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.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The bad news was that the stadium was crowded and sold out.
That good news was that the stadium was crowded and sold out.