Page 385 of Sticks and Stones
“Only, the bikers all swore they did the drop with them. They showed them pictures of the missing men, and they said they went to the buyers unscathed—just used. Unfortunately for us, their stories all matched. No one deviated from the story, and they were scared stupid. If something else happened, someone would have caved.”
Honestly, hearing the details was gross.
It turned both of their stomachs that someone was doing this kind of act against another human.
To stop anyone else from going through this, they had to get to the bottom of it.
Ethan went there.
“So for the buyers to have the same dump location, it’s either one person buying men, or they contacted the person they paid, and he did the dumping after the victims died.”
Gabe agreed.
“That’s what I think. It feels like a clean-up on aisle perversion if you ask me. You know like a money back guarantee and all. With drug mules, we all know they die from the same thing more times than not. I’d bet that they died likely from a balloon popping inside them.”
They didn’t argue that.
Plus, the tox report that Reed Peterson had said they had the drugs in their system. He just couldn’t identify the drug.
“And we’re to believe them?” Ethan asked. “I only question it because if I use that in my profile, and Gene runs with it, that is going to make us go one way versus the other.”
Gabe understood.
Been there.
Done that.
“I tend to believe the bikers in this case. Let’s just say that they were run through the wringer pretty damn hard,” Gabe said. “The CIA hasHORRIBLEpeople skills, but they are effective when it comes to extracting information.”
Gene hoped so.
He wanted them all to suffer for what was done to Corbin.
“If they died during interrogation, give me some names of those agents. I’ll send them a gift basket to thank them. They deserve a medal after what those five assholes did to the detective.”
Gabe didn’t disagree.
“How’s the detective?” he asked. “I’m going to assume you’re both making sure he’s okay. I know you like working with him.”
That they did.
But that Gabe knew was more annoying than anything. That meant someone was talking shit about them as they fed information to him.
Gene was honest.
“He’s in pretty bad shape, but he’ll get better with time. I find it particularly annoying that the commissioner didn’t bother to ask about his own detective. Instead, he was too busy busting my balls,” he stated. “Oh, yeah, and the homicide captain too—who played pass the buck.”
Gabe laughed.
“In his defense, it’s not difficult to bust your balls. You make it easy. As for the rest…I can’t answer that. If something happens to one of my agents, I want to make sure they’re okay. That’s vital when you run a division.”
Yeah, they were aware.
They honestly wished Gabe would follow-up a lot less than he did—especially since he was onto them.
“Thanks for helping us out,” Gene admitted. “I appreciate you letting us pull this case away from the local police.”
Yeah, well, after the talk with the commissioner, now he needed to know.
