Page 144 of Don't Say a Word

“Yeah,” Cal said. “This guy—he’s been on our radar on and off for a while.”

Cal stared at the photo of Megan Osterman, then glanced over at me. “What do you know of Megan?”

“Is that your case?”

“It’s in my office as part of a task force with Phoenix. But I refreshed myself this afternoon. She dated Scott Jimenez before he went to prison. We looked at her, interviewed her, scared the bejesus out of her, but she hadn’t been involved with Bradford, and we had no evidence she was dealing with Scott.”

“We had one of our female detectives try to scare her straight,” Hitch said. “I thought it worked, but I guess it didn’t.”

“She died of a drug overdose on July 6,” I said. “Across the street from the Cactus Stop.”

Cal squinted at my board, then at me. “You think Scott is dead?”

“Jeez, what gave that away? My starred noteJimenez killed after release?”

“Funny,” he said.

“My sister can’t find him, and if Tess can’t find him, he’s either completely off the grid or in WITSEC or he’s dead. I think dead.”

“We’ll look into that,” Hitch said.

“We couldn’t get anything on Desiree,” Cal said. “But we interviewed her since she was Scott’s sister.”

“EBT,” Hitchner said. “What do you think is going on there?”

Cal frowned, as if he were thinking.

I said, “Well, I don’t have all the pieces, but Desi and her assistant manager, Tony, are running a drug operation out of the Cactus Stop. Ithinkit works like this: Someone comes in, either using a debit card or an EBT card, and ostensibly buys something. But they don’t take anything from the store. Instead, they’re given a receipt and they leave. So I’m wondering if they take the receipt to another place to pick up drugs.”

“Youarebrilliant,” Cal said. “That’s exactly what’s happening. Fuck!”

He was excited. And I was pleased that he thought I was brilliant yet again.

“Brilliant,” I said to Jack and pointed to my chest. “Me.”

“I’ll have it engraved on your headstone,” he said. I stuck my tongue out at him.

“Damn! Cash?”

“I didn’t see cash,” I said. “One witness I have said he only saw debit and EBT cards.”

“How does this work?” Jack asked. “I never worked white-collar.”

“Not my expertise,” Cal said, “but I know a lot about laundering drug money. It’s why I was so impressed with Cecilia Bradford andherlaundering operation. If she’d used her brains for good instead of evil, she’d have gone far and not be in prison. These people are dealers.” He tapped the pictures Elijah had taken. “Just like Sun Valley, but they’re not students. Some look like homeless, some gangbangers, others could be college kids for all I know. They’re buying their product at a discount, then setting their own prices. It’s fucking brilliant. No drugs on the property, much harder to catch.”

“Buthow?” I asked. “They get a receipt and do what with it? Go to the drug emporium down the street?” Then I thought of what Edith Mackey had said, about people walking up and down her quiet street. Maybe I wasn’t that far off.

“Pretty much,” Cal said. “Go in, run your card for some predetermined amount, get a receipt, take that receipt to pick up your supply, sell it. Where do they go? There has to be a place close by where they bring proof of purchase.”

“Same street?” Margo asked. “At least in the neighborhood?”

“Most likely. From the pictures, these people came on foot.”

“That’s what I also observed.”

“So close by. Blocks. And that’s why this works. Someone raids the place, they’re not going to find anything.”

“When I spoke to a financial crimes detective, she said that EBT fraud wouldn’t work on a scale like this because the inventory wouldn’t match and the corporate office would eventually figure it out. On a small scale, staff could cover it up, but this is adozen people a day. For what? A hundred, two hundred bucks a pop?”