The Final Twist by Jeffery Deaver (free ebooks romance novels txt) 📕

“Ms. Ramirez filled out an affidavit saying that she saw you with a significant quantity of narcotics. She had a relative who overdosed and was doing her civic duty to get them off the street. Now, you can help yourself here by cooperating. And I’ll tell you, sir, it’ll go a long way if you do.”

“I don’t know what’s going on. I’ve never done drugs, let alone sold them.”

“Cooperation?” Barnes reminded, steering back to his theme.

“Of course. Sure.”

Barnes’s face registered some relaxation. “So,” he said. “The drugs?”

Shaw frowned broadly. “I don’t know anything about any drugs. I assume you’ve looked my name up in NCIC. Nothing there, right?” His eyes were fixed on the young woman’s, which were cast defiantly toward Shaw. She really was quite beautiful.

Barnes asked, “How do you know each other?”

Shaw beat her to whatever she was going to say, “I don’t really know her. We have a mutual friend.”

To Shaw, he said, “Tell me about the drugs.”

“There are no drugs.”

“Ms. Ramirez tells a different story.” Barnes sighed, as if autonomically responding to what he’d heard a thousand times before. The officer returned to his favorite subject with: “You should be more cooperative than you’re being.”

“Doesn’t get any more cooperative than this. I’m telling you the truth.”

“All right.”

A variation on “Okay.”

Shaw shrugged. The cuffs jingled.

Barnes asked Connie, “Where?”

She pointed to the end table beside the couch, where she’d sat earlier. “The drawer.”

Barnes jerked his head toward another patrolman, an underling, a short, uniformed cop with a shaved head and the complexion of mixed races. He fit the description of Roman, Tessy’s stalker former boyfriend. The man opened the drawer. “Got something.” After donning blue latex gloves, he removed the bag and set it on the table, near Shaw’s accessories.

The woman’s look of vindication was smug.

“About eight ounces, Quentin,” the woman officer said, eyeing the bag. “Way over felony.”

Barnes sized up Shaw, assessing the offense not of drugs but of failure to cooperate. He nodded to the underling who’d discovered the bag. The officer removed a folding-blade knife and cut a small slit in the top of the bag. From one of the many pockets in his service vest he extracted a small bottle. He broke a liquid capsule inside and added a bit of the white powder. He shook it. There was no color change.

“More,” Barnes said.

The young officer added powder. It still didn’t turn blue or green or red, whatever it was supposed to.

“What?” Connie whispered. Her expression registered a minor Richter number of concern.

Shaw said, “It’s not drugs.”

Barnes asked, “No? What is it?”

“Chalk. I rock climb. This is just a misunderstanding. I appreciate her concern. Drugs are terrible.” He looked into her lovely eyes. “I see why you’d think that, of course, but I’d never have anything to do with narcotics.”

Barnes took the knife and sniffed. He handed the blade back to the other officer. He looked from one to the other. “Whole room,” Barnes ordered. “Search it.”

The others—four cops in total—began searching. They were good. Every place where a four-by-eight-by-two-inch pouch of cocaine could be hidden was examined.

After the dining room came the kitchen then the two bedrooms, the living room. All of the closets, of which there were a fair number, and they were big ones. For a last-minute safe house, it really offered some nice features.

Barnes was frustrated. He snapped, “Dog,” to the patrolman who’d searched Shaw’s wallet.

A moment later the canine made his appearance with a young Latina handler. He was a lithe and focused Malinois, one of the four Belgian herding breeds, the others being the Tervuren, Laekenois and the Belgian sheepdog. The Malinois was smaller and wirier than the German shepherd and had largely taken over law enforcement duties from the latter around the country.

The dog—whose name was Beau or Bo—zipped up and down the floor twitchily. Nose up, nose down, turning corners fast, sticking the lengthy muzzle into cushions and the gap between cabinets. Everywhere.

But he never once sat. Sitting is the signal that police K9s learn to indicate that they’ve found what they were searching for: the drugs, the explosives, the body. They don’t point or bark and they never bring a treasure back to their handler in their eager and powerful jaws.

They sit.

But Beau or Bo didn’t.

Barnes was no longer relaxed. And he definitely wasn’t happy.

The handler gave the dog a dried meat treat. His confirmation that the suite was drug free was as much a win for the muscular animal as if he’d found a thousand pounds of smack.

“Officer Barnes?” Shaw asked.

The man continued to scan the residence, then finally looked toward Shaw. His massive, round face displayed no expression whatsoever. “Yes?”

“In your experience how many people who have CCPs are involved in criminal activity?”

To get a concealed carry permit you undergo an extensive background check. If a criminal past shows up, you’re disqualified. If you can legally carry a sidearm—especially in California, where the requirements are more rigorous than in any other state in the union—that means you’ve been vetted about as well as a civilian can be.

Barnes looked at Connie. “Ms. Ramirez?”

“I’m sorry. I saw the package. I just thought . . .”

Barnes stepped away to make a radio call. This left Shaw and Connie in the living room, standing near each other. The woman officer with the taut hair was nearby, keeping an eye on them but she was out of earshot.

Shaw whispered, “Here’s the deal, whoever you are. You come back here later. Alone. If you don’t, I give the cop the video of you planting the real drugs in the drawer when I was getting you that tissue. I saw you wipe it, so it may not have your fingerprints on it, but it still has your DNA. Roll you up for felony possession.”

The tears had been real, but a little Tabasco on the fingertips does the same thing as true sorrow or method acting.

“Do you understand?”

Silence. Her lip trembled. A nod.

Barnes and the others returned. The