“That doesn’t make any sense.” Luke approached the area where the dumpster had been and stared long and hard, eyes roaming relentlessly over the area until the rest of the men joined him.
“Have I ever told you guys that I’m the real brains of this operation?” Wylie teased.
“More times than we care to give a shit about,” one of the brothers answered.
“Prepare to be amazed.” Wylie moved to a long metal rain gutter that had a curved vent at the bottom and kicked it. Hard. It was attached to the brick building the dumpster had been resting against and had a narrowed opening at the ground level.
“Hear that?” he asked.
“Yeah. Metal tends to make a loud sound and then echo if you kick it that hard.”
Wylie shook his head at Luke in disbelief and kicked it again, harder. A satisfied smile graced his face when he moved to the front of the vent. Gripping it with both hands, he continued to kick one side and then the other. After several kicks, he leaned down and pulled at the vent from left to right, loosening it.
With a solid grunt, he finally pulled the lower portion of the vent from the rest of the assembly and gave it a shake.
“I’ll be damned,” Dace said, moving closer to the rattling sound. “Tip that son of a bitch over.”
Wylie obliged and did just that and out slid a muddy white cell phone.
Dace slid on the black leather gloves he’d previously tucked in the back of his waistband and grabbed the phone, turning it every which way as if there were a clue written all over it.
“Okay,” C.T. said. “Point taken. My team missed something. In all fairness, though… How the hell did that get in that little opening and lodged that far up?”
“My guess,” Wylie replied, looking from the dumpster to the vent, “it ricocheted off the wheel of that dumpster or something with just enough force and momentum to get lodged in there. I mean…the screen is shattered, so it hit something with a lot of force.”
“Almost like shoving a round peg in a square hole.” C.T. joined the circle forming around the device.
“Yeah. Don’t beat yourself up too bad, buddy. We had a heads-up after watching that footage back,” Wylie said, analyzing the beaten-up device in Dace’s gloved hands. “Your team had nothing but instinct, and instinct doesn’t necessarily trigger dismantling random rain gutters.”
“Yeah, this thing is caked in sludge, and the screen is toast. We never would have found it without those cameras on the street.” Dace stared long and hard at the beat-up phone as if it held all the answers. Hoped it held at least a few.
“Do we arm wrestle now?” C.T. chimed in. “That’s technically my evidence.”
“But do you have anyone as good and as fast as Liam with this shit?” Dace cocked his head in question. He wasn’t eager to hand over the only piece of Ivy he had, the only clue as to why she showed up after all these years and who hurt her.
“Do we have forensics? Stupid question,” C.T. teased, knowing full well how this was going to go, despite the advancements his department had made in technology forensics.
“Look.” Dace began to barter. “We both know Liam can crack this shit faster than any tech geek on the force who will have to fill out a dozen work orders just to spring the damn thing from the evidence locker. Let’s give it to him, and we’ll share the findings.”
“You know I can’t use anything you find on that thing – not legally.”
“You can if we put the thing back, and you decide to sweep the alley again, looking for evidence that may have been missed.”
C.T. nodded. “You know I have to subpoena all the camera footage, right? I can act surprised when my team sees there was a phone tossed, but I can’t stop the inevitable sweep that will follow once they see what we did on those cameras.”
“Just give us a heads-up, we can be in and out of this alley within minutes from your call,” Wylie confirmed. “We’ll have Liam shut down the cameras real quick and then plant it, just like he is right now. None of us were ever here.”
“Jesus.” C.T. ran his hands through his disheveled hair and looked at the camera at the head of the alley, pointed right at him. There was something eerie about knowing Liam was watching them at that very moment while erasing the footage taken only seconds before so they were all protected. “Why do I always feel like I’m one crime scene away from losing my job when you guys are involved?”
“One, we’ve helped you solve countless cases using our resources. And two, we’d never let that happen. Worst case, you always have a job with us.” Dace wasn’t parting with that phone and would make a deal with the devil himself to keep it if he had to. C.T. was far from Satan, but he wasn’t an easy sell either.
“And how many times have I stepped in and covered your asses, cleaning up the messes you leave around town?” C.T. argued back. “I seem to remember a scenario – not all that long ago – where the waterfront was shot up by fucking drones while chasing one of you assholes. And let’s not forget that time one of you launched a car from one side of the bridge to the other…while it was lifted for a cargo ship passing underneath. That was some shady made-for-TV shit. You’re welcome.”
C.T. was referring to Liam’s encounter when his now wife’s past came back to haunt both of them and played out all over Portland. They needed a cover, and C.T. provided it – murder and mayhem ensued but never made it to the public’s ears. He protected them, as they did him.
“Touché.” Wylie laughed. “He’s not wrong.”
“What I’m hearing here is that we go back a long way and have each other’s backs. You can trust that we will not make the chain of custody an issue with a busted cell phone.”
“I know you won’t, and fact is, you will probably get answers faster with no red tape and protocol on your end. Just don’t tell me which laws you have to break to get whatever’s on that thing.”
“I don’t know why you make this shit hard every time, Charlie Tango.” Wylie rolled his eyes.
“Because I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t put up a fight. My head says to quit giving in on this kind of shit, but my gut says we won’t get a break, much less justice otherwise. Fucking take it.” C.T. turned his back to the guys. “If I didn’t see it, it didn’t happen, and I’m not lying if I ever end up under oath because of you assholes.”
The men laughed and fully understood their friend’s position. They also understood that there wouldn’t be answers, any real answers, if that phone left their possession. They didn’t know who they were dealing with, which made it all the more dangerous. It was highly likely they were dealing with the worst of the worst, or so it was beginning to appear as such, and those types go deep.
Deep pockets, deep connections, deep cover, deep within every government and law enforcement agency a person could name. Everyone had a price, and nothing was off-limits. It was beginning to look like this wasn’t some off-the-wall, random hit. There were too many unanswered questions, too many possible coincidences that may or may not involve cartel.
The harsh reality they were facing was that they didn’t know a damn thing yet, and that meant trust no one. C.T. understood that better than anyone, especially since the phone wasn’t recovered during the initial sweep of the crime scene. Was that just a sloppy oversight? Or was it a bad seed in his department who was working a side hustle on riffraff payroll? There was no way to really tell this early. One thing he could be sure of was that the O’Reillys couldn’t be bought. He could trust them.