“I said she wouldn’t suffer. I didn’t say you wouldn’t.”
Noel took the knife he had in his hand and cut out Vega’s tongue. Vega’s screams of agony gave Noel neither pleasure nor remorse. Murder as punishment was simply a job that needed to be done; Noel didn’t dwell on it. He stabbed the blade into Vega’s stomach up to the hilt. He’d live ten minutes. Maybe a little more, or a little less. Though Noel was certain he wouldn’t survive, he wasn’t about to take chances.
“Ignacio, stay for a while. If he’s not dead in twenty minutes, put a bullet in his head.”
Noel left with Mr. Ling. The sky was just on the lighter side of night. “Will he be alive at sunrise?” he asked.
“What time is sunrise?”
“Four fifty-eight A.M.”
“No,” Ling said.
“Do you want to wager?”
“A hundred?”
“You’re on,” Noel said.
They got into the rental car and Noel said, “Find everything you can on this Chuck Angelo. He may be a mole. And I want renewed efforts put into tracking down the boy. If he’s in federal custody, we have a problem.” Two kids-the Zamora boy and the girl Tobias failed to kill and dispose of properly-were the greatest threats to his freedom. “I want that boy and the woman in the hospital dead.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I have to take care of Agent Sonia Knight.”
“I agree.”
“She’s not going to be easy to take out.” His anger had been simmering from the minute he heard Sonia’s name. She had been a pain in the ass since the minute he laid eyes on her. He should have killed her years ago when he’d had the chance. “Mr. Ling, when we get back to the hotel, pull together whatever information we have on her. Address, adopted family, friends, habits-anything you can find.”
“Sir, if I may?”
It’s what Ling always said when he had an idea Noel wasn’t going to like.
“Go ahead.”
“A sniper’s bullet is the best way.”
Noel knew he was right. But it wasn’t what Sonia Knight knew about this upcoming transfer, it was her activities in general that negatively impacted his business. He wasn’t going to give up the entire western states because one bitch had made it her personal vendetta to stop people like him. In actuality, Noel offered poor girls a chance to get out of the farms where they were already virtually slaves by being born into the decrepit, poor villages. He removed them from the squalor they lived in and employed them. Sex was a viable commodity. They provided a good fucking-or whatever the client wanted-and Noel and those he sold to made sure they had a place to live, food to eat, and medical care. Hell, most of the girls he handled had never seen a doctor before Noel took them for brothels around the world.
Sonia Knight would never be able to stop this profitable business. It was getting stronger every day. But she could hurt his bottom line, and Noel took that very seriously.
Especially coming from her. He wanted to see her face when he killed her. He wanted her to know who he was before she went to her grave. He wanted to make her suffer for every dollar she’d cost him over the years.
Of course, he didn’t want to be caught. He was in his prime, his business thriving especially after he took over when his father died.
“Very well, Mr. Ling. We’ll do it your way.” He sighed. “Too bad I can’t take her back to Mexico and make her work off all the money she’s cost us-on her back.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The sun had barely crept over the Sierra Nevada Mountains far east of the Sacramento River when the Sheriff’s Department underwater rescue team dove to recover the first body.
Dean crossed the parking lot of the closed restaurant. One deputy muttered, “We have Sac P.D., Sac Sheriff’s, Immigration, and now the FBI.”
Not being based in Sacramento meant that Dean was not only an outsider because he was a fed, but also because he didn’t know any of the local cops. He should have brought Callahan with him, but he’d left him in charge at Jones’s house. Or, rather, the cabin that Cammarata had been staying in. Until there was confirmation as to whether Jones was in fact dead, Dean couldn’t enter his house without permission. And he didn’t see Jones’s attorney giving it.
Dean walked to the back of the restaurant and spotted Sonia. Maybe it was just seeing a familiar face, or maybe it was because she was so beautiful and regal that Dean stopped for a moment just to watch her.
