Y/n's POV
"I found a crowbar in the basement and the boiler room door pried open. It looks like the crew holed up there," Adam disclosed.
"Well, my best guess is that there was a lookout in the lobby. When he saw me and Ruz, he geared up with the others and crashed the party," Kevin put forth.
"The Tahoe was stolen, probably stashed there last night. This rip was well planned out. These guys knew what they were doing," Hailey spoke.
At that moment, I saw one of our witnesses trying to leave the scene, so I left the team to catch up to her. Apparently she had alerted Jay that a car was about to crash into him, and she saw the whole crime occur, so I wanted to extend my thanks and get her statement.
"Hey, miss, will you hold up a sec?" I call out and jog over to her. "I just wanted to say thank you for helping my husband out earlier. Both of us appreciate it. I also need to get a witness statement from you before you leave."
"How about you tell me your name instead?" the woman countered. "Is that your boss back there? What's his name? What are the names of your other team members? Which unit are you?"
I frowned. "I'm sorry, I'm a little confused. What's the problem here?"
"Your team shot up a street, let a man bleed out, and the big, bad guys got away. That's the problem," the woman responded. "You want my statement? That was it."
The attitude I was getting from this woman was not something I wanted to deal with today. Our drug deal was supposed to go down smoothly, and our case should have been over by now. But since there was a rip right in the middle of it, our case just got even bigger. So I was a little cranky too, but I hadn't acted on it. Well, until now, anyways.
"All right. I'm Detective Y/n L/n," I introduce and turn to point out my team members. "My immediate supervisor is right over there. Sergeant Hank Voight. The man you alerted about the car earlier is my husband Detective Jay Halstead. Then you've got Officer Adam Ruzek, Officer Kevin Atwater, Detective Hailey Upton, and Officer Kim Burgess. We're the Intelligence Unit, and we work out of District 21. You happy now?"
"Okay, Detective L/n, can you tell this officer to move her car so I can get the hell out of here?" the woman questioned.
"Sure. Move the car, would ya," I order the nearest police officer. With that, I turned around, and with an eye roll that the woman couldn't see, I headed back over to my team.
"Listen, we work this rip hard. We've got two bodies, two stolen kilos, and 100Gs of our city's money on the street. It's not a good look," Voight confessed.
"Sarge, it took us a month to get in with Los Temidos," Kim pointed out. "These guys don't talk to anybody outside their gang, and somehow this rip crew knows exactly when the buy's going down?"
"Right. Find out how," Voight instructed. Back at the district, Adam and Kevin were interviewing Manny while the rest of us gathered what little information we had. When they exited the interview room, we met up in the bullpen to discuss what we knew.
"Manny said he may have mentioned the fent deal to these four fine individuals in Los Temidos. Two of them are from the 34th Street faction, the other two are from the 29th and the 23rd," Adam shared.
"Right, so we're just gonna keep tracing them, Sarge. Try to figure out who they may have been talking to, look for a leak, try to check socials. But so far, it feels like an inside job," Kevin stated.
"It makes sense," Adam agreed. "Manny only talked to his own people. Los Temidos has 2,000 members in its eight factions, and they're well known for their violence and infighting."
"Kim, what do you got?" Voight asked.
"Nothing," Kim replied. "No leads on the scene and no DNA on the crowbar."
"Ballistics said no match on the slugs either," Jay added.
"I got a hit on PODs," Hailey announced. "After the rip, the Tahoe went straight to a block with a known chop shop."
"Okay, good. You and Y/n move on it," Voight commanded. At the chop shop, Hailey and I found the owner, but he wasn't proving to be any help.
"Look, that's what I'm saying. I have no idea about a Tahoe," the man admitted. "If it was dropped off, I wasn't here."
"Wow. That's convenient," Hailey commented. "You know we're gonna talk to every single one of your employees, right?"
"Go ahead. But none of them speak English," the owner told us.
"Esto no es un problema. Yo habo espanol (That's not a problem. I speak spanish)," I relay to the owner. "I'm near fluent, actually. Now, I don't suppose you have any cameras set up in here."
