Chapter 10
Wylie watched his brothers walk into the jail. He did wonder what was going on, but didn’t bother them. He was on a stakeout with Rosie, and she was watching the jail too. She turned to look at him when he said her name.
“I wonder what they’re doing in there?” He said they were no doubt causing trouble. Not the serious kind, but enough to have tongues wagging. “McGee hasn’t left yet. He’s been consistent in leaving every day at eight on the dot. Do you suppose he had an appointment with your brothers?”
“I doubt he’d wait around on them if he knew they were coming in. Gleason doesn’t look happy about something, and Raphael looks like he knows something. Do you suppose he’s going in there to ask about the Sheep? That’s all he could talk about last night when he was over to the house.”
“He’s guessing really well. My source tells me that there were fourteen bodies from the lower levels of the place and five from the kitchen.
The other drug dealers came in, firing up the place and killing whoever got in their way.
” He couldn’t believe that it had happened nearly at their front door.
“I guess they were in on their territory, and that pissed them off. It was a good plan to have them make meth in a restaurant. No one would be suspicious about a high gas bill when they were cooking food. However, they got caught, and that’s not a good thing for around here.
They’ll be speculating on it for years to come if it doesn’t get leaked out of the jail sooner rather than later. ”
“I’m thinking that they’re just lucky that so few had been killed.
If the place had been full of dining customers, there is no telling what the body count would have been.
” She agreed with him. Then she noticed that Gleason and Raphael were being escorted out.
“That can’t be good. I wonder what they did to have that happen.
I’ve never had to escort anyone out of the jail before.
I’ve wanted to, but it seemed to be too much effort to do that instead of letting them leave on their own. ”
“I’m betting it has to do with Raphael. He’s got a burr up his ass about the restaurant, and he won’t leave it alone, no matter how many times he’s been told not to bother.
It will just make him dig his heels in deeper until he gets himself hurt.
Or someone else.” He pointed to the station house.
“Look, there goes McGee. What makes you so sure that he’s working with the Feds on this? ”
“He is. They said that while he’s not in charge, he’s making enough of a nuisance about himself that they’re letting him hang around.
” Rosie started the car. “We can only follow him so far, then he’ll turn into the drive that leads to the parking lot.
If they wanted to make it so no one cared about what was going on, they shouldn’t have done that.
I would have just kept the house out of sight.
They could do that with a couple of well-placed tents. ”
He didn’t care if he got any information about what had happened.
He was just enjoying himself getting to do this with Rosie.
She’d gotten a call in the middle of the night about what had really happened at the place and how meth had been being made on the premises.
It wasn’t until an hour later that she was called again to say that Mr. Shadows had been killed along with his wife and daughter.
They’d been the ones who were running the operations and had been killed terribly.
There had been a dishwasher who had been killed along with one of the waitstaff.
It was a bloody mess out there, and he wondered if they’d ever find the ones that had done the killing.
McGee had been the first one on sight, and he’d been in charge of the operations long enough for some of the other staff to have been let go.
The feds were looking for any information about the people, and he knew from Rosie that it had been two men and two women.
They’d all been in the kitchen staff when things went off, and now they didn’t know where to find them.
“Wouldn’t they have been able to find them with the information that was on their driver’s license?” Wylie thought that was what he’d seen done in the movies. They took down their information so they’d have it for later. “I mean, that’s what I would have done before I let them go.”
“Apparently, it was done, but now they can’t find it.
I don’t know why, but I think that McGee has it on his person and is keeping it hidden away so that he can be the big hero and get things going.
I wouldn’t put it past him.” He’d not met the guy for very long, but he really didn’t care for him.
He was slick, like someone would think a car salesman would be.
He didn’t know any slick car salesmen, but he knew the reference.
“I’m betting right now it’s in the safe in the office, with not just the names of the people that he let go but some of the evidence too. He’s a cocky son of a bitch.”
They followed McGee all the way out to the Sheep.
Once they were at a point where they could see the place, they were stopped and told to turn around.
She did so without complaint to the man, but cursed him all the way home.
It was funny to him that his little wife had such a vocabulary of words that weren’t fit for company.
He asked her if he could drive home, and she stomped around the car to the passenger side.
He had to bite his tongue or laugh out loud when she got in and slammed the door.
“I don’t understand what the big deal is. Just tell the public what happened and be done with it. They certainly wouldn’t have to have all this extra intrigue or anything. Just post signs saying that there was no trespassing, and that would be the end of it.” Rosie told him he was being na?ve.
“People would want to go in and see for themselves what a drug ring looked like. They might even steal something, like I know McGee did, to make it so that the case is never solved. Then what do you do if someone gets hurt trespassing? It could happen, and they’d sue them for not having enough barriers up, even though they’d been told to stay out.
I know people. They’re okay when they’re alone, but get a group of them together, and Armageddon will come around. ”
He could see that. His grannie used to say something like that all the time when she’d been alive. That one person was smart, and that a group of smart people suddenly became stupid. He never really believed it until today.
Since she knew that McGee was gone for the day, she wanted him to drop her off at the stationhouse.
She didn’t think she’d get any more information than her snitch was telling her, but she said it was worth a try.
What pissed her off the most was that had she waited one more day to retire, she would have been in charge of the operation, and the number of things that she’d done differently would have had the case solved by now.
Not really, but he wanted to think that she could solve anything given enough information.
After dropping her off, he went home. They were expecting a delivery today, and he would have to sign for it.
It was some of the kitchen aides that they decided they needed, but not right away.
Ordering through an online store got it to them in a couple of days instead of having to travel all the way to Columbus again. He loved ordering online.
No crowds of people. No driving. He was even happy to pay for shipping because he knew that he’d spend more than that on gas.
There wasn’t even any kind of hassle when he had to return it for some reason.
Just print out a label and take it to another store, and there it was.
Done and done. He would even get his refund back before he left the parking lot on some days.
Since he relied on reviews, he always left one so that the next person would know what sort of issues or not that he’d had.
~*~
Rosie didn’t get any information from the stationhouse, but she did have fun.
They’d missed her they told her, and her ways of doing things.
She did notice that a couple of people asked her when she was coming back to work, had she found retirement just too boring.
She told them that she was enjoying her new life and couldn’t wait until the holidays so that she could get into them more than she had any other year before.
She’d only been gone a few days, but it did seem longer to her. Not having to get up every day was nice and wearing the bulky uniform wasn’t something that she was going to miss either. For now, she was enjoying her lazy days off and deciding on the nursery things they had to sort through online.
Getting ready to leave when they were called out on a call, she was asked if she knew anything about the Golden Sheep.
Shaking her head no, because she couldn’t say anything different, she told them that she’d tried to go out that way to get some things from Columbus and had had to turn around and go back.
“I guess it’s a big to-do out there. We’re kept in the dark, too, about it.
The only thing we know for sure is that McGee goes out there daily to have a look around.
We don’t know what he’s looking for, but he seems to think they can’t run the thing without his input.
” The officer laughed. “Are you sure you don’t want to come out of retirement for us?
I sure do miss you being behind the desk.
As it is now, we have to call him on the cell phone, and he sometimes doesn’t answer. Too busy, I guess.”