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Of course, there was still plenty of time for things to go south.
I took the reins for a little bit, asking questions about the club’s infrastructure and the business plan. Fox and I had discussed this beforehand. Since I was relatively new to the team, it wouldn’t throw up as many red flags if I asked a couple of invasive questions about their business, under the guise of newbie mistake if they felt things got too personal. Armed with the understanding that there was an OD victim who’d partied with them in the VIP room, I made sure to dig deeper on that.
“So anyone’s allowed back into the VIP room so long as they have a golden wristband?”
“Correct,” Dylan replied. As time was ticking by, I noticed the answers being supplied getting shorter and shorter.
I recalled seeing Matt’s golden VIP wristband back in the hospital, which added even more credence to his story.
“Have you ever seen anyone take Dragon in the VIP room?”
“No, we haven’t.” Dylan’s eyes were set, conviction in his answer. Either he was a spot-on liar, or he truly hadn’t seen anyone take the drug.
I was leaning toward the former.
“If someone does something behind our backs, that’s a different story,” Pierre offered. “It isn’t like we are babysitting them, you know?”
Dylan nodded before checking his phone. It had been buzzing throughout our interview, but it wasn’t until now that he checked it. We must be losing him.
“Sorry.” It was Lucien. “I’m going to have to take a break. My head feels like it’s splitting.”
“Of course,” Dylan said first, not giving anyone else a chance to speak. He rose with Lucien and walked with him to the nearby bedroom.
“Here, would you two like to see the security footage we have?” Pierre opened the laptop in front of him and clicked around a few times before turning the screen toward us. “Unfortunately, the tech guys corrupted something and could only recover a couple hours from a random Friday.”
As disappointed as I felt, I couldn’t show it. Fox seemed to have a harder time controlling his emotions.
“What the hell, Pierre, who’d you hire? A pair of preschoolers? I get kids are using tech younger and younger these days, but come on.”
Pierre didn’t seem to like that joke as much as I did. “I’m working on hiring new ones,” Pierre answered curtly before pressing Play on his laptop, his finger slamming hard on the Enter key.
We watched some of what was available, seeing nothing that gave us any red flags. The footage was clear and the club wasn’t dark enough to hide faces, but some of the angles did have large and obvious blind spots. Plus, with only three or so hours of footage, this was basically useless.
“Do you have this on a flash drive?” I asked, feeling disappointment give way to frustration.
“Yes, I do. I can give you a copy.”
“That’d be great,” I said. Fox was still crouched over the laptop, scrubbing through the little amount of footage we had. I scanned the room, seeing plenty of proof that three men were calling this hotel suite their temporary home. There were discarded piles of clothes, open pizza boxes, half-empty champagne bottles, and unwashed cups and plates piling on a tray meant to go back down to the kitchens.
Something sitting against the far wall caught my attention. It was a large watercolor painting of… the beach? A porta-potty? It was difficult to tell—whoever painted it did a shit job. It wasn’t the painting that grabbed me though, it was the three bold letters sticking out in the corner.
L.M.F.
Fox coughed, looking up at me. He followed my gaze.
“That’s a beautiful painting,” I said. “Who painted it?”
“Oh that?” Pierre looked over his shoulder. “It’s Lucien’s. We took some art classes, and he’s been practicing ever since.” He looked back to us, hands on the laptop. “Practicing.”
“His signature’s interesting.” I squinted my eyes, pretending as though I couldn’t clearly make it out.
“Oh yeah, L.M.F.? Let Me Fuck?” Pierre caught us by complete surprise, his French accent only added to the words.
“Joking, joking,” he said, laughing. “Le Mans, France. He wanted to get artsy, thought signing his name was too typical, so he chose his hometown instead.”
Huge red flags are now on the field.
There it was. The link we were looking for. Lucien used the same exact letters we saw in the drug dealer’s text message.
This was big. I felt a surge of excitement rise inside me.
I had to tamp it down. Pierre couldn’t see that Fox and I had just landed on one of our biggest leads yet. I had to remember these three were still a unit, and if one was up to something, there was a strong possibility the other two were also involved.
Except, if Dylan were involved, why would he hire us?
