Page 67 of Ultimate Justice

“So it’s a made-up name created solely for email purposes.” He’d been hoping to make a connection between Manello, the nine-thousand-dollar payments from Purple Dream, LLC, and the Wyoming farm.

“What’s Rediff?” Brian asked.

“It’s an India-based email service,” Tony said. “Deck and I went through all the emails.” He tapped his keyboard. “We found filled-out order forms. This one’s for Noah.”

Evan moved closer to the large screen on the wall, reading the column headings. First name. Sex. Age. Height. Weight. It was the last column heading that had his head prickling with rage. Personal. Under this column were the words baseball and computers. They were not only cataloguing kids’ physical identifiers but their personal preferences. “Jesus. They’re keeping track of what every kid likes, so they can lure them into the camp and convince them to stay by giving them what they want.” Most of these kids were so needy and vulnerable it was easy. Only Noah had been savvy enough to see through their ploy and realize the camp wasn’t all Manello promised it would be.

“I took Noah and Marlie up to Wyoming today,” Evan said. “We looked at four properties. Noah can’t positively ID any of them as being the camp, but there was one place with a seriously pricey security system. The local PD doesn’t know much about the place, except that it’s owned by Mr. and Mrs. Smith.” Again, he looked at Sammy. “Anything on the Smiths?”

Sammy nodded. “John and Jane Smith do own that property you went to on Painted Sky Road. It’s about a thousand acres. Other than the Google Earth images and property sales records, there’s not much information available about that farm. Twenty-six years ago, Madeline Humphrey sold it to John and Jane Smith. And before you ask, after the sale, Madeline Humphrey moved to an assisted living facility in Florida. She died eight years ago.”

All around the table came sarcastic grunts. They all knew John and Jane Smith were probably bogus names.

“I did find one other email you should see.” Tony cued up another email from Tangier Industries to Manello.

Evan read the message aloud. “Cold weather coming soon. Urgent you find more help for the harvest. Big order to fill, then packing up for the move.” Shit. If the farm with the over-the-top security system was indeed the camp, had them showing up today triggered a move?

“They’re pulling up stakes,” Brian said, voicing Evan’s greatest fear.

The big question being, what would happen to the children already there?

“The harvest,” Deck said. “Corn? Wheat? What’s so important about those crops that they need children to do it?”

“I’ve got a theory.” One he hadn’t discussed yet with Brian. Only now were the pieces starting to fall into place. “Tony, were there any prints on that tub of marijuana I seized?”

“They’re still working on the prints.” Tony pulled something up on his laptop. “But I did get a response from the forensic botany unit at the University of New Haven on those buds. They’ve never seen anything exactly like it before, although there’s some similarity to Green Gelato, a Dutch strain with a THC content of twenty-four percent, making it very popular. A couple hits is all it takes to get a cranking-good high.”

“Thanks, Tony,” Evan said. He’d been hoping to get a location. Unfortunately, most of their leads were drying up like a desert. Except for one.

Evan summarized the information Sgt. Browning had given him on the suspected pot farm and the two missing workers.

“They’re still missing.” Sammy handed Evan a folder. Before leaving the Cheyenne PD, he’d sent Sammy the screenshots he’d taken of Pedro Cordova’s and Harrison Grimes’s identifiers. “Their families reported them missing twenty years ago.”

“You think their employment was terminated, and not just in the literal sense?” Brett asked.

“Maybe.” Evan continued shifting around the puzzle pieces in his head. “What if they hired these guys to work on the pot farm, but when they started shooting their mouths off in a public place, they became a liability?”

“So they killed them and started using runaway kids to work there?” Janie McNamara, one of the agents from the Wyoming field office asked.

“Kids can be controlled, making them vulnerable. They can essentially be brainwashed and convinced the outside world, including their parents, is evil and to stay away from it.” He’d seen it before in child abduction cases.

“Here’s the way I see it,” Brian said, and from the look on his face, Evan knew where his boss was about to go. “We can connect John and Margaret selling pot at a farmers market in Denver. Noah ID’d this couple as running the camp, but he can’t positively ID the location of the camp. He can’t even say for certain it was in Wyoming, although I can go with that, based on the eighty-mile-per-hour speed limit sign.”

Brian steepled his fingers beneath his chin. “We already have Manello for kidnapping a minor, assault on a minor, and endangering a minor. We can connect him to over a dozen other missing children via his laptop and social media accounts. We can show he’s getting paid by Purple Dream, LLC, an offshore company registered in the British Virgin Islands. We have him sending emails with photos of missing kids to Tangier Industries via an India-based email server. Now we have a cryptic email to Manello about hiring help for a harvest, but we still can’t connect all the dots, and we still can’t prove where these kids are. Which is exactly what a judge will say. To get a warrant, we need more.”

As much as he wanted to, Evan couldn’t disagree. “Boss, I need that flyover.”

Brian sighed heavily. “I’ve been on the phone all day trying to get you one. So far, no joy. Our closest chopper is down for serious maintenance. I reached out to the Colorado State Patrol, Denver PD, and the Wyoming Highway Patrol. Whoever calls back first gets our business.”

Evan shoved a hand through his hair. Outside the military, the FBI had the largest fleet of government aircraft, and there wasn’t a single chopper available? No telling how long it would take for outside agencies to respond. “I’ll get with Marlie and try to ping Noah’s memories of the camp again. Maybe something will come back to him we can use.”

“That’s it for now, everyone.” Brian rose, indicating the meeting was over.

Evan looked at all the photos taped to the boards, including Manello’s. Every time he looked at it, he had the weirdest feeling he knew the guy but couldn’t place where or when they might have met. If he’d arrested him before, it would have been in his criminal history.

“Got something.” Brett tapped on his phone. “Arthur Constantino, the owner of Blue Waters, changed his flight back from Greece. He and his wife are inbound to DIA. ETA in one hour. I arranged for HSI to meet us at the checkpoint.”

Hot damn. He didn’t think it would get him the remainder of the probable cause he needed, but it was something. He grabbed his phone. A moment later, Deck answered.