She stood straight, legs slightly apart, hands behind her back, in the middle of the pier in a short-sleeved black T-shirt with police ice in large white block letters. Her hair was up and looked more red than brown in the early-morning light. Her tan face glowed from the morning chill, colder here on the river.
Her call to him had been brief. He had a million questions for her but couldn’t ask until he’d swept Cammarata’s cabin.
“Charlie broke into my house this morning. He told me Jones is dead, killed by an unknown associate, and dumped in the river behind his restaurant. Can you check on Jones at his place? If there’s anyone who’s seen him since last night? Then check out Charlie’s cabin. If he’s there, arrest him. Breaking and entering, assault on a federal police officer, and anything else you can think of.”
She’d sounded professional and calm on the phone-too calm. Dean would have preferred her fiery anger at Charlie’s invasion into her home over her cool detachment. Something was troubling her over and above the events of last night; Dean aimed to find out what.
When Sonia turned her head toward him, as if sensing she was being watched, he saw a large Band-Aid on her cheek. That bastard had hit her. The sudden urge to protect Sonia surprised Dean, but more than the need to stand guard was his instinct to hunt down Cammarata. His hands clenched and unclenched, the only physical sign of his outrage.
Sonia raised her hand and beckoned him over, meeting him halfway. “They’re bringing up a body now,” she said. “It was caught in the roots of a tree about a hundred yards downriver.” She gestured to the sheriff’s rescue boat. Several divers were in and out of the water. “Ten minutes or so, they think.”
She seemed distracted. Before Dean realized what he was doing, he reached up and lightly touched the bandage on her cheek. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said, but averted her eyes.
“Why did he break into your house? Just to tell you about Jones’s body?”
“I don’t know. That was part of it. I guess you rattled him a bit last night when you told him I wanted to talk to him.” She smiled, but Dean didn’t see the humor.
“If I had known he would attack you in your own home, I’d have been there watching the place. I’m sorry.”
“You have no reason to be sorry. You’re not the problem. Charlie doesn’t play by anyone else’s rules.” She turned from Dean and looked out at the river. “Did you find anything at Jones’s house?”
Dean suspected there was far more about Charlie Cammarata that Sonia wasn’t saying. She’d alluded to some of their history yesterday, but there was more, and it was eating her up. Still, now was not the time or place to ask. “Locked up tight. I have Richardson looking into getting a warrant whether or not we recover his body. Cammarata’s cabin was clean. I suspect he cleared out either right before or after the alleged murder.”
“You don’t believe him?”
“Do you?”
“Yes. There was no reason for him to lie, and there’s a fresh body down there.”
“Confirmation that it’s Jones?”
“Not yet, but if the time line holds, it’s only been about six hours and the body won’t be too damaged. We should know immediately after they bring it up.” She glanced at him. “Charlie said Jones kept a coded journal documenting everything.”
“Coded?”
“He has a copy, wouldn’t give it to me, that asshole. I put an APB out on him, I have everyone looking. He’s so damn fixated on this missing girl, Ashley Fox, he can’t see the bigger picture.”
“We’ll find him.”
“Don’t be so sure. He’s good at hiding. He said he didn’t know where the girls are now, but he did know that at midnight Saturday the exchange would be made.”
“Even with Jones dead?”
“I don’t know. But if Jones isn’t there, those girls will die. My informant didn’t know when, but I’ll bet he knows where.”
“I don’t follow.”
“He’s been involved with dozens of sales. There has to be a limited number of places Jones can keep twenty to thirty young women. He gave us two places Jones no longer used as a sign of good faith, but insisted that if he said anything else, Jones would know it was him talking. We raided the two places-one an abandoned farm not far from here, another a warehouse in Stockton near the river. There was evidence that a large group of people had been there-biological matter, garbage. Vega promised to contact me when he had an exact time and place, and I’d have about four hours to set up the raid. But now I have to push him.”
“There’s a pattern,” Dean said. “Even when criminals attempt to randomize, people unknowingly create patterns.”
