The Fallen

Chapter 56

Decker got into his truck and was about to drive out of the parking lot when he turned in the opposite direction and headed over to where the new construction was under way. He parked his car, got out, and walked as close to the construction site as he could. Workers were racing everywhere and forklifts and trucks and Bobcats were hurtling around carrying materials. Obviously, the police had allowed the work to recommence. Decker studied the activity for a bit and then took a closer look around the area. He spotted something, bent down, and picked it up. Examining it for a moment, he stuck it in his pocket. He got back into his truck and drove off.

On the way, he called Kemper and asked her to meet him in front of the Mercury Bar.

He was waiting for her when she pulled up. He climbed into the SUV, pulled out the bottle, and briefly described to her how he’d found it.

“Can you check to see what it is? I think I know, though.”

She looked at the bottle. “It’s almost certainly either heroin or fentanyl. They look the same, which is why dealers lace one with the other. Problem is, it takes thirty milligrams of heroin to kill someone, while it only takes three milligrams of fentanyl to do the same. So, you said you got this from a hiding place in Ted Ross’s office?”

“Yeah. And there’s a ton more in there. I think the shipments are coming in through the fulfillment center.”

“Why ship it there? Why not to his home or a PO box?”

“Far easier to search a home or PO box. The fulfillment center gets millions of packages. Like finding a needle in a haystack, if you’re the cops.”

“But don’t they track all those boxes pretty closely? How is he getting them out of the computer system there?”

“He’s the manager of the place. If anyone could think of a way, he could.”

“How did you even know he had a hiding place in his office?”

“Toby Babbot. He’d drawn plans of the fulfillment center. I found a set of official construction drawings and compared them. Babbot’s version showed only one discrepancy from the construction drawings. A two-foot-deep deviation in Ross’s office.”

“How’d Babbot find out about that?”

“He worked on the construction of the fulfillment center and later worked in the office there. He might’ve discovered it that way. I used a tape measure. Maybe he did the same.”

“Do you think he knew what Ross was going to do with that space?”

“Well, Babbot ended up dead, so chances are he did know, or at least suspected.”

“I’m surprised that Ross would keep this in his office.”

“It’s actually pretty secure. You can’t accidentally open the closet. He had to stand on a chair and turn a part of the molding to do it. And the panel was seamless. You could look at that wall all day and not know a door was there. And he had a Steelers jersey hanging there to disguise it further.”

“How did he have something like that installed and no one know about it?”

“He might have done it himself. He told me he worked construction before he moved on to the fulfillment center. Or maybe one or more of the construction guys is in on this and did it for him. As the manager, he had free run of the space and was overseeing all the construction work.”

“But how would a guy like Ted Ross get mixed up in a drug distribution operation?”

“He once described himself to me as the little guy, the underdog. And he said that when the little guy gets a chance to punch back, he needs to go for it. I think that was the reason he gave me the contact information for a lawyer for Amber to sue Maxus. He hates the big guys. And Alice Martin told me that his father, Fred, treated him and his mother really badly. Ted told me the same thing at the funeral. Maybe that screwed him up too. I can vouch for the fact that Fred Ross is a pretty unpleasant guy. That and a boatload of money would be a hell of a motive. Or maybe they approached him because he was the fulfillment center manager and they wanted to use that as their cover.”

“Decker, this really is awesome work on your part.” Kemper paused. “And now I’ll return the favor. I found out what you wanted to know about Randy Haas.”

“Our dying declaration guy who fingered your two agents?”

“You asked if he had family and whether he might have been sick. Well, you were right on both counts. He had a wife and two young kids. And he had pancreatic cancer. Advanced. He had maybe two months to live.”

“And the family? How are they doing?”

“They apparently had a financial windfall. They’re living in Bel-Air, California, in a home that cost three million.”

“And their explanation for that?”

“Life insurance. A ten-million-dollar policy.”

“That’s not cheap.”

“No, it’s not. But the premiums were fully paid up.”

“Okay, but I doubt that Haas listed ‘drug dealer’ as his occupation on the application. I can’t believe a legit insurance outfit would have sold him a policy that large. His odds of dying early were way too high.”

“The policy wasn’t written by an American company. It was an overseas outfit that we’ve tried to find out about, but so far we’ve run into a stone wall. It could have just been a way for his family to be paid off in exchange for his lying about my two agents.”

“Life insurance again,” said Decker thoughtfully.

“Right. But how’d you know we’d find out Haas was terminal?”

“Because I believed he lied about your guys. He set them up to take the fall. They weren’t rogue. I think they had stumbled onto what was happening here in Baronville and they had to be taken out. And Haas, who was already a dead man with a family to take care of, was the one to help do it. He made you think your guys were bad, and the real bad guys killed them. And his family reaped the benefit of his lying declaration. For all we know, he injected that fatal dose of morphine himself.”

“Okay, we have a major fentanyl ring operating in Baronville. And they’re using the fulfillment center to bring it in. What do you think Ross does with it?”

