Free Low Tide by Dawn Lee McKenna Page B

Evangeline,” Boudreaux said. “As you well know. Now let’s get the little piece of garbage into the ground and be done with it.”
    “I gon’ pray for you, then I gon’ come over there and snatch you up.”
    Boudreaux drank the last of his coffee, put the cup down, and smiled.
    “I’ll be at the office by the time you make it over here.”

“ S o what do we know?” Wyatt asked.
    He was sitting in the metal chair in Maggie’s office, resting one foot on the opposite knee and tapping a pen against the legal pad in his lap. Maggie was sitting on the edge of her desk and Lt. James Caulfield, from the Narcotics Division, sat at the other desk a few feet away.
    “Not much, yet,” said Maggie. “All Grace knows is that this deal is supposed to involve more product than he usually handles.”
    “Well, Joey Truman is strictly small time,” James said. “He’s Alessi’s lap dog and he’s never done anything without him. Barone, he’s a different fish. He’s from Gainesville. Two priors for aggravated assault and he got busted in 2002 for possession with intent. No indictment. Search and seizure issues.”
    “What did we bust Alessi with in ’07?” Wyatt asked.
    James flipped through a file on the desk in front of him.
    “A little over two kilos,” Maggie answered. “Nothing since he got out in 2012.”
    “What we need is the cooking facility and we just can’t get it,” James said. “Aside from the fact that they move those things around all the time, as far as we know, Alessi never goes there. We surveilled him for a while last year, but came up empty. We know he’s setting things up with his cronies and one of the cronies is going back and forth to the lab, but we don’t have the manpower to tail every of one his associates.”
    “Let’s say we got him with just two kilos or so this time around,” Maggie said. “What kind of time might he be looking at?”
    “I don’t know.” James shook his head and ran a hand through his sandy, thinning hair. “He’ll be classified a habitual felony offender. He’s got that second-degree felony arrest for coke back in…’09? He’ll be gone for a while.”
    “Well, as far as this girl is concerned, the more immediate question is will he get bail,” Wyatt said. “Did you talk to her about that, Maggie?”
    “No, I didn’t want to scare her,” Maggie said. “I’m going to bring it up to the ASA. Honestly, if he can’t give me at least some assurance that Alessi won’t get bail awaiting trial, I don’t want her to do this.”
    “Well, but that’s not your choice,” James said with a shrug. “She’ll be coming to you with knowledge of felony activity.”
    “I know,” Maggie said. “But she has nowhere to go.”
    Wyatt threw his pen down on her desk. “These lost kids,” he snapped. “I don’t know how you people raise teenagers without taking some kind of medication.”
    They all sighed and sat silent for a moment, then Wyatt looked at his watch.
    “Did she tell you when she’d be calling?” he asked.
    “No. Just some time today,” Maggie said.
    “Well, Greggs, Peterson, and Lowicki are on duty tomorrow night and I’ve got Paulsen and Messer on stand-by,” James said. “We’ll get with SWAT once we know something definite, get some additional officers from PD, too.”
    “Don’t forget me,” Wyatt said.
    “I want to go, too,” Maggie said.
    “You’re not narcotics anymore,” Wyatt said shortly.
    “You’re not narcotics, either,” Maggie answered.
    “I’m the Sheriff; I get to be whatever I want.”
    “And she’s my informant,” Maggie said.
    Wyatt sighed and stood up, stretched his impossibly long legs. “We can argue about this in the car,” he said. “Let’s go talk to the ASA.”
    “Let me know what’s going on,” James said as he got up and headed for the door.
    “I can go myself,” Maggie said, once he’d left.
    “Well, you could, but since he has an appointment with me , he wouldn’t be