“Her name isn’t Flores?”
“I don’t know what she goes by. Legally, her name isn’t Flores. She was born Jasmine Constance Ricardo. But she dropped her last name long ago. Married once, the guy’s dead under suspicious circumstances, she inherits a small fortune. But this was years ago-when I was a rookie in Arizona. I don’t have any more information-but I can get it.”
“Was she a suspect?” Lucy asked.
“Not that I know of, but again, I don’t have the file handy and I’ve never had need to read it. Jasmine is one of those names that pops up but never goes anywhere because we don’t have a current photo or address for her. Couldn’t interview her if we wanted to, and since we’ve never had even circumstantial evidence against her, no warrants for fishing.”
Brad covered the phone and mumbled to someone in the background, then came back. “Sorry, I have like five minutes. But you should know that Don Flores was killed by his own family. It’s not a big secret, but it was a long time ago. Fifteen, sixteen years.”
Noah said, “So you don’t know what she’s specifically involved with?”
“No-again, everything is quiet rumors about her. The one rumor is that she’s working with her family in Mexico-but because Flores hasn’t moved into my jurisdiction, I don’t know a lot about their operation. It’s possible that now that Tobias’s operation is wiped out, they’re planning on making a move, but at this point all we’re seeing are local turf battles, no big organization coming in. Yet-because we all know it’s going to happen. Where there’s a void and that shit. Oh! One more thing. Even though Jasmine and Don were tight, she’s not fond of the drug trade. Go figure. She has her hands in semi-legitimate business enterprises. That’s the word, at any rate. Do you want me to ask around?”
Lucy glanced at Noah. He said, “Yeah. And don’t be subtle. Maybe we can shake some trees and make her nervous.”
“Will do. It’ll take me a couple days, but I know exactly how to shake some big trees.”
“Would black-market babies be up there on her list of business enterprises?” Noah asked.
Brad swore. “That’s what this is? You think she’s selling babies?”
“Yes,” Lucy said. “We have evidence of four women who were or are pregnant, but suspect there are many more. We don’t have a lot to go on right now, but the photo we have of Jasmine seems clear that she’s in charge.”
“Interesting. Can you shoot me the pic?”
“Yes,” Noah said. “Whatever you can learn would help us. You don’t have her address, do you?”
Brad laughed. “No. She hides very well. And truthfully, even if we did, it’d mean shit. There’s no evidence she’s ever done anything illegal. No proof that she even associates with her brothers. What we think and what we can prove are not the same.”
“Our CI acted intimidated,” Noah said. “I’m still not sure it wasn’t an act for our benefit.”
“Remember-she’s smart. She’s never even been questioned in a DEA operation, and I doubt any other law enforcement agency has interviewed her. She’s a lawyer-not a trial lawyer, but she is well versed in using the law to both hide and manipulate the system. So mind your P’s and Q’s.”
“Thanks, Brad,” Noah said.
“Lucy,” Brad said, “don’t be a stranger.” He hung up.
“Where do we go from here?” Lucy asked Noah.
“Stay the course. I, for one, would like to get this Jasmine into an interview. She’s a material witness at a minimum considering she was in the same house with a woman who turned up dead.”
Lucy didn’t say anything. Jasmine was a lawyer-she could easily manipulate the adoption system. Lucy didn’t know much about the illegal adoption business. She wondered how much parents would pay for a child. Infants were in high demand.
Still… there had to be far more money in trafficking drugs than infants.
Her heart skipped a beat. There was a demand for children, children that no one knew existed. They could be breeding their own armies, indoctrinating young children their entire lives to serve the cartels, to be fodder for the militants, to serve in brothels and work in factories.
“Lucy,” Noah said quietly.
“Yeah?” She forced her voice to sound normal but in doing so sounded like she was suffocating.
“We don’t know why Jasmine was at that house. We don’t know what she’s doing or how she’s doing it, or even if she’s doing anything illegal. All we know is that she was at a house where one of the residents turned up dead.”
“And her baby missing.”
“And no proof that Jasmine killed her. Based on Siobhan’s statement, Jane Doe was alive when Jasmine left the house with the others.”
Noah was right. What they knew as facts was very little.
“We will find the truth,” he said. Noah looked at his phone. “Zach wants to talk to us when we get back-do you think you can spare thirty minutes?”
“As much time as you need. Sean isn’t home.” She really wished he was. She could talk to him about this. She had promised him that she wouldn’t hold everything inside anymore, that when something hit her hard, she’d talk to him. She’d kept so much bottled up inside for so long that having someone to confide in-someone who didn’t think she was going to break down at any moment under the weight of tragedy-had freed her.
“But first, let’s get some food. Why didn’t you tell me you were hungry?”
“I’m not that hungry.” She was starving.
“Your stomach is loud.”
“Traitor,” she mumbled.
Noah grunted a laugh.
An hour later, Noah and Lucy were sitting in the small conference room with Zach Charles, eating Mexican food takeout. “There’s plenty,” Noah told Zach.
“I ate.” But he was eyeing the chips and salsa. Lucy slid them over to him and he took a handful. “Okay, thanks for coming in, because this is hard to explain on the phone.”
“You’re the one staying late.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t mind.” Zach unfolded the whiteboard on the wall. He’d already drawn a pyramid-type structure with business names, connected by dates and lines.
“So, you both know how shell corporations work, so I’m not going to go into detail, but think about the layers, okay? Because that’s really what this is. Layer upon layer upon layer of hollow businesses that were created for the express purpose of making it difficult to find a real person to assign liability. And while there are some legitimate purposes for shell corporations, that’s not this. This operation you uncovered down in Laredo is just the tip-I think this goes much bigger.”
Zach pointed to the name at the bottom of the chart. “Direct Property Holdings. They manage all the properties you identified. But each of the properties is owned by a different business. And that’s key-they’re owned by businesses, not individuals. Those businesses are also shell corps and none of them have overlapped-yet.” He slid over copies of a printout to both Noah and Lucy.
Lucy stared. She was looking at dozens-hundreds-of business names.
“And they’re all anonymous,” Noah said. “Shit.”
“Okay, maybe I should have led with the good news.”
“You think?” Noah said.
“Yeah, well, okay, so all these shells have one thing in common: an address in Las Vegas.”
“You’ve connected them to the same entity? You could have said that on the phone.”
“No-they have the same address, but all different corporations. It’s just a way to obfuscate the picture. But filing dates are part of the record, so I was able to re-create the order in which these organizations were set up. Maybe whoever organized this didn’t realize we’d get so far, or maybe they didn’t know what they were doing initially and weren’t able to cover their tracks. But the first one was disbanded a year ago-and the appointed director is Gregory Valeria. His address is in San Diego.”