“Figured you might want an update. Busy?”
“Hit me with it.”
The marshal said, “The person who stabbed Jenkins in lockup is the same guy who attacked Dr. Yassan outside the hospital. Stuart Parker. He was being kept for the weekend and took the opportunity to try and kill Jenkins. Now there’s no way they’re letting him out. Judge Mullinax set bail at one million, and the DA wants Parker to tell the police who hired him to do it.”
“Any update on Jenkins’s status?” Luca glanced around to make sure no one was listening to him.
“I haven’t heard anything since he came out of surgery. The knife nicked his spleen and they had to take it out, so he’s still touch and go.”
That was as much as Luca already knew from talking to Mack on the way here. It wasn’t a surprise that the kid had mixed feelings about his father’s condition. He was also wrestling with the idea of forgiving Jenkins, something Hammer had told him they both needed to do in order to move on with their lives.
“What about the cartel guy the police brought in? Have you discovered anything about why he and his buddy were tailing Dr. Torres earlier?”
Ethan said, “Our techs are still trying to get in his phone, but at this point, if he doesn’t voluntarily unlock it for us, we might not be able to get anything from it.”
“How is that possible, with all the technology you guys have? Can’t you just compel him to unlock it for you?”
“Usually we’d be in it by now. But this phone isn’t like anything our techs have seen before. It’s like it runs on a whole different network.” Ethan paused. “If this is the future of unregistered phones, it doesn’t bode well for us getting intel. We can’t locate a phone company that runs the operating system on this device. The techs tell me it seems to be some kind of proprietary operating system.”
“Like a criminal phone network?”
Ethan said, “I hope not.”
Luca shook his head, his gaze catching on the corner of one of the posters. An image of two Afghan girls smiling, clutching books. “Has he said anything?”
“We ran his prints. The file that Homeland had on him matches up with what we found. Plus a couple of extras they weren’t aware of,” Ethan said. “The US Attorney is going to pressure him on the two missing persons cases we have in Arizona. Young girls who never turned up, but his fingerprints were found on their cell phones. Looks like he took them and left the phones behind in both cases.”
“It’s a good thing this guy is off the streets.” Not that it entirely solved the problem. “His friend is still out there.”
“Has Dr. Torres shown up?”
“Not according to Detective Martinelli. He’s the one watching the patient right now. I’ll be back there later tonight to check on things, and first thing tomorrow, I’ll be on the door for the day.”
He wasn’t sure what Kira’s plans were and wanted to ask. But they would get there. Maybe she’d want to go to dinner tomorrow night.
“Sounds good,” Ethan said. “Martinelli is a solid cop.”
Luca wasn’t going to reaffirm that he knew what he was doing. The proof would come when Francisco was done with his treatment and could be back in the Marshals’ custody.
All because Judge Mullinax wouldn’t allow the Marshals to protect the witness before he testified. He would only authorize the detail once Francisco had given the Marshals what they needed to know. A deal with some significant strings attached.
And those strings were getting tangled, considering members of the cartel were here to cause trouble. The doctor had run off, as had another man.
Right now, Luca didn’t even know if the doctor was alive. The other man might’ve caught up to him, and anything could’ve happened after that. But the patient, Francisco, would be safe either way. Kira could administer the treatment, if it came to that, and the deal could be salvaged.
“That’s all I have right now.”
Luca said, “I appreciate the update.”
“I appreciate you doing this job for us. It’s a regular lovefest over here.” Ethan chuckled. “We’re thinking about privatizing the entire agency. Contracting all our work out to guys like you so we can stay in the office all the time eating our admin assistant’s brownies and cookies.” Ethan hung up the phone, still laughing to himself.
Luca’s gaze snagged on the corner of the poster. A slight discoloration that shouldn’t be there on the image, given the rest of the picture didn’t contain that color. It almost looked like the edge of a watermark. Had the foundation used stock photography instead of an original image one of their people had taken showing real people they had helped?
He could understand if every single one of the images they used might not be their own. But still, he wondered if it was an indication that things about the foundation weren’t quite honest below the surface.
As soon as the money moved, Jamie would see where it went and track her funds—how they were distributed, the kinds of accounts they landed in. It was just another way to untangle the web of what was going on. If Destiny and her nonprofit were legit, then great. But if it was somehow connected to the Shadow Syndicate, then Luca needed to know.
He saw Roger Rousseau duck out of a side door of the main hall, checking first that no one saw him by looking around. Then he disappeared out of sight. Luca knew that look on the man’s face, and it didn’t bode well. He was up to something. Even if that something was only that he needed to duck out and smoke where his mother wouldn’t see.