“Now, either the cooks were extraordinarily neat and tidy and cleaned up their precursors before starting to cook-very unlikely-or the chemicals came with the labs,” Wyler said. “We did find remnants of trailers and hitches and stuff like that at a few of the sites, but that’s not uncommon and we didn’t think much of it at the time. We think it’s a vital clue now. We now feel we’re talking about a large, portable, self-contained reactor unit, mounted on a trailer and possibly disguised as a U-Haul or a home-built trailer.”
Wyler let that information sink in a moment, then continued: “Now, as to the victims. With the exception of a relatively small but nonetheless unfortunate number of civilian casualties, it looks like the right folks got dead in those explosions. Get this: Of those identified so far, about seventy percent of the fatalities were Satan’s Brotherhood members or associates. Over a thousand identified casualties. And all these DOA’s were found well outside ground zero of the blasts, farther than fifty yards or so. That means anyone within fifty yards was probably Crispy Critters the nanosecond that lab went up. Although we’ll probably have no way of knowing for sure for several months, if ever, it’s safe to say that most of the Brotherhood members were closer than fifty yards to ground zero, and that the current Brotherhood death toll is just a fraction of the actual number. We could be talking about three, four, even five thousand casualties, guys-maybe up to eighty percent of the total known Satan’s Brotherhood membership in the state of California.”
“Hol-ee shit,” someone exclaimed.
“Well, what are we sitting around here for?” said someone else, exchanging high fives with the detectives around him. “Let’s get the hell out of here and go to Sammy’s for some breakfast. Or better yet, I think I saw McLanahan’s open for the graveyard shift. Let’s go and get us a few pops and celebrate!…”
Tom Chandler rose to his feet. “Seventy-three children were killed in those explosions-you want to invite the parents of those kids to McLanahan’s to celebrate with you?” he asked. The celebrating agents fell silent. “Whoever did this didn’t kill all those Brotherhood bikers for our benefit-whatever they got planned for this city has got to be far worse than what the Brotherhood could do to us. Keep your damn minds on the task at hand: Let’s find whoever did this and put his ass in jail, soonest.”
“We didn’t mean any disrespect, Captain,” one of the sergeants said. “But we been workin’ twelve-, sixteen-, some of us even twenty-hour shifts. We’re burned out.”
“The chief is counting on us to get a handle on this,” Chandler said.
A moan of resignation went up from the cops in the conference room. Police Chief Barona was currently in Washington, D.C., testifying to some Senate subcommittee on law enforcement about the need for more federal funding for law-enforcement programs for cities, citing the statewide meth-lab explosions as perfect examples of a crime rate almost out of control. If he did get any funding, it would probably be for yet another federal grant research study or education program, not for more cops. And it was a sure bet that the chief wasn’t manning a command post or sifting through bags of body parts at three A.M. looking for clues.
“All right, that’s enough of the whining,” Chandler said. “You’ll all have one hour for Code Seven after this meeting-and I mean one hour, not an hour and a half, and not at home either-and then I want your butts back out on the street. Start hitting up your informants…”
“The CI’s have scattered, Captain,” one of the officers said. “The streets are empty.”
“I don’t need excuses, I need results,” Chandler said irritably. “Find out where your CI’s have gone and go talk to them. Bump up the cash offers, but get some solid info from your informants. And update me on the status of your surveillance operations. Obviously the Brotherhood surveillance ops went bye-bye, but find out which surveillance jobs are still standing, and why. If a Brotherhood lab site or hangout or a lab site in a Brotherhood area of town didn’t blow up, I want a surveillance set up there.
“Don’t forget to call up BNE and any of the surrounding agencies and get the flow of information going again. I know there’s been no exchange of information while the crime-scene investigations were being conducted, but now that agencies are wrapping up the crime scenes and starting the investigations, I want that information now. Everyone got that?” Nods all around. “Anything for me?”
“Yeah,” said one of the sergeants. “There’s a rumor going around that overtime is being cut. What’s the story, Captain?”
Chandler took a deep breath, then looked directly at his troops. “Rumor looks like it’ll be true this time. We blew through the first two quarters’ overtime budget like it was nobody’s business, and emergency procedures went into effect. Starting tomorrow, mandatory flex time up to forty hours, then mandatory comp time. No overtime will be authorized beyond that, so don’t ask and don’t put it on your time cards. All personnel may have to go on staggered twelve-hour shifts if this keeps up much longer. Until further notice.”
“No overtime!” the cops wailed, almost in unison. “The sheriff’s department gets feds to help them with their investigation, and we get sixteen-hour shifts with no overtime? That sucks, Captain!”
“Listen, everybody has to sacrifice until we get a handle on whoever planned these meth-lab booby traps,” Chandler said wearily. “This is an emergency situation. Update your surveillances, beat the bushes for your CI’s, gather some tight info, and make some arrests. Pronto.” He knew it was not much of a pep talk, but right now Thomas Chandler wasn’t feeling too peppy himself. “Anything else for me?” There were no replies this time, just exasperated expressions. Chandler turned and left, feeling the icy pinpricks of his troops’ anger jabbing at his back.
Deanna Wyler rubbed her eyes as she waited for the muttering to die down. “Okay, listen up,” she said, opening up her notes. “I looked through all your recent surveillance reports and cross-checked them with the locations of those lab explosions. Two glaring holes: the new Rosalee suspected lab, and the Bobby John Club. Intelligence has filled in a couple of holes for us and I think it’s time to revisit those two locations. If someone was going to target Brotherhood labs or hangouts, I’d have thought it would’ve been those two places. Both are still standing, right?” The sergeants nodded.
“I know we had a surveillance set up on the Rosalee location before, but we terminated it before the explosions because we needed the manpower elsewhere and because we were starting to see more normal activity there-kids, yard work, pet dogs that weren’t guard dogs, et cetera. Intelligence says there’s a pit bull in the yard again, and they haven’t seen the kids that were playing there. They may be cooking and dealing again. Restart that surveillance again tonight.
“Let’s restart surveillance on the Bobby John Club too,” Wyler went on. “We stopped it after that weird bar-fight incident where someone set off a gas grenade, because the place has been nearly deserted. But informants tell us it’s open for business again. I’d think that any surviving Brotherhood members would steer way clear of it in case whoever set up the booby-trapped portable labs goes hunting for survivors, but no one ever gave the Brotherhood a lot of credit for brains. I want to know who goes in and out of there; I want to know which Brotherhood members are still breathing, and I want them brought in for questioning.
“I don’t think we’ll have any trouble getting wiretap warrants, so write ‘em up and I’ll help you get them signed,” Wyler said. “I’ve got some retired folks and some volunteers who are going to come in and help us write up warrants and help around the office too, and we’ve even got retired judges resworn in and volunteering to sign warrants. So at least a little help is on the way.”