Stone Investigations (Stone Series Book 4) by Bob Blanton (open ebook txt) 📗

meant that Matthew drove toEmily’s house, they watched the briefing, then raced off to school before firstperiod.

“Okay, let’s summarize what we have,” Agent Peters said tothe team.

“One: We have a clear path linking Graham to the money fromthe distributors, with the keys for the mailboxes discovered in his house.

“Two: We have the distributor, Dante Cruz’s statement that hereceived a shoebox with drugs every four weeks, which coincides with Graham’strips to Catalina.

“Three: We have the planes that have been modified so theycan change their identification and transponder codes.

“Four: We have the corroboration of the pilots about how theflights went.

“Five: We have the data from the search of the plane onCatalina.

“Six: We have no direct link between Graham and the pills orthe cocaine.

“Jackson, do we have anything else?”

“We believe that the truck that Graham drove to Catalinabelongs to the guy who breaks the pallets apart and then ships the drugs out. We’re tracing the license plate, but it belongs to a truck up in Sonoma.”

“Who in Sonoma?”

“It’s one of those wineries.  The truck is there, and theycan prove it was there on Saturday, so we suspect that the plates were copied.”

“What about the driver?”

“All we saw was a Hispanic male with a hat and sunglasses. We didn’t try to follow him since we had the license number and we didn’t wantto tip Graham off.”

“Marcie, where are we with the federal prosecutor?”

“Graham is not saying anything, except ‘I’m not guilty.’  Hedisavows any knowledge of the smuggling.  He claims the pilots are lying abouthim being involved in torching the pallets, he was just being a nice guy andhelping them out.  He denies any connection to the drug distributors who weresending him money, saying he was confused about why he was getting books withmoney in them.”

“Great.”

“His attorney is screaming for bail.  The prosecutor isclaiming that Graham doesn’t have any assets that are not clouded by hisreceiving the proceeds from drug sales.  Graham’s attorney is suggesting that afriend might be willing to post bail for him.”

Agent Peters laughed at that.  “He might be surprised at howhard that will be.  Jones, anything else on the house search?”

“Not much.  We’ve found a book of rare stamps that we’veseized.  Also four rare books on his bookshelves.  Between them, they wereworth about eight million.  You saw the diamonds he had in his safe as well asthe million in cash.  So I don’t know where he thinks he’s going to be gettingmoney from.  Of course, we suspect he has offshore accounts, so he might beable to transfer money around, but that would require him to get someone to doit for him.  Does he have anyone he trusts that much?”

“The lawyer?”

“I don’t think the lawyer wants to do anything criminal.”

“That leaves his son.”

“True.  The son’s staying with friends.  He’s a piece ofwork.  Nothing outright criminal, but he has a history of troublemaking andexcessive partying.  Word is he doesn’t get along with his old man.”

“But he is family.”

“Yes.  We’re keeping close tabs on him.  We have a warrantfor a wiretap on his phone.  I don’t know what else we can do.”

◆ ◆ ◆

“He’s going to get away with it, isn’t he?” Emily moaned.

“No.  They’ve got him on receiving the money.  They’ll builda case and he’ll cop a plea.”

“But he murdered Elaine Frye, and who knows who else.”

“I don’t know what we can do about it.”

“We can find more evidence.”

“Hey, I’m searching the house and so are the feds.  Besides,what would he have that would connect him.  He’s been very careful.”

“Let’s get to school, but we have to try and figure somethingout.  Maybe he’ll tell his son something we can use.”

Chapter 17Got a Nail?

“Hey, Barb, you changed your hair back.”  Emily and Matthewwere meeting Agent Peters to go over the case, and because for once, they couldgo to a restaurant together.

“I did.  It was freaking some of my colleagues out.  Theykept making dumb brunette jokes.”

“Won’t they just make dumb blond jokes?”

“Yes, but at least I can be myself.  I kept wondering who thewoman in the mirror was every morning.  Anyway, how are you two doing?  Iassume you’ve been keeping up?”

“We may have tuned into a meeting or two,” Matthew said.

“Yeah, right.  Anyway, as you know we’re a bit screwed on Graham. We can connect him with some of the money, but it’s circumstantial as to howmuch and for what purpose.”

“That sucks.”

“Yes, it does.  We’re still looking for something that willtie him directly to the drugs.”

“What about Frye’s murder?”

“Detective Vaughn is working on that, but he’s not coming upwith anything.”

“Why don’t we go over what had to have happened for Graham tohave been behind her murder.  Maybe that will give us a clue.”

“Sure.  Should we call Detective Vaughn?”

“I don’t think so.  I don’t want to explain how I know what Ido.”  Matthew grimaced as he thought about what Detective Vaughn would think ofhis involvement.

“Oh, right.  I keep forgetting.  So what do we know?  I canask him to fill in any blanks.”

“Okay, well the events that transpired were:

“One: Frye stole from her employer which put her on Vaughn’sradar.

“Two: They followed her for a few days, then she went to theStarbucks where she passed Frankie the money.

“Three: The cops tried to bust them but couldn’t find any drugs,so they let them go.  That means that Frye didn’t get her pills.

“Four: Three days later Frye overdosed.  The search of herperson and her home turned up a little under a two-week supply of pills.

“Five: The analysis of the pills showed that they had varyingamounts of Fentanyl in them.  Some had barely enough to get someone high andothers had more than enough to kill most addicts.

“Six: Analysis of the pills that Dante was distributing showthat they too contain Fentanyl, but in well-controlled quantities. Pharmaceutical quality.

“So, what questions does that raise?”

“The first one I think of is where did the bad pills comefrom,” Emily said.

“Yes, and how were they delivered to Frye.”

“Well, the signal was a flyer on the windshield.  The buyerwould then find the pills under the hood in a foil package.”

“Okay, so anyone could have dropped the pills off on Frye’scar.  And it