Friday Edition, The by Betta Ferrendelli Read Free Book Online Page B

several states.
    One part of that investigation led to indictments in several American cities this past spring. Charges included drug smuggling and illegal money laundering.
    An affidavit in that case, unsealed yesterday, outlined how the operation worked …”
     
    Her frustration mounting, Sam looked again in the trashcan, but it was empty. She glanced at the paper again. She was surprised to see that she had missed something. A name was printed on the lower right hand corner of the article and underlined twice.
    Sam recognized the familiar script. Robin had written the name, Roy Rogers.
    The Silver Screen Cowboy?
    She half-scanned the page looking for references to Trigger and Dale Evans. She had a hunch, however, that this had nothing to do with a western and this Roy Rogers was not one of the good guys.
    Sam last talked to Robin the morning of Christmas Eve. Robin said she planned to leave the office by two that afternoon. They were having an office party later that day and then she was going home. Sam knew that Robin would be home alone Christmas Eve. She closed her eyes, rested her elbows on the desk and gently massaged her temples. She didn’t know if this was a new headache, or the nagging one that had been with her since Christmas morning. She shrugged her shoulders and forced herself to sit up straight. She grabbed the key and unlocked the center desk drawer.
    A brief search netted a Denver Post newspaper article centered in the middle of the drawer. A grainy black-and-white of two Denver police officers taking a man away in handcuffs accompanied the article.
    Sam recognized the reporter’s byline, W. Robert Simmons. Just seeing the name made her lip curl slightly. Walter was his real name, but he went by his middle name. They never got along when she worked there and nothing had changed. She read the bold-faced headline that spread across the top of the page:
     
    11 Arrested, $1 million Seized in Cocaine Investigation
     
    A deckhead explained more of the article:
     
    Denver International Airport hub for transfer
    of drugs from Colombia to Cheyenne
     
    She read eagerly, her eyes moving quickly across the page. The article reported that officials were calling the drug bust one of the largest cocaine investigations in the Rocky Mountain region in recent years. Twenty-two pounds of the drug had been seized at DIA. The street value totaled more than $1 million. The seizure had come after the arrest of several street-level dealers, capping a two-year drug investigation. After entering the United States, drugs were shipped from Los Angeles to Denver and Greeley. Simmons’ article reported that the Wyoming capital was also a major destination point for the shipments.
    As Sam read, she remembered that Jonathan once told her about one of the biggest drug investigations the Metro Area Drug Task Force Unit had successfully handled. As the lead officer for the unit, Jonathan was proud of his efforts on that investigation. The Metro Area Drug Task Force investigators broke a drug smuggling ring that had been operating from the Truman County Airport.
    She remembered he said that his team of investigators had used electronic intercept devices to listen to their suspects’ conversations and learned that they were disguising drug deals with electronic codes punched into their pagers. Hard to imagine now with smart phones and the like that people still used pagers, but Jonathan always used to tell her that they had their place in the drug-dealing world.
    He told Sam they had capped that drug investigation after a tip that sixty-five pounds of cocaine could be found stashed in the cockpit of a small jet that had flown to the county airport from Latin America. Sam recalled Jonathan had told her that the informant knew everything there was to know about the smuggling operation, right down to the details of the 100-pound bricks of cocaine wrapped in black plastic and stuffed in the jet’s overhead panel. One of W. Robert