Chapter 14 #2
She was quiet for a moment, looking at her glass. Then she looked back up at him with the expression that appeared occasionally and which he'd come to recognize as her real face underneath all the other versions of it — the one that wasn't managing anything.
"Thank you," she said. Simply, without performance.
Gary refilled her glass.
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The DA's office had been building its case through November and into December with the methodical patience of people who understood that a case assembled carefully is worth considerably more than one assembled quickly.
David had told Gary in their second meeting that they had what they needed to move — the inventory discrepancies, the sales documentation, the surveillance record, Belle's wire-recorded conversations with Jed, and the statements from two bar staff at the restaurant on the eastern edge of the county who had agreed to cooperate.
But three specific events remained on the plan before they moved.
"We want this complete," David had said, in the level, unhurried tone of a man who had built prosecutions before and knew what made them hold.
"We want Jed and Brett documented in the act, money changing hands, the receiving end of the transaction on record.
If we move before Christmas we get part of this.
If we wait for the three events we get all of it, nobody walks on a technicality. "
Gary had agreed. Belle had agreed, which had required a conversation that Gary didn't find easy and which she had handled with considerably more calm than he expected — the calm of a woman who had made a decision and was past the part where it required courage.
Christmas Eve was event one.
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Belle had gathered the intelligence in the second week of December, piecing it together from fragments — a call she'd overheard on Jed's phone during a local event in Texas for the circuit, a text she'd seen on Brett's phone during a Sunday dinner when he'd left it unlocked on the kitchen table, and one conversation between Jed and Brett in the barn that she'd recorded on the secondary phone, two minutes of audio that contained, in the middle of a conversation about the holidays, a specific reference to a specific date and a specific quantity.
Three barrels. Christmas Eve. While the family was occupied with the holiday.
The logic was sound, in the blunt, opportunistic way of people who are comfortable with risk as long as the immediate environment seems safe.
Christmas Eve at the Steele farm was an all-hands occasion — Nancy cooking, the family gathered, attention directed inward, upward, toward the food, the children, the accumulated warmth of the holiday.
Nobody would be in the distillery. Nobody would be checking the inventory.
Except that Gary had spent the previous three Thursdays with Lou, ostensibly moving product and in reality working with the DA's office to install three cameras in the storage room — small, flush-mounted, positioned to cover the tunnel entrance at the far end of the room and the rack sections where the targeted barrels were stored.
Lou didn't know about the cameras. Belle did.
Belle also had the wire.
David's office had fitted it at a meeting the week before, a small device that looked like nothing and recorded everything within a reasonable radius.
She would wear it to Christmas Eve dinner; after the barrels moved and Jed completed the transaction at the restaurant, she would document the exchange — the handover, the payment, the conversation that accompanied both.
The restaurant owner, who did not know he was being recorded and did not know that two of his staff had agreed to cooperate with the district attorney's office, would do the rest himself.
Gary had been through the plan with David and Sue twice.
It was clean. The moving parts were minimized.
Belle's role ended with the wire and the documentation — she would not be anywhere near the tunnel during the actual movement, which would happen, they expected, in the window between eleven PM and two AM, when the family had retired and the farm was quiet.
All Gary had to do was be at Christmas Eve dinner and not give anything away.
He had done harder things. He tried to believe this fully and mostly succeeded.
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Christmas Eve arrived cold and clear, the Texas version of winter — not the deep, structural cold of the Midwest Gary had grown up in, but a genuine chill that came off the open land after dark and made the farm's lit windows look warmer by contrast.
Gary pulled through the Steele gate at six and drove the long tree-lined approach to the farmhouse with the practiced familiarity of a man who had made this drive a dozen times now.
The house was fully lit, every window, and from the driveway he could hear the layered noise of the whole family inside — voices, something on the record player, the particular acoustic warmth of a large family in a large room that has been holding Christmas for a hundred years.
Marv was in the back seat. Gary had asked David whether bringing him was appropriate and David had said yes, without elaboration, which Gary interpreted as it looks normal and normal is what we want.
He clipped on Marv's leash and went inside.
Nancy met him in the front hallway with the full warmth of a woman for whom Christmas was both a religious event and a logistical operation that she ran simultaneously and with equal conviction.
She hugged Gary with the unceremonious affection that had become standard, bent to greet Marv, directed them both toward the main room where the family was assembling.
The house smelled of everything it was supposed to smell like on Christmas Eve — pine from the tree in the corner, something with cinnamon from the kitchen, the low woodsmoke of the fire in the main room's fireplace, and underneath all of it the constant, permanent note of aged oak and spirit that the old stone distillery across the property pressed into everything on the farm.
Rosie the bulldog located Marv within seconds of their arrival, conducted the usual assessment, and led him to their corner of the screened porch as though this were an established arrangement, which by now it essentially was.
Lou came in from outside with the cold on his jacket, shaking Gary's hand with the solid warmth of a man who had genuinely come to value his Thursdays, asking about finals with the interest of a man who knew Gary was finishing something and thought it mattered.
Brett was there, which Gary had expected and prepared for — Gary met his eyes across the room with the level, neutral expression of a man with nothing obvious to hide, and Brett held the look for a moment and then looked away.
His jaw was set in the particular way of a man who was pretending to be comfortable and not quite achieving it.
Belle appeared at Gary's elbow within a minute of his arrival, the casual ease of a woman who happened to be nearby and wasn't communicating anything specific.
She looked exactly as she should look — Christmas Eve at the family farm, dark hair loose, a dark green dress, the particular composed warmth of a woman who belongs in this room and is genuinely glad to be in it.
"No Jed?" Gary said, keeping his voice easy and conversational.
"Circuit doesn't give him a break until mid-March," Belle said, with the practiced neutrality of a woman who had said this enough times that it no longer required any particular expression to accompany it. "We'll manage."
"Seems like you always do," Gary said.
She smiled at the middle distance. "We always do."
Under her dress, against her left side, the wire was doing exactly what it was designed to do.
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