Before I Wake

  Nathan looked at Charles. “What else here is worth noting?”

  “Over here, on the side table. You’ll want to see this too.”

  38

  Rae perched on the tailgate of Sillman’s truck, holding a cup of coffee to keep her hands warm. Bruce walked over with Nathan to join her.

  “Nathan?” She looked at him, hopeful.

  “You’re already in far enough on this case I’m going to bend every rule of the game I know and talk to you two. Will, Sillman, come join us.”

  Will walked over, still wiping disinfectant rags across his jacket sleeves.

  “You think this is the lab he’s been using?”

  Will nodded. “We’re certain of it. Peggy’s BlackBerry was discovered inside. This is our guy.”

  “Her BlackBerry—that makes sense. He wanted to know what she had found out about him.”

  “I turned it on. It’s password protected for the notepad section. You can see her address and phone numbers, but I doubt he got to the rest of it.”

  “I think the password is vanilla-rich; it’s worth a try at least.”

  “Thanks, that will help.”

  Rae looked at Nathan. “What else?”

  “We’ve got composition notebooks that look like formula books. Eight of them, and some date quite a few years back. Nothing in them looks particularly recent, but it’s something Franklin can explore.”

  “He took the current one with him.”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Did he leave any leads for who this guy is or how the drug is being given without our knowing it’s happening?”

  “All we saw in the cabin were powders and liquids, nothing that looked wrapped or packaged or prepared like pills. For all I can tell he may be changing the delivery method every time—one of you got it in a drink, one in something you ate, another through something you touched—it’s impossible to know if it requires a particular form to be effective or if it’s just the amount of it you get that matters.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that. You’re right. It could be different in every case, based on what was available to put it in,” Rae replied, surprised she hadn’t realized that before.

  “There are also both paint-sized cans and boxes from the tile plant. What’s inside them doesn’t match the label on the outside,” Will told them.

  Bruce straightened from leaning against the truck. “The tile plant—that’s a big deal.”

  “Maybe it’s an innocent connection and someone is reusing their cast-off materials,” Nathan said. “Or maybe the tile plant is being used as a cover for incoming raw source materials and later shipment of the drug powder out. If that’s the case, then either the cook or someone he is working with works at the tile plant.”

  “You’re heading there now?”

  “As soon as the warrants come through,” Nathan confirmed. “I don’t know what we’re looking for yet, but we’ll start by tracing the lot numbers on these cans and figure out if they are something that was already tossed in the Dumpster, or if the lot of materials had just arrived at the plant and these cans were recently smuggled out with their contraband contents.”

  “That’s got to be it, Nathan. We were trying to figure out where he was shopping for his raw materials. He was having them shipped in to him.”

  “Maybe.”

  “The boy. Do you know who it is who died?”

  Sillman looked at Nathan.

  Nathan shrugged. “Go ahead and tell them, Gray. I doubt the name means any more to them than it did to us, but I’ve been wrong before.”

  “His name is Tim Pliner, a high school kid from the next town over. He cuts school regularly, and his mom didn’t pursue it after she got the call from the school yesterday. When he didn’t come home last night—she sounded like she really thought he had run away and that would have been a good thing.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Does his identity help us out?” Bruce asked.

  “Not much, I’m afraid,” Sillman guessed. “We’ll push his friends hard to get what names we can, but he was probably trying to keep this job his secret. Talk to friends about this place; they know they can hit him up for cash or drugs. But maybe a friend saw Tim with someone and we can get a description to work with.”

  “Could we go back and see the cabin?” Rae asked.

  Nathan shook his head. “It’s as hazardous as anything I’ve ever seen before. It will be a while before we can start even the normal process of dusting for prints and looking at papers. My suggestion is you go back to town.”

  Rae smiled.

  Nathan smiled back. “My second suggestion is you find someone willing to keep you supplied in that coffee and you stick around out here to see what might change as the day wears on. I don’t mind you providing good ideas.”

  “You’ll continue to share enough info we might be able to be helpful?”

  “Almost victim four means I think you have a right to know some of this as we learn it. That’s as far as I’m going until I know more about what happened back there or where the tile-plant connection might lead us.”

  “Deal.” She even held out her hand to make it official.

  * * *

  Nathan walked over to join Rae. “I’m heading into town.”

  “Your warrants have come through?” From her perch on Sillman’s truck tailgate, she leaned back and caught a bag of supplies. She offered him a dry pair of gloves.

  He gratefully swapped them out. “Will is walking around the papers now. He’ll have what we need by the time I get there. I want to hear what you and Sillman have been thinking up before I leave. You’ve been thick as thieves over here.”

  “We’re just comparing notes.”

  “Hold still.” He lifted her foot and set her boot against his coat. He retied her dragging laces. “So start at the top and give me the highlights. I like highlights.”

  “Do the other one too, please.”

  He obliged.

  “A reasonable guess: one or two boxes or cans, specially marked, hidden in a warehouse of stuff coming and going isn’t going to surprise me. Those tile-plant trucks go all over the state—it’s a perfect distribution point for some drug ring to have developed for just their traditional drug shipments, not just this.”

