Chapter 12
100 Kilograms
As Elijah began to wake up, he was overtaken by the pungent smell of manure. They were obviously in a barn. He couldn't move, because Becca and him were seated back to back, and had their arms and legs tied to their chairs. A few minutes later, as Becca was beginning to wake up, a strange looking man could be seen standing in the shadows whispering to another man. Wanting to hear what was going on, they pretended to still be unconscious.
"Have you decided what to do with them yet?" said one man.
"Isn't it obvious, they can't be allowed to tell anyone what they've seen. We've been smuggling this stuff in for Jimmy for six months, and now at the time of our big payoff, I'm not going to let some mealy-mouth lawyers get in our way," the other man said with a sense of urgency.
"I can't believe that you're talking about killing them. You don't even know what they saw," the first man said.
"They were snooping around the loading docks and I think they saw what you were doing," the second man responded.
"So that's it, we're going to kill them on your think so! I don't want that blood on my hands. We're already in enough trouble as it is with them poking around the park, let's not add to it," the first man exclaimed.
The door to the barn then slid open and a third man, whom the other two referred to as Jimmy, came into the room. Jimmy was a very tall man, dressed in dark black jeans, and spoke with a rather gruff voice.
"Have they come to yet?" Jimmy asked.
"No, that bump on the head should keep them out for a while," the first man said.
"Well you're going to have to decide what to do with them quickly because soon their disappearance will be all over the news, endangering this operation," Jimmy said.
"Well I want to kill them," the second man said, "but the genius over there thinks that they should be kept alive. He claims that he's not certain what they saw and until he knows for sure, that we ought to do nothing."
"You two boneheads are a bunch of wimps. After all that's gone on at that park in the past two months you're now afraid of killing 2 lawyers?" Jimmy said mockingly. "I'll deal with them in a few minutes, but my people are waiting, so we have some business to transact."
"Yes sir," the second man said. We did what you told us. Starting six months ago, we have gradually smuggled over 50 kg of cocaine and 50 kg of heroin into the country, in boxes of frozen hamburgers bound for the park."
"I'm interested to know how you managed to escape detection by both Canada Customs and the Toronto Police," Jimmy asked.
"Well as we said when we met you the first time, we're experts at this, as we've been doing this for a few years now. All we do is have our supplier place some cocaine and heroin into a select number of boxes, usually equaling a tenth of the boxes coming on the shipment. The boxes are interspersed around the truck, easily avoiding a spot inspection by a custom's agent. Only a well trained drug dog would be able to detect the drugs, so one of us always scouts out the border on delivery day to insure that the agents aren't employing enhanced security on commercial vehicles. We've only had one day where we've had to call off the shipment, so I think our record speaks for itself," the second man said.
"Indeed it does, although 6 months having to wait for a complete shipment is a little long in my kind of business," Jimmy said.
"It's the only way we could assure you the drugs without detection. If we were making a sale every time a shipment came in, our boss might have caught on and alerted the police, but if we stored the shipments and made one large sale, no one would become the wiser," the first man said.
"So, where are the drugs?" Jimmy asked.
Upon the request, the first man went up to the second floor loft in the barn to fetch a package of heroin and a package of cocaine. Jimmy then examined the drugs, and when they were found to be legitimate demanded that the rest be brought down.
"Only after I see some form of payment, Jimmy. I believe we had settled on $13.6 million," the second man stated.
Jimmy then popped his head out of the door and one of his men brought him a large briefcase filled with money.
"Go ahead count it. That's $5 million. My guys will show you that I have the rest, but until I get all of my drugs, you won't get a penny more," Jimmy said.
Once both men had seen that Jimmy did in fact have all of the money needed to complete the sale, they, along with Jimmy's men began unloading all of the drugs. It took about 15 minutes for the four of them to unload the 100 kg of cocaine and heroin into a small moving truck that Jimmy had parked outside.
With the movement of the drugs now completed, all that was left was for the final payment to be made.
"It was nice doing business with you guys," Jimmy said as his men began bringing in the 2 briefcases that housed the remaining money.
"Same to you," the second man said as he began counting it. "And if you ever need anymore drugs, you know who to come to."
It was about at this time that Jimmy's attention had turned from the small talk between him and the two men, to the now obviously awake Elijah.
"You fools!" Jimmy screamed. "Didn't you two idiots notice that they were awake?"
"They must have woken up while we were loading the stuff into your van!" the second man said.
Jimmy immediately ran over to Elijah and began questioning him.
"How much did you see?"
"Well besides seeing the 100 kg of drugs that was put into your van and the almost $14 million dollars you paid Kevin Craig and Tim Parker for smuggling the drugs into the country, I didn't see anything," Elijah said sarcastically.
"You have got a rather smart mouth for someone who is about to die," Jimmy said gruffly.
"You do that and you'll really be in trouble!" Becca screamed as she tried to wiggle free.
"In all seriousness," Elijah chimed in seeing that Jimmy was getting rather angry, "you'll never get away with this," referring to the two men.
"Never get away with what?" Tim asked.
"Killing Scott Taylor. Jimmy over here said that our disappearance could be all over the news by now, so the police are soon going to discover that it was you, Tim, along with your partner Kevin who were one of the last ones to see me before I was kidnapped. You can then assume that soon they'll be knocking on your door to ask some questions, maybe even with a warrant to search this barn of yours."
"They'll never find you!" Craig called out.
"Whether they find me or not, it's only a matter of time before they find out about your drug ring, how you and Tim sabotaged the ride, how you, Kevin, got the computer to malfunction and how the both of you killed Scott Taylor."
When Elijah described Scott's murder, Jimmy began looking rather nervous. "Oh they didn't tell you about that part, did they Jimmy?" Elijah said. "It's all beginning to make sense now. Scott must have found out about their drug running scheme and before he could inform the police Kevin and Tim killed him."
"That's enough man!" Jimmy screamed. "We're going to end this now!" Jimmy then reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out 9 mm handgun and began to walk over to Elijah. Just as it looked as though he was about to pull the trigger, he winked at Elijah, turned around and yelled: "Freeze! Police!"
Immediately about a dozen policemen swarmed the barn and arrested Kevin and Tim for drug smuggling. Jimmy then leaned down and began untying Elijah and Becca.
"Sorry about the deception sir, but we've been after those two for almost 3 years and I couldn't let you jeopardize its outcome. Don't worry though, I wouldn't have let them hurt you," Jimmy said.
As Elijah and Becca stood up, Jimmy introduced himself as Sergeant James Kilpatrick of the Ontario Provincial Police Narcotic's Unit. Sergeant Kilpatrick told them that he would gladly take them to the police station where they could freshen up and listen in on the questioning of the two men now in custody.
As Elijah got up, still a little bewildered, he walked toward the police car and
asked Sergeant Kilpatrick if he knew who hit him on the head. He got no response. He asked again but to no avail. A little angry, he got into the back seat of the car and enjoyed the long quiet ride to OPP headquarters. Along the way, Elijah told himself not to get discouraged, for answers would soon come if he was patient. The problem was that Elijah hated to be patient.
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