got it.”
“Breaker, help him.”
Breaker nodded.
“Hose.”
He looked at me.
“Go over Owen again.”
“I already did.”
“Do it again.”
He didn’t argue.
“Everybody else keeps their mouths shut about Eli. His name doesn’t leave this room.”
Heads nodded around the table.
I looked down at my phone.
Eli had given us something. Not enough, but something.
Owen hadn’t died somewhere else and been dumped at the facility. He’d been killed there, and whoever pulled the trigger had gotten his body out of sight, put him into a fake Grave Casket, and somehow gotten that casket into the return area without leaving a normal trail.
Then they’d sent him directly to us.
I stared at the dark screen of my phone.
Whoever had put Owen in that casket hadn’t been trying to hide Owen from the Grave Prowlers. They’d wanted us to find him.
I just didn’t know why.