for too long.”
“Did Smitty give Jones up?”
“No, he never talked to us. Everything we learned came from his records, which were disorganized. It took over a year of painstakingly analyzing his cryptic notes to discover that Smitty had a business association with Jones. I never figured out it was human trafficking-” He shrugged in frustration. “But we were close. I’d thought prostitution.”
She nodded. “Smitty was a competitor. He specialized in runaways. Jones works with coyotes-human smugglers-south of the border, all the way to South America. But while Jones can bring in more merchandise, his expenses are higher than Smitty’s. He makes his money on volume, while Smitty lured young runaways off the street and then relocated them all over the continent where they couldn’t easily get out if they wanted to. Many of the girls he manipulated had been sexually and physically abused as children and felt they deserved what ever happened to them. Smitty was really good at spotting the damaged teens.”
“You worked on his case, too?” Dean asked, surprised she knew so many details but he hadn’t worked with her on the case.
She shook her head. “He was dead before I transferred to Sacramento, but I knew him as one of the players. Unfortunately, he was out of my squad’s charter. My job has always been international trafficking, and after nine- eleven it’s included a focus on potential terrorist trafficking, specifically disbanding hidden cells throughout the country.”
“But your heart isn’t in it.”
“My heart is with the victims. I’ve done my fair share to prevent terrorism, but it’s hard to focus on that when hundreds of thousands of innocent young people are lured or kidnapped into prostitution or labor camps.”
Dean watched Sonia closely. She was impassioned, but also a realist. There was little they could do to stop these horrendous crimes, but she was determined to do everything possible to thwart their opponents. He admired her drive, her dedication, her passion for her job and the people she helped, as well as the people she put in prison. Sonia wasn’t a woman who would ever stay on the sidelines. Like him, Dean doubted she had much of a life outside the job.
Sonia asked, “What did you find that put Jones on your radar?”
“A thin file. Nothing I could use in court. We originally went after Daniels for racketeering because he was working with major drug smugglers out of Stockton. He was responsible for laundering their money, and had a scam of claiming income from property rentals that didn’t exist. It took time to catch on, but the banks involved alerted us after he changed his deposit habits, and we launched a grand jury investigation to figure out exactly where his money was coming from. It took a few months and physically viewing the properties to realize what his scam was.
“We didn’t go after him right away because we wanted to build a case against the entire organization. Our profilers said he wouldn’t rat anyone out-he was former military and extremely disciplined. So we began surveillance and Jones turned up in one of our photos. Because Jones was a well-known philanthropist, we didn’t make him a priority, but after Daniels was killed, I found a memo that mentioned Jones and a bill of sale for property in Amador County. Nothing on the surface seemed illegal, and after looking into the property we couldn’t find anything wrong with the sale. Callahan went out and interviewed Jones and his answers raised no flags. It went on the back burner until we closed out the Daniels case. But while logging in evidence months later we found another photograph of Daniels, Jones, and some others taken years ago in Mexico-analysts identified the area as Laguna Tres Palos, outside Acapulco. It made Jones’s statement to Callahan that he was only an acquaintance of Thomas Daniels suspect. I started looking closer at Jones’s business-maybe he was now laundering money for drug smugglers since Daniels was gone. I pulled his tax returns and saw that he had ample wealth with no major red flags, but after talking to specialists with the IRS, it seemed that Jones made a lot of money very quickly. He was paying his taxes, but his earnings far exceeded the normal range for companies like his. We looked at his businesses. Everything looked in order … but the association with Daniels bugged me, so I pulled together everything I could get my hands on. When I had the minimum information I needed, I launched the grand jury investigation.”
Dean saw that Sonia was absorbing all the information. “Wow,” she said, eyes wide and sparkling. “And you got a warrant on that? Vague gut instinct?”
“No, that was just the beginning.”
“So you don’t have an informant?”
“No. I wish I did. We discreetly approached some of Jones’s people and determined they aren’t willing to talk or they don’t know enough to help.”
“And how did you get the warrant you executed last night? They’re not easy to come by.”
“On a wing and a prayer,” Dean mumbled.
“Excuse me?”
“Full disclosure: I don’t have a case. But I have a terrific assistant U.S. attorney who put together a solid argument with legal precedent. I have strong hints of a case, I know in my gut that Jones is corrupt-his lobbying firm charges his clients more than any other state or federal registered lobbyist. But I can’t get anyone to talk, and because Jones is meticulous about his filings, there’s nothing, not even an error, I can nail him on. If his clients are willing to pay, what can we do? Is it extortion? Bribery? We’re looking into possible political corruption-that’s Sam’s primary focus, at least until I arrived-but we can’t find anything there, either.”
“It’s hard for that many people to keep a secret that long. Politicians may be scumbags, but they’re not usually murderers or involved in human trafficking.”
Dean cracked a wry grin. “True, but there have been exceptions. Did you know that back in the 1920s a legislator shot his chief of staff in a lover’s triangle involving the secretary?”
“You’re a font of murderous trivia,” Sonia said with a smile. “I haven’t really looked at Jones’s lobbying other than a cursory examination-do you think something’s there? Or that he’s using the business to pass through his trafficking profit?”
“I’ve looked, but I don’t see how he’s doing it. Every dollar he gets from clients is reported, we’ve verified with the clients’ own reporting, and everything matches up. So if Client A pays twenty thousand dollars for consulting services, Jones is reporting twenty thousand dollars-not thirty or forty thousand as I’d expect if he were washing illegal dollars.”
Dean continued. “When you look at his two primary businesses-the lobbying and the security business-they’re very lucrative. More lucrative than similar businesses. I want to take another pass through the companies, the staff, the clients. That was what I was in the middle of when we decided to shake Jones up.”
“That’s all this exercise was about? Shaking Jones up?”
“I just wanted to see what he would do. So far, he’s holding to schedule. I checked his calendar and he showed at his meetings today. I’ll track him tomorrow as well, see if he’s changing any of his plans. He didn’t like me stopping by his lunch date this afternoon.”
“Date?” She raised an eyebrow.
Dean waved his hand. “Just an expression. It was a meeting-him and two clients, men-businessmen, possibly his Indian gaming clients. Sam is running their photographs through the database. We know the fourth man, who arrived late, is his chief of staff at the lobbying firm, Craig Gleason. We took a surface look at him at the beginning, nothing popped, but we’re digging deeper into his background. I have a pair of agents staking out his plane, and if he attempts to leave we’ll take him into custody.”
“On what grounds?”
“Attempted flight to flee prosecution.”
“But you don’t have that.”
“No, but it’ll stop him from leaving for forty-eight hours and I’ll get it.”
“And here people think Homeland Security has loose rules.”
“I follow the rules,” Dean said firmly, “I just make the most of them. There are more rules protecting criminals than defending our right to pursue them. I’m not trampling on any of his rights, but I’m going to make damn sure he doesn’t leave the country. I have his passport flagged as well. If he tries to use it, the FBI will be notified and he won’t be allowed to board the plane.”
“Do you really think Jones is running his human trafficking profits through his businesses?” Sonia asked, somewhat skeptical. Dean understood her confusion-white-collar crimes were a far cry from anything she’d worked on.
