Best Laid Plans (33 page)

“We don’t want to step on your toes, doctor.”

He waved them off. “No interagency bull crap from me, boys. Our sheriff thought you might want everything, already signed the paperwork so as I don’t interrupt his poker night.”

“Did you search his body? Any ID?”

“Pulled out a wallet. No ID inside, but there are cards and photos, you might be able to find out who it is. We pulled prints from his fingers, they’re with the sheriff’s department. Probably be scanned tonight.”

“Anything else?” Brad asked. “Identifying marks? You mentioned tattoos over the phone.”

“Got a couple of tats. I photographed the visible ones, but like I said, we haven’t stripped and cleaned the body.” He zipped up the bag and pushed the drawer back in. “I’ll call Bexar and tell them to expect the body tonight.”

“Thank you.”

The doctor walked over to his desk and opened the bottom drawer. He took out a sealed plastic bag and handed it to Brad. “That’s everything that was in the victim’s pockets,” he said. He handed a folder to Ryan. “Those are copies of the x-rays of the bullets, and the tats on his arms.”

Brad signed for the evidence, then unsealed the bag and examined the wallet.

Photos of the dead kid with what Brad assumed was his family—multigenerational, like many of the Hispanic families in the area. Grandparents, parents, siblings. This kid wasn’t that old. Twenty, tops. Brad hated that so many young men turned to gangs. Many blamed it on poverty, and that certainly had something to do with it—the allure of drug money was hard to resist. If Nicole Rollins, an educated, middle-class federal agent was attracted to it, why did he expect a kid with nothing and a family to support would turn his back?

But it was more than simple poverty that turned these kids into drug runners. The thrill. The violence. The gang that became their family. Threats. The idea that they would somehow be bigger, more powerful. It was depressing, and Brad had long since put aside trying to reason it out.

Ryan tapped on the photo of a tat from the victim’s right forearm. “Know what that is?”

The skull, crossbones, and rosary were clear and well done. Not a cheap tat.

“The San Antonio Saints,” Brad said. “Well, shit.”

The SAS were run by a thug named Reynardo Reynoso, a wily little prick who’d been in and out of prison. Reynoso had been on Brad’s target list during Operation Heatwave two months ago. They’d never found him to haul his ass back to prison—he was wanted on multiple charges including drug distribution, attempted murder, and grand theft auto. Word on the street was that Reynoso now answered to Marquez, a rising star in the drug underworld—bigger now with Sanchez out of the picture.

“Marquez’s pet gang took out Sanchez’s people,” Brad said.

“Reynoso wouldn’t act on his own?” Ryan asked.

“Not from what I’ve heard, but I should talk to Jerry with SAPD. He knows more about the local gangs.” Brad stared at the photo, but wasn’t seeing anything as he tried to put the puzzle pieces together. “It doesn’t make sense, unless Marquez thought Tobias was rebuilding and wanted to wipe him out for good. Power grab, not retaliation like Rogan thought.”

“Maybe Rogan was wrong,” Ryan said. “No one is right all the time.”

But in the short time Brad had known Kane, he’d never been wrong. What was he missing?

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Lucy always felt at home in a crime lab, just like she felt comfortable in the morgue. There was an organization and science to everything; evidence turned clinical. There were no victims in the crime lab, only pieces of a puzzle to put together.

There’d been a time when Lucy thought she’d be better working behind the anonymity of the forensic sciences, where she didn’t have to face the victim or the criminal. Her fourteen months interning for the Medical Examiner in D.C. had been both challenging and satisfying; she could have seen herself working there for the rest of her life. It wouldn’t have been difficult, with her college degree and a master’s in criminal psychology, to continue in school, get a doctorate or a third degree in biology, and become a senior pathologist, or even go to medical school and become a medical examiner.

But ultimately, she continued down the law enforcement career path. Her unique skill set enabled her to assess crime scenes with the eye of an experienced cop instead of the rookie she was, and her background in psychology added another layer to her abilities. Crime scene investigators collected and analyzed evidence, but they didn’t extrapolate or assign the human factor. They took facts and presented them; it was up to agents like Lucy and detectives like Tia to look at the evidence and add in the human equation.

While she loved her job, she sometimes missed the lab environment, so when Tia asked if she and Barry could stop by the lab after their late lunch to look at the evidence from the Elise Hansen shooting, Lucy agreed before Barry could comment.

The evidence was still in the main lab room being processed. They all donned gloves, gowns, and booties, then approached the table where a tech named Stuart was cataloging each item. Everything had been sealed and labeled in either paper bags—if there was biological material like blood—or plastic bags.

Elise’s clothes were hanging in a special drying chamber in the corner both to dry the blood and preserve the evidence.

Stu said, “The cell phone is a burn phone. We pulled down the data from the SIM card.” He handed a printout to Tia. Lucy looked over her shoulder. There wasn’t a lot there.

“Can you shoot a copy of this to my computer and the FBI?”

“Already done,” Stu said. “Your second canvass turned up a backpack in a ditch near the shooting site. Inside was a wallet, multiple IDs, makeup, a change of clothes, condoms, a flask of vodka.” He gestured to a series of plastic bags that had been sealed and labeled. “She had over five thousand dollars in cash on her. We also found an airplane ticket stub in the wallet.”

Lucy picked up that envelope. Barry took a picture on his phone of the information.

“She flew in to San Antonio from Dallas on May thirteenth. Under the name Elise Hamilton.”

“Dallas is a major hub,” Tia said. “She could have transferred from another flight.”

“But now that we have a name and date,” Barry said, “we can contact TSA and see where she originated.”

“Did she have an ID in this name?” Lucy asked.

