A/N: Hey, I've got half-yearly's for everything coming up next week, which is sooo bad. Anyways I know this chapter is a bit short, but I should have another one up in a couple of days!
Chapter 15- So Simple
After being given authorization from U.S. Department of Justice: Office of Enforcement Operations, Sharon Gallagher had gone into the Witness Protection Program on the 10th of May 1985. The OEO authorizes people to go into this program who at risk as a result of testifying against drug traffickers, terrorists or organized crime members. She was formerly known as Stacie Geldon. The decision had been made to place her into the program after her sister's murder. On top of her body as a note that stated- ' If you testify the same will happen to you'. Regardless she had decided to go ahead with it and was placed into the Witness Protection Program. Scotty was running the information from the pages through his head and trying to figure out what it had in common with Lilly's disappearance. So far he hadn't found anything that would be of any use to them but he kept on reading.
She had been part of a small drug-dealing ring and has slowly been working her way up in the gang. She had flipped out one night though after she discovered that drugs weren't the only things they were smuggling in. There were people too. One night they had decided to let her in on this part of their operation since she had successfully passed the rest of their little tests of faith. They had taken her to the place were the people were being held only to find that they were all dead. The shipping container they had been in had run out of air and they had died of oxygen deprivation. Stacie had grown up in a bad part of town and had seen a couple of dead bodies in her time as a result. There was always gang related shootings and drug OD's in her part of the town, she had grown up with it and learned to accept it. But this was different. There were so many of them, all crammed into such a small space. She was shocked when she observed that the lack of oxygen hadn't been the only thing that had lead to the death of these people. Two of them, in the far corner had been shot in the head. Frankie, the right hand of the group's leader, saw her starting at it and pointed out that this was a 'routine process', kill one or two so the others don't get any ideas about causing trouble. That's when she had decided to get out, and to take their whole operation down with her. It had been one thing for her to be involved in importing and dealing cocaine, but it was another thing completely for her to be involved in mass murders.
After her first few discreet meetings with a couple of cops, she was convinced to hang in their for a while, so she could find out about their next imports before getting out. She went along that night and for show was arrested so they wouldn't get any suspicions about who had ratted them out. Well that hadn't worked exactly, Scotty thought to himself. Someone had told. So much for the records being sealed.
Scotty went through the records of the guys she helped put away. A couple of them had only been on minor charges, so he focused on the bigger ones. And he found them. Two of the guys had been charged with all the same offences including- possession with intent to distribute, assisting in illegal immigration and endangering the lives of others. There was another, more interesting charge he noted closer to the bottom. Murder. The charges had been dropped after the only witness turned up dead. These two mean looked like they must be the ones who had killed the two immigrants on the boat. Forensics wouldn't have exactly helped them much, as the gun they had used was probably somewhere at the bottom of the sea. They knew it had only been one gun as the bullets had matching striations.
The two men in question were Frankie Logan and Dennis Valentini. Frankie had been released six months ago and Dennis, three weeks. Who wanted to bet that they had met up the second Dennis was out? But some aspects of this weren't making sense. Neither of those men could have killed Sharon; they were both in prison at the time. He looked back through Sharon's statement and found something interesting. Frankie had been the right hand man, Dennis the left. Their leader had remained out of prison, his name not even getting called up in the investigation. Frankie and Dennis had remained faithful to their former employee.
The man on the phone had said it had to do with Sharon Gallagher's case. Were these the men that had Lilly? If they were, Scotty knew that these guys wouldn't hesitate about her appearing on the growing list of people they had helped die.
He briefed the others on what he had found out regarding Sharon Gallagher. Their next step was to find out who knew about her new identity. Scotty got in contact with Special Agent Kurt Roberts and asked him to send over a list of everyone who knew about Stacie's change of identity and then a list of everyone he'd had to contact a few days before when he had gotten Scotty the information about the case.
The information arrived by fax about half an hour later, and Scotty skimmed through both reports, trying to see if anyone had been involved both times. No one had been involved in both of them; most of the people involved in the original change of identity had retired.
He sighed and leaned onto his desk. He needed Lilly here. She saw these things from a completely different point of view. 'But that's not all,' said an annoying little voice at the back of his mind. 'You want her, its that simple,' it uttered to him in an annoying know-it-all tone. Simple? How was it simple? How could anything as complicated as love is described as simple, he thought? Wait a sec. Love? Was that what it was? He knew that he liked her and that he was attracted to her but he had never thought of it as loving her. Loving Lilly. Could it be so simple?
