“Be careful, Wilson. They’ll be watching you if they think you had something to do with this.”
‘I know. Let them watch. Maybe they’ll learn how to do some actual police work.”
He went directly from his station to the smaller one on the other side of town. He had a friend from the academy that had got sent over there and they still kept in touch. Rather than calling him and having a record of it on his phone, he just walked in, flashing his badge at the desk officer. She barely even glanced at him before going back to the magazine she had been reading when he came in.
“Hey, Chuck. You got a minute?” he asked a lanky ginger cop sitting at his desk. Chuck was easy to pick out in a crowd. He looked like a love child between Conan O’Brien and a Drop Dead Fred. He was a great guy, but not exactly a lady killer. The term made him wince as he considered it’s double meaning.
“Well, fuck me if it isn’t Ryan Wilson,” he said with a big grin on his face. “What brings you down here to the slums of policedom?”
“I need a quick favor.”
“Sure, buddy. What can I do for you?”
“I need you to find this guy in your logs and get me a copy of his file. His last arrest was here, so you should be able to get to it without pulling it up on the network. Get my drift?”
“Sure. Should I ask why?”
“No.”
“Good enough for me. You need it right now or can you come back?”
“Now would be better.”
“Alright. Go get yourself a coffee and I’ll see what I can get for you.”
Ryan did just that, feeling like he was coming out of his skin as he waited. It was a good half hour before Chuck returned with a large envelope and handed it to him.
“Guy’s a real shit show. I don’t know what’s going down, but you watch your back with him. Get out of her before someone asks what I gave you and call me sometimes to have a drink instead of be your fucking copy boy, ya prick.”
“I’ll do that,” Wilson laughed. “Thanks. I owe you.”
“Fuckin’ A, you do.”
Ryan took the file back to his car, flipping through it. Craig Scroginski, known to his friends simply as “Ski” had a very long arrest sheet, but only one conviction. He’d done a stint over on the east coast for attempted murder. The other arrests were for a variety of violent crimes, but he’d gotten off on an assortment of procedural failures that smelled like corruption more than any actual mistakes by the department.
He was considering again that this might have something more to do with him than Lucy, as there was no reason this man would be after her. His sole line of work seemed to be to enforce whatever he was told to take care of by a network of drug lords in the area. It had to be tied in to some of the crimes he was dealing with on the east side.
But then everything changed and he remembered the question Lark had asked. It was right there in the file, “Derek Jameson.” Ski had been tied to a lot of crimes at the behest of a prominent drug lord named Derek Jameson in the past decade. Was Lucy kin to Derek? Was it her father? Why would she not have told him that?
Either she was ashamed or he was no relation. He picked up his phone and called Tate.
“What is it, Wilson. I’m trying to take an old man nap.”
“Do you know the name Derek Jameson?”
“Jameson? Yeah. He disappeared off the map a few years back, but he used to be a real bastard. He was ruthless on the east side. Dealers didn’t cross him and neither did anyone else. Even the cops steered clear.”
“Why?’
“Because he didn’t give second chances. The last dealer I’m aware of that tried to screw him over ended up in a dumpster looking like he’d been chewed up by a combine. It was ugly. Couldn’t prove it was him though. You know how these types work. Always someone on the inside. The DNA was tainted and had to be tossed out. Never seen anything like what was done to that man though.”
Kevin had. He knew exactly what had been done to that man and the DNA wasn’t tainted. It just wasn’t human. Derek Jameson was either wolf or using wolves to do his dirty work. If it was the former, there was a solid chance that he was Lucy’s father.
“Any idea where I might find him now?”
“No and wouldn’t tell you if I did. Nothing good can come of you going against that one alone. We’ve already lost one good cop this week. Can’t even have a proper service burial for him for fear of blowing the cover of other UCs that were embedded with him.”