Fear No Evil(Alex Cross #29)(44)

I looked over my shoulder to see the new widow standing about ten feet behind me with Sampson at her back.

“Thank you, Jill,” Rosella said coldly. “I’d have thought you’d be here sooner.”

“It’s been chaotic. May I come in and talk to you? Dr. Cross said he was just leaving.”

“No, I didn’t.”

Hernandez’s widow glanced at me and then back at Hanson. “You’ll have to wait outside, Jill, until I’m done talking to Dr. Cross and Detective Sampson.”

“I would like to hear what you have to say to them as well,” Hanson said.

“Not now,” Rosella said, and she headed back to the kitchen. “Can you shut the door for me, Dr. Cross?”

“With pleasure,” I said and slowly shut the door in the DEA agent’s face.





Chapter





50




Rosella Hernandez led us back into her kitchen. She trembled as she walked and had to put her hand on the wall several times. I thought it was due to her grief, but when she sat down, she looked hard as nails.

“Before I say a word, I want witness protection for me and for my children and my entire family back in New Mexico. And Eddie’s too,” she said. “I want the U.S. Marshals Service arranging for us to disappear. Tonight.”

I said, “We don’t have that authority, Mrs. Hernandez.”

“Then call someone who does,” she said and sat back, her arms crossed. “I know things.”

I went into another room, called Mahoney, and explained the situation.

“She credible?”

“She hasn’t said anything yet,” I replied. “But she acts like she’s holding aces.”

“I’ll call Justice and get it rolling. But Alex, I’m going to need something concrete to convince them to move her and the children into witness protection that fast.”

“I’ll call the second I have it.”

After we hung up, I went back into the kitchen. Rosella looked at me. “Well?”

“We’re getting DOJ approval before we talk to the U.S. Marshals office. But we need to hear something that justifies witness protection or no deal.”

Rosella thought a few moments, then said, “The DEA? U.S. Customs? ICE? Border Patrol? Police in all border states? Riddled with corruption. All of them. Even FBI down there. You know what? It’s understandable. There’s so much money and so many reasons to take it.”

“From the Alejandro cartel?”

“No doubt.”

Rosella said she had been a New Mexico state trooper before she joined the DEA, and she’d met her husband shortly afterward. Eddie Hernandez was assigned to be her partner and trained her. Though they tried to keep their relationship professional, the attraction between them had been immediate and intense.

“I fell in love with Eddie the moment I met him,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s what made me blind to it all while I was at the agency. I didn’t last long. I got pregnant and resigned so we could marry. By then I already suspected Eddie wasn’t true blue but I ignored it. Until I couldn’t.”

“Extra cash around a lot?” Sampson asked.

Rosella looked in her lap and nodded. “Eddie said almost everyone working down near the border took some at some point. Especially if you had a family. See? That’s one way they get you.”

According to Rosella, the Alejandro cartel kept tabs on new agents and waited until they were in a financial squeeze before approaching them with a small bribe, something easy to take, easy to justify as a onetime deal. But the hook was set and they kept you on the line. “The money got bigger as you became a bigger fish,” she said.

“Like Eddie coming here to work intelligence?” I asked.

She nodded again. “It gave the cartel a direct line into what the honest agents were doing and what those agents knew about the cartel’s activities.”

“But I thought Eddie was part of the team that put away Marco Alejandro,” Sampson said.

“At a certain point, everyone on both sides of the border knew that Marco was going down. He’d gotten too big, too public. In the end, Eddie gave his allegiance to the cartel, not the man who founded it.”

“Where’s Eddie’s money?” Sampson asked.

“Various security boxes around the country,” she said. “And he changed a lot of it into cryptocurrencies. That’s where it’s all going these days, Eddie said. According to him, eventually cash will become irrelevant and governments will be unable to trace digital currency.”

“Do you know the names of other corrupt agents?”

Rosella straightened in her chair. “I do, but I won’t name them and I won’t tell you how I know until we’re safely in witness protection.”

“But you will testify as to what you know?” Sampson said.

She hesitated before nodding. “If that’s what it takes to protect my kids, yes.”

“Is Special Agent Hanson on the take?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “Eddie seemed leery of her. But better safe than sorry. I hate to sound paranoid, but you have to protect us if I’m going to blow this wide.”