“So?” Sean said, but with less vehemence.
“Whether you like him or not, Senator McDermott has kept up with the work law enforcement is doing here on the border.” He breathed through his nose, a wet, rattling sound. He winced again. “Your career has just taken a nosedive. You have a skill that can help the senator, and maybe you’ll get a chance to…what’s the best way to put it?…to redeem yourself.”
“News doesn’t travel
“You have a friend in the office, a Mr. Helms?”
“AJ? What about him?”
“It seems he is currently dating a young woman whose sister works in Senator McDermott’s Tucson office.”
Sean shook his head. “You’d think Tucson was some little town, not a major city, the way things go around.”
“The way of the West, Mr. Kelly. Are you interested?”
“What’s the deal?”
Owens pointed at the envelope. Sean undid the clasp and shook out the contents. Papers, newspaper and magazine articles, long narratives, and several photos, all of which included pictures of a striking young woman with dark hair and eyes.
“Daryn McDermott,” Owens said. “The senator’s daughter, age twenty-four.”
“What about her?”
“She’s missing.”
Sean looked up sharply. “I haven’t seen or heard anything about this.”
Owens sighed. “Senator McDermott has kept it out of the media. Daryn is…well, Daryn is…difficult.”
“Difficult?”
“The girl is…how should I say this?…she’s out of control. She doesn’t feel that the rules of society apply to her. She’s done things and said things that have been politically very…difficult for the senator.”
Sean blinked, thinking through the bourbon. He’d seen something on TV a while back.
“She’s the one,” he said, “that was arrested for public nudity in front of the U.S. Capitol.”
Owens nodded. “Protesting her father’s stand on allowing the government to access records of what people check out of libraries. Her point was that the government had no business knowing if someone read a book or a magazine that, say, had nudity or sexual references in it.”
Sean stared at him.
“You’re in law enforcement. Surely you understand the power of having the right information.”
“Don’t assume anything about me,” Sean said. “She did other things, too, didn’t she? Even more radical things.”
Owens nodded again, touching his nose gingerly. “She went on a cross-country tour, trying to raise support for legalizing and regulating prostitution. She would go into a city and get an army of prostitutes together and they would descend on the city hall or state capitol, generating all kinds of media coverage. She wants drugs legalized and regulated too.”
“So her father,” Sean said, “the keeper of morals and traditional values, is embarrassed, personally and politically.”
Owens’s voice rose slightly. “He’s given her everything! Put her through Georgetown, even allowed her to get a worthless degree in sociology, of all things. He pays for apartments in D.C. and in Phoenix for her, and she repays him by embarrassing him.”
“You think she’s just a spoiled princess acting out, trying to piss off her father, or is it a real issue for her?”
Owens’s voice softened. “A bit of both, I’d say. Daryn actually does believe all these ridiculous things she spouts. But just because she has money and influence and a name, she gets a more public arena to speak out on all this drivel.”
“And now she’s missing.”
“For nearly a month now. It’s not like her to take off and not be heard from. I mean, in the past when she’s taken off, she turns up in the media in places like West Virginia and Oklahoma and South Dakota. But now she’s gone without a trace.”
“And the senator didn’t contact the FBI? I would think they’d pull out all the stops to find a U.S. senator’s daughter.”
Owens shook his head emphatically. “The senator wants this handled discreetly. He first hired private investigators in Washington and in Phoenix. All the traditional methods were dead ends. She hasn’t used her credit cards, hasn’t accessed her bank accounts. Her car is in its garage in D.C. None of her friends know anything. She’s simply…gone.”
“You think she’s just run off again, or something else? Something criminal?”
“We don’t know. There’s been no kind of ransom demand, nothing like that. So the senator’s presumption is that she’s on her own somewhere. And he wants her back.”
“The loving father?”
Owens picked up the sarcasm. “Look, they aren’t close, as you might imagine. Daryn, the ungrateful little brat that she is, calls her father part of ‘the ruling class,’ as if we were living in some kind of aristocracy. It’s one thing for a child to disagree with their parents’ values. We all go through that, to a point. It’s another for her to criticize and vilify everything her father stands for, and to do it as publicly as she can. He just wants her found before she…” Owens looked uncomfortable. He glanced toward the bar, then looked quickly away. The old smokers were still staring.
“Go ahead, say it,” Sean said.
“Before she does something either stupid or embarrassing,” Owens said.
“What makes you think I can find her?” Sean said. “I’m a Customs agent on suspension for screwing up an operation. There are those in this world who believe I have a drinking problem.”