“He must take it from the center and pass it on to others. He’s got a duffel bag in his office. I think that’s how he’s getting it out. I found out he goes to the gym after work. But why carry your gym clothes in with you to work when the gym you’re going to has locker rooms and showers? Why not just leave them in the car until you get to the gym?”

“But don’t they have security there to check bags and stuff?”

“They have magnetometers, but that wouldn’t catch powder like this. Now, they do search bags. But I’m betting the duffel has a false bottom. I opened it up when I was in his office, and it seemed to be shallow for how large the bag was. And it wouldn’t take much space to hide bottles like these.”

“No, it wouldn’t.”

Decker indicated the bottle. “So educate me on the economics of this.”

“The cost to make a kilo of heroin and a kilo of fentanyl is about the same, about three to four grand. A kilo of heroin will fetch sixty thousand on the streets. But because fentanyl is so much more potent, one kilo of fentanyl can be made into about twenty-four total kilos of drug product, making it far more lucrative than heroin. And a kilo of fentanyl can produce nearly seven hundred thousand pills that sell for about twenty-five bucks each.” She looked more closely at the bottle. “This is about five thousand milligrams of powder.”

“There were twenty boxes in his office. The one I opened had five bottles inside it. If all the others had the same number of bottles, what would that be worth on the street?”

Kemper mentally calculated this. “If it is fentanyl, you’re looking at nearly nine million bucks sitting in the guy’s office.”

“I wonder how many shipments are coming through there?”

“I wonder too,” said Kemper worriedly.

“Why does it strike me that the dollar amounts we’re talking about make this seem less like a small-town conspiracy and more like an international one?”

She nodded. “You just read my mind, Decker. I can tell you that the Mexican cartels are all in on fentanyl. They either import it directly from China, where it’s manufactured both illegally and by legit pharma corporations, or they buy the stuff they need to make it from the Chinese and do the lab work themselves. They sell it in powder form like in this bottle, or they cut it with heroin. But they’re also pressing millions of fentanyl pills. And the thing with fentanyl, when you put it in pills, the dealers usually have no idea it’s in there. And the consumers don’t either. But people who don’t want to snort or smoke something because they’re afraid, or it makes them feel like addicts, will take a pill because they think it’s safer and it feels more legit. You know, sort of like taking a prescription. The pills will look like an oxycodone pill, or you can cut it with Xanax or other pain pills. They’re even stamped with the dosage amount of eighty because that’s a typical dose of Oxy. ‘Shady eighties,’ they’re called on the street. As I said, they can cost about twenty-five bucks a pill and a typical addict will take twenty pills a day.”

“Five hundred bucks a day. Expensive habit.”

“I’ve arrested dealers who routinely sell a minimum of a thousand pills a day. That much is called a ‘boat’ on the street. And there are dealers who do a lot more than that.”

Decker looked at the powder. “Do you think the plan is to make pills from the powder?”

“That would be my guess. Which means this powder is going to a pill press operation probably somewhere close by. I mean, why else ship the stuff to a place like this?”

“How much space would it need?”

“You can do it in your bedroom, or the back room of a legit business. But they would need to bring in equipment. That would include a pill press, quarter- or half-ton or bigger, depending on your output requirements. A quarter-ton unit can produce three or four thousand pills an hour. And you need people to process and package the stuff. You have to be careful while handling it. I’ve had local cops go in on drug busts and touch the fentanyl without using gloves. Next thing you know they’re on the floor turning blue. It’s that dangerous.”

“Well, there are a lot of empty buildings around here. In fact, I was thinking about the empty house where your two guys were found. With a whole house, you could probably have a bunch of pill presses going. And that would explain why the power was turned on even though no one was living there.”

Kemper’s eyes widened. “You think?”

“Like I told you before, they probably had a drone flying over the street that night.”

“Yeah, but you never told me why.”

“I think maybe they were moving out equipment and then moving in the bodies. And they wanted to make sure no one was watching or coming that way. Best way to check for that was by aerial surveillance. And that’s what drones can do really well.”

“Then we need to go over the space again, to see if they left behind any trace of a pill press operation.”

“I’d check the house next door too, where I shot Brian Collins. That place is empty as well. And has the electricity turned on too.”

“And the old man who lived across the street?”

“Dan Bond might have heard something and they needed to get rid of him. They probably picked that street because it was nearly empty. In fact, only three people lived there, including him. And Fred Ross is the father of the guy with all the drugs.”

“So what’s your suggestion? Do we go in and bust Ted Ross?”

“We bust him, chances are good everybody else gets away. And you can’t get a search warrant based on what I told you, because I had no probable cause to do what I did today in his office.”

“But when he checks his stash, won’t he know a bottle is missing?”

“He might think they just shortchanged him. But we’ll need to watch him. If it looks like he’s on to it, we’ll need to pick him up.”

“Okay, I’ll get people on that. What are you going to do?”

“We know the endgame here now — drugs. Now I just have to find the rest of the pieces.”

“Do you think all the other murders are tied to this?”

“Yes, I do. But there might be something else going on here.”

“Like what?”

“As soon as I know, I’ll tell you.”