Breaking Creed

69

O’Dell greeted agent McCoy as he came up the Bagleys’ front porch steps. Behind her the forensic team was finishing up. She could see the other FBI agents waiting for her by the outbuilding where the children had been kept.

“Is this your first time here?” she asked McCoy.

“First time in Alabama.”

“Really? But this was such an important case.” She held the screen door open for him.

He maneuvered around her into the entry, and she noticed his eyes darting around the place.

“It’s called delegating, Agent O’Dell. You should try it sometime.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets, obviously impatient with her. “So what’s so important that you brought me all the way out here and on a Sunday, no less?”

“I appreciate you taking the time.”

“Yeah, well, be sure not to waste my time. I wouldn’t be here if your boss wasn’t busting my boss’s chops. Now that we have George Ramos’s son in custody, my people are anxious to close this sorry-ass case.”

“It’s just too bad they haven’t found the Iceman.”

He shrugged. “According to Leandro Ramos, the Iceman’s apprentice was supposed to be at the scene last night, too. And we haven’t found him yet either.”

“Maybe he’s a ghost, just like his boss.”

She thought she saw a spark in McCoy’s blue eyes. She wasn’t sure if it was more impatience or perhaps a flicker of respect that both the Iceman and his apprentice had beaten them all once again.

“So what’s so important?”

“It’s upstairs in the master bedroom.” She pointed to the open staircase, then she led the way up, stopping for one of the forensic team who was coming down.

“They should be finished,” McCoy said as they passed another tech in the hallway.

“Pretty much.”

The door to the master bedroom was open. She stepped in and waited for him. She watched him glance at the altar, then scan the rest of the room as if he were looking for what it was she thought was so important.

“Something’s been bugging me about the altar the Bagleys set up for Santa Muerte.”

“I hate to tell you this, O’Dell, but I’ve already seen this altar in the case photos that were taken. And believe me, they had all kinds of angles and close-ups, so please don’t tell me you brought me all the way out here to find what’s bugging you about this.”

“Have you looked at very many other altars to Santa Muerte?”

He let out a long sigh of frustration and said, “No, I can’t say that I have.”

“All of them leave gifts, and there’s some variation but there are a few things that seem to always be the same.”

“And I can’t wait for you to tell me what those are.”

“Almost all of them leave tequila. Seems strange to me, but all of it seems strange so why not tequila, right?”

He glanced at the altar.

“Sometimes the whole bottle is included. Sometimes not. But always, if there’s tequila at all, there’s some poured into a glass or several glasses.”

“That’s so very interesting, O’Dell, that you’re putting me to sleep while I’m standing up.”

But she didn’t think he looked bored. For the first time since he entered the house, Agent McCoy looked a bit uncomfortable.

“I’ve checked with some experts.”

“There are experts?”

“Oh yeah, it’s crazy, isn’t it? They all say the tequila is poured and ready or it’s not an official offering. Sometimes people will refresh what’s in the glass, but never will they leave a glass empty. That would be disrespectful. Actually, an insult.”

She waited for his eyes to check out the glass, even though he certainly already knew it was empty. The glass was the only thing set off to the side. She hadn’t allowed the forensic team to touch anything else.

“Your prints are on the empty glass, Agent McCoy.” She said it bluntly, as a matter of fact. “I’m just wondering how that is possible when you’ve never set foot in this house. No wait, you haven’t even been in the state of Alabama.”

“I don’t know what you’re trying to pull. I pissed you off, so this is your way of getting back at me.” He shook his head as if he were disgusted by her. “You’re a sorry piece of work, O’Dell.”

“You’ve gotten away with it for so long that you got a bit cocky. You didn’t think anyone would notice. Especially if you had your own team in here cleaning up after you.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re a ghost, right? No one knows what you look like. You’ve been able to arrest or kill anyone who might.”

His eyes flashed at her. Blue eyes. Ice blue.

“But your apprentice knows.”

“My apprentice? What the hell are you talking about?”

She pulled out her cell phone and hit SEND on the text that she had drafted, letting her team know it was time to come on up.

“What are you doing? What did you just do?”

“You and George Ramos have been friends for a long, long time.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“All the way back to the days when you were a simple immigration officer working for ICE. You helped him come to the States. When you got promoted and went to the DEA, you even tried to bust his old partner in the Gulf drug cartel.”

He shook his head again, but he didn’t stop her. She wondered if he was trying to figure out how she knew this or if he was plotting what to do with her.

“Howard Johnson went straight. And no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t bust him. But your buddy George got involved in a new cartel, Choque Azul. Somehow he convinced you to come along for the ride.”

“You don’t know anything.”

“You’re right about that. There are a whole lot of holes I haven’t filled and dots I can’t connect. But I’ve seen the way you look at Senator Ellie Delanor. Did you come in second to George with her, too?”

“Shut up, O’Dell. You really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“When I ended up busting George on his houseboat, he put his son Leandro in charge. You thought it should have been you, right? After all, weren’t you the one that came up with the new idea of trafficking kids?”

“That was Leandro, not me.”

She kept quiet, staring at him and waiting for him to realize his slip. When he finally did, she saw the anger before he tucked it away and replaced it with a smile.

“You can’t prove any of it.” He pointed at her chest. “What, are you wearing a wire? Thinking I might confess to your crazy-ass theory?”

“What about the fingerprints?”

“You planted those.”

“Then what about the one man who can identify you as the Iceman?”

“What are you talking about?”

McCoy’s back was to the open door when the two FBI agents brought in the young man named Falco. McCoy turned, and she watched his face fall, along with all his carefully maintained composure. From what she knew about the Iceman, he had taken great pains to put away, destroy, or kill anyone who had ever seen his face, and he had been able to do that all the way back to the days when he was an ICE agent. But McCoy didn’t know that Falco had been captured last night, so how could he get to him?

“Sorry, boss,” the young man told him. “They tricked me, too.”