Breaking Creed

52

O’dell had gotten to Quantico with only forty-three minutes to spare before the dreaded meeting with AD Kunze and Agent McCoy.

While she printed out the autopsy photos of this latest floater, the images of the cockroaches reminded her of the scorpions. It would take a long time to forget that feeling of them skittering over her body.

She rubbed at the backs of her hands. The swelling was completely gone this morning. Dr. Avelyn’s sticky paste mixture had reduced the welts to mere red marks, no more noticeable than a mosquito bite. A small amount of makeup and her hair covered the ones on her neck and cheek. She’d keep her jacket on, though, to avoid any more reactions like Stan’s. Although she was pretty certain the attention wouldn’t be on her after showing these photos.

Stan had removed a total of five cockroaches from the victim’s mouth. Only one hadn’t come out willingly and had to be extracted. The other four had raced out as soon as he pried the lips apart. One almost escaped up the medical examiner’s hand before O’Dell swept it back into the plastic bag, which she had tried to wrap tight against the victim’s bloated face. The trick was that Stan had to keep the tweezers and at least his fingers inside the bag to open the mouth. He was fast but not as fast as the roaches.

O’Dell had to admit, she had a newfound respect for Stan. He hadn’t flinched. If he had, all five roaches would probably have been long gone in the corners and cubbyholes of his meticulous autopsy suite.

Only after Stan was convinced there were no more cockroaches had he dug deeper and worked carefully to remove the other object that had been stuffed down the throat — the man’s driver’s license.

Before she left the District to head to Quantico, she had typed “Robert Díaz” into several searches available to her. Those were also waiting for her to print out.

When she arrived five minutes before three o’clock, she was surprised to find everyone waiting for her. And even more surprised to see Senator Delanor. She was seated in the same chair across from Kunze’s desk, where O’Dell had found her the last time. AD Kunze introduced O’Dell and Agent McCoy with no explanation about the senator’s presence, and Senator Delanor made no motion to leave. She was obviously a part of this meeting. And immediately, O’Dell felt her guard go into place. She seemed to be the only one here who had no clue what the hell was going on.

“Agent McCoy was just filling us in about what happened at the Bagleys’,” Kunze said, as he waited for O’Dell to take the chair next to the senator. McCoy evidently had chosen to stand.

“Yes, how are you doing?” Senator Delanor patted her arm. “How dreadful.”

Before O’Dell could respond, Kunze added, “You should have told me about the scorpions when we talked yesterday.”

And there it was — already the sympathy had been converted to blame.

“I’m fine, thanks for asking,” she told the senator. To McCoy she said, “So you knew about Trevor Bagley?”

“Oh, he and his wife have been on our radar for some time.”

“Would have been nice if you had shared that when we pulled his body from the Potomac.”

“Agent O’Dell,” Kunze scolded.

“No, that’s okay.” McCoy smiled and waved a hand at Kunze, dismissing O’Dell and her comment even before adding, “I’ve already heard she’s a pistol.”

O’Dell had checked him out, too, learning everything she could, though there wasn’t much available. In the last twenty years, Agent McCoy had been promoted up the ranks, starting out as an immigration officer before moving to the DEA.

Somewhere she had read that he was a Texan, and she half expected a big and bold cowboy with a southern accent. Even in the confines of the office, he still managed a swagger, but there were no other signs. No Stetson, no cowboy boots, no decorative belt buckle. She was almost disappointed. Agent McCoy looked very much like an official government agent — square shoulders, a standard steel-blue suit to match his tie and eyes, polished black leather shoes, and slicked-back hair with just enough gray at the temples to make him look seasoned.

“What happened is unfortunate, Agent O’Dell, but we could hardly expect that you’d be running out to Alabama and tromping all over the Bagleys’ property, now could we?”

“I’m curious why not?”

“Excuse me?”

“If you knew it was Bagley in the river, and this was such a sensitive case, why weren’t your people at the Bagleys’ before me?”

This time Kunze didn’t hush or scold her. At a glance, she could see that her boss was also interested in the answer.

McCoy used that moment to sit down on the corner of Kunze’s desk, ignoring the assistant director’s look of disapproval. His perch kept him higher than everyone else, establishing an air of authority and making the rest of them all look up to him. It was an old trick. O’Dell had used it herself sometimes when questioning suspects. However, she had never done it with a colleague.

“We tend to measure our moves carefully, instead of running half-cocked.” He shot an irritated look at Kunze. McCoy no longer seemed amused by this “pistol,” though he didn’t mind continuing the metaphor. “We’ve known that Mr. and Mrs. Bagley were running drugs. We were waiting for the right time to raid their property so that we could use them to help make our case against George Ramos. We wanted to do as much damage as we could to Choque Azul. Are you familiar with them?”

“Agent O’Dell was responsible for putting Ramos behind bars,” AD Kunze said, and for the first time in a long time O’Dell thought she heard a hint of pride in her boss’s voice.

“Ah yes, that’s right,” McCoy said. “You went out to rescue him and his kids on his houseboat during a storm and ended up interrupting a drug pickup in the middle of the Gulf.”

He had to already know that. O’Dell couldn’t figure out why he was pretending it was news to him. She glanced at Senator Delanor. George Ramos had been her husband. He was the father of her children. She was the one who used her influence as the junior senator from Florida to get Kunze to send out O’Dell and the Coast Guard to rescue her family. It couldn’t be easy listening to McCoy talk about it so flippantly.

After all, the woman had winced when O’Dell accidentally called her Senator Delanor-Ramos just days ago. But she was a professional politician, and somehow she managed to keep her face impassive. O’Dell saw that the senator kept her hands in her lap, and she noticed that the interlaced fingers were gripped tightly together, almost in a stranglehold.

“It wasn’t until Ramos’s arrest that we discovered not only that he was a part of this Colombian cartel, but that he was the jefe, the boss man, for the entire southeastern region. His arrest last fall caused all kinds of shifts and tensions. We’ve learned that his son has been trying to take over in his absence.”

“His son?” Kunze asked, and looked to Senator Delanor.

“I knew George had a previous life,” Senator Delanor said. “In Colombia, long before I met him. Of course, I didn’t know until recently that he had a wife and a son. Or that he was still in touch with them… and taking care of them.”

“So did Choque Azul decide to get rid of the Bagleys before you got to them?” O’Dell asked.

“That’s what we thought initially, when you pulled Bagley’s body out of the Potomac. This cartel is known for their creative warnings. Torture and kill a stoolie, then dump him where he’s easily found. Keep any other members from even thinking about flapping their mouths to the feds. But they didn’t just dump Bagley and let him be found. They announced that they left a package in the Potomac.”

It only just occurred to O’Dell, and she looked at Senator Delanor. “You got the call.”

The woman’s eyes confirmed it before she said, “Yes, it appears it’s me they are warning.”