Stu nodded. “She had several IDs. I made copies. A Nevada ID under Elise Hansen, age eighteen; a Nevada driver’s license under Elise Hamilton, age twenty-one; an ID from Virginia under Elise Harrison, age eighteen; another ID under Elise Hansen but from Texas, age eighteen.”

“Fake?” Tia asked.

“All authentic—but there are people who specialize in creating identities. But four authentic identifications? That’s odd—at least to me.”

“Which ID was issued first?”

“Elise Hansen in Nevada is a state ID that’s three years old. The newest is Elise Hansen in Texas—it was issued three weeks ago, the day after the airline stub.”

“She got the card in three weeks?” Tia asked. “That fast?”

“One day—the day after she arrived,” Stu corrected. “I don’t know how she did it or where she bought it. It has all the marks of being a God-honest Texas ID card, but the address is fake—they couldn’t have mailed it there.”

“Meaning, someone has the ability to create authentic but fake identifications,” Brad said.

“Bingo,” Stu said. “We’re going to run tests on it, but I ran the number—that is real. She’s in the system, under that address, posted on May fourteenth.”

“Then wouldn’t there be a record of who created the ID?” Tia asked.

“Yes and no. If it was created at a DMV, we can trace which one, and we can investigate further. There was a big scandal a few years back where one of the DMVs had a ring of employees who created false identification for illegal immigrants. The state clamped down on them, but that doesn’t mean that others couldn’t slip through. It’s a lucrative business. But it could still be a perfect forgery, especially if they use the same equipment and raw material.”

“She’s from Nevada,” Lucy said.

“Because that’s the oldest ID?”

“That, and because she had a second ID with her being over twenty-one. Important if you’re hooking in bars or clubs. Nevada also has legalized prostitution,” Lucy said. “She could have started there.”

“But she’s underage,” Barry said. “Legalized means regulated.”

“And she had false identification,” Lucy repeated. “You don’t think she could be eighteen, do you, Tia?”

“Slim to no chance. I talked to the doctor—based on x-rays, he put her age at sixteen, and he says that’s within six months.”

Lucy tapped the Elise Hansen ID card. “I don’t know if that’s her real name, but I’ll bet that’s her birthday, plus two years. All these cards have her birthday on April fourteenth.” She also thought it was her real name because it was the first card issued.

Tia said, “I’ll talk to my pal at NCMEC and run with that. We can focus on Nevada and the West. It gives us a place to start. Plus, I’ll narrow the missing-persons search to Nevada and surrounding states.”

“She lied to us,” Lucy said.

Barry and Tia turned to her.

Lucy continued. “She said she’d been here a week before meeting with Worthington. But she came in
three
weeks earlier.”

“Maybe,” Tia said.

“Maybe?”

“It could be she didn’t specifically lie, she was just being vague. These girls don’t like details. They don’t want to get pinned down on anything, so if they keep it vague, they can simply say we misunderstood, or they were being general.”

Lucy wasn’t certain that was the case here, but considering that Elise had been shot and had just gone through surgery—with the requisite pain-killers—maybe she should give her the benefit of the doubt.

“What’s this?” Barry held up a plastic envelope with a sheet of stationery. On the paper was an address, date, and time. “This street is near where she was shot.”

Stu said, “That’s not the girl’s handwriting. We found a black book in her bag. We’re making a copy because there may be information in there for your investigation—dates and times and clients. Assuming the black book is hers—and I’m pretty certain it is—I can definitely say she didn’t write down this address.”

“So whoever gave her this note set her up,” Barry said.

“Is it Mona Hill’s handwriting?” Lucy asked Tia.

“I don’t know. But I have a statement she wrote at the office on an unrelated matter. I’ll check.”

Stu added, “It’s expensive stationery—watermarked as well. We have a database of paper samples, and we’re running through it now. I should know at least what brand by the end of the day. If it’s as expensive as I think it is, there’ll be very few places that sell it. There’s also an interesting threading in the paper, which tells me that it’s a special order of some sort.”

“Good job, Stu,” Tia said. “Anything else we need to know before you finish up your report?”

“I’m waiting for the ballistics report, but we should have that by the end of the day as well. I did a fingerprint comparison, and her prints match the prints found at the Worthington crime scene. We’re running her prints wide now, but so far, nothing else in the criminal database.”

Barry glanced at his phone and excused himself. He left the room to take the call.

“There’s something missing,” Lucy said.

“No, this is everything,” Stu said, looking at the log.

“Keys. There’s no key. No hotel key card, apartment key, car key. Nothing. We don’t know where she was staying. This isn’t all her stuff—she was seen in different clothes Friday night, and those clothes aren’t here or in the dryer.”

“Think she was staying with Mona?” Tia asked.

“Or with one of her girls. Gives us another cause for the warrant.” But Barry was right—it was going to be hard to convince the AUSA that they needed a warrant when their probable cause was so thin.

Barry opened the door. “Kincaid, we have to go. Now.”

He looked worried, and Barry had the straightest face of any of the agents Lucy had worked with. Something was wrong.

She thanked Tia and Stu, then followed Barry out of the building. “What happened?” Lucy asked.

“Shit if I know, but we’ve been summoned to headquarters immediately for a meeting with Naygrew and Juan. Zach’s the one who called, he didn’t know what it was about. Said it was urgent and to drop everything.”

Lucy’s phone vibrated. It was a message from Sean. She immediately showed the text to Barry.

The FBI planted the bug in Worthington’s office.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

As soon as they stepped into the headquarters they were directed to go immediately to SAC Ritz Naygrew’s office. If the meeting was connected to the bug that Sean had found—and the FBI techs had identified it as one of their own—then she wasn’t worried. Juan had approved the operation and would cover for them if they inadvertently had stepped on another agent’s case.