“Of course. They’re dead.”
“I was thinking of the vodka-swilling shits Ace Shuman alluded to.”
“You’ll have to clue me in.”
“Sergey Yuran is a Russian trafficker. If it’s in Russia-drugs, people, weapons-he can get it.”
“Yuran?”
Noah nodded. “He’s the only Russian who’s on Morton’s associate list. According to Kate Donovan’s notes, he supplied Trask Enterprises with a steady stream of prostitutes for their sex tapes. If Morton crossed him?”
He stopped. Something didn’t feel right about this.
“What?” Abigail pressed a moment later.
“I don’t know. I don’t know Yuran well, but Morton’s murder seems sloppy to me.”
“Sloppy? One bullet and he’s dead.”
“Yeah-but Yuran is better than that. Still,” Noah said, turning onto the freeway, “Morton was into something that got him killed, and that means someone even more dangerous is involved in whatever plan Morton had up his sleeve.”
“Where to now?”
“Yuran. I have to call it in, I’m sure one of our people is watching him closely. I don’t want to risk any existing undercover op, but he knows something or Shuman wouldn’t have seemed so nervous.”
Driving back to D.C., Noah called Hans Vigo to learn the status of any investigation involving Sergey Yuran. By the time Hans returned his call, he was pulling into FBI headquarters.
“You were right to call,” Hans said. “Immigration has had him under surveillance for months, and they don’t want us involved at this point. I did, however, get some information out of them. Good news, bad news. Or good news, neutral news, depending on your point of view.”
“Give it to me.”
“Yuran and his key men are all alibied for last weekend-they were in New York City.”
“Doing what? A human trafficking convention?” Noah added sarcastically.
“They didn’t say, I didn’t ask. Immigration is touchy these days.”
Noah said, “He could have put a hit out on Morton.”
“True, but there’s no whisper of that. According to my source, Morton and Ralston aren’t even on their radar. There are no signs that Yuran is even looking into the online sex trade; he prefers to deal with live people.”
Noah didn’t think that Shuman was blowing smoke up his ass. “My source says Yuran was a possible source of capital to launch the venture.”
“That may be possible, but only from a money perspective. Yuran has been known to loan money, at huge cost. You think that’s why Morton and Ralston were killed? They didn’t pay up?”
“No,” Noah admitted. “That doesn’t feel right-there’s no sign that either of them had any cash, even for a short time. Yuran isn’t an idiot; he wouldn’t kill them without a reason.”
“I agree. I think Yuran is a dead end, but I did ask my ICE contact to research the matter. How many emails were exchanged between Yuran and Morton?”
“One.”
“Doesn’t seem like a good bet. Does Kate have the content yet?”
“No. Anything else?”
“Yeah, the neutral-to-bad news.”
“I thought you gave me the bad news.”
“Because you didn’t close your case? That’d be too easy. But you should know that Sean Rogan paid a visit to Sergey Yuran yesterday.”
Noah tensed. “Rogan?”
“Stayed for twenty-seven minutes. Went to his bar before it opened. The timing suggests it was right before he found Ralston’s body.”
“Yuran sent him there?”
“Doubtful-Ralston was an associate of Morton’s, Sean was working the case like you were.”
“Obstructing justice.”
“I’m saying, you might want to use Sean and RCK where you can. They have a little more freedom than we do.”
Hans wasn’t explicitly giving him an order, but it felt like one. Noah didn’t want to cross that line. Bringing in a private consultant was one thing, but a gray-area firm like Rogan-Caruso-Kincaid? “I think I’ll just ask Rogan what he and Yuran talked about, and then tell him to stay the hell out of my case.”
“I understand; I’m just giving options,” Hans said.
It wasn’t an option Noah cared to exercise-except as a last resort.
TWENTY
Cody confronted Lucy outside the Medical Examiner’s Office on Monday morning. “You lied to me.”
Lucy blinked rapidly, at a complete loss. Her head ached from lack of sleep, the wind had picked up, making her colder than she already was, and that awful pinprick sensation of being watched had returned.
He shoved a piece of paper into her gloved hand. It was a printout of a message from Prenter’s social networking account-the deleted account-forwarded to Prenter’s personal email.
The original message was from Lucy’s “Tanya” account:
change of plans-i have an errand in dc can we meet at club 10? can’t wait!! xoxo Tanya.
Lucy read it five times before Cody yanked it out of her hands. “I didn’t send it,” she said.
“I don’t believe you.”
She stared at him, heartbroken that he thought she was lying. A curdle of fear twisted in her stomach as she realized someone had used her account to send Prenter to Club 10. Where he’d been murdered. “You’ve known me for over three years. You don’t trust me?”
“Are you denying this is your account?” He waved the paper in her face.
“No, but-”
“Your secure WCF account?”
“Cody! Stop interrogating me like I’m a suspect.”
He didn’t say anything, but glared at her.
“I didn’t send that message,” she repeated.
“Then who?” He shot out the question as if she were a hostile witness.
“I don’t know!”
Lucy’s mind ran through every possible scenario she could think of. “It’s not impossible for someone to have hacked my account.”
“Someone would have to have known who you were.”
“No-not necessarily. If someone got hold of Prenter’s emails-hell, Cody, he had them forwarded to his personal email, anyone could see my log-in name! Maybe one of his ex-girlfriends was pissed off and didn’t want him seeing someone else. Maybe-”
“Listen to yourself!”
“I’m trying to figure out how someone used my account-or masked their account to look like mine-to send him to the bar where he died. Maybe it’s just a coincidence.” As she said it, she realized this was no coincidence. The decision to send Prenter to Club 10 was deliberate and calculating. Less than two hours later, he was murdered in the alley. Quietly, she asked, “What do you think, Cody?”
He ran a hand over his face. “I don’t know what to think, Lucy.”
“The murder was purposeful. Did you read the autopsy report? Four bullets, remember? Three in the stomach, one in the back of the head. That sounds professional, right? Not a drug dispute gone bad.”
Lucy began to shake from more than the cold.
Cody grabbed her hand. “If you’re in trouble, tell me. I will do everything in my power to help you, but you
