A records search in both California and Nevada took the better part of an hour and turned up nothing. Rochelle Moroni had no criminal history whatsoever. In fact, there wasn’t even so much as a traffic violation.

  “So what’s this Little Miss Perfect doing hanging out with a bad boy like Big Eddie Gascone?” Roxie asked.

  “No accounting for taste,” Juanita replied.

  “What are you going to do about this?” Roxie asked. “Head up to Vegas to question him?”

  Juanita glanced at her watch. It was already midafternoon. In order to cross state lines to interview Eddie, she’d need to go through channels and across desks, a journey best navigated on weekdays during office hours rather than late on a Sunday.

  “I think I’ll tackle that tomorrow,” she said. “What we have so far is still pretty thin—just that single connection between Dante’s phone and Big Eddie’s. How long before you have location info on his phone?”

  “No telling,” Roxie replied. “It’s soup to nuts. Could be a matter of hours or a matter of weeks.”

  “All right, then, I’m going home. If I leave now, I’ll be able to spend some time with my kids. This week I’ve been gone more than I’ve been home.”

  “Do that,” Roxie said. “In the meantime and just for the hell of it, I’m going to go online and do a deep dive into both Big Eddie Gascone and his gal pal, Rochelle. What’s showing in Records may not be the whole story. I’ll take a look at what the Internet has to say.”

  Three hours later, Juanita’s whole family was cuddled up on the massive leather sofa in the family room watching America’s Funniest Videos when a call came in from Roxie. Juanita went into the other room to take the call.

  “What have you got?”

  “Rochelle Moroni may be a law-abiding citizen, but her father’s a different story.”

  “Who’s her father?”

  “His name is Salvatore Moroni. He’s a former organized-crime kingpin who moved from New Jersey to Vegas back in the eighties. Twenty years ago, while Rochelle was still in high school, Salvatore went to prison for knocking off some of his former associates. He was convicted on four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of conspiracy to commit. He’s in prison doing life without.”

  “What prison?” Juanita asked.

  “Lompoc Federal Correctional Complex.”

  A wave of goose bumps passed over Juanita’s body. “Holy crap!” she exclaimed. “You may have just cracked the whole case.”

  “What do you mean?” Roxie asked.

  “Frank Muñoz, the guy we’re looking at as being the epicenter of this whole flurry of cases, was paroled from Lompoc just a couple of months ago. It’s been suggested that he might be working with someone doing murders for hire.”

  “So maybe Muñoz and Moroni met up and started collaborating while they were both in the prison,” Roxie suggested.

  “Possibly,” Juanita agreed. “Muñoz was still incarcerated when the first homicide occurred in St. Paul. He’s out on parole now, but if he and Moroni are still working together, how do they communicate?”

  “Easy,” Roxie answered. “Via computer. I’ve gotten a look at Big Eddie’s email accounts and found something curious.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Of the four accounts accessible by his phone, only one of those appears to be active. The other three are blank with no correspondence at all coming or going.”

  “Maybe he deletes his messages,” Juanita suggested.

  “I’m sure he does.”

  “Can you get them back?”

  “No,” Roxie replied.

  “Why not?”

  “Because they were never sent,” Roxie said. “Have you ever heard of 9/11?”

  “Of course, everybody has. Why?”

  “The 9/11 coconspirators communicated with each other by having jointly registered email accounts on their various devices. By posting messages in email draft files, anyone with access to that account could read the content and then erase it completely simply by deleting the draft file. Deleted sent messages never completely disappear. Deleted draft files do.”

  “I’ll need more warrants for those accounts, won’t I?” Juanita said after a moment of consideration.

  “Yes, you will,” Roxie said, “and I’ll text you those IP addresses right away.”

