Winter Counts(27)

“Uh, don’t you have to show us your badge?” Marie asked.

He smiled. “No badge, just this. All right, let’s hear about the drugs.”

I glanced over at Marie. She gave a little shrug with her eyebrows.

“Well, some guys brought heroin to the reservation last week,” I said. “They gave some to my nephew. He took it and overdosed, nearly died. I heard Rick might be part of that.”

Now he looked more interested. “What type of heroin was it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Black tar, white powder, brown powder.”

“Don’t know.”

“Do you know when they started selling? On the reservation?”

“Not sure. Nathan—my nephew—said they gave it to him for free, he didn’t pay for it. Maybe that’s just BS, though; he’s only a kid.”

“You say they gave it to him?”

I nodded.

He took a drink of his coconut soda. “How old is your nephew?”

“Fourteen.”

“So the transaction, it occurred on reservation land, you’re sure?”

“Yeah,” I said. “At the high school. That’s what Nathan told me.”

He took out a small notepad from his pocket and started writing. “I’ll need to speak to your nephew, get a statement.”

“Sorry,” I said, “but why does he need to talk to you? I just told you everything.”

“Part of an ongoing investigation. Would he be available to speak to me on the phone?”

“No. He wouldn’t.” I got up and threw my trash away.

“Look,” he said. “I’ve been tracking these mutts for a while. I know they’re starting to move their product to reservations, but couldn’t confirm it. Until now. Been dealing with a boatload of jurisdictional bullshit, too. DEA, FBI, they all claim authority. Your nephew gives me a statement, I can start moving against these guys, get there first. Understand?”

I grabbed a Mexican soda—tamarind flavor—and opened it up. “Would anyone see his statement—I mean, would his name be protected?”

Dennis shook his head. “No one will see it except for law enforcement.”

“Hold on,” Marie said. “We’ve been working with you. But you need to tell us what’s happening on the rez. With the drugs. Give us some background, maybe we can help you more.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Let me see your IDs.”

We handed him our driver’s licenses, and he walked off to his car.

“You think I should give him Nathan’s info?” I asked Marie, quietly. “Don’t know if that’s smart.”

She shrugged. “Let’s hear what he has to say. I want to know more about Rick, what he’s supposedly doing.”

Supposedly. From the cop’s interest in him, it looked like Rick was in pretty deep. But it made sense to get as much information as possible.

The cop came back to the table and returned our IDs to us. “Okay, everything checks out.” He paused. “I can’t tell you anything that’s part of the investigation, but I can give you the big picture—what’s already out there. Let me get some water first.” He got up from the table and returned with a plastic cup. “Okay, bear with me, I got to go back a little bit. You hear this, you’ll understand why we’ll need your nephew to cooperate.”

I nodded.

“How much do you know about opioids?”

“You mean heroin?” I said.

“Well, heroin is just part of it. Opioids—pain pills—are the biggest drug problem we’ve ever had. And created by the big pharma companies, pretty much.”

“Of course,” Marie said. “Overprescription. Not exactly a new thing.”

He took a gulp of his water. “Sort of. Few decades ago, the drug companies started selling pain pills—like OxyContin—and created a massive marketing program. Bad back? Here’s a scrip for oxys. Chronic pain? Take more oxys. Now you got a generation hooked on pills. Then the damn pill mills popped up—so you got even more addicts out in the boonies.”

Marie said, “Yeah, but the government shut down those clinics. That’s what I—”

“Not exactly,” he said. “Feds wised up and slapped the drug companies with massive fines, so they reformulated the pills. Can’t be crushed up and abused as easily. The pills are still around, but tougher to get and way more expensive. So what do the addicts do? Start taking heroin—same drug, different form.”

Marie looked at Dennis intently, like she wanted to argue with him. I wondered if Dennis smoked and if I could get a cig.

“You got an increasing demand for the stuff,” he continued. “But the supply hadn’t kept up. So some Mexican cartels start to focus on heroin instead of weed. But it’s not the white powder dope—it’s black tar, looks and feels like a Tootsie Roll. Easier to make and smuggle. Here’s the kicker: it’s ten times more potent than powder. We’re seeing black tar that’s seventy-five percent pure. China White heroin back in the day was maybe five percent.”

“Holy shit,” I muttered. Marie kept quiet.

“It gets worse. One of the cartels developed a new distribution system—a better method to get the drugs to the customers. They started using a decentralized structure. More efficient, more profitable.”