Chapter 25

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The doorknob rattled. “Rachette!”

After a second of shock, Rachette recognized the voice.

“Rachette! Open up! It’s Yates!” More pounding.

A wave of relief washed over him. “Yates?” He reached over and twisted the lock. As he did, Engelhardt took another step toward him.

Yates busted in with his gun raised, stopping Engelhardt’s progress.

“Hands up!” Yates yelled.

Rachette swung the door closed and stood next to Yates. “Sit down!”

“Jeremy.” Engelhardt stepped back. “What are you doing?”

“Sit down,” Yates said, his voice calm.

Engelhardt turned up his hands. “I thought we were friends.”

Yates lowered his gun, ignoring the big man. “What are you doing here?” he asked Rachette.

“These assholes cut the brakes on my truck. I had my kids in there. My family. We could have been killed. He just admitted it, man. He just told me.”

Yates put a hand on Rachette’s arm. “Lower the gun, brother.”

A tear spilled out of Rachette’s eye and ran down his cheek. “We could have died.”

“You can’t drive a truck after the brakes have been cut,” Engelhardt said. “We knew that. We were just doing it to scare you.”

“The rest of the car still worked, asshole. I backed into the car behind me. There could have been kids walking behind my truck at the time.”

“Well, you’re an idiot for not feeling the brake pedal sink to the floor then.”

“I told you they could have been hurt,” Carlton said.

Engelhardt looked over at his roommate. “Shut up!”

They all stood in silence for a while. The two men on the couch turned against one another, Rachette still aiming his gun, Yates’s hand on his shoulder.

“Come on, Rachette,” Yates said. “What’s the plan here? We can’t just shoot ’em.”

Rachette blinked, the tears receding as he lowered his gun.

“That’s it,” Yates said.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Engelhardt said.

“Shut up!” Yates aimed the gun at his chest.

Engelhardt put up his hands, then made a zipping of his mouth motion, locking it and throwing away the key.

“Asshole,” Yates said, lowering his gun.

“I have no proof,” Rachette said. “There’s no way to prove it. But he’s gotta pay. They’ve both gotta pay. There’s no way I’m living out there with my family with these two walking around on this planet as free men. I can’t risk it.”

“We can bring them in,” Yates said.

Rachette looked at him for the first time. Yates was pale, sweating all over like spring slush. His eyes were red-rimmed, and it looked painful for him to be standing and conscious.

“What are you talking about?” Rachette asked. “On what?”

“That girl I just drove past,” Yates said. “In the 4Runner. Her name’s Chloe Anderson. She works at the Mountain Mart Pharmacy in Ashland. She’s in charge of inventory, and she skims from orders coming in and gives it to these guys. These guys sell it, and they split the profit. It’s one of the ways they get the legit stuff and not the counterfeit.” He turned to Carlton. “Where is it?”

Carlton said nothing, but he looked at a paper grocery bag perched on the end table next to him.

Yates walked over, picked up the bag, which looked as heavy as if it were filled with groceries, and brought it back. He hefted it onto his forearm as a shelf, opened it, and tilted it toward Rachette, showing multiple plastic bags of pills lying inside, identical to the ones that had been over at Yates’s house. There were two dozen or more.

“We can bring her in and get her to talk,” Yates said. “She has no prior record, and I’m sure she’ll be happy to keep it that way by rolling on you two.”

“We’ll tell them about you,” Engelhardt said.

Yates ignored him. “And then there’s the fake prescription pads. They have them in the house here somewhere, I’m sure. Carlton here has a friend who’s a managing nurse over at the county hospital, a guy named John Jansky. I’m sure he’s the one supplying them. They have a network of intermediaries who go to various pharmacies in the state to fill the fake prescriptions. Sit here a week, and you’ll see all kinds of people coming in and out. I’m sure they have other means, too, but the girl and the nurse—they’ll be enough.”

Yates turned back to Engelhardt and Carlton. “Carlton here has a prior with schedule two drugs. A second offense with intent to sell would bring on the hefty sentence of multiple decades in jail as it is. Throw in the elaborate ring you two are running…” Yates clucked his cheek. “I’m not sure if you guys will ever get out. Not in this lifetime.”

“You know all of this for sure?” Rachette asked.

“Yeah.”

“You just…followed them around in your spare time?”

Yates shrugged. “I’m a detective. What can I say?”

“We’ll tell them about you,” Engelhardt said again. “You’re one of our best customers, Jeremy.”

“I don’t care. Tell them all you want. My career’s over as it is.”

“It’s aiding and abetting,” Engelhardt said. “You followed us around, figured out everything we were doing, and still you bought from us. They’ll throw you in jail, too. You were basically an accomplice.”

Rachette narrowed his eyes, knowing they could be right, depending on how the DA’s office wanted to spin it. He looked at Yates.

“I don’t care,” Yates said. “The point is, you don’t have to throw your life away by killing these guys, Rachette. These guys are already toast.”

Rachette shook his head, thinking. How would prosecutors pursue charges against Yates? The district attorney had never liked Rachette, that was for sure. But how about Yates? Surely, White wouldn’t push to bust a former detective who was clearly fighting PTSD after getting shot on duty, driven to desperation for pills he was hooked on due to the trauma of doing his job and saving the life of his fellow detective in the process.

Then again, Rachette couldn’t say for sure. The DA had always acted in his own best interest, driven by his track record first and foremost. It could be a scandal. But it could just as easily be a boon for White’s next election.

