A Snippet from Caught in a Web
I wanted to give you a snippet from my book, Caught in a Web. It is the first book I wrote after I wrote the Lives Trilogy, and it deals with gangs and drugs, particularly drug overdoses from a mix of heroin and fentanyl. At the time I wrote the book, fentanyl was just coming into its own as lethal and deadly, especially as it was mixed with heroin.
Caught in a Web deals with cops trying to shut down a drug ring before MS-13, a violent gang that controls the drug, sex, and weapons traffic from Chicago to Door County Wisconsin and Northern Wisconsin. My story takes place in Waukesha, Wisconsin just like my other stories.
In this scene, we find a frustrated and tired Detective Jamie Graff, who is heading up the investigation. He is having no luck so far in tracking down the source of the drugs, and at this point, has no idea MS-13 is in town searching for the same thing, but in a deadly way to send a message. Graff has enlisted the help of two veteran detectives, Pat O’Connor and Paul Eiselmann, and the three of them are sitting in a diner discussing the case and the lack of evidence.
CHAPTER 41
There were times when Jamie wondered if he was tripping down the bramble path scraping up the palms of his hands and tearing holes in his knees as he crawled along blindly. There were other times he felt like he was speeding along the autobahn in a shiny red convertible with the top down on a sunny day at a hundred and twenty miles an hour. Police work was like that. As John Denver used to sing, Somedays are diamonds, somedays are stones. And Jamie understood the thing about police work was that he never knew from day to day or from moment to moment if he was on the bramble path or the autobahn. At this point in the investigation, he had the sick feeling he was on the bramble path and didn’t know how to get off.
He had worked this case for what- two or three days? And he still didn’t know what he had or where he was going. Shit, it felt like two or three years. When kids died ugly deaths, it always felt like years, not days.
The three cops didn’t say a word. The closest thing to a word was a grunt from O’Connor. He’d read something, run a hand through his long hair and grunt. More like a “huh” or an “um.” Something like that. The first couple of times he did that, Jamie would look up expecting a comment or an insight. Instead he got nothing, so after the fourth or fifth time, Jamie didn’t look up at all.
Jamie rubbed his eyes. He was tired of reading and frustrated from not finding much to work with. He just wanted to get home to Kelly and Garrett, eat a nice dinner and drink a beer.
“Okay, what do we have? Tell me one of you found something useful.”
Eiselmann said, “I don’t see anything here you don’t see. I mean, we have Kevin Longwood’s prints and DNA in the building. Hell, they were easy enough to match, since his prints and DNA were all over his car. So one thing we know for sure is that he was involved in at least two deaths, probably more.”
“And,” O’Connor started and stopped. “And my gut tells me that whoever killed him is the other set of prints in the building and in the car. Whoever it is, I’m guessing it’s a boy, not a girl and probably the same age as Longwood. I’m betting they were friends. He has prints on the syringe and on the rubber thingy and prints all over Longwood’s car.”
“Tourniquet. The rubber thingy is called a tourniquet,” Eiselmann said.
Ignoring their banter, Jamie asked, “But we don’t know who it is?”
“Yet,” Eiselmann said pointing a pen in his direction. “If we run the school security tapes back, we find who hangs with Longwood, find a way to get his prints and we get him. We watch the places in the notes given to Jeremy and I’m willing to bet our guy shows up. It’s only a matter of time.”
Speaking to Eiselmann, O’Connor said, “You don’t believe just one kid and Longwood were behind all of this, do you?”
Eiselmann shook his head and said, “Nope. But if we find the kid who killed Longwood, he’ll lead us to whoever is behind it all.”
—
“This important, nail-biting crime thriller about MS-13 sets the bar very high. One of the year’s best thrillers.” –Best Thrillers
“…the right blend of tension and intrigue …” Midwest Book Review
It is a PenCraft Literary Award Winner and won several other awards. Caught in a Web is available in Kindle, Paperback, and Audio formats. Here is the link to Amazon: https://amzn.to/2GrU51T
I would love to hear what you think, so please drop your comments below. I hope you check Caught in a Web out, and I appreciate you following along on my writing journey. As always, until next time …