The owner shook his head. "Nah. Who would want to see that?"
"Cops would," Hailey answered. I then glanced back outside, and I just so happened to catch sight of the woman from the crime scene earlier. As soon as she saw me, she took off, but I had already caught her license plate.
"5021, I need you to run a plate," I say into my radio. "King 7 John 135."
"Hey. What's going on?" Hailey quizzed.
"That was the woman from this morning," I declare and hold my radio up to my lips again. "Hey, Sarge, I think we got something."
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"Anna Avalos, born and raised Little Village. She's got one kid, a five-year-old boy. There's no father attached to the birth certificate. But her family, very deep with Los Temidos," Kevin informed us.
"And Anna's pop's had been in the joint since she was ten," Adam added. "He's never getting out. Her mom dealt for Los Temidos, died when Anna was 17. Her brother, Miguel, was hooked on a 20 year armed robbery charge. He got shanked to death in prison in 2017."
"Anna got linked up further after that. Started dealing, got pinched in 2018, did time, played nice in Menard, got out a year ago, got her kid out of foster care," Hailey listed off.
"She's been an active CI for the DEA for six months. Her handler says her tips are solid and she's well placed within Los Temidos, trusted because of her family. Her handler also says she's slippery though," Kim put forth. "She parcels out intel for maximum profit."
"Did we get an explanation as to why she was at the rip and the chop shop?" I implore. "Because whatever it is, it's not gonna be good."
"Look, we spent weeks lining up Manny and this buy/bust, and I don't see a single Los Temidos with his photo crossed out. Maybe Anna can get us the rip crew. Maybe she can even get us another bite at the apple," Voight suggested. "And she's a pro CI. I mean, if she wasn't slippery, she'd be dead and gone. Let's use her."
Voight went and talked to Anna, and she gave us a name. Luis Cortes. He was the leader of our rip crew. Anna also told us that there was supposed to be another rip today at noon, and she gave us the address. Currently, we were all stationed around the address, and I was with Kevin and Adam. We were pretending that we had car trouble in order to not seem suspicious. The thing was though, we had been sitting here for quite awhile, and it didn't look like a rip was gonna be taking place.
"This is ridiculous," I grumble to Kevin, who was 'checking the engine' of our car. "They aren't gonna show up."
"Give them some time. They'll show," Kevin assured me.
"Luis is hitting a different target," Voight disclosed over the radio. "I'm sending the address now."
"Finally some action," I mutter and climb back into the car. By the time the three of us got there though, the offenders were gone. It was weird though, because when I got to the scene, I could sense something was off, but I didn't actually figure out what it was until I glanced over at Intelligence's group of vehicles. "Oh....Jay's gotta be pissed right now."
"Why?" Adam inquired.
I gestured to Jay's vehicle. "They shot at his truck and put bullet holes in its windshield. Do you know how much Jay loves that truck? Almost as much as he loves me. And I'm not kidding when I say that." Once the crime lab showed up, we got an ID on our dead guy. Jose Vazquez, multiple priors, including arm robbery and aggravated assault. He did some time with Luis Cortes, and apparently their connection went back further than that. However, we still had no intel on the third crew member.
"What the hell happened?" Jay pushed. "Did Anna give you false info?"
Voight shrugged. "It's possible."
"No, it's more than possible. She wanted our money and a cut from the rip. She's playing you," Jay seethed.
"Well, I will find that out," Voight claimed. "In the meantime, keep working the scene and find something actionable."
"Hey," I breathe out as I jogged to catch up with Jay. "Sorry about the truck. We can got and get it fixed as soon as this case is over. You okay?"
"I'm fine," Jay responded curtly. "I just need some space. Excuse me." As Jay walked off, I was approached my Hailey.
"He still ignoring you too?" Hailey asked.
I sighed. "Yeah. And I don't know what else to do. All I can think is to give him space, but it's all I've been doing, and it's not working. We just need to talk things out, and hopefully we can do it soon."
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"Anything?" Voight questioned.
Kevin shook his head. "Nope. Not yet."
