Page 9 of First Surrender
The hair at his temples is balding and for being around my age, he looks much older. Despite trying to act indifferent to his circumstances, I can tell from his face that he’s tired. It’s exhausting to keep one eye open while you’re in jail, surrounded by people that you can’t trust. People that he’s probably wronged in the past.
“Tell me what you know or I walk out of here and you go to trial.” I fold my hands on the table as relaxed as I can. He’s not going to get the tension from me like he wants.
He huffs. “You’re lookin’ at me, but you should be lookin’ at bigger fish. I’m just a little fish.” He pinches his pointer finger and thumb together to accentuate his point.
“Obviously.” I know Declan isn’t my criminal mastermind just by looking at him.
“Ahh. Maybe you should ask mewhogave me the drugs, notwherethey came from.”
This joker wants to play word games and I am in no mood. “Who gave you the drugs?”
“Oh, no. I can’t tell you that. That would get me killed.”
When I interrogated Thomas Jameson about his extremist group and the 5k bombing a couple of months ago, he had said the same thing. He couldn’t tell me who funded his operation because it would get him killed.
“Killed by who?” I ask, impatiently.
He tsks at me. “Get me released, now, and then I’ll tell you.” He winks.
“Do you know Thomas Jameson?” I ask, hoping that even the simplest thread to these dangerous crimes will lead me somewhere.
Jameson is in this same jail, only he’s awaiting to be transferred to prison because he’s already been convicted for his crimes. His case was incredibly cut and dry, unlike Declan’s.
He shrugs his bony shoulders and I can feel his ego rolling off him in waves.
“This is a small area Declan. Criminals run in the same circles. Everyone who lives here knows about the 5k bombing. Do you know anything related to the bombing?”
“I don’t mess with explosives, Sheriff. I’m hurt that you think I would.” He feigns offense but smirks.
I hate lifetime criminals like Declan. They have no moral code or sense of decency. They’re willing to hurt anyone without remorse.
I place a piece of paper down as a last attempt to get anything useful from him. It’s a compilation of photographs of our missing person cases but only those reported before he was arrested.
“Did you supply any of these people with drugs?”
He shrugs. “I don’t think I should answer a question like that, Sheriff. It seems like… Hmm… What would my lawyer call it? Ah, entrapment.” He eases the paper away from his side of the table with a single pointer finger.
“Information is what will get you out of jail, Declan. You haven’t given me anything. You’re going to rot in here.”
“We’ll see.” The tilt of his lips is eerily confident.
It takes all my reserve to stand up and exit the room without tossing my chair across the suffocating space. This was pointless. Every lead is turning inside out before I have a chance to make a real connection to anything.
I thought I was getting somewhere but Declan Randolph is useless, and I have no other direction to go.
Someone in this county is orchestrating a human trafficking ring, funding extremists, and orchestrating a drug trade. I need to figure out if it’s the same person and who the hell it is.
I don’t care what happens to Declan Randolph but now I’ve stuck my foot into innocent people’s lives. Natalie’s words haunt me, and the fear in her eyes is stuck at the forefront of my mind. I might have just assisted in letting a criminal back onto the streets and there is a kid involved.
I slam the door to my suburban as I get in. I don’t deserve the Sheriff tag branded on the body or any of the stripes. I thought I was equipped to handle this job but I’m failing every day that I don’t put someone in handcuffs for their crimes against innocent people.
My phone rings and Vanessa Porter’s name is on the screen so I hit ignore. I might as well have ‘Do Not Answer’ as her contact name since I always screen her calls. I’m not in the mood to hear about the old corrupt Sheriff’s ideas for Rollins County or his flippant wife’s fundraising ideas. The politics of this job are not important to me but I have to deal with people like her every day.
The first time I ever spoke to her, she swore her husband’s death was suspicious, that he’d never kill himself. She also swore that she didn’t know he was involved in any illegal activity and failed to mention that they were one stack of paperwork away from a divorce.
Unlucky for her, since his death was ruled a suicide she didn’t get to collect his life insurance. She also lost both of her brothers that day, both of which were menaces to society. I sympathize with her losses but I do not feel sorry that they’re dead.
I should call her back only to appease her, but not today. Today I’m going to drive around until someone needs me, hoping that the answers I need will fall out of the sky like Declan’s drugs.