Chapter Twenty-One
New Orleans
Present Day
IT WAS FOUR-THIRTY in the afternoon, the end of the workday for many in government service. But not for Jarrett Stanton.
Inside the sterile, fluorescent-lit conference room on the third floor of the Federal Building, the air was cool and dry, humming with the low buzz of a ceiling vent.
The walls were bare except for a whiteboard filled with color-coded charts and a corkboard pinned with maps of the great state of Louisiana, each one marked with pins and string like a spiderweb of crime.
Stanton stood at the head of the table, sleeves rolled to the elbows of his crisp white shirt, tie loosened, correctly indicating he had been at it since dawn.
His dark eyes scanned the room like a hawk circling a field.
He was in his element, his weekly Trends meeting, where data was gospel and patterns were prophecy.
The room was quiet, professional, anodyne. Two rookies sat stiffly at the far end of the table, trying to fit in.
“He always like this?” one of them whispered.
“Oh yeah,” came the reply from a grizzled agent with a coffee-stained tie. “We do this every week.”
The door creaked open, and Augustus Lloyd, the special agent in charge of the New Orleans Field Office, poked his head in. He was a big man with a double chin, a slow drawl, and a thinning hairline in sharp retreat, his face aged with sunspots.
“We’ve got that call with the DA,” Lloyd said.
Stanton checked his smartwatch. “Trends meeting, sir. Just finishing up.”
“I’ll get us dialed in.” Lloyd gave a mock salute and disappeared down the hall.
Stanton had near-religious reverence for the Trends meeting. This was how you fought crime, not by chasing rumors or gut feelings, though those could help, but by amassing data, spotting patterns, and digging in. He believed in numbers. Numbers didn’t lie.
Analyzing data was the most efficient way to do their jobs, and if he was going to get on the phone with a former federal prosecutor who was likely to be the next governor of Louisiana, he wanted to have his trends buttoned up.
Opioid deaths were picking up across the state, and with the DA running for governor she was going to want to know more. That might be so she could pin it on her opponent, the current state attorney general, or it might be so she could do something about it.
He clicked a remote, and a projector lit up the wall with a spreadsheet of calls, arrests, and incident reports.
“We’re seeing a spike in opioid-related calls upstate,” he said, tapping the screen with a laser pointer.
“Synthetics. Same pattern as last quarter, but the clusters are tighter. Someone’s moving product again.
Showing up in Baton Rouge, also some in neighboring states.
Thoughts?” Stanton’s voice was calm, clipped, precise.
The agents scribbled notes.
Stanton was about to encourage the team to voice theories based on data when a voice piped up from the far end of the table. Scott Abrams, one of the rookies. Eager. Sharp and still green enough to think initiative was always rewarded.
“Not sure if it could be related, but we had a visitor yesterday,” he ventured.
“You were on complaint duty?”
“Yes, sir.”
Complaint duty was a rite of passage for the new guys. Nine or ten crackpots a week drove out to the FBI district HQ on Lake Pontchartrain to talk about UFOs, Elvis sightings, and the Trilateral Commission. But every now and then, a walk-in said something useful.
“A walk-in? Here?” Stanton asked.
“No, sir. It was down at the Federal Building. U.S. marshal reported a strange encounter with a walk-in. Drug-related.”
Stanton turned his head slightly. “Okay, Agent Abrams. What do you have?”
“A man came in looking for a specific DEA agent. When he was asked to fill out the usual forms for the request, he bolted. The marshal thought he got spooked by something.”
“ID? Video surveillance?”
“No ID. He was wearing a hat, pulled low. Bearded. I saw it, which is why I bring it up.”
“Where are you going with this?”
“I’m not sure. Something stood out about him. He was a rough-looking character. I saw a still photo first and pegged him as homeless, but on the video he sure didn’t walk like a homeless guy.”
“What does that mean?”
“Just seemed like he walked with purpose. Like a cop.”
His voice lowered, steamrolled by the scoffs from saltier agents.
Stanton waved them down.
“Who was he looking for?”
“A UC,” he said, using the acronym for undercover. “Javier Gonzalez.”
“Can we enhance the video, maybe do a facial pattern search, find out who this guy is? The man wants to meet with the DEA. Let’s give him the FBI.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll check.”
Stanton’s watch buzzed. Time to talk to Icy.