Page 96 of The Wrong Side of the Law

“Jesus. Seriously?” Gabriel’s eyebrows go up. “He’s arguing Silveira the day after tomorrow. You’d better hurry, then.”

“I’ll be back in a bit,” I say. “I’m going to walk, I think.”

“Have fun, then,” he says, grinning and blowing a kiss at me. “Love you, be safe, look both ways crossing the street. All that stuff.”

I catch the kiss and send him one right back, and then I’m on my way.

The walk doesn’t help to clear my head. I promised Frank I’d find a way to keep him out of prison, and every passing day just makes that outcome seem less and less likely. What do I do?

Every step I take brings me closer to the police station. The evidence locker is at the other end of the building from the holding cells where I visited Frank, but it’s all still the same industrial cinderblock construction, in the same shade of just-slightly-greener-than-off-white. The same acoustics, where everything echoes endlessly back and forth, up and down the hallway. The same smell of cheap disinfectant cleaners and floor wax on the same imitation-terrazzo, though mercifully without the underlying stale urine and fresh vomit.

I show my ID badge to the evidence clerk who barely glances away from her magazine to see if the picture matches my face.

“Whatcha want?” she asks, though her eyes still track side to side as she absorbs every line of an article calledFourteen Signs Your Man is Micro-Cheating On You, which I suppose is understandable. What a vitally important subject for an evidence clerk to be studying on the job.

“I need to take pictures of some stuff.”

“Forms?” Her eyes go wide and she taps the magazine at tip number six.

“I’m sorry, I just have the case numbers,” I tell her, pulling out my phone and opening up the notepad app. “I don’t have any forms?”

“Fine,” she says, glaring at my interruption and pulling her computer keyboard closer. “What’s the case number?”

“First one is 682017CF006815,” say, reading off the Westhaven case’s number.

“And what do you need to see?”

“The drugs. Um. A kilo of cocaine,” I tell her, “wrapped up in plastic.”

“Hoo-boy!” She whistles. “Line four. Can’t let you look at that in the hallway. Come around the side,” she says, pressing a button underneath the desk that sets off a buzzer at a heavy gray security door.

Inside the door is a folding metal chair and table to one side, and a counter on the other, with a window open to the clerk’s desk.

“Wait right here,” she says. “I’ll be back.”

Three or four minutes later she’s back with a large plastic-wrapped of cocaine in a clear evidence bag and a form for me to sign, and then she’s back to her magazine.

The lighting in the room is terrible, and to make the pictures come out clear I have to get as much shadow as possible and use the flash. I’m sure I look strange, huddled around this thing to block out the light, but when I glance around to see what angles of me the security guards will be laughing at later… there are no cameras.

Sheesh. With no cameras and the clerk busy reading her stupid magazine, I could take half of this cocaine and nobody would even realize it.

A few seconds later I return the cocaine to the counter, all my pictures taken.

“What else y’all need, honey?”

The same cycle repeats itself with the handgun from the Driggers case. I sign the chain-of-custody form and take my pictures. The gun is going to seal Marcus Driggers’ fate in court. He’s not just going to get the minimum sentence: he killed someone with this gun, and did it for the baggies of heroin that I’ll be photographing next.

I’m so glad that Frank’s not on charges for something like that. Fifteen years is bad, but Driggers is looking at thirty-five to life, probably. But even that fifteen years isn’t going to happen. Gabriel and I will find some way to protect you, Frank. I promised you that, and I’ll make sure it happens.

The gun goes back to the clerk, and she brings me the heroin next, a plastic tub full of tiny plastic zipper bags, each with a miniscule amount of heroin in it. There’s at least a hundred of them here.

Again, no cameras, and the clerk isn’t paying attention. She’s not even looking at the stuff as I hand it back to her. I could have done anything I wanted to it. Point Lookout Police Department needs to really have a close look at their security procedures around evidence.

No cameras. Nobody paying attention.

I promised Frank.

Silveira’s LSD is literally a black plastic trash bag full of individual paper hits of LSD, all stuffed into a large plastic bin.

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