“If Charlie would have just given me the fucking journal, this wouldn’t be an issue! Between the FBI and ICE we could break the code in short order.”
It bothered Dean just as much. “Why is he doing this?”
“He wants to save the girl I told you about yesterday, Ashley Fox. She’s been missing for a year. A few days more isn’t going to matter for her, but it could mean the difference between more young women suffering her same fate. Dammit!”
She turned her back on him so he couldn’t see that this had gotten to her, but he hadn’t missed the pain and frustration in her expressive eyes.
“Are you certain Charlie was telling the truth about the journals?”
“Absolutely.”
“They’re not anywhere at his house,” Dean said. “We searched extensively, had Jones open his safe. But most criminal enterprises keep two sets of books-their public books and the real books.”
“Have you been to his offices? The consulting firm and the security business?”
“Someone from our office has, but only to retrieve financial data per the warrant. Not to search the establishments for journals or anything else.”
“If you can’t get another warrant, I will. We need to push hard, whether Jones is dead or not. We don’t have a lot of time. Two and a half days.”
“If the books aren’t at his businesses, then maybe one of his employees is working with him. Maintaining the second set of books.”
Dean shook his head. “His businesses are what kept him legit. When laundering money, the more people who know how it works the more risk. But I can’t figure out how Jones was doing it. His office expenses are a little high, but in line with the income he generates from his clients, which is substantial.”
“Do you have a list of his clients?”
“Of course. We didn’t have time to get to it yesterday.”
“Maybe after we’re done here and we talk to my informant, we should go back to your office and look again at his clients.” The sheriff’s boat started toward the pier. “Jones is getting money from buying and selling people, and I doubt he’s hiding it under his mattress,” Sonia said.
Dean and Sonia approached the vessel when it docked. The deputy coroner was on the boat bagging the victim. Floaters were put in clear plastic to preserve evidence and fluids, as the body decomposed much differently than it would on dry land. Then the victim was put into a body bag for transport.
Dean had a sudden realization. “I’m going at Jones all wrong,” he admitted. “I was focusing on the money trail. Ninety-five percent of the time, going backward in financial records gets you exactly what you need. But with Jones, that hadn’t been working. All his records check out. I need to spend more time looking at his clients.”
“But you said not ten minutes ago that you looked into his clients.”
“I did. They’re all legitimate businesses with no red flags on their tax filings or bank accounts. But I need to dig deeper on them like I was doing with Jones.”
Sonia frowned. “That sounds like it’s going to take hundreds of hours of manpower. We don’t have the time.”
“That’s why I need your help. You know this area. With you and Sam going through the names and addresses, I think we can narrow it down to a handful of possibilities.”
“It still sounds like a long shot.”
“Perhaps, but unless we find a safe with gold, cash, or black-market diamonds on Jones’s property, a client is the only way he can clean his money.”
Trace Anderson jumped off the rescue boat and approached them. He said, “It’s not Jones.”
“Charlie said there were two victims,” Sonia said.
“Yeah, but who the hell is the second victim?”
Sonia watched as the deputy coroner and his team carried the body from the boat to the dock. A white sheet had been draped over the gurney. Charlie’s story about the man Jones met with killing one of his own people was now far more terrifying with a body. There was a predator in town even more ruthless than Xavier Jones.
The head diver said to Trace, “We’re headed back out to see about the second possible. You coming?”
Trace looked at Sonia, and she nodded her approval. “I’m coming,” he called to the diver, then said to Sonia and Dean, “I’ll let you know as soon as we find the other body.”
“Thanks, Trace.”
The boat left, and Sonia approached the deputy coroner and introduced herself and Dean. “I need to see the victim.”
The wiry Asian man nodded and said, “I have him bagged already, but the outer bag isn’t sealed yet.” In a homicide, they locked the external body bag until the medical examiner’s office was ready to perform the autopsy; then the lock was broken and all biological and trace evidence logged.
He removed the sheet and Sonia stared at the victim through the clear plastic.
