Free Last Call - A Thriller (Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels Mysteries Book 10) by J.A. Konrath

packed with calories that wouldn’t spoil. A thermos to urinate in. Caffeine pills. A notebook, to jot down the movements and guard changes of the snipers on the rooftops, the car makes and models and tags, the number of deals Hugo made.
    For four hours, he’d park in a spot up the street. Then he’d get out of the car and sit in an alley, next to the world’s smelliest Dumpster; seriously, it smelled like someone vomited up a skunk with diarrhea and let it bake in the ninety degree heat for a week. But it was close enough to the action that he wouldn’t need the binoculars, his cover disguise a stained shirt and half a bottle of warm beer in a paper bag. After four hours in the alley it was back to the car and a new parking spot, in the opposite direction.
    It was grueling, boring, mind-numbing work. This spying stuff wasn’t Phin’s thing, and as the minutes ticked slowly by he felt more and more wound up.
    But he learned a lot about their operation. Hugo had a five hour shift, then was replaced by another guy—this one in Armani. Armani was replaced by a third dealer, this one in Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, the gaudy ensemble topped off with a straw pork pie hat with a flowery band that matched neither shorts nor shirt. Then back to Hugo.
    They dealt some grass, occasional baggies of powder, and a lot of syrup. All three used the same parked car as their storage locker, and Phin had yet to see the supply replenished. He did some quick calculations and figured he’d watched over twenty thousand dollars’ worth of transactions in a sixteen hour period.
    Now the sun was up, heating up the interior of the car. Neither Luther Kite, nor his scarred ward Lucy, had paid Hugo a visit. Were they getting their painkillers elsewhere, maybe via fake prescriptions? Was the painkiller trail a dead end, and they weren’t even using? Were they even still in town?
    Phin considered his options. Grabbing one of the dealers and asking him if Luther was a client would be risky, and even if the dealer recognized Luther, that didn’t mean he knew where Luther was staying. Trying a different approach meant abandoning this one, and Phin could picture Luther driving up to score painkillers five minutes after Phin left.
    He tried to think like Luther, but that wasn’t one of Phin’s strengths. He knew street thugs, pimps, gang bangers, junkies, hustlers, and whores. Jack was the one who knew psychopaths. Though Phin had encountered a few serial killers—old cases of Jack’s—he couldn’t put himself in their minds like she seemed to be able to.
    Luther came to Mexico with Lucy. Why? To escape capture in the US? Because he had some sort of stake here? A hideaway? A supply of cash? Drugs?
    Drugs were available everywhere. And Luther wasn’t exactly Public Enemy Number 1. He was no doubt on some law enforcement watch lists, and there were arrest warrants, but he was just one of hundreds, probably thousands, of wanted murderers. And there were plenty of places to hide in the US. Luther and Lucy had been doing so for years.
    Why Mexico?
    Phin recalled the video that brought him there. A man being dragged behind a car. That wasn’t the act of someone on the run, trying to avoid attention.
    That was the act of a maniac. A psychopath. Someone insane, who got off on the pain of others.
    Maybe Luther and Lucy weren’t in Mexico to hide from authorities.
    Maybe they’d come to have fun.
    Phin played with the idea. Baja had plenty of tourists who didn’t know the area. Plenty of poor locals no one cared about. Police that could be paid to look the other way.
    It was like a Disneyland for serial killers. They could operate under the radar, having their pick of disposable victims, with impunity.
    Maybe, instead of staking out dealers, Phin should go to the police. Find out if there had been any more people dragged to death. If they could be bribed to ignore crime, maybe they could also be bribed to reveal it.
    That seemed like a