The Lost Girls

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

As soon as they started on the road back to San Antonio, Noah got on the phone. Lucy blocked out his conversation and checked her own email. First thing she opened was an email from her contact at NCMEC. She’d sent him the photos Siobhan had taken of the blond girl with the infant leaving the house in rural Freer on Sunday evening. He’d identified her.

Lucy:

Our facial recognition and age maturation program has identified with 89% certainty that the woman in the photo you sent me is Macey Sue Hornthrope from Kansas City, Missouri.

Macey went missing four and a half years ago shortly after her fifteenth birthday. She is currently nineteen. Police determined that she ran away with her boyfriend, eighteen-year-old high school dropout William “Billy” Randall. While they did minimum due diligence, because of her age and the fact that there was no sign of forced abduction, the police shelved the case as inactive. I’ve attached a copy of the initial report and investigation into the Hornthrope home situation, but in a nutshell, the parents were in the middle of a nasty divorce, Macey was the middle of three girls, and there was evidence that Macey had been using drugs for at least a year. When Mrs. Hornthrope forbade Macey from seeing her boyfriend, Macey ran away.

There have been no sightings of Macey, at least none that have come through our office or the federal database. She was considered low-risk-you know how it is. She was over 14, she left voluntarily, she was a drug user.

I’ve sent you Randall’s last known address and contacts for both Macey’s parents and Randall’s mother. His father is not in the picture.

I contacted the Kansas City police and they indicated that the parents are still looking for her-posting on message boards, social media, contacting the missing persons department regularly for updates. It’s my opinion that both parents would welcome their daughter back, no questions, if that will help you convince her to make contact, should you have the opportunity to talk to her.

Let me know what else I can do to help.

I heard through the grapevine-ok, your sister-in-law-that you’re getting married. Congrats. Next time you’re in DC, let’s have coffee.

Sincerely,

Grant Mara

Assistant Director, NCMEC

As soon as Noah got off the phone, Lucy told him the news. “It’s a start. I’d like to start by calling Randall’s mother-find out where he’s living, if she even knows. He could still be with her, maybe pimping her out. Forcing her into prostitution to feed their drug habits.” She stared at Macey’s current photo, the one Siobhan had taken. She looked scared, not strung out. “Or maybe they split and she didn’t think she could go back home.”

“We’ve both seen situations like that before.”

“I want to find her. Let her know she has options. Encourage her to cooperate. Explain that she has to help us.”

Noah shot her a glance but didn’t say anything.

“She’s probably a victim, but we don’t know, do we? Was she forced into prostitution? Did she go voluntarily? Was it a combination? She may be loyal to these people. Or terrified of them. Or both. We can’t trust that she’ll turn on them, especially if they’ve brainwashed her to the extent that she can’t see her life any way other than what it is now.”

“Like you said, Lucy, we don’t know.”

Noah was right-and Lucy needed to talk to Macey, assess who she was now. In the past, Lucy always sided with the victims. She still did… but she’d learned the hard way that some people pretend to be victims when, in fact, they’re predators.

“Grab my phone,” Noah said.

Lucy did.

“Look up the SAC in the Kansas City office and send him a memo from me-he can task someone to follow up with the Kansas City police on Randall and Hornthrope and get us current information.”

Noah dictated the memo for her to send. The requests coming from Noah would hold far more weight than if they came from a rookie agent, so Lucy was happy Noah thought of it.

“Do you think I’ve conveyed the necessary urgency?” Noah asked her.

“Oh yes,” Lucy said. “Dropping Rick Stockton’s name conveys urgency. Speaking of Rick, does he have any more information about this Jasmine?”

“He sent me a message to talk to Brad Donnelly of the DEA. I haven’t had a chance to call him-but since you’ve worked with him, go ahead, call, put him on speaker.”

“You’ve met him, right?”

“Couple of times since I’ve been here.”

Lucy had Brad on speed dial. They hadn’t seen much of each other outside of work over the last three months, mostly because Brad was overwhelmed putting the San Antonio DEA back together after a corrupt agent decimated it. He was the acting ASAC for the office, but word was that his position would be permanent by the end of the year.

“Donnelly. Is this Lucy?”

“It is.”

“It’s about time you called.”

“The phone goes both ways, Brad.”

“But this isn’t a social call.”

“It’s not. I’m putting you on speaker-I’m with SSA Noah Armstrong.”

“Serious?”

“Could be.” She put the phone down on the center seat and pressed SPEAKER. “We’re all here.”

“Armstong,” Brad said.

“Hello, Brad. Call me Noah.”

“What can I do for you?”

