Page 119 of The Fourth Option
“Pretty much all printers are color these days, Chris.”
“How about a scanner?”
“It’s both.”
“Good.” He tossed Rayne’s badge wallet to her. “Ever made a fake ID?”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY’SOffice sat on South White Street, a squat, beige building with narrow windows and a faded seal above the door. It looked more like a DMV than the nerve center of Orleans Parish justice.
The conference room was tucked behind a frosted-glass door. The walls were painted a cool, institutional gray, but Irene Isaacson had added a framed campaign poster from her first run for DA and a signed letter from a former U.S. attorney general prominently displayed in a gold frame. A flat-screen TV was mounted on one wall, muted, a national news channel running.
The table sat eight, with low-backed task chairs that had seen better days. Icy looked down the length of the table, Jarrett Stanton and Augie Lloyd on one side, Lieutenant Cornelius Bates on the other. She wore a cream pantsuit, her hair down, tapping a handcrafted NOLA pen made of reclaimed wood from the historic St. Charles streetcar on a yellow legal pad.
Bates sat under the clock, a thick case file open in front of him. He wore a tailored navy suit for the occasion, made of stretch fabric, athletic cut, tight at the shoulders.
“Let’s start with what we know,” the NOPD officer began, flipping a page in his thick file, one of two murder books he had brought with him in a silver aluminum briefcase. “First scene: Garden District. Homeowner and victim is Leigh Ann Staub, a charge nurse at Tulane Medical Center. Cause of death: blunt force trauma to the head, likely with a claw hammer that was used to torture her. Three unidentified Latin males also deceased, shot with nine-millimeter rounds. One additional deceased unidentified Latin male. Cause of death a combination of blunt force trauma to his head and sharp force trauma to his neck, likely from a shovel recovered next to the body. No signs of forced entry. No witnesses to the crime, but a neighbor reported a white male and a dog inthe area at the time of the murders, and a Ring doorbell has a person of interest matching that description leaving in a blue VW camper van that was parked a few blocks away.”
He looked up, letting the silence settle.
Stanton sat with his back straight, hands folded, a manila folder in front of him on the table.
Lloyd leaned back in his chair, his expression appropriately somber.
Bates slid the first murder book aside and opened the second.
“Second scene. Ninth Ward. Two of my COPE unit officers were surveilling a suspected drug house.” He paused and looked up. “Officers Rayne and Hendrick, killed by someone using a rifle chambered in .300 Blackout. Also found: one black female. Killed with a shot to the head from a .38-caliber revolver.”
“Were drugs recovered at the scene?” Icy asked. “Opioids?”
“The place was cleaned out.”
“You said it was a known drug house,” Stanton observed. “You must have records that suggest who the dealers were. And what they were dealing.”
“That’s exactly what Rayne and Hendrick were investigating,” Bates replied. He paused as if conducting a moment of silence for his fallen officers.
“Continue,” Icy said.
“Early read from ballistics is that we are dealing with one shooter.”
“One shooter? With a .300 Blackout and a .38? That doesn’t seem right.”
“The rounds extracted from my officers appear to have come from the same rifle. The .38 is anyone’s guess.”
“That could suggest another shooter,” Stanton offered.
“Anything’s possible in the Ninth.”
“And the killer?” Icy leaned forward, her fingers steepled. “You must have a theory, Lieutenant.”
Bates nodded. “We think this is a cartel war. The two crimes are linked by this single shooter and the drugs, the Staubs’ residence connection through Connor Staub, and the Ninth, well, we all know the Ninth.”
“I’m not buying the drug connection in the Garden District,” Icy said.
“Ma’am, the principal victim was Ann Staub. Her son, Connor Staub,died a month ago of an OD. That suggests a drug connection. Looks like the kid was doing more than using. The amount of drugs found in his vehicle suggests he was dealing. We think enforcers from a cartel were looking for money or drugs that Connor owed them when a hitter from a rival cartel showed up. Gunfight ensues. The place was ransacked. They were looking for something.”
“And that led to the Ninth?”
