A Chip and a Chair (Seven of Spades, #5)(6)
Martine made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat. “Those freaks need to be shut down yesterday.”
Her assessment was met with murmured agreement throughout the room. Utopia, a Neo-Nazi street gang turned private militia, grew larger and more brazen every week. Intent on spreading their venomous message while grabbing up resources, territory, and fresh recruits wherever they could, they were responsible for a string of violent hate crimes across the Las Vegas Valley. The two men Hale had killed had been members of Los Avispones, a Latino gang that was Utopia’s fiercest rival.
But while Utopia was a huge problem for the city, Levi’s involvement was limited to picking up their members when their murders crossed his desk. In the larger organizational sense, Utopia was the responsibility of either Gang Crimes or Organized Crime, depending on who was winning that turf war on any given day.
Levi’s focus belonged here, with the official task force created to address the city’s other largest threat-the Seven of Spades.
He’d been reinstated to the task force after being cleared of suspicion in the Seven of Spades’s crimes. The group was run by Dean Birndorf, captain of the Homicide Bureau; in addition to Levi and Martine, it included their sergeant James Wen and a cross-departmental selection of detectives, uniformed officers, and technical support staff. Leila Rashid and Special Agent Denise Marshall served as their liaisons to the DA’s office and the FBI, respectively.
Levi took the empty seat beside Martine. “What did I miss?” He couldn’t quite meet Leila’s eyes as he sat, but he felt her heavy gaze.
“Not much,” said Wen, who was as impeccably dressed and well-groomed as always. “We were just discussing the killer’s radio silence-no new murders, no phone calls, no messages, no contact of any kind for over a month now. It’s the longest the Seven of Spades has remained inactive since framing Keith Chapman.”
“And it’s all thanks to Levi’s epic bitch-slap.” Martine elbowed his side.
Levi agreed that his reaction to Carolyn Royce’s murder had rattled the Seven of Spades-but whether they’d withdrawn simply to lick their wounds or to gear up for some sensational vengeful return, he couldn’t say. He remained on high alert regardless.
“How are things proceeding with the ketamine angle?” Denise asked.
“No developments,” said Levi. “But it’s kind of like looking for one specific drop of water in a lake.”
The Seven of Spades used ketamine to drug their victims into a dissociative paralysis before slitting their throats. From the beginning, Levi had believed the killer obtained the drug from a legitimate source. For one thing, illicit sales of ketamine were small-scale, not the kind of operations that would allow for stockpiling. Legal channels were more reliable, involved far less risk of exposure, and carried no need to tangle with criminal elements.
The problem was the sheer number of people who had legitimate access to ketamine. In addition to countless individual practitioners, the drug flowed from manufacturers and distributors to pharmacies, hospitals, clinics, teaching institutions, and laboratories. The Seven of Spades could be getting their hands on it anywhere along that supply chain.
Levi’s gut told him the Seven of Spades would prefer the end of the chain, where there were fewer moving parts and they’d have greater control over their access. With the cooperation of the DEA’s Diversion Control Division, he’d spent the past year reviewing the licenses of every practitioner registered to dispense Schedule III controlled substances, beginning within the Las Vegas city limits and expanding outward in a circular geographic pattern. One by one, he’d researched every individual for criminal backgrounds, ties to personnel in the LMVPD and DA’s office, unusual business practices, and other red flags.
In the process, he’d discovered several small, unrelated diversion operations, and he’d passed that information along to the appreciative DEA. But as far as the Seven of Spades was concerned, he’d had no luck.
“Do you need more personnel on it?” Birndorf asked.
Levi nodded. “That would be helpful. It’s time-consuming work, and pretty tedious.”
“Sounds like it’d be right up your alley,” said Jonah Gibbs, a ruddy-faced officer with a hot temper that rivaled Levi at his worst.
“Thank you for volunteering, Officer,” Wen said.
As Gibbs spluttered indignantly, Levi tried to hide his dismay. Having Gibbs on this would only slow him down, because he’d have to double-check every single thing Gibbs did.
“You can have all the people you need.” Birndorf gestured to the massive board on the wall, which held brief profiles of the task force’s top suspects. “Make sure you’re cross-referencing all your results with the suspect pool.”
“Of course, sir.” Levi exchanged a quick sideways glance with Martine, but broke the eye contact before he could give anything away.
The task force’s suspect pool was based on FBI agent Rohan Chaudhary’s criminal profile of the Seven of Spades, further culled through personal histories, interviews, tips from the Seven of Spades hotline, and other investigative techniques. But Levi and Martine both knew that cross-referencing the ketamine investigation with that list would be a waste of time-the real top suspects weren’t anywhere on the board.
In fact, half of them were sitting in this very room.