After a long moment, Becca gave in to a smile as she gazed down at the coffee cup—
He'd done his homework. Now, time for Becca to do hers.
A half-eaten burrito, wrapped in foil, lay atop Becca's desk. The smell of refried beans and old coffee filled her nostrils, almost a distraction. But nothing would divert her attention. She was a woman on a mission. Even though Dani was never far from her thoughts, it felt good to be working a case again.
Most detective work was a painstaking grind, picking apart every detail until a thread of motive could be followed and backed by irrefutable evidence. But it all began with the identification of the victim. So to start her thread, Becca jumped online to retrieve what information she could. She determined the time period for the original theater fabrication and the subsequent renovation through the public record filings for construction permits. This gave her a time frame within which to perform an extensive search of the archives for old missing persons cases. With her investigation narrowed by time period and females by age, she came down to five cases.
One of those had been declared a hoax. The young woman had eloped with an older man. Case closed. Two had turned into murder cases when the bodies were later found. One of those was still open. That left two cases. Becca made a note of the case numbers and submitted an electronic request to have the records pulled. Cases older than five years were archived in the bowels of the County Courthouse, not stored with the newer Evidence Unit on South Frio Street. It would take time to locate the boxes.
While she waited, Becca knew how to fill her time. GQ's dark eyes spurred her on. He had a name, and she'd find it. After leaving the sidewalk bistro, she walked the man's coffee cup back to the theater. A CSI tech bagged it and would process it for prints. And she obtained the recording of the rabble of onlookers outside the theater. She watched it several times, committing each face to memory. Yet she had to shake her head when she noticed that her mystery man had done a vanishing act.
'Guess you don't care for the limelight.'
Luckily, the tech doing the recording backed up his work with a detailed listing of the license plates with the makes and models of all vehicles—GQ's license plate among them. She ran his tag through the Department of Motor Vehicles. According to DMV, the car was registered to Global Enterprises, a corporation she knew nothing about. She ran a check of the name against local businesses. Still nothing.
'Not what I expected,' she muttered as she sat back in her desk chair.
But before she redirected her attention, Becca returned her focus to the ownership history of the Imperial Theatre.
'Let's see what's floating out in cyberspace.' Moving to the edge of her seat, she popped her knuckles like a concert pianist.
Nearly oblivious to the ringing phones, conversations, and people traffic through the bullpen of the homicide division, she sat at her metal desk, fingers tapping her keyboard. She knew her first step would be the property ownership records. If she found the owner of the Imperial, she could zero in on her mystery man—killing two buzzards with one stone. In most cases, she would have hit pay dirt searching the county tax assessor's records, but nothing doing. Her research only produced the name of a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation and restoration of historic buildings for cultural use. She had to dig deeper, back to the original owner.
On a lark, she keyed the Imperial Theatre and San Antonio into an Internet search engine.
'Thank God and Al Gore for the Internet.' She smiled, bathed in the pale light off her computer monitor. She scored 360,000 records.
Becca tried a couple of other queries and a more advanced search to fine-tune the hits. Eventually, her persistence paid off.
'Bingo.'
An old newspaper archive contained an article announcing the dedication of the Imperial as a historic building, complete with photographs taken at the front of the structure. A bright sunny day. With a twinge of deja vu, Becca remembered reading the article when it was first published. Less than a year ago, the mayor and the elite of San Antonio had gathered for the occasion. Even though the photo held many smiling faces in the foreground, one set of dark eyes lurked in the shadows of the theater entrance, behind the key players. And he looked anything but happy.
No name for her mystery man in the caption, but she was one step closer to identifying him. Becca searched the article for any name construed as a benefactor 'affiliated' with the property.
'Gotcha. I'd say ownership constitutes an affiliation, wouldn't you, Mr. Crypto?' Her success produced a smile that faded when she read the name of the theater owner aloud. 'Hunter Cavanaugh. Thanks for the warning, Slick. When you said he was powerful and nasty, you weren't kidding.'
Cavanaugh had a reputation. Good and bad. On the surface, he appeared to be a high-powered member of the community with far-reaching political ties. She had no idea the extent of those connections. Somehow, Cavanaugh had parlayed old family money into an international conglomerate focused on the travel industry.
'I'm not a big fan of coincidence.'
Since Cavanaugh donated the theater to a nonprofit charity, shifting title to another organization, her insurance fraud angle bit the dust. Of course, she had to confirm the details, but the man wasn't exactly hurting for cash either.
This time, Becca did a search on Global Enterprises and the name Cavanaugh. She scored numerous hits, printing out press releases, financial documents, and newspaper articles on a merger between Cavanaugh's travel company and Global Enterprises, almost three years ago.
'What do we have here?'
She knitted her brow and lowered her chin, staring at her computer screen. Once again, a familiar face skulked in the background of another newspaper photo. Eyes she would know anywhere. Only this time, Cavanaugh was nowhere in sight. Another suit posed in the foreground.
'You sure get around, Slick.'
After skimming the article, she printed the material and reread the pages. On the surface, the New-York- based Global Enterprises invested in resorts abroad, with some domestic locations. On paper, the merger made sense. But when the article told of how the corporate head, Joseph Rivera, had been accused of racketeering, Becca smelled money laundering. Rivera's case had been dismissed on a technicality, no doubt through the efforts of high-priced legal help. The name Rivera didn't ring a bell, but after reading the story, she came to one conclusion. GQ had connections to the mob. With his ties to the heavy hitters of New York as well as to Cavanaugh, her gut told her he might be pulling double duty. Could he be working for more than one boss?
At first, Becca saw Cavanaugh's link to mob money as one of the reasons his travel business diversified and flourished. But from what she knew about Cavanaugh, the man had too big an ego. He wouldn't stand for a spy operating in his midst or welcome any interference from an outside source in the form of someone he deemed lower on the food chain. Cavanaugh might be fueling the engines of the Mafia train with GQ on board for the ride, doing his dirty work. That kind of combo was dangerous enough, but she didn't want to get caught in the middle of a turf war. Something didn't add up.
The news story made her stomach lurch for another reason. A personal one. How could she have been so wrong about her mystery man? She had sensed the danger but overlooked it, finding something redeeming in his eyes. She had to admit it. A more powerful urge had overruled her better judgment. The man rattled her, touched her in a way she had never experienced. If he stood in her way, could she ignore her personal feelings to do her job?
'Only one way to find out.' Becca heaved a sigh. When her desk phone rang, she answered, 'Montgomery.'
'Hey, Rebecca.' She recognized the voice of Sam Hastings, her CSI guy. 'Those fingerprints on the coffee cup? We ran 'em against NCIC without any luck, but through AFIS, we got a hit off firearms registration. Your boy's name is Diego Galvan and he's got a permit to carry concealed in Texas.'
