Amanda asked, “This was one of Adams’s usual CIs?”

“No, she’d never met him before. He was locked up less than two hours, and he asked for her by name.” Branson added, “Adams has a reputation with the junkies around town. This wasn’t necessarily a red flag.”

Amanda’s brain was working faster than Will’s. “The snitch was Tony Dell?”

Branson hesitated. “Yes, ma’am. He told her that he would trade Sid Waller for immunity off the drug deal.”

Will glanced at Faith. At least now they knew why Lena had sent Will the email. She didn’t want Dell to skate.

Amanda told Branson, “You got Waller on tape, which gave you probable cause for an arrest warrant?”

“Yes,” Branson confirmed. “We commenced the raid four days later. The snitch said a big shipment was coming in. Detective Adams and her team breached the house. They found this.” She nodded to Nick.

He tapped some keys on the laptop and Amanda’s tennis shot was replaced by a crime scene photo.

Will stared at the screen. Two dead men. Hispanic. Shirtless. They were sitting on a tattered old couch. Their throats were slit open.

Nick asked Amanda, “Can you see it, ma’am?”

“Yes.”

Branson said, “The one on the right is Elian Ramirez, an Oxy freak who was at the wrong place at the wrong time. The guy on the left is Diego Nuñez. He was Waller’s right-hand man. Professional thug. He spent his twenties inside for manslaughter coupled with time-plus for bad behavior.”

Branson nodded for the next photo, and Nick slid over the laptop so she could do it herself.

Branson narrated the next picture, which showed a man with the top of his skull chopped off. “Thomas Holland. He’s new to the scene, got hooked on crack his senior year. We don’t know why he was there except to get high. He was taken out with an ax.” A picture of Holland’s scalp flashed up, then his face from another angle. He was young, probably seventeen. Blond hair, piercing blue eyes. Except for the missing part of his head, he could’ve been on a poster for a Disney movie.

Branson flashed through some more innocuous photos, showing stills of the bedrooms, the bathroom, the dining room. Will had been inside shooting galleries before. The scene was familiar: crack pipes and needles scattered on the floor, mattresses in every room. He never understood where the mattresses came from, or why someone who was shooting poison into their veins required a comfortable place to pass out.

“Here.” Branson stopped on a photo. It showed an open basement door. There were metal braces on each side. A two-by-four was on the floor.

She said, “The basement. This is where Sid Waller was hiding.”

Will wondered if his head was still messed up. If someone locked you in a basement, you weren’t hiding. You were trapped.

Branson said, “Two detectives breached the basement. Mitch Cabello and Keith McVale.”

Faith stiffened. They both recognized the detectives’ names. McVale had taken leave from his job and Cabello had been admitted to the hospital the day of the raid.

Branson said, “Detectives Adams and Vickery stayed in the kitchen. Cabello and McVale called the all-clear on the basement. They relayed to Detective Adams that they’d found a large amount of money. We believe it was shortly after this that Sid Waller came out from his hiding place.”

She pulled up the next photo, which showed a hanging piece of wall paneling with a dark, wet hole behind it that someone had dug into the earth. The photo was not great, but Will could tell the hole was deep enough to hide a grown man.

“Waller knocked out Cabello with a strike to the head. He then took McVale hostage—quietly. Shortly after, Detective Adams went downstairs to help secure the money. She walked into the hostage situation. She drew on Sid Waller, who had a gun to McVale’s head. There was a standoff. Rather than being taken in by Detective Adams, Waller shot himself in the head.”

Will silently replayed her words, which were wholly unexpected. He managed, “Sid Waller shot himself?”

“All three detectives told exactly the same story.” She held up her hands, stopping the obvious question. “The crime scene techs support every word of their statements. The autopsy confirmed the wound was self-inflicted. The tox screen showed there were enough pills in Waller to make a Buddhist monk go postal. At no point do the facts diverge. Everything says Waller took his own life.”

Amanda wanted a second opinion. “Lonnie?”

Gray stirred in his chair. “Our snitch recorded Waller referring to a breakdown in supply. One of his trucks was rolled by some Cubans down in Miami. I made a call to some contacts I still have down in Florida. Waller was on the verge of a war with the Cuban cartel.”

Branson said, “Sid knew he wouldn’t last more than a day in prison. Better to eat a bullet than take a shiv from some Cuban in the yard.”

Amanda moved them along. “Where does Big Whitey fit into all of this?”

Gray looked at Branson. He seemed sad, like one of his children had disappointed him.

She told them, “I was working the case off-book. Chief Gray told me not to pursue it, even on my own time, but I was obsessed with tracking Big Whitey down.”

Amanda asked, “This is connected to Waller?”

“Tangentially,” Branson conceded.

“Is there a reason you’re not taking us down that tangent?”

Branson reached into her briefcase again. She took out a file that was several inches thick. Then she took out another one. Then another one. She stacked them on the table.

Faith wasn’t shy. She grabbed the whole pile and slid it toward her.

Branson said, “Big Whitey came onto my radar eighteen months ago. I like statistics. I like to run the numbers, track the crimes, see where we need to move people around to stop the bad guys.” She paused. Will could tell she had just realized she wasn’t going to get to do this anymore.

“Anyway,” Branson said, “it’s what you said yesterday, the same thing that happened in Savannah and Hilton Head. It felt like there was a larger, organizing factor. Our usual lowlifes were stepping up. There’s a law firm here they all use, ambulance chasers, sloppy and cheap. Suddenly, they merged with a white-shoe firm out of Florida.”

“Vanhorn and Gresham.” Faith looked up from the report she was reading. “The shooter who went after Jared Long is represented by the firm.”

“Correct,” Branson said. “We started seeing low-level cons like Fred Zachary walking on solid charges because of these guys. I started talking to folks, meeting with my detectives, and figured out there was a new player in town.”

Faith said, “Big Whitey.”

“Correct,” Branson repeated. “Whitey started out banking legit through a series of pain management clinics. It’s the usual deal. They were using junkies to cash the scripts. Rednecks, mostly. They control the meth trade, so it was natural for Whitey to tap into an existing market.”

Gray felt the need to explain himself. “I wasn’t persuaded Big Whitey existed. There were some sketchy details from Florida, but no name, no description, no affiliation. He was a ghost.” Gray shrugged. “And we had a lot going on at the time. There was a rash of heroin overdoses at one of our private schools. Young women from good homes. Not the type we were used to seeing in that situation.”