Page 35 of The Evening Wolves

Auggie made a beckoning motion. “Let me see the other ones.”

Emery produced his burner phone and displayed the close-ups of the shooting victims from the meth lab. Auggie shook his head, his mouth curling into a moue as he studied first the smaller man, then the bigger one. When he swiped to the woman, though, he said, “That’s her!”

“That’s who—” Jem began, and then he said, “No fucking way. She was at the club too. Real hard-ass vibe. She had a bunch of guys hanging around.”

“Her name’s Ingra—I don’t know, Ingra something. I looked her up when we were trying to find Shaniyah. Theo, remember?”

Theo nodded slowly. “I remember seeing her. I don’t remember the charges, but I remember thinking she looked like she was Ozark Volunteers. Or maybe a motorcycle club—didn’t we talk about that?”

But Auggie only stared at the phone and said again, “Holy shit.”

“Something’s wrong,” Shaw said.

“You can say that again,” North muttered.

“What does this mean?” Tean said. “Why would they shoot each other?”

“An excellent question,” Emery said, cutting his eyes to John-Henry.

“It could be a lot of reasons.” John-Henry spread empty hands. “They had some sort of deal, and it went wrong. Or they were tweaking, and things got out of control.”

Emery made a noise of dissent and shook his head. “Occam’s razor.”

“See,” North said, “he’s finally starting to get all growly and bad ass, and then he opens his mouth and something like that dribbles out.”

Jem asked, “For those of us who don’t know, probably just me, what is Occam’s razor? And is it better than my Wahl?”

Emery gave him a flat look to show what he thought of the second question, and then he said, “Occam’s razor: all things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. In this case, John is positing that a man known to be connected to the Cottonmouth Club, who was involved in a shooting that involved a woman connected to the Cottonmouth Club, had some separate criminal activity going on unrelated to this attempt to frame John. That means multiplying all sorts of factors. Instead, it’s simpler—and more likely—that everything is connected.”

“Ree—”

“Why wouldn’t it be? Since the beginning, we’ve known that whoever was behind this operation, they were involved in a range of criminal activities. We knew that they had a wildlife trafficking operation. Jem also found controlled substances, legal documents, jewelry. Criminal organizations involved in human trafficking don’t usually limit themselves to moving people illegally from place to place. Drugs, sex work, and yes, animals. It’s all connected. In this case, we’re seeing the drug angle—the Ozark Volunteers are one of the major producers and distributors of methamphetamine in the state.”

Jem raised his hand.

“Yes?” Emery said.

Jem pointed at Tean.

Tean shifted in his seat, shrugged, and said, “I don’t know if this means anything, but—but when I reached out to some colleagues this morning, they told me they’ve had a lot of strange reports.”

“Strange how?”

“Well, someone found a tiger cub in a dumpster.”

Shaw opened his mouth, and Jem rushed to say, “It was fine. Someone found it before it froze to death.”

“A python in a woman’s pantry,” Tean said. “A macaw flew right into this old man’s window. It’s not unheard of for people to release exotic animals once they realize that they don’t have the means or knowledge to adequately care for them. Every once in a while, you’ll hear about someone spotting a lion walking across their yard, something crazy like that. But this has been…a lot.”

Everyone was silent for a moment.

“What does that mean?” Theo asked.

Tean shrugged. “Whatever it is, it seems like something has changed.”

Emery opened his mouth, but John-Henry spoke first. “I understand your point, Ree. We’ve discussed this before; I agree that the drugs and the wildlife trafficking, they’re all tied together with what’s going on. But I’m trying to say there are a lot of possibilities, and we shouldn’t jump to conclusions.”

“And I’m saying that it’s ineffectual to pretend we don’t know the most likely possible explanation for what happened last night.”

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