“How about this?” Rachette said. “Either you two spend the rest of your lives in jail.”

“Along with your friend,” Engelhardt said.

Rachette nodded. “Maybe he faces charges, yes.”

“Or?” Carlton asked. “You were going to say something else?”

“Or you two pack up and get the hell out of here,” Rachette said.

Yates narrowed his eyes.

“You guys leave town by tomorrow night,” Rachette said, “Seven o’clock p.m., or else we get a warrant and come after you. And after that,” he looked at Yates, “we let the chips fall where they will. But we bring you two assholes in, and you rot in jail for the rest of your lives.”

Engelhardt tilted his head. “And you just forget all about us?”

Rachette shook his head. “No. I don’t. You let us know where you went, and I let the local law know all about you—about our suspicions of what you were doing and how. But we don’t have any concrete evidence. So, they keep a close eye on you. And you turn your lives around, get legitimate jobs, and quit being the scum of society.”

“Done,” Carlton said .

Engelhardt looked over at his partner in crime.

“What?” Carlton slid sideways on the couch away from him. “I’m not doing this anymore. I told you it was a bad idea. I told you. I’ll leave tomorrow, alone. You can do whatever you want.”

Engelhardt looked like he was having murderous ideas about his friend, but Rachette didn’t care about them at the moment. He was proud of himself for coming up with such a win-win plan for him and Yates.

“Whatever,” Engelhardt said.

“Bullshit,” Rachette said. “Not whatever. You tell me you agree. That you’ll be out of here by seven p.m. tomorrow, and you’ll let us know where you end up by the end of the week. Or else we start searching.”

“Agreed,” Carlton said.

After huffing and then upturning his hands again, Engelhardt nodded. “Okay.”

Rachette put his gun in the back of his pants. “Good. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

The two men said nothing.

Yates looked up at Rachette; a hint of joy glimmered out of deadened eyes as he put his own gun in the back of his pants.

They left, Rachette eyeing the two men as he shut the door behind them. Carlton and Engelhardt looked stunned, resigned to their fate.

Outside, the air was cool and thick with the scent of pine. Rachette followed Yates down the steps to his car.

“Are you okay to drive?” Rachette asked.

“Yeah.”

“How many pills have you had?”

Yates pulled open his door. “I’m fine. ”

Rachette grabbed his shoulder, stopping him from getting inside. “Hey.”

Yates turned around, and Rachette wrapped him in a hug.

Yates remained motionless for a few moments, arms dangling by his sides, then finally slapped him on the back. “Okay.”

“Yeah,” Rachette said. “It is okay.” He let go of his former partner. With the moonless night, Yates’s eyes were puddles of black. “You really saved my ass in there.”

Yates said nothing.

“I really was going to kill them. I thought I had no other choice. I was seconds away, I swear. And you frickin’ came in there and gave me an out. Shit, man. I don’t know what to say. Now, I owe you twice.”

“You can thank Patterson. She called me all in a huff, telling me she learned your brakes were cut and she couldn’t find you. I knew where you were going.”

“And you didn’t tell her?”

“No.”

“Okay, fine. I owe you three times, then.”

“You owe me for three things?”

“Yeah. The way I figure it, if you wouldn’t have taken that bullet in the chest last year, that woman would have taken me down. I know that’s the truth. So, there’s that. And now there’s this.”

“You owe me for a hell of a lot more than that.” Yates turned around and sat down behind the wheel.

Rachette smiled. “Okay, well, consider me following your ass home now, payback for one of them. Give me a ride to my truck.”

He walked around the car and got in the passenger side. It smelled like old food and dust. He shut the door, kicking aside a bag of fast food, and watched Yates for any signs of impairment as he put the keys in the ignition, shifted into reverse, and drove.

“How many pills?” Rachette asked.

“Just a few. Earlier.”

Rachette nodded, knowing he was probably lying. He checked the rearview mirror. The house remained dark, save the rectangle of light leaking around the blinds.

“You think they’ll leave?” Yates asked.

“I don’t know. If they don’t, they’re idiots.”

They rode in silence until they reached Rachette’s truck. Yates stopped, and Rachette opened the door. “Wait for me. I’ll follow.”

Rachette felt fifty pounds lighter as he stepped up and got behind the wheel. He fired up the engine, turned around, and followed Yates down the county road and back out to Highway 734.

Heading north, he steered with his knees as he put the battery and SIM back in his phone and powered it on. The device dinged and vibrated for a good minute, showing he had thirty-two missed calls and ten missed text messages.

“Good lord,” he said under his breath and dialed Charlotte.

“Where are you?” she answered.

“I’m fine. I’m with Yates.”

“What are you doing? I’ve been calling you all day. Do you know how worried I was? That I still am? What did you do?”

“Nothing. I know. I’m sorry. I just needed to do something, so I shut off the phone.”

“Did our brakes get cut last night? ”

“Yes.” No sense lying now.

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because I was going to do something to the guys that did it.”

She breathed into the phone, a ruffling coming out of the speakers. “So? Did you do something?”

“No. And everything’s okay now. Alright?”

“Who were the guys that did it? Are we safe?”

“Yes.” At least, he hoped so. The HK would stay close to him that night, that was for sure. Carlton sure didn’t look like he was entertaining any ideas, but he wasn’t so sure about Engelhardt. He decided he would tell Patterson everything, too. Just…not now. In the morning. Right now, he was dead tired.

“I’m coming home,” he said. “I’ll see you in an hour.”