Bourke shot a sideways glance at Callahan. “Matarife means ‘slaughterer.’”
Callahan rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. This whole thing made her bones tired. There was a reason agents timed out of Crimes Against Children task forces. Her supervisor had warned her after her last emotional outburst that she was definitely coming to the end of her shelf life with the CAC.
Feng kept at his drawing, hunched over the legal pad. “I’ve never met him, but I hear Matarife is into some pretty nasty stuff.”
“Be more specific,” Bourke said.
Eddie shrugged. “I am actually onto something else for my story, so all this stuff with the girls was just extra. Believe me, once I got what I needed, I was going to make some calls and get the girls out of there.”
“Must have been really important,” Bourke said, “for you to leave them in slavery while you got your precious story.”
“You have no idea.” Feng hung his head. “But I understand how it looks . . . how it is. I should have called someone.”
“Yes, you should have, Eddie,” Callahan said. “But you can make a difference now. Let’s get back to what you know about Matarife.”
“All I heard was whispers. Rumor is he leads some kind of blood cult, but I think that’s just a story to scare the shit out of the competition. I haven’t put it together yet, but he’s somehow linked to a guy they call Coronet. That’s who I’m looking to find, Coronet. I suspect he works with a contact in mainland China. Sun Yee On triad, Tres Equis, Coronet—and the PRC. They’re all connected. I just haven’t put it all together yet.”
“Well, shit,” Callahan said. This was starting to spin out of her control. If it got too big, then Violent Crimes or one of the counterintel squads would muscle her out. “So tell me, Eddie. How do we find Matarife?”
Feng looked up from his map, which was incredibly detailed considering that he was drawing it with his hands cuffed. “He’s supposed to have a big house out in the country.”
Callahan pounded the table again. “Where is this big house?”
Feng shrugged. “Still working on that,” he said. “I haven’t managed to get myself invited out there. Until you arrested me, though, my next stop was a mid-level guy named Naldo Cantu who owns a string of massage parlors in South Dallas. He’s a real piece of work, just brutal to his girls. He keeps them strung out to keep them under control. Burns them with cigars for entertainment . . .” Feng shook his head, as if to clear away the image. “I know he pays a fee to operate in Matarife’s area. He’d have to know how to get in touch with the guy in order to pay him. Cantu will have some girls on hand. He always does. Could be this friend of Blanca’s is with him. I can tell you where he lives.”
“You can?” Callahan said, surprised at a glimmer of positive news.
“Sure,” Feng said.
Callahan patted her hand on the table. “Hurry up, then,” she said. “I’m not done with you yet, but if you know where Naldo Cantu is holding girls, I want to act on it right damn now.”
“Good,” Feng said. “Because there are probably some other things you need to know—”
An electronic buzzer sounded at the door, nearly sending Feng out of his skin. There was a heavy metallic click and Tim Dixon, one of the supervisory agents, entered. He had a tall Starbucks cup in his hand with steam coming off the top—which meant it couldn’t be for Feng. Prisoners got lukewarm coffee at best—in case they decided to try to weaponize their drink.
Feng dropped the pen on the table and rattled his cuffs. “What’s going on? Who is this? Is he one of the guys watching me?”
Callahan snapped her fingers to shush him, then looked up at Dixon, afraid of what his presence meant. Interruptions like this usually meant a lawyer had shown up.
The news turned out to be even worse.
Dixon leaned in to whisper in her ear. “There’s an agent named Caruso here to see you. Apparently, he’s out of WFO.”
“Okay.” Callahan shrugged. “What does somebody from the Washington Field Office want with me?”
“He knows you have Feng in custody,” Dixon said.
Callahan gasped. “We just scooped him up two hours ago.”
Dixon gave her a knowing nod. “Fancy that. And get this, the Old Man got a call from the office of the director about five minutes before this guy slithered in here, telling us to show one Special Agent Dominic Caruso all possible courtesy. He didn’t say it, but I’m thinking he’s gotta be counterintel. You have to admit, Kelsey, this whole case has a CI stink to it.”
Dixon had surely read Callahan’s 302 summarizing the interview with Blanca Limón, and now there was Eddie Feng’s reference to the People’s Republic of China. All this talk of spies and geopolitical competition brought spooks swarming around like blowflies to putrid meat.
Callahan wallowed up out of the prison-industries chair, knocking it over and hoping she smashed it in the process.
“What the hell, Tim? You know this is all wrong. We’re saving kids here, not working on spy shit. All possible courtesy my ass!”
Dixon sipped his coffee. “He’s standing right outside the window.”
“I don’t care where he is.” Callahan yanked open the door. “I will not hand over this investigation to a bunch of Washington counterintel weenies.”
She nearly ran headlong into a dark-haired man wearing faded jeans and a face full of stubble over a passive smile.
He gave her a wink that made her want to punch him in the nose, then said, “I think I can help you with that last part.”
? ? ?
The contract security officers in the lobby of the fortresslike Dallas field office had checked Caruso’s credentials and assumed he was armed. The magnetometer beeped when he walked through, which was not surprising to the guards. He wasn’t local, but he was an agent, so everyone assumed he would be armed. They did not, however, know that he wore a wire neck loop and microphone connected to the small radio hidden under the tail of his loose shirt and tucked inside the waistband of his jeans. The tiny earpieces Campus operatives wore were designed to blend in, but he’d removed his to be on the safe side. FBI agents were trained to be highly observant, and wearing an obvious wire into the lion’s den was sure to earn him a case of the third degree from the Old Man—the notoriously territorial and protective special agent in charge of the Dallas office. This left Caruso blind to any communication coming from other Campus members but still able to feed pertinent information to them through the mic just out of sight below his collar. He knew it wasn’t quite sensitive enough to pick up everything that was being said around him, so he strategically repeated the important stuff while trying not to sound like too much of an idiot.