Best Laid Plans(81)
“Marquez’s pet gang took out Sanchez’s people,” Brad said.
“Reynoso wouldn’t act on his own?” Ryan asked.
“Not from what I’ve heard, but I should talk to Jerry with SAPD. He knows more about the local gangs.” Brad stared at the photo, but wasn’t seeing anything as he tried to put the puzzle pieces together. “It doesn’t make sense, unless Marquez thought Tobias was rebuilding and wanted to wipe him out for good. Power grab, not retaliation like Rogan thought.”
“Maybe Rogan was wrong,” Ryan said. “No one is right all the time.”
But in the short time Brad had known Kane, he’d never been wrong. What was he missing?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Lucy always felt at home in a crime lab, just like she felt comfortable in the morgue. There was an organization and science to everything; evidence turned clinical. There were no victims in the crime lab, only pieces of a puzzle to put together.
There’d been a time when Lucy thought she’d be better working behind the anonymity of the forensic sciences, where she didn’t have to face the victim or the criminal. Her fourteen months interning for the Medical Examiner in D.C. had been both challenging and satisfying; she could have seen herself working there for the rest of her life. It wouldn’t have been difficult, with her college degree and a master’s in criminal psychology, to continue in school, get a doctorate or a third degree in biology, and become a senior pathologist, or even go to medical school and become a medical examiner.
But ultimately, she continued down the law enforcement career path. Her unique skill set enabled her to assess crime scenes with the eye of an experienced cop instead of the rookie she was, and her background in psychology added another layer to her abilities. Crime scene investigators collected and analyzed evidence, but they didn’t extrapolate or assign the human factor. They took facts and presented them; it was up to agents like Lucy and detectives like Tia to look at the evidence and add in the human equation.
While she loved her job, she sometimes missed the lab environment, so when Tia asked if she and Barry could stop by the lab after their late lunch to look at the evidence from the Elise Hansen shooting, Lucy agreed before Barry could comment.
The evidence was still in the main lab room being processed. They all donned gloves, gowns, and booties, then approached the table where a tech named Stuart was cataloging each item. Everything had been sealed and labeled in either paper bags—if there was biological material like blood—or plastic bags.
Elise’s clothes were hanging in a special drying chamber in the corner both to dry the blood and preserve the evidence.
Stu said, “The cell phone is a burn phone. We pulled down the data from the SIM card.” He handed a printout to Tia. Lucy looked over her shoulder. There wasn’t a lot there.
“Can you shoot a copy of this to my computer and the FBI?”
“Already done,” Stu said. “Your second canvass turned up a backpack in a ditch near the shooting site. Inside was a wallet, multiple IDs, makeup, a change of clothes, condoms, a flask of vodka.” He gestured to a series of plastic bags that had been sealed and labeled. “She had over five thousand dollars in cash on her. We also found an airplane ticket stub in the wallet.”
Lucy picked up that envelope. Barry took a picture on his phone of the information.
“She flew in to San Antonio from Dallas on May thirteenth. Under the name Elise Hamilton.”
“Dallas is a major hub,” Tia said. “She could have transferred from another flight.”
“But now that we have a name and date,” Barry said, “we can contact TSA and see where she originated.”
“Did she have an ID in this name?” Lucy asked.
Stu nodded. “She had several IDs. I made copies. A Nevada ID under Elise Hansen, age eighteen; a Nevada driver’s license under Elise Hamilton, age twenty-one; an ID from Virginia under Elise Harrison, age eighteen; another ID under Elise Hansen but from Texas, age eighteen.”
“Fake?” Tia asked.
“All authentic—but there are people who specialize in creating identities. But four authentic identifications? That’s odd—at least to me.”
“Which ID was issued first?”
“Elise Hansen in Nevada is a state ID that’s three years old. The newest is Elise Hansen in Texas—it was issued three weeks ago, the day after the airline stub.”
“She got the card in three weeks?” Tia asked. “That fast?”
“One day—the day after she arrived,” Stu corrected. “I don’t know how she did it or where she bought it. It has all the marks of being a God-honest Texas ID card, but the address is fake—they couldn’t have mailed it there.”
“Meaning, someone has the ability to create authentic but fake identifications,” Brad said.
“Bingo,” Stu said. “We’re going to run tests on it, but I ran the number—that is real. She’s in the system, under that address, posted on May fourteenth.”
“Then wouldn’t there be a record of who created the ID?” Tia asked.
“Yes and no. If it was created at a DMV, we can trace which one, and we can investigate further. There was a big scandal a few years back where one of the DMVs had a ring of employees who created false identification for illegal immigrants. The state clamped down on them, but that doesn’t mean that others couldn’t slip through. It’s a lucrative business. But it could still be a perfect forgery, especially if they use the same equipment and raw material.”