Headlights appear ahead. Keller takes a bottle of water from Nico’s car and splashes her face.
As the trucks approach, Keller stands in the street and waves her arms frantically at the lead truck heading toward them.
On the ground near the MG, lies Atticus. A red flare burns next to him. A nice touch that Atticus added to ensure the drivers didn’t miss him in his dark clothes. Smoke from the flare floats in the air, adding to the sense that a serious accident has occurred.
The lights are blinding now. But the truck stops. The two rigs behind it pull over as well.
The door to the first truck swings open. Keller runs over.
“We had an accident,” she says, gulping for air. “We weren’t going fast, but I think he may be having a seizure or something.” She turns back to Atticus, who remains on the asphalt.
The trucker, a heavyset guy with a scraggly beard, appears torn. He has his CB in hand. He mutters something into the radio, then lumbers out of the truck.
“I called 911,” Keller says. “Do you know CPR?”
The guy hesitates. A 911 call means cops will soon be on the scene.
Keller glances over the trucker’s shoulder and sees figures approaching the cabins to the other two rigs. The trucker follows her gaze and looks behind him. In the headlamps’ glare, the two drivers are pressed against the sides of the trucks, hands behind their backs. Nico gives her a thumbs-up.
The trucker turns back to Keller. “What in the hell?” That’s when his expression turns to dread at the sight of Keller’s badge.
CHAPTER 47
It takes less than fifteen minutes for the rigs to pull into the storage facility and the team to make arrests. They’ve separated Rusty Whitaker from the desk clerk. Rusty’s in the back of Nico’s car, wearing a dirty white T-shirt and a scowl. Nico is in the front office grilling the clerk, who’s likely spilling his guts.
Standing in the half-light near a cluster of storage units, Keller glances inside the car, sizing up Rusty. He doesn’t seem overly concerned. He knows counterfeit cigarettes aren’t the highest priority of the justice system. He probably assumes he’ll get a slap on the wrist.
He has an ugly disposition, Rusty Whitaker. Not his physical features. His aura. Under the unkempt facade there’s a once-not-so-bad-looking man. His son Vince is a looker. She wonders what became of the youngest child in the woebegone Whitaker family. Keller hopes the kid got out from under Rusty’s rule before his disposition turned ugly too.
Nico’s agents continue to process the evidence. The three trucks have been seized, but the storage units already contained another two loads of product that will need to be inventoried and transported to federal evidence storage.
Rusty sits bored in Nico’s backseat, not a care in the world.
Until …
Keller notices him sit up straight, his attention locked on Atticus, who’s examining a storage unit protected by a rolling metal door. It’s far from the cigarette units, but for some reason it’s caught Atticus’s attention.
Rusty seems even more agitated when Keller heads over to Atticus.
“What’s up?” Keller asks.
Atticus holds his iPhone’s flashlight over a printout. “The owner gave me a list of all the units and owners.” He swings the beam of his light to the unit in front of them. “But this one doesn’t appear on the log.”
Atticus moves the beam back to the printout. Keller’s eyes follow Atticus’s index finger down a column. It lists units 1400, 1401, 1402, and so on until Atticus stops at 1452. The next number is 1454. There is no unit 1453.
“It could be just a misprint, but it’s weird, like someone is trying to hide the unit.” He shines his light on the storage unit’s number: 1453.
It’s probably nothing, Keller thinks. But what the hell, they’re here.
She calls over to a member of Nico’s team. “Can you bring over the cutters?”
The woman nods, disappears a moment, and returns with bolt cutters. Keller moves aside so the woman can do her work. She snaps the padlock on the first try.
Keller looks back at the car. Rusty is all stares now.
Inside, the unit is dark. Musty. There’s an old mail sack with U.S. POSTAL SERVICE printed on it. Envelopes are scattered across the floor.
Keller picks up one of the pieces of opened mail. A Christmas card in a partially torn envelope. The postmark is from 1996.
“Hmm,” Atticus says. “Someone stole a bag of mail for the Christmas money and gift cards, I guess.”
Keller shrugs. A federal offense, but it pales in comparison to the counterfeit cigarette charges. And it’s decades old, so there’s likely a statute-of-limitations problem.