  “Thank you,” Juanita told her. “I’ll tackle Judge Carruthers first thing tomorrow. In the meantime, I believe it’s time to give Amos Anderson a call.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “A captain at St. Paul PD in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was the lead detective on the first case in this whole series, the murder of a woman named Danielle Lomax-Reardon, who was shot to death on her way home from work. It turns out she was also Frank Muñoz’s ex-girlfriend. So the idea that Muñoz and Moroni might be collaborating on all of this doesn’t seem at all far-fetched.”

  “So we’re getting someplace then?” Roxie asked.

  “I think so,” Juanita agreed. “Let me know the moment that location info comes in. It doesn’t matter if it’s day or night—just call.”

  “I will,” Roxie said. “I promise.”

  CHAPTER 49

  ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA

  Sunday, January 5, 2020, 9:00 p.m. (CST)

  By late Sunday evening, Amos was still in his office. He had a headache and his eyes hurt. The interview Russ had done with Luke Reardon the night before had come up empty. Danielle had evidently edited her connection to Frank Muñoz out of her relationship with the man who became both her husband and the father of her children. Considering Muñoz’s character and criminal history, that was entirely understandable.

  Amos and Russ had spent hours combing through the Internet, tracking down everything they could find on Frank. Some of what they’d found, including his current address on Shadow Lane in Las Vegas, came from sources accessible to law enforcement only, but most of that came from sites open to the general public. Nothing they’d found served to move the investigation forward.

  Based on the message Ali Reynolds had left on Amos’s cell phone the night before, they had checked reservations for all commercial flights scheduled to leave Las Vegas’s McCarran International over the course of the next two weeks. Frank Muñoz’s name appeared in none of them. A similar check with local FBOs indicated that he wasn’t due to depart on a private flight, either.

  “I’m done,” Amos told Russ finally. “Let’s give it up for tonight. Tomorrow’s another day.”

  That was when his phone rang. “Amos Anderson.”

  “Detective Juanita Ochoa here,” she said. “I think I’ve got something.”

  To Amos’s ear, she sounded excited. “Hold on while I put you on speaker.” Together he and Russ listened to the whole story, By the time Detective Ochoa finished relating everything she and Roxie had pieced together, the two St. Paul detectives were excited and reenergized, too.

  “All of this adds up as far as I’m concerned,” Amos said. “Do you need any assistance in going after that next warrant?”

  “I don’t think so,” Ochoa replied. “Since this all came out of my original warrant, it’s probably best if I go back to the same judge for the one on Rochelle Moroni.”

  “While you do that, Detective Thomas and I will see what we can dig up on Papa Moroni, but we’ll be doing it on the Q.T. We won’t make any direct inquiries to Lompoc. I don’t want to alert him or anyone who might be aiding and abetting him to the fact that we’re on his trail. But here’s something else you should know, Detective Ochoa. We’ve learned Muñoz may be planning to skip town in the near future. I’ve reached out to his parole officer to see if she’s aware of that. If we can nail him on a parole violation, he’ll automatically be shipped back to Lompoc to serve out the remainder of his sentence. That’ll give us several more years to build a case.”

  “I don’t want to wait years to build a case,” Juanita Ochoa objected. “I want this solved now.”

  “Believe me, so do I,” Amos told her.

  “What next?” Russ asked once the call ended.

  While Amos considered his answer, he shuffled back through the batch of notes he’d been making along the way. Finally he spotted the name of someone he’d originally discounted.

  “Assuming we manage to nab Muñoz, one way to start building a circumstantial case against him is to show that he exhibited patterns of abusive behavior in the past. The only witness we know of for sure who can attest to that is Zeke Woodward, an ex-con living in Washington State and currently in hospice care.”

  “Hospice?” Russ asked. “So he’s on his way out?”

  Amos nodded in agreement. “And he most likely won’t be around long enough to testify at trial.”

  “You’re looking for something like a deathbed declaration?”

  “Yes, I am,” agreed Amos. “It might not be admissible but I’d like you to fly there to get it for us.”

  Amos and Russ hadn’t worked together as partners for years, yet they had easily slipped back into being able to read each other’s minds.