“Jasmine, rumored to be the illegitimate daughter of a drug cartel leader,” Noah said. “I don’t have a last name, or a family. I hope you have more.”

“Yep. I’ll tell you what I know-which, frankly, isn’t much-but first tell me how she came up in one of your investigations.”

Lucy quickly explained the case they were working. “We have a photo, and a CI identified her by her first name only-claimed he didn’t know her last name.”

“Brave soul-or you have something on him. Here’s what I know-I need to give you both a little history lesson first. And to be honest, some of the information I can’t verify. It’s all rumors, and even the rumors are vague.”

“We’ll take anything at this point,” Noah said. “We have a dead body and two missing women.”

“First, the rumor that Jasmine is the illegitimate daughter of someone in the cartel is probably accurate. Don Flores, one of the old-time cartel bosses, had two families-his first and legitimate family in Mexico, and his illegitimate family in Corpus Christi. Some say he was a polygamist, but I doubt it-you and I both know, Luce, that criminals have a weird and twisted view of religion. Flores was very Catholic, four sons with his wife, went to church, the whole nine yards. Sure, keep a piece on the side, but he wouldn’t marry her. I can’t remember the mistress’s name-I can find it if you need it-but she had two daughters. The younger daughter went to college in Massachusetts or Maine and has as far as I know never stepped foot back in Texas. The older daughter-Jasmine-embraced the family legacy. Rumor is that she was Don’s favorite, and she learned everything from him.”

“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.”

“That’s really good work, Zach,” Noah said. “And fast.”

Zach grinned, both out of pride and embarrassment. “Um, yeah, thanks. But I’m not done. The property management company is just a one-room office-I called pretending to have a group of properties and asked about their policies and rates. They told me they are a private company and work only for a group of businesses. They wanted to know how I got the number. I had to do some quick thinking, so I said the Internet, then quickly created a fake page that listed a hundred property management companies in Texas and included them. If they dig deep, they’ll see it was created today, but hopefully they don’t.”

“Smart,” Lucy said.

“I need a warrant,” Noah said. “I don’t want to go in there and tip them off.”

“We have cause,” Lucy said. “One of their properties was a murder scene.”

“We don’t know she was killed there.”

“We don’t know she wasn’t.”

“The AUSA isn’t going to bite on that.” Noah snapped his fingers. “The brothel in Del Rio. Illegal prostitution. We have a confidential informant who gave us information, we need the property records and all information on the owner.”

“Who? Barrow? He’ll never agree.”

“Doesn’t matter, he already talked to us, he gave us the intel, and we have his investigative report. I think I can convince the AUSA to give us a little room on this.” Noah packed up the remaining food. “I’m going to talk to Rick first thing in the morning and we’ll work out a strategy. Lucy-follow up with the Kansas City field office about the memo we sent, see if you can find this Randall kid, and be ready to serve the warrant on DPH. Zach-I need you to quietly dig up everything you can about Jasmine Constance Ricardo, born in Corpus Christi, possibly goes by the name Jasmine Flores. Copy in only me and Lucy. Donnelly with the DEA is looking into her as well, and he’s making a bigger splash, but I need you to be discreet.”

“No problem,” Zach said. “Oh-one more thing, on those photos you sent. Finally got a hit late this afternoon on this guy.” He slid over the photo of Jasmine’s bodyguard. “Lance Dobleman. Dishonorably discharged from the Army six years ago for a variety of charges, including insubordination and assault of a superior officer.”

“Why wasn’t he court-martialed?” Noah asked.

“I hope you don’t mind, but I asked Agent Dunning to look into it, since he’s former Army.”

“And?”

“Dobleman was sleeping with his commanding officer’s wife. Commanding officer caught them in bed, fight ensued, Dobleman got the discharge. But apparently there were a lot of shady things with this guy. Nate couldn’t get the details, only that Dobleman was a ladies’ man, may have been abusive to the women he was with, and his unit didn’t like him. His bunkmate is the one who told their commander about the affair.”

Noah said, “Ask Nate to follow up on that, and I’ll work on getting his military records and see if we can work that angle. Find out what he’s been doing in the last six years and who employs him now.”

“I got that part,” Zach said with a grin. He handed over a slender file. “I don’t have a lot on him, but he works for Gold Key Enterprises, one of the companies in this big shell game.” He circled a business in the middle of the chart. “Title is security chief. And I have a residence-thanks to Nate. It’s all in the folder.”

Lucy opened it. Dobleman lived in Austin, Texas.

“Hold off on interviewing Dobleman until I hear from Stockton about how we’re going to handle Jasmine,” Noah said. “But Zach-keep working this. The more information we have, the better.”