Wild Secret

everyone would know that my son was the rat? What if these people decide to retaliate?"
“We can provide protective services, and we can discuss the witness security program,” I said.
"You mean, go into hiding? Uproot our whole lives?"
"Trevor is charged with felony theft," Daniels reminded her. "He just had a birthday yesterday, I believe. That makes him an adult. This is the kind of thing that sticks with you for the rest of your life."
It was a convincing argument. Mrs. Landis wasn't thrilled about the situation. "Go ahead, Jared. Tell them."
She glared at us.
"I was riding my bike through the neighborhood. These two dudes rolled up and asked if I wanted to make $50 bucks. I told those creeps to get lost. Random dude offers a kid $50 bucks, he wants his dick sucked.”
“Jared!”
“It’s true! But the dude was like, no man, it ain’t like that. All you gotta do is swap these plates out. He pointed to April’s car and gave me the plates. I rode my bike down the street, swapped them out, and gave them April’s. He gave me $50 bucks."
"What kind of car were they driving?"
"It was a maroon Yamota with a matte black hood and a bunch of dents. The car was a piece of junk."
"You get a license plate?"
He smiled. "I sure did. I got a photographic memory. I'm gifted."
"If only you'd apply yourself," his mother chided.
Jared told me the plate number. I asked him to stay put while we looked up the information.
The vehicle belonged to Kashton Epps.
I kicked myself for not pursuing the lead sooner when Denise first mentioned him.
Kashton was no stranger to the inside of a prison. He was 24, with prior charges for drug possession, stolen property, and resisting arrest. Chuck had been the arresting officer on the possession charge, catching him with 2 kilos of cocaine. He shouldn’t have been back on the street.
Kashton’s face was crinkled with a guilty smirk in his mugshot. He had short brown hair that was receding at the temples. He had a thin brown beard and brown eyes.
His co-defendant in the possession charge was a guy named Isaac Norwood. They had both gotten off with a fine. Norwood was 23 with a similar background of possession charges, petty theft, and a DUI. He tilted his head back in his mugshot, trying to look like a badass. He had a look on his face as if to say, “This don’t mean nothing to me.”
Norwood had buzzed reddish-brown hair, a thick neck, and beefy shoulders. He had light eyes and puffy cheeks.
I printed their mugshots and took the images back to the conference room. “Do these two guys look familiar?"
Jared studied the images carefully. "Yeah. That's them."
"You’re sure?"
"No doubt about it."

41
"Coconut County!" I shouted. "We have a warrant."
Before I could finish the words, Erickson and Faulkner heaved a battering ram against the door. The jam splintered, and the door flung open. Shards of wood scattered, and the inside door handle clanked against the foyer wall, denting the drywall.
JD tossed in two flash-bang grenades. They bounced across the tile, down the foyer, and clattered into the living room.
Bam!
Bam!
The deafening blasts rattled windows, and flashes like lightning blinded the room.
I stormed in with my weapon drawn, advancing down the foyer to the living room.
The two perps sat on the couch.
Isaac Norwood reached for an Uzi on the coffee table. It rested amid an array of empty beer bottles and a kilo of cocaine. He had been cutting it with laxative and packaging it into smaller units. A nearby tray contained marijuana, and there was an ashtray full of cigarette butts. The place smelled like a mix of the above substances combined with the acrid smell of the flash-bang grenades.
A thin haze hung in the air.
The perps lived in the Windswept Dunes apartments—a trashy little complex on the northeast side of Coconut Key. There were no dunes, and Wind Damaged might have been a more appropriate name.
Kashton held a video game controller in his hands as he raised them in the air. He’d been playing a first-person shooter on a 65-inch flatscreen display in the living room. The sound filtered from massive speakers.
The thugs had a lot of nice toys in the crappy apartment. Two fully tricked-out mountain bikes, a Les Paul guitar with a flame maple top and a small practice amp, nice furniture—all paid for with cash, no doubt.
Isaac’s hand was almost an inch away from the submachine gun when he had a change of heart. Barrels of assault rifles in your face, wielded by angry cops, can have that effect. Isaac leaned away slowly and raised his hands in the air.
Within moments, we had the suspects face down on the ground, their hands cuffed behind their backs.
Erickson and Faulkner escorted them out of the apartment and down the steps to a patrol car waiting on the street.
We searched the apartment and confiscated drugs, machine guns, and fat stacks of cash. There was no doubt in my mind the ballistics from the machine guns would match the bullets that killed Chuck.
The scumbags were taken to the station, processed, and printed. They were lucky to still be breathing. Cop killers don't get a lot of leniency.
Between the two of them, I figured Kashton would be the first one to break. He looked like the softer of the two. There was more fear in his eyes. He was thin and twitchy. Isaac was a cool customer. Nothing seemed to phase him. He was disconnected emotionally.
We let them sit for a long time before entering the interrogation room. JD and I took a seat across from Kashton.
I sat there with a confident look on my face and stared at the perp for a long moment. "Okay. Here's the deal. Isaac said you were the shooter.”
Kashton’s eyes rounded, and his face tensed.
"He admitted to driving the vehicle,” I said. “He's gonna get a considerably lesser sentence."
I was making the whole thing up.
Kashton’s nervous eyes flicked about, and his