  “Ali Reynolds, our source in Arizona, is the one who located Zeke in the first place. I’ll text you her information. Since he talked to her, maybe he’ll agree to talk to you, too. This time, though, I want that interview recorded.”

  “Got it,” Russ said, getting to his feet. “If I get the go-ahead…”

  “Book the flight and go,” Amos told him. “If admin gives you any guff about it, have them check with me.”

  CHAPTER 50

  LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

  Sunday, January 5, 2020, 1:00 p.m. (PST)

  As far as Frank Muñoz was concerned, Sunday seemed to go on for damned ever. Football was on, but not even the game between the Vikings and the Saints could hold his interest—he was too antsy and restless. He’d heard nothing more from Sal, and nothing from Rochelle, either. At this point there was no sign of his promised refund, and the clock was ticking. He was dealing with a sense of urgency no one else seemed to share.

  Finally, unable to stand it any longer, he sent what he hoped sounded like a friendly reminder:

  Any news on that refund? I’ll be checking out of here tomorrow night, and I really need to have it.

  Then, to keep from just sitting there, staring at the unchanging words in the draft file, he left his apartment and moseyed over to Hi-Roller. An hour or so of walking on the treadmill would do him a world of good, especially since, starting tomorrow night, he’d be spending the better part of the next three days on board airplanes with his body crammed into an economy seat.

  He stopped off at the diner for a tuna melt on the way home, and then spent the evening doing nostalgic channel surfing, wondering if there would be anything worth watching on TV in Indonesia once he got where he was going.

  A little before midnight when Hi-Roller was due to close, Frank ferried his luggage over to the gym and left it with the backroom attendant. After returning to his apartment, he gave himself a mental pat on the back. It was late enough that he hadn’t seen a soul coming or going. Now with his luggage safely stowed, he was good to go except for one last thing—that damned refund.

  CHAPTER 51

  COTTONWOOD, ARIZONA

  Monday, January 6, 2020, 2:00 a.m. (MST)

  Stu was in the office and manning a nighttime shift when the next howler came in.

  “You need to see this,” Frigg told him.

  Pulling the file up on his iPad, he saw another segment of pieced-together video surveillance footage. In it someone resembling Frank Muñoz appeared to be transporting two pieces of wheeled luggage—a larger one and a smaller—out of his apartment, through the apartment complex, and into a business.

  “When did this happen?” he demanded.

  “A little over an hour ago,” Frigg answered. “I spliced the footage together before sending it.”

  “And where is the luggage now?”

  “Inside the Hi-Roller gym on Alta.”

  “What about Muñoz? Where’s he?”

  “Back in his apartment.”

  Stu sighed. Obviously the man’s departure was now imminent. “Thank you, Frigg,” Stu said aloud. “Keep him under surveillance and let me know right away if he goes anywhere else. In the meantime, I’ll try to figure out what to do next.”

  Between looking after B.’s medical needs and juggling the many well-wishers who had stopped by the house to see B. on Sunday, Stu knew that Ali’s day had been difficult. He suspected that once B. had gone to bed, Ali had, too. The last thing Stu wanted to do was disturb her, but with clear evidence that Muñoz’s departure was imminent, he didn’t think he should sit on that information until later in the morning. If he called Ali, there was a good chance she’d be upset with him for waking her in the middle of the night, but there was an equally good chance that she’d be even more upset if he didn’t.

  Taking a deep breath, Stu settled on option one and dialed. Ali answered the call in a whisper. “Hold on,” she said.

  Stu heard shuffling noises as she got out of bed. “Okay,” she said a few seconds later. “I’m in the other room with the door closed. What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Muñoz,” Stu said. “He’s moved his luggage from his apartment to a different location. It looks like he’s making a run for it tonight or tomorrow. Do you want Frigg to send you the footage?”

  “No need,” Ali said. “I’ll take your word for it. I’ll pass this information along to Amos Anderson immediately if not sooner.”