He was middle-aged with a receding hairline, skinny but with a slightly pudgy middle. Tall-six foot two at least-with muscles still defined even though the water had saturated the skin, turning it a white and pasty color in the middle, with the limbs beginning to turn green from the buildup of gas and bacteria in the body. The bicolor stage of decomp helped establish time of death: generally, if a body was discovered within thirty-six hours, plus or minus, the M.E. could closely estimate time of death. Beyond that, the TOD became an educated guess.
The bullet holes in the chest were clean from the fresh water, the edges black suggesting that the killer was only feet away from the victim.
“He’s pretty fresh,” Sonia said. “Do you have an estimated TOD?”
“I have to factor in time, weather condition, water temperature-”
“I’m thinking four to eight hours,” Sonia said. “I’ve seen enough dead bodies to know this one is new.”
“You’re probably right. Certainly less than eight hours, otherwise he’d be a lot darker. It’s always darkest before the dawn.” The coroner laughed at his morbid humor over the stages of water decomp, the two sheriff’s deputies joining in. Sonia smiled, but she wasn’t in a humorous mood. There was something bothering her about this victim, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
“What are you thinking?” Dean asked quietly.
“Look at his clothes.”
The victim wore a white T-shirt under a dark blue, unzipped windbreaker, jeans, and bright-red running shoes.
“I haven’t seen a floater,” Dean admitted. “Is there something unusual? Should the current have stripped his shoes or something?”
“No, not necessarily. Maybe it’s the red shoes. They look … different.”
Dean said to the coroner, “When you get the body back, can I send an agent over to observe the autopsy and possibly help with evidence? My office has committed all resources necessary to assist the county in this investigation.”
“Sure, whatever floats y
our boat. I’ll let the supervising pathologist know to expect one of your people.”
Dean said to Sonia as the coroner finished bagging the body, “I’ll mention the shoes. Maybe they’re rare, only available in a specific store.”
“Yeah, but in the age of online shopping that doesn’t matter much anymore,” Sonia said, frowning. She asked the coroner, “Do you think you’ll be able to get prints off the body?”
“Good chance. He wasn’t in long enough to destroy them completely. We get his hands dried out, we can print him. You’ll have to give us a couple hours.”
“That’s fine. Thanks for your help.”
She and Dean walked back around to the front of the restaurant and into the parking lot where the crime-scene van was now parked, the techs combing the area for evidence. She motioned to the blood on the pavement near the restaurant entrance, then observed the riverbank to the southwest. “Charlie said he was hiding on the edge of the riverbank among the trees and had a clear line of sight on Jones. But the pier isn’t visible from here.”
“Depends on where he was hiding,” Dean said.
“It couldn’t have been too far, otherwise he wouldn’t have seen the second victim shot, yet at an angle where he could observe the first shooting.”
“And?”
“I think he knows damn well who killed Jones.”
“I could have told you that. That guy is dangerous.” Dean lowered his voice, brushed his hand again along her injured cheek. She resisted the urge to lean into his light caress. She wanted five minutes to just release the pent-up frustration and deep sadness that warred within her at what her mentor had become. She’d known-dammit, she had seen firsthand-Charlie’s warped sense of justice, but she had hoped he’d realize he couldn’t sacrifice honor and the law. Otherwise, he was just like the people they fought. A vigilante? Vigilantes didn’t hurt innocent people. Vigilantes didn’t let a truckload of Chinese women die because of a missing girl. He could save both if he would just be honest with her. She didn’t understand what he was doing.
“We’re getting close,” he said, brushing loose strands of her hair aside. Dean’s eyes were full of quiet compassion and potent focus. He didn’t look much different than he did the other night at the raid, except that he wore only one gun under his jacket. That he was an accountant amazed Sonia. She never imagined being attracted to a numbers cruncher, but she’d never met one who looked so … hot. That he was also smart-she’d always been attracted to the smart, athletic guys-was an added benefit; that he was so commanding in his quiet intensity had her swallowing involuntarily and averting her eyes.
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