He flinched at the word “cartel,” but his gaze didn’t shy away from hers. For a moment his eyes raked her face as he tried to gauge what she knew. She waited.
“This is a delicate situation,” he said finally. “I’m not hauling anyone in without real evidence. So if you find something on them and bring it to me, I’ll consider questioning them.”
“So, let me get this straight.” Veronica tapped her lips thoughtfully with her index finger. “You’re going to let me do all the legwork, because it’s not politically viable for you to look into wild, orgiastic parties thrown by the junior members of one of the most violent crime organizations in Mexico. I’ll save you some trouble and just assume you’re getting a kickback of some kind from the Milenios—maybe in one of their more legitimate guises.” She cocked her head, feigning confusion. “But if I find actual evidence that they’re, I don’t know, using their parties as some kind of lure to kidnap pretty girls? Or worse? That’s when you want me to hand it over to you.”
“Sounds about right.” Lamb gave her a smile that was all reptile. “The Sheriff’s Department appreciates your assistance in this matter.”
He gave her a little mock salute, and then he was sailing out the door, leaving the lingering notes of his Axe body spray in his wake.
She went to the reception area. Mac didn’t even look up. Her fingers were flying over the keyboard. Veronica took in her friend’s jutting chin, the jerkiness of her shoulders. She wasn’t happy. Not for the first time she thought about how Mac had left a safe, quiet office—and a fat paycheck—for this. Now here she was, working as a glorified secretary, taking abuse from anyone whose toes Veronica stepped on.
“Are you okay?” She sat on the edge of Mac’s desk.
“I’m fine.” Mac looked up, her eyes bright and fierce, but a small smile flitted across her face. “One of these days, I’m going to find something on that guy that’ll wipe the smile right off his face.”
“You handled him like a pro.”
“Luckily, my intimidated face looks remarkably like silent defiance.” She exhaled loudly. “So is he trying to nab our collar?”
“Sure is. But only once I’ve got something on the Gutiérrezes. He’s scared of the big bad drug lords—doesn’t want to take them on until we’ve got something solid.”
“Well, shouldn’t we be?” Mac raised an eyebrow. “Scared, I mean? Some of those stories …”
“Believe me, I am treating the ultraviolent gangsters with all the caution required. I’m not about to poke a rattlesnake nest if the snakes are all comfortably asleep. Did any of those background checks come in yet?”
Mac looked up at her, hesitating. Veronica rolled her eyes. “It’s fine. Just tell me.”
“Okay, well … Lianne Scott—I mean your mom—has a few misdemeanors on her record, none more recent than 2006. Public intoxication, shoplifting, and trespassing. Looks like she moved around a lot between 2004 and 2006. I’ve got her in Barstow, Reno, Scottsdale, and then finally Tucson.” Mac’s eyes flickered from her screen to Veronica and quickly back again. “Married Tanner Scott in January of 2007. Gave birth to Hunter Jacob Scott in December 2007. She started working for the dental office last year, after Hunter started school.”
“And Tanner?”
Mac pursed her lips. “He’s been kind of hard to track. Spotty employment history and no permanent address between 2000 and 2006.”
“That’s not too surprising. He told me he’d been in the bottle pretty hard before he met my mom.”
“He was married to a woman named Rachel Novak in 1996; they divorced in 2000. Aurora was born 1998 in Albuquerque. Looks like he served ten months in jail for check fraud in 2005; Aurora was a ward of the state while he was away. After he got out he seemed to settle down. He got custody of Aurora and started working more steady jobs. Before Home Depot he was a janitor for the city for a few years.” Mac looked up. “That’s all that’s coming up on the basic search. You want me to keep digging?”
Veronica shook her head. “No. I think I can fill in the gaps.”
She knew the recidivism rates for petty crimes; no former criminal worked as a janitor for a few years unless he was determined to go straight. The idea of easy money became much too alluring after scrubbing toilets all night. Tanner Scott may have set off her bullshit detector, but it looked like he really had cleaned up.
She realized Mac was watching her closely, her forehead creased with concern.
“This has got to be weird for you,” Mac said.
“It’s not. It’s fine.”
“Veronica, look who you’re talking to. If anyone has mom issues, it’s me.”
Veronica forced a smile. In high school, she’d been the one to uncover the fact that Mac had been switched at birth, that the family she’d never really fit in with wasn’t really hers.
“Okay. It’s completely weird. But I’m trying not to think about it. Right now I really just want to focus on finding Hayley and Aurora.” She looked out the window over Mac’s head. A seagull hung on the breeze outside, a pale streak against the sky. Pretty, for an animal waiting for an unguarded Dumpster. “Did you have a chance to look in on our other guys?”
“Yup. Chad Cohan is, as far as I can see, still snuggled up in Stanford. I’ve gotten into the Stanford security logs, and it looks like he’s used his student ID to access the gym and the library in the past few days. No flight records, and no charges on his cards that would indicate travel.”
“What about Crane?”
Mac shook her head. “I don’t have much of an electronic trail for him. It doesn’t seem likely that he’d be able to slip away from his family and hurt someone while they’re the subject of so much media attention, though, right?”
“Unlikely, but not impossible. I’ll check in with the Dewalts tomorrow. I should do that anyway.” She put her hands over her eyes for a moment. A small headache was forming over her temples.
“What should we do next?” Mac’s voice was quiet, almost tentative.
“The only thing we can do.” Veronica drew her hands away from her eyes. Mac sat very still in front of her, waiting. “We keep going over the evidence, and we hope like hell that sooner or later, some part of it makes sense.”