"No leads from the scene and nothing from the chop shop. We even ran at Manny again but got nothing," Hailey shared. "The SA also said no to the warrant for Luis because we don't have enough."
"Then we're using Anna again," Voight decided. "She'll meet Luis and get him talking about the rips. I can confirm that she is not playing both sides. She's just too motivated. Wire her up and let's go." Our second try with Anna also didn't go too well. Luis pulled a gun, and things got out of hand, so we had to send in patrol and have them claim that someone nearby heard someone screaming, so they had to check it out. Back at the district, we were all sitting at our desks, desperately trying to find something. "Tell me we've got something else."
"We think Pablo's our third crew member. His height and weight are a match, and he's got two priors, but he's no longer on parole," I put forth.
"We're digging into him now. His phone and financials look clear, so he probably has a burner. I'm tracking him on social media as we speak," Kim added and typed away at her computer, just as Voight's phone buzzed.
"Anna's got something," Voight asserted.
Jay scoffed. "You can't be serious. She's unreliable. Every tip that she has given us has almost gotten us or her killed. We should not be using her."
"We've got nothing else," Voight reminded him. "So we're using her." Once Voight entered his office, I walked over to Jay, who was just about to sit down, and stopped him.
"Come here for a second," I request and lead him all the way down to the observation room. "Okay, you need to talk to me."
"Y/n, I don't want to do this right now," Jay confessed.
"I don't really care, because we're not doing this anymore. It's clearly not working. You're angry, Jay. I get that. You should be. But you're barely talking to Hailey, you're ignoring me, and you're sniping at Voight," I list off. "It's the wrong way to handle this."
"Is that what you think? Can I not have a real argument against him? I've got to back him all the time because that's what you do?" Jay quizzed.
"No, I don't," I oppose. "And just because I didn't back you when you were challenging him does not mean I'm taking his side. I make my own choices now, just like I did when I decided to not tell you what happened that night with Roy. Yes, I hid all of that from you, but I'm still me. I'm still the same person you met years ago when I had just transferred over from Homicide. I'm still the same person you fell in love with, but you're acting like I'm not. You barely talk to me, and I don't know what to do anymore. I-I can't take this."
"I can't either," Jay admitted. "But I am doing the best that I can with it, Y/n. And right now, this is the best that I've got." The next afternoon, Anna promised that we could catch Luis. She said that they were doing a deal together and that the dope was in the car. All we had to do was pull him over and find the drugs. Then, he'd be arrested. Adam and I were sitting in a car nearby while Hailey and Jay were riding in a patrol vehicle. It wasn't long before our radios went off.
"Patrol 2262, gonna need backup on a possible narcotics-related," Hailey spoke.
"Patrol 2262, this is dispatch. We have plainclothes in your area," Adam returned and stepped on the gas. In seconds, we arrived where Jay and Hailey had pulled over Luis and Anna, and the two of us climbed out of the car.
"What do we got, officers?" I implore.
"Narcotic odor," Jay replied. "And we don't have the gloves to check it out."
"He's also refusing to get out of the vehicle," Hailey mentioned and gestured to Luis, who was still sitting in the driver's seat.
"Sir, I'm gonna ask you one more time to step out the vehicle," Adam commanded.
"Hey, brother, this is harassment, bro," Luis complained as Adam pulled him from the car. I then pulled out some gloves from my pocket and put them on before searching the backseat of the car. It only took seconds for me to find the drugs.
"I've got a positive," I confirm and place two bricks on the roof of the car.
"That's not mine. I've never seen that before," Luis insisted. "You planted that, bitch! You planted that!"
"Hey!" Adam shouted and shoved Luis down onto the top of the patrol car, handcuffing his hands behind his back. "Don't talk to my partner that way. Lets go." Once the paperwork was finished up, I pulled on my jacket, but didn't want to go home, so instead, I sat down on the edge of my partner's desk.
"You want to head over to Molly's? First round's on me," I propose.
Adam smiled. "Yeah? Well then I can't say no, can I? Give me a few minutes to pack up and then we can head out."