Chapter 2
Olivia
I looked around Redding and drew in a deep breath. The DEA’s main office in Virginia sent me out here to use my skills in order to get a handle on the increased drug activity. I’d been an agent assigned to cartel related operations for almost a year now, and this wasn’t the first time I was sent to a random city to follow leads. Being a field agent came with its perks. I got to travel around the country a lot. See a lot of new places. Meet a lot of new people. But it also had its downsides.
Like coming across trigger-and-handcuff-happy agents.
I pulled into the parking lot of my temporary office and grabbed my box. I didn’t have much. During cases like these, I had one suitcase I lived from and a box of things to go on my temporary desk. For a few years, I had worked with the FBI. Traveling around and sniffing out the bad guys using my psychological profiling specialties. I made a switch to the DEA a few months back because I wanted something different. I wanted something more.
I wanted to help people like my father.
I walked into the local police station and was directed by the front desk officer to my office. My name was written onto a piece of paper and taped onto the front door. ‘Olivia Banks’. I pushed the door open with my hip and sat my cardboard box down onto my desk. I fired up the very old computer sitting on the rickety wooden piece of furniture and turned on the light, taking a look around the dusty office.
Home sweet home.
According to the briefing I had gotten before I packed up for this assignment, there had been an uptick of drugs funneling into Redding. Which didn’t shock me. I mean, it’s Redding. There really wasn’t much to do around the smaller town which usually lead to drug use. But, it was enough of an uptick to trigger the government’s watchful eye, and now circumstances had changed. My boss told me Redding’s sheriff would brief me on what had happened to spawn my venture into California, but I didn’t have anything else other than that to go on.
“Agent Banks?”
I turned around at the sound of the smooth tenor voice. “Yes?”
“Sheriff Barnes. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Just the man I was looking for. Hello,” I said.
I shook the man’s hand and put on my best smile as I instantly sized him up. Bags under his eyes. Bloodshot rims. Disheveled hair. He had buttoned up his shirt wrong and his boots weren’t shining. More scuffed than anything. Either the man was incredibly tired or getting incredibly tired of his job.
Either way, it didn’t bode well for me.
“I want to go ahead and get you briefed before I go out on my lunch break. It’s been a long past few days, and I’m glad you’re here,” Barnes said.
“Whatever I can do to help, I will,” I said.
“Good. So, here’s what’s been happening in our part of the world. We’ve caught wind that a cartel has been ticking up their business in the area. Specifically, making Redding a drug hub. We know of some smaller-time game we’ve arrested and put in jail. Dealers. Junkies who need a night to clean themselves up before they talk to us. We’ve had a run in with someone who we believed coordinated drop-offs from the airport.”
“Do you know which cartel?” I asked.
“The Roja Diablos. Or something like that,” he said.
That wasn’t good. If he was talking about the cartel I thought he was talking about, then they were ruthless. They had their operations stationed everywhere across the U.S. My office had been chasing them for years. Well before I had taken up my post there. But, the fact that the sheriff couldn’t even rattle off their name told me that he either didn’t care, or the information was so new to them he didn’t have a chance to memorize it yet.
The former wasn’t good, but the latter was understandable.
“What’s been keeping you up for the past few days?” I asked.
“That noticeable?” Barnes asked, chuckling.
“You look a little tired. I’m trying to figure out why.”
The sheriff sighed. “A few days ago, there was a shootout. A small club on the other side of town around two thirty in the morning. Multiple injuries. A couple of casualties. One of them was one of ours.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss. Do you believe the shootout was drug related?”
“I think it was. According to witnesses we spoke with at the scene—--and the man we have in custody—--it was a shootout between the cartel and a local motorcycle gang or whatever,” he said.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.
“A club,” I said.
“Yeah. One of those. We get them from time to time, but we have one that’s settled here for years. We usually don’t have any trouble with them. But, their noses aren’t very clean, if you catch my drift,” Barnes said.
“Do you have any proof that their noses aren’t clean?”
“You mean other than the fact that they probably own guns they shouldn’t and think the laws don’t apply to them?”
That’s a dangerous mindset, Sheriff.
“Anyway, at the scene while we were trying to clean things up, one of the guys in the club made a break for it. Tried to run from us after we had trapped his bike. We have him in custody now. He’s been in a holding cell the past few days. We’re trying to figure out if he was the one who gunned down our officer,” Barnes said.
“And if he isn’t?” I asked.
“Then, we try to figure out why the hell his men were shooting at people from the cartel. And possibly figure out if he knows whose bullet killed one of our men. He’ll get justice. I promised his wife and three kids that, Agent Banks.”
I nodded my head as I soaked up his words. My father had been in a motorcycle club back in Arizona where I grew up. He was in the Steel Horsemen, and I grew up around the lifestyle. I was familiar with it. The only issue was I also watched how they could be stereotyped. How those kinds of men could be made as scapegoats for issues a community couldn’t solve. My father was sent to prison when I was seventeen years old because of faulty drug charges against him. He had been innocent. The lawyer was able to prove his innocence. But the prosecutor stereotyped him and played on the fear of the jury and settled reasonable doubt into their minds because of the lifestyle he was involved in.
Sure, my father’s club had been into bad stuff in the past. But never had they touched drugs. Once I had come along, he and the rest of the club cleaned up their act. On his mark, since he was President. That prosecutor had it out for my father. That prosecutor had been looking for a major win in order to secure a decent promotion for himself. And because of all that, I knew what prejudice looked like. I knew what it meant for someone to believe another human was guilty before a trial. Or evidence.
And Sheriff Barnes was almost certain this person in holding was guilty of something.
“Well, I promise you our interests align, Sheriff Banks. I will most certainly get justice for your officer, whether someone from the motorcycle club shot him or someone from the cartel. What I will tell you is this: I left the FBI and joined the DEA because I wanted to put the right people in jail. Not the wrong ones. This means you might not agree with some of the tactics I use to fish out information from other people. And you might not agree with my actions if I feel those people are innocent when you don’t,” I said.
“All I want right now is for you to go interview the man we have in custody. I’ve heard that you’re the best at feeling people out. Getting a read on them during your first encounter,” Barnes said.
“Psychological profiling is my specialty, yes.”
“That’s why I want you interviewing him first. No one’s talked with him. Not even a lawyer.”
“He hasn’t called for one?” I asked.
“No. Son of a bitch has been silent for days. We’re hoping you can change that.”
I drew in a deep breath as that reality settled onto me. A man in a club that was sitting in a holding cell, silent and without a lawyer.
Didn’t seem like the actions of a guilty man to me.
“What’s the name of his club?” I asked.
“The Black Hornets,” Barnes said.
“Does he have a position in the club?”
“Come again?”
“Motorcycle club usually have a core group of members, and those core members hold rank. President. Vice President. Treasurer. Secretary.”
“Like a government or something?” he asked.
“More or less. Even clubs like this have organization in their ranks.”
“Well, we don’t even know the man’s full name. We held him for hours and kept him awake after the shootout, and the only thing he did was grunt and laugh at our questions whenever we asked him for answers. He had no ID on him, and his finger prints don’t show up in our system. We caught some bits and pieces of things when he made his one phone call, which was how we got his first name. He made it to a guy named Duke. From the sounds of it, this Duke character has bail money. Might be another member of the club.”
“More than likely, yes. Men who are involved in things like that usually don’t seek help outside their own.”
“You seem to know a lot about how they work,” he said.
“It’s all about psychology. Not about how they work,” I said.
“Ah. Well. So, I take it you’ll interview him for us?”
“Well, I’d be happy to interview him for you. When would you like me to?”
“How about this afternoon?”