“Wouldn’t he? Confusion? Joy? Bewilderment? Something?”
“Could he have been medicated for the hearing? Maybe the stress was too much and they had him on something.” Kins set down his sandwich.
“Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe he knew it was going to happen.”
CHAPTER 30
Nicholas Evans was a high school graduate, bass player in the heavy metal band CHAOS, and heroin dealer.
“Quite the resume,” Del said to Faz.
After reviewing the text messages on Jack Welch’s phone, they had the evidence they needed to establish that Evans sold Allie and Welch the heroin that killed her. Welch had texted Evans the afternoon of that final day.
Looking to score some shit. Have the money.
It took Evans a half an hour to respond. Later today, bro.
When Welch didn’t hear from Evans, he contacted him again late in the afternoon. Dude, my friend and I are ready whenever you are.
Evans responded. Chill, bro. I’m working on it.
Finally, at five in the afternoon, Evans contacted Welch. BK on Aurora. 20 minutes.
Welch then texted Allie the messages Del had seen on her phone, but which now had a much better context. Score! Need to be there in 20. I’ll pick you up.
Allie, however, continued to express reluctance. Not sure home by then. Just go w/o me.
Del sat back from his computer. Tears filled his eyes. Allie had been so close to just going home, so close to staying alive, but Welch didn’t have the money for the buy, and like most addicts, he wasn’t about to let it go.
I’ll pick you up. Can’t miss out. He has other buyers. Srsly. This stuff is sweet.
Allie’s response, so simple and so sad, might have expressed more about the hold heroin had on her being, the life-and-death daily struggle she fought, than anything else she could have said.
K.
Faz contacted Narcotics and asked whether they had any information on Evans. Surprisingly, they did not, despite several detectives working undercover in Seattle. They were certainly aware of several suspected dealers, but Evans’s name was not among them. Given that Evans was not peddling black tar but rather a high-grade heroin, or one laced with something deadly, they speculated that he could be a lone wolf, keeping a low profile to remain off all the radars. Del asked that he and Faz be kept advised.
Del and Faz had located Evans in an apartment in Green Lake and brought him, without incident, to the King County Jail. Evans wasn’t a high school senior, like Welch. He was twenty-two, and at the moment he was acting like a tough guy, professing an unwillingness to talk to them, except to say he wanted a lawyer. So be it. Late on a Friday afternoon, Evans wasn’t getting out of jail until, at the very earliest, a probable cause hearing the following Monday. Celia McDaniel would handle that hearing and told Del that, realistically, Evans’s bail would be set at $50,000. She could try for more, argue the gravity of the situation, the deadly nature of the drug Evans was peddling, but they could only link him to Allie’s death at this time, and they were still awaiting the toxicology analysis on the heroin Del had found in his niece’s bedroom.
“The smart move,” she’d said over the phone, “is to keep the amount of bail within a ballpark that a judge will feel comfortable imposing.”
That meant that, with a $5,000 payment to a bail bondsman, Evans would walk from jail. But Del didn’t think so.
“Play it as you ordinarily would,” Del said. “I suspect from my view of the shit-hole apartment Evans lived in that he’s a lot like Welch, and has worn out his welcome at home. I don’t think Mommy and Daddy will be eager to dig up the cash necessary to bail him out.”
And that would give Del the weekend to put together the evidence needed for the charging documents. It was definitely a step in the right direction, a step toward determining who was supplying the drug that had killed Allie and maybe several others, but the closer Del got, the further away he felt from any form of satisfaction or closure. He kept thinking of what Celia had told him, about the three or four dealers who’d be waiting in the wings to fill any gap in the supply chain, about how her conviction of her son’s dealers had brought her little satisfaction.
“Revenge,” she’d told him, “is a poor substitute for a son.”
Del kept telling himself that he had a job to do, that he was a cop, that others might also be out there dying, and that he had been tasked with putting a stop to it. But he also couldn’t ignore the truth in Celia’s words. He wondered, when it was all finished, when he had found those who had supplied Allie, when they had been prosecuted and put in jail, whether he would feel the same as Celia, and, more important, whether his sister would too. He wondered if his burning desire to bring those responsible to justice wasn’t actually about his sister at all, but about his own burning desire for revenge. And he wondered whether, in the end, revenge would be just as hollow a substitute for a niece . . . and certainly for a daughter.
CHAPTER 31
Friday afternoon, when Tracy walked into the conference room, Cerrabone and Dunleavy sat waiting. Her captain, Johnny Nolasco, and Chief of Police Sandy Clarridge would also join the meeting. “How’s Kins?” Cerrabone asked as she entered and sat.
“He’s doing well,” Tracy said. “I just saw him. It’s pretty amazing what they can do now. He calls in several times a day just to drive us all crazy.”
“How’s the pain?”
“Mine or his?” They laughed. “It was either surgery or replace his kidneys from all the ibuprofen he was taking,” Tracy said.
Clarridge entered the room followed by Nolasco, who shut the door.
Once they were all seated, Dunleavy led the meeting. “We received a call today from the Navy’s senior trial counsel. Trejo is going to be released in a couple of hours.”
“Is the case coming back?” Clarridge asked.
Dunleavy shrugged. “That decision has not been formally made yet, but I suspect that, absent the videotape, the Navy’s case got a lot more difficult, especially if it proceeds to a court-martial and a reasonable-doubt standard. Trejo and his counsel will scream about the missing tape and his inability to confront witnesses. I’m not sure the prosecution can overcome it. I’m not sure we could either.”
“And I’m dead certain the community will not be satisfied with that answer,” Clarridge said, growing red in the face.
“At the moment the community is upset with the Navy,” Dunleavy said. “I’m not sure we want to step into that mess and give them the opportunity to direct their ire at us, especially if we can’t convict. I’m told the Navy is going to go after the defense attorney on an ethical investigation and, depending on the outcome, may court-martial her for dereliction of duty, among other things.”
“So they got their scapegoat,” Nolasco said.