  “Agreed.”

  “That means someone involved in this works at the plant, at least enough to smuggle out those cans for cash. I lean toward them not knowing what they are actually moving, or thinking it’s something like meth production that they may have been involved with before.”

  “So I’m not searching for a chemist working at the tile plant, but someone who probably unloads the trucks and moves around pallets of materials. What else?”

  “The kid who died—he’s from another town. That suggests they intentionally didn’t want someone local helping them. And they wouldn’t use someone totally green at this level of a place. You’ll probably find a history of the kid working at a meth lab or some other drug connection which is how he got selected to be here.”

  “You’re saying they rather than he.”

  “There might be one guy in charge, but there are partners in this, Nathan. Sillman is the one that pointed that out. Every time we get a lead to tug on, it points to more people. A single cook working on his own doesn’t bring in someone this young to be his first helper. The tile-plant connection—our cook is not working out here, keeping a full-time job at the plant and testing the drug. Just the fact we haven’t been able to identify a common person or way the drugs got to the victims—it was probably more than one person involved with Nella, Peggy, Karen, and I rather than one person getting to all of us. We didn’t spot a common pattern because the group behind this is the pattern, not an individual.”

  “You’re convincing me. It’s reasonable.”

  Rae rubbed her arms. “You’ve got to look at the pharmacists again, Walter Jr., his son Scott, and Walter Sr. Those notebooks were the precise notes of someone reformulating and twe
aking his product.”

  “I already am,” Nathan assured quietly. “But I know at least Walter Jr.’s handwriting by sight, and I didn’t recognize what was in those composition books. What else?”

  “If there is someone at the tile plant, he would have been working there at least a couple years to know the system well enough to safely smuggle those shipments through. I doubt it is something which started in the last few months. It’s probably been going on for years.”

  Nathan felt his phone vibrate in his inside pocket where he’d tucked it to keep warm. He pulled it out, looked at the incoming number, and took the call. “Yes, Will. You’ve got the warrants?”

  “In my hand. But there’s other trouble here. Word just came from Zachary. Corporate rejected the contract deal. The tile plant is being shut down effective Friday night, midnight.”

  Nathan felt like someone had just kicked his heart out of him. “Say that again.”

  “Tomorrow, Nathan. It never reopens. Zachary gave us as much of a heads-up as he could, but he’s got to call Adam now. Word is going to move fast.”

  “Head to the plant; you’re in charge until I get there. Arrest people if you have to, disperse the union line, anything that seems warranted to keep the situation under control. I’m on my way with lots of backup.”

  Nathan hung up on Will. “Gray!” He waved over Sillman.

  Rae slid off the truck tailgate and put her hand on his arm.

  Nathan looked at her, not knowing what to say but to just say it. “The draft contract was rejected; the tile plant is closing.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Get Bruce. I need a favor.”

  Rae nodded and headed toward the officers by the warming tent to find him.

  Nathan pulled a number out of his pocket and called the Brentwood chief of police.

  39

  News of the plant closing surged through the union lines. People were streaming into the area from around the town, not all of them directly tied to union members, but coming to show their support. The crowd was well past the hundred mark in size and looked on its way to several hundred.

  Nathan pushed through the crowd that surrounded his car and got through to the van where his chief deputy had set up station.

  Will muted his handset and leaned over to be heard. “We’ll never get that bus safely out of there tonight. The back gate looks like another smaller version of this crowd.”

  “Tell the guys inside the plant to just sit tight until further notice. I don’t want any movement through that gate right now.”

  Will relayed the order to the security chief inside.

  “He says they’ve voted to extend their workday another hour of overtime rather than just sit idle and wait, but he wants to talk with you on an exit plan.”

  Nathan nodded. He scanned the street. “We disperse that line and we end up with clusters of men around this town to worry about. For now it’s better to keep the union guys gathering in an area where we know where they are. We’ll take the strikebreakers out of here in squad cars later if we have to. Let’s just keep the sides apart and let people vent.”

  “I like that idea better than trying to wade into that crowd to ask them politely to leave the area. We’ve had guys trying to climb the fence and get into the plant grounds, but otherwise the lines are staying apart.”

  “Where’s Adam?”

  “I last saw him down by the main gate. You’ll hear him on a bullhorn occasionally. He’s been repeating the news as Zachary gave it to him, trying to dispel rumors that wash through this crowd with every new group of people who arrive.

  “Adam said it’s not all bad news. Zachary got a severance plan approved that covers all employees. That’s the two-sentence summary Adam had time to convey before they started shoving his car around. I’m hoping there are enough details it can temper a bit of this initial shock. But guys are taking this hard, Nathan. I saw some of the twenty-plus-year guys start to cry when word first passed along the line. This gets worse tonight before it ever gets better.”

