men. With what he knew of her ex, it wasn’t hard to see why.
“The call was from Morales. There’s still been no sighting of Juicy but maybe he’s been occupied elsewhere. He just got a call from Vice. Someone dropped Sam Crowley off a tenstory building last night.”
Chapter 19
“Got some more details after I called you.” Eduardo Morales looked like he’d already been home before returning to work. He was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt rather than the suit and tie he normally wore. Nate and Risa were seated in his office. He faced them, hips propped against his desk. “Apparently Vice had contacted Crowley about setting up a sting. The plan was to wait until Emmons called him next time about meeting to exchange the books. Crowley convinced them that if he reached out sooner than their regularly scheduled meets, Emmons would suspect something. So they were resigned to wait another week or more for their first chance at getting their hands on his financials.”
“They didn’t have someone on Crowley at all times?”
Morales’s face was grim as he answered Nate’s question. “They were planning to get that set up in the next few days. He hadn’t actually done anything for them yet, so they figured they had time. But somehow Emmons must have been tipped off that Crowley was going to flip on him.”
“Chances are it was Crowley himself.” He rolled his shoulders to loosen some of the knots that seemed to have taken up residence there. “Crowley seemed to trust Juicy more than he did cops when we talked to him. Might have decided to curry some favor by alerting him about what was coming. The way he’d figure it, that would get him a free walk from us for cooperating and insulates him from retribution from Emmons, too. Maybe they’d figure out a way to double-cross the PPD, feed them false info. Crowley would have liked that idea.”
“And he seemed much more scared of Emmons than he was of the police,” Risa added.
“With good reason, as it turns out.” Nate filled Morales in on their lack of success finding the man earlier that day. “I think it’s time to put a citywide BOLO out on him. He’s got a lot of answers to give.”
“And departments will be standing in line to ask the questions.” But Morales nodded. “I’ll see to it. In the meantime, Vice wants a copy of your interview with him.”
“He didn’t learn of the upcoming sting from us.”
“I know that. So we’ll give them the copy and they’ll realize it, too.” Morales looked at his watch. “Now get out of here so I can send out the alert and get back before the kids’ bedtime. Renee is never too happy when she has to wrestle all three of them down for the night.”
They exited his office. Risa knew she wasn’t going to be able to remain upright for much longer, but as long as they were here, she tugged at Nate’s sleeve. “Let’s do a quick run on that fatal car accident involving Baltes.”
He didn’t argue, and soon he was ensconced behind his computer with Risa leaning close to look at the screen. “A fiery accident,” she murmured, reading from the article he found. “Seems like a lot of that going around in this case.”
“Maybe not coincidental. Too many people involved in this investigation are ending up the same way.”
“But why Baltes? Did he see something, overhear something when he was a kid? If so, why wait until he was”—she stopped a moment to check the screen again—“twenty-six before getting rid of him?”
Nate couldn’t answer. After he exhausted the online archived articles on Baltes’s death, he ran a quick DMV check. The results had him sitting back in his chair, a grim sense of purpose filling him. “One more question for Emmons.”
The DMV report listed Sam Baltes as owner of the car that crashed and burned three years ago. But it also listed the transfers of ownership.
And it just so happened that one Javon Emmons had previously owned Baltes’s car.
Risa turned to him. She swayed slightly, balanced herself with one hand to his desk. “Maybe we could . . .”
“Wait until tomorrow for anything more on this? Great idea.” He shut down the computer and pushed his chair back. She was exhausted. Risa pushed herself so hard that it was easy to forget for periods of time what she’d been through the night before.