Read Online Iron River by T. Jefferson Parker - Free Book Online
Authors: T. Jefferson Parker
Tags: Fiction, thriller, Thrillers, American Mystery & Suspense Fiction, Suspense fiction, Mystery Fiction, Police, California, Mystery And Suspense Fiction, Fiction - Espionage, Police - California - Los Angeles County, Firearms industry and trade, Los Angeles County
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yanked Victor’s license a year ago,” said Ozburn. “He sold to some straw buyers plugged into the Tijuana Cartel. He sold to young mothers in east L.A. We couldn’t build a case, so we closed him down. But Victor didn’t miss a beat. Gun heaven, man, pistol paradise. Most of this iron would have hit the streets in the next three months if Victor hadn’t run up against his own product. He’d sell the beat-up shit guns to the inner-city bangers. The heavy stuff he’d sell to the cartels. The badder the bad guys, the better their guns are.”
Bly ran a metal detector through the house in search of more. Ozburn safed and photographed and logged the guns and put them into ATFE lockboxes for transport.
Hood found a briefcase stuffed with ATFE Firearm Transaction Records and appointment books under the living room sofa. He’d seen such forms before—each dealer was required to complete and sign one for each sale, then keep it in his possession. If the dealer went out of business, he was supposed to send the forms back to ATFE for storage, but Victor Davis was noncompliant. Hood wondered at a system that trusted the crooks to follow the procedures.
He set the briefcase on the kitchen counter and rifled through the forms. They’d been thrown in loose. He found dates ranging from 2004 through June of 2009, when ATFE had pulled Victor Davis’s federal firearms license. Hood knew that 2004 was when the Iron River began to swell—cartel competition, another surge of Mexican law enforcement, another hike in the prices of street drugs across the United States. Now it was a flood and he was part of the levee.
He ran one hand through the piles of forms. Hundreds of them. All makes of guns, all calibers, from .22-short derringers to 10-gauge riot guns. The buyers were mostly men, but not all. The prices ranged from fifty dollars for a used Lorcin .25 to seven hundred and fifty dollars for a new Colt .45 ACP. The names were Dalrymple and Johnson and Gutierrez and Hoades and Valenzuela and Milliken and Djorik and on and on and on. Hundreds and hundreds more.
Hood pulled up a barstool and flipped through, arranging the sales by year.
A Beretta nine for Wilson of Oceanside.
A Taurus .38 for Foxx of Commerce.
He thought about Holdstock and his car. The car gave Hood hope, but not much hope. Holdstock had had enough? Run out on his wife and daughters? Run away to Mexico in order to stretch a modest federal paycheck? What quality of hope was this?
A Savage Arms 12-gauge for Mendoza of Yuma.
A Ruger .22 for Pfleuger of Santa Ana.
A Colt .45 for Lochte of Tempe.
Mendoza of Yuma, the Ruger for Pfleuger, Lochte of Tempe. Like poetry, thought Hood: bad fucking poetry. Maybe Holdstock ran his car off the highway and CHP hadn’t found it yet. Was this hope at all?
A Pace Arms for Gowdy of Phoenix.
A Bryco for Stevens of Alpine.
More likely the Zetas had grabbed him and used his own car to take him across. If that was true, Hood thought, then he was probably beheaded by now and someone would find his body in one place and his head in another, and the Iron River would have swept away another life. The cartels had never come north to grab a U.S. lawman. Now they had accomplished what before they had never dared. The old rules were gone. The word unraveling came to Hood’s mind. He saw the ends of fresh-cut ropes twisting in a bitter wind.
A Winchester for Lopez of L.A.
A Lorcin for Barret of . . . who cares?
A Charter Arms for . . .
A .40-caliber derringer for Allison Murrieta of Norwalk, California.
Hood looked away and took a deep breath and let it out and looked back at the FTR.
Allison Murrieta/Suzanne Jones. Take your pick. He recognized her bold handwriting. It conjured her voice and the shape of her face and the feel of her body and the taste of her breath. She had been shot with that derringer in her hand, not quite ready to use it against a boy. It was ivory-handled and beautifully tooled. Now it was Hood’s gun,
Bly ran a metal detector through the house in search of more. Ozburn safed and photographed and logged the guns and put them into ATFE lockboxes for transport.
Hood found a briefcase stuffed with ATFE Firearm Transaction Records and appointment books under the living room sofa. He’d seen such forms before—each dealer was required to complete and sign one for each sale, then keep it in his possession. If the dealer went out of business, he was supposed to send the forms back to ATFE for storage, but Victor Davis was noncompliant. Hood wondered at a system that trusted the crooks to follow the procedures.
He set the briefcase on the kitchen counter and rifled through the forms. They’d been thrown in loose. He found dates ranging from 2004 through June of 2009, when ATFE had pulled Victor Davis’s federal firearms license. Hood knew that 2004 was when the Iron River began to swell—cartel competition, another surge of Mexican law enforcement, another hike in the prices of street drugs across the United States. Now it was a flood and he was part of the levee.
He ran one hand through the piles of forms. Hundreds of them. All makes of guns, all calibers, from .22-short derringers to 10-gauge riot guns. The buyers were mostly men, but not all. The prices ranged from fifty dollars for a used Lorcin .25 to seven hundred and fifty dollars for a new Colt .45 ACP. The names were Dalrymple and Johnson and Gutierrez and Hoades and Valenzuela and Milliken and Djorik and on and on and on. Hundreds and hundreds more.
Hood pulled up a barstool and flipped through, arranging the sales by year.
A Beretta nine for Wilson of Oceanside.
A Taurus .38 for Foxx of Commerce.
He thought about Holdstock and his car. The car gave Hood hope, but not much hope. Holdstock had had enough? Run out on his wife and daughters? Run away to Mexico in order to stretch a modest federal paycheck? What quality of hope was this?
A Savage Arms 12-gauge for Mendoza of Yuma.
A Ruger .22 for Pfleuger of Santa Ana.
A Colt .45 for Lochte of Tempe.
Mendoza of Yuma, the Ruger for Pfleuger, Lochte of Tempe. Like poetry, thought Hood: bad fucking poetry. Maybe Holdstock ran his car off the highway and CHP hadn’t found it yet. Was this hope at all?
A Pace Arms for Gowdy of Phoenix.
A Bryco for Stevens of Alpine.
More likely the Zetas had grabbed him and used his own car to take him across. If that was true, Hood thought, then he was probably beheaded by now and someone would find his body in one place and his head in another, and the Iron River would have swept away another life. The cartels had never come north to grab a U.S. lawman. Now they had accomplished what before they had never dared. The old rules were gone. The word unraveling came to Hood’s mind. He saw the ends of fresh-cut ropes twisting in a bitter wind.
A Winchester for Lopez of L.A.
A Lorcin for Barret of . . . who cares?
A Charter Arms for . . .
A .40-caliber derringer for Allison Murrieta of Norwalk, California.
Hood looked away and took a deep breath and let it out and looked back at the FTR.
Allison Murrieta/Suzanne Jones. Take your pick. He recognized her bold handwriting. It conjured her voice and the shape of her face and the feel of her body and the taste of her breath. She had been shot with that derringer in her hand, not quite ready to use it against a boy. It was ivory-handled and beautifully tooled. Now it was Hood’s gun,
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