  “There’s a problem with that,” Stu objected. “The footage we have came from a whole series of illegal hacks. What are you going to tell him?”

  Ali thought a moment before she answered. “I’ll use the same ruse I did before—that the information came from one of our operatives.”

  “That’s what you’re calling Frigg these days?” Stu asked. “An operative?”

  “It worked last night when I left him a message,” Ali said. “I’m guessing it’ll pass muster this time, too. Is there anything else?”

  “Well, yes, there is,” Stu admitted. “I had a long talk with Cami yesterday evening. We’ve all been hearing rumblings about Covid possibly causing a worldwide pandemic. She said the last day of the conference was devoted almost entirely to talk about how restrictions to international travel might impact the cybersecurity industry as a whole. That got me to worrying about how it might affect High Noon in particular, so rather than just worry about it, I posed the question to Frigg.”

  “What did she say?” Ali asked.

  “She says that there are currently no known therapeutics that can be used to combat Covid, which suggests that mandatory travel restrictions may well be imposed. Her calculations indicate a 97.6 percent certainty that a pandemic similar to the Spanish flu of 1918 is inevitable.”

  “How do we weather a storm like that?”

  “I don’t know,” Stu said. “Let’s figure that out after we finish dealing with Frank Muñoz.”

  CHAPTER 52

  ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA

  Sunday, January 5, 2020, 10:00 p.m. (CST)

  Once Russ’s travel plans were sorted, Amos went home. Bonnie was already in bed. Amos understood why. He’d been late to dinner the night before. Even though he’d turned off his phone and done his best to play host for the remainder of the evening, no doubt he was still in the doghouse about it. Not wanting to wake her, he closeted himself in his study and spent the next couple of hours digging into Salvatore Moroni’s background.

  He had grown up in Camden, New Jersey, with family connections that made him third-generation Mafia. By the late seventies he was in the top tier of the local mob and was expected to end up as the big boss. Then several of his compatriots had closed ranks, hoping to push him out and install someone more to their liking in his place.

  That’s when Sal and his family had decamped to Vegas where he gradually created a whole new set of mob-related connections. Meanwhile, back home in Jersey, the hits started coming. One by one the guys who had taken Sal down came to grief in blatantly violent fashion, with package bombs being Sal’s preferred method of exacting revenge. In view of what had just occurred in Beaverton, Oregon, on Friday morning, Amos found that part of Moroni’s history especially compelling.

  Eventually, after one of Sal’s hired hand-bomb-delivery guys had ratted him out, the feds put it together and came calling. Moroni had been charged and convicted on four separate counts of murder in the first degree and conspiracy to commit. Amos found it interesting that the snitch had died of a self-inflicted shotgun blast within days of Sal being transported to Lompoc. After reading the chronology, Amos couldn’t help but think Moroni had orchestrated the snitch’s death as well.

  What all those early cases had in common was a deeply personal link to Salvatore Moroni. What were the chances that, once he’d settled his own scores, Moroni had taken what he’d learned along the way and turned it into an ongoing business venture?

  The more Amos thought about it, the more it made sense. Sal already had considerable experience in organizing long-distance hits, and he probably had a whole catalog of people willing to do his bidding if the price was right. Not only that, if he got caught, what was the worst that could happen to him? He was already serving life without. Death sentences were occasionally still imposed, but they were seldom carried out. In other words, the worst that could happen was the possibility of receiving yet another life sentence. Big deal.

  At that point Amos’s phone rang with the name of the Beaverton detective showing on caller ID.

  “Hey, Lew,” Amos said. “How’s it going?”

  “Hope it’s not too late to call.”

  “Not to worry. It’s not. What’s going on?”

  “Our CSIs found all kinds of newspaper and plastic confetti that tend to corroborate the newspaper boy’s story of detonating the bomb by hitting that cardboard box. It was powerful enough that anyone holding the box when the bomb went off would have been blown to smithereens.”

  “So that kid saved somebody’s life,” Amos observed.