  Nathan agreed with that prediction. “Brentwood is sending over a dozen officers. I’m reassigning all but six of Chet’s guys to you here; I’ll have the others pair up with some of the Brentwood guys and handle patrols in town for the night. State will take the highways for us as well as all nonemergency calls we’d normally assist on.”

  “Good. Every extra hand is going to help.”

  “Let’s start making it uncomfortable for more people to reach here. We’ll start with closing the side streets. We can at least discourage the spectator crowd. It’s cold and high stress—so let’s also get some hospital people down here just in case they are needed.”

  Sillman joined them in time to overhear the last part. “Let’s use the cold to our advantage and get the community center open. People are looking for information; let’s try and oblige. We’ll advertise a community meeting to begin at the top of the hour. The mayor can work some magic on holding people over there rather than here on the street. Adam can talk after the mayor does, and we can make some rapid announcements on assistance plans. Anything to keep people together and talking, rather than acting rashly.”

  “Great idea. Find the mayor and make that happen.”

  Sillman nodded and disappeared back into the crowd.

  “What about the warrants for the tile plant?” Will tugged them from his inside jacket pocket.

  Nathan hesitated but then looked at the plant. “We’ve got no choice but to serve them today. Who knows what those strikebreakers have been told their job assignments are for this last twenty-four hours. It’s a hard closedown of the plant. They may be planning to literally empty the warehouse into trucks or clear all the office paperwork to be shipped out. The last thing we need is our evidence disappearing on us or being so corrupted by handling, the defense team walks right over us and gets it tossed out of court.”

  “Do you want to hand it off to Brentwood officers?”

  “No. As soon as the Brentwood guys get here, you and I are handling the warrants. Chet and Sillman are tough enough on crowd control to manage this while we’re inside. Find five guys you think are good at working under this kind of pressure and get them ready to go in.

  “I’m going to find Adam and Larry and privately alert them to what we found today. I think we’ll be okay for controlling this if we can split part of the group away to the community center, and the rest that stay here see cops heading into the plant in numbers. I won’t discourage the rumor that we’re serving a warrant. If they speculate we’re seizing financial documents from the plant, we won’t correct it until we’re done with the search.”

  Will nodded. “I’m fine with that.”

  * * *

  Nathan found himself admitted to the union crowd but not welcomed. It was the first time he’d seen anger in the faces of townsfolk directed at him. He bore the stares and the abrupt words cut off when he arrived and made his way through toward Adam and Larry.

  The union chief came to meet him with an outstretched hand. “Nathan.”

  “How are you holding up, Adam?”

  “I’m sick to my gut. I knew it was coming, but I didn’t want to believe it would ever happen.”

  Nathan put his arm around the man and pointed to the porch of a nearby house. He knew the home belonged to one of the union’s rank and file. “Come on. Let’s talk.”

  Adam walked with him, and the crowd parted to let them step away.

  “There’s been threats to Zachary’s home, the plant itself, talk of lawsuits against the corporation,” Adam said heavily, taking a seat on the porch chair.

  “I already anticipated that. There are officers doing what they can to protect both property and family members. Will you speak at a community meeting if we get it arranged for the top of the hour?”

  “Yes. That’s a good idea.”

  “I’m sorry for all of this.”

  “So am I.” Adam struggled to find words and then just shook his head.
“It’s a blow.”

  “We’ll get through this one day at a time. It won’t be the first time the town has rallied from trouble; it won’t be the last.”

  “Larry and I, we’ll do what we can to help.”

  “The guys have never needed your leadership more; I’m glad you’re there for them, Adam. It’s going to make a difference.”

  “I hope so. You’ve got other news. I knew when I first saw Will that he was only half hearing me.”

  “We found a drug lab and a dead teenager.”

  Adam closed his eyes and rubbed them. “It does put this in perspective. It’s just a job, despite all the emotion we invest in it.”

  “It’s a livelihood. A different weight than life or death, but still as important.”

  “This lab explains the deaths in town? The ladies at the hotels?”

  “I’m hoping it does once we sort it out.”

  “Why did you tell me?”

  “I’m serving warrants on the tile plant in a few minutes. We’re looking for some contraband that may have shipped through using the tile company trucks and been smuggled out of the warehouse once it arrived.”

  Adam looked at him, devastated. “One of my guys?”

  “I don’t know. I won’t catch you with a second surprise today, Adam. I’m looking first to see where the lot numbers we found fit into the timeline at the plant. Then I’ll look for who might have had a hand in those cans leaving the plant.”

  “The warehouse guys—they turn over more often than any other group at the plant. Most are newcomers, with less than two years at the plant. They move on whenever they spot a less physically demanding job elsewhere.”

  “Okay. That kind of information will help.” Nathan looked at the crowd on the street. “Do you want me to do anything particular in regards to how we handle this tonight?”

  “We need to take this in the opposite direction from what it is heading now. Pizza, hot dogs, soft drinks—let’s push so much food and conversation at folks they end up wanting to go home, because they’ve been taken care of today with someone just willing to offer an arm around their shoulders and a recognition they just got badly hurt. The town is in this together—that’s got to be the message right now.”