“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.”