“As I said before-”
“Yeah, I know, I have a reputation.” Sean tossed back another shot. He felt himself giving, bending, like power lines in high wind. And the painful truth was, he had nothing else to do, nowhere to go. If a United States senator wanted to pay him to look for his wayward daughter, who was he to question that?
“How much?” he asked.
Owens looked relieved. He withdrew another envelope from the briefcase. “Here’s twenty thousand dollars cash.”
Sean leaned forward. “I’m sorry. Say that again?”
“Mr. Kelly, the senator is hiring you based on your reputation, but he’s counting on your discretion. It’s a delicate situation. You can’t just track down Daryn, pick her up under your arm, and bring her home to her father. Do that and she’ll go straight to the media as soon as she’s back in Washington, and it’ll be an even worse nightmare. Not only do you have to find her, you have to gain her trust. Make her believe it’s her choice to go with you. All this will take time. Also, the investigation is off the books. The senator wants it all done quietly. No one should ever know Daryn was missing in the first place.”
“And all this because he’s afraid she’ll embarrass him politically?”
“I’m only Senator McDermott’s lawyer, not his conscience, Mr. Kelly. He pays me well.” Owens gestured at the envelope full of money. “Another amount equal to that will be paid when Daryn is safely, discreetly returned. Don’t try to get in touch with me or with the senator before that time. Once she’s home at her apartment in Washington, the senator will know.”
“What, does he have his own daughter’s apartment bugged?”
Owens spread his hands. “I won’t comment on that.”
“Nice guy.” Sean fingered the envelope full of cash. “And if I do this, the senator does what he can to get me reinstated in ICE?”
“The senator will use whatever influence he may have to make sure you’re able to continue in federal law enforcement.”
“Typical lawyer’s response,” Sean said. He rubbed his forehead. He was buzzing right along now, his headache gone. “I’ll look into it.”
“Good,” Owens said, sounding relieved. “Everything you need to know about Daryn is in that first packet. Except for one item.”
Sean looked up at him.
“The girl is, quite frankly, very promiscuous,” Owens said.
Sean folded his hands together on the table.
“Her sexuality is very…open,” Owens said. “Men, women…it doesn’t matter. This has presented problems in the past as well. Maybe she’s taken up the cause of legalizing prostitution as a vicarious sort of thing. Perhaps she secretly wishes she was a prostitute herself, so she could indulge herself and be paid for it.”
“Are you a psychiatrist too?”
“No, but I did fall under her spell myself once,” Owens said. “All I can say to you is to be careful. Remember what your job is.”
“I think I can take care of myself. Even around a politically radical, oversexed sociology major.”
Owens didn’t smile. He snapped his briefcase closed. “This is a nasty place,” he said.
“Yeah, but it serves its purpose,” Sean said.
“So it does.”
“Sorry about your nose.”
Owens shrugged. “The pain’s going away already.”
“Told you it wasn’t broken.”
Owens nodded and left the cantina. Sean sat for a long moment and looked at the two envelopes. Then he downed one more shot, stood a bit unsteadily, and left a wad of cash on the table. He took the envelopes, and before he left the building, pulled another tortilla out of the basket on the bar. He saluted the bartender and the old smokers with it, then headed out into the bright desert sun.
Tobias Owens drove the Lexus steadily north on 286 until it merged with Highway 86, which headed east back toward Tucson. Twenty miles outside the city, Owens pulled onto an unmarked gravel road that snaked north for several miles. He parked in a stand of cactus, right beside another car, a nondescript four-door, the kind typically used by rental agencies.
Another man got out of the rental car and looked at him. The other man was as nondescript as the car, around Owens’s age, with average features. Modestly handsome, but not memorable. His clothes were khaki pants and a blue polo shirt. Unremarkable.
“He took the job,” Owens said, placing his briefcase on the ground between the two cars. “But the drunken SOB nearly broke my nose.”
The other man’s neutral expression didn’t change. “I’m sorry to hear that. You told him everything?”
“Followed the script exactly,” Owens said. “Now about my fee…”
The other man had kept the car between the two of them, his hands shielded from Owens’s view. He quickly raised his right hand, which held a pistol, and shot Owens point-blank three times in the chest. The lawyer lunged backward across the hood of his Lexus, then rolled to the ground.
The other man had no worries about the sound of gunshots. This was the Arizona desert, and gunfire was often heard as ranchers chased off various vermin, both of the two-legged and four- legged varieties. He went through Owens’s pockets, removing the man’s business cards and wallet. After a moment’s consideration, he took the bloody handkerchief as well. He removed the license plates, registration, and insurance cards from the Lexus and placed them all in Owens’s briefcase. He left Owens’s body where it had fallen.
The man got back into his rental car and drove away without looking back. He had much to do, and far to go. The game had only just begun.
