34
I got to my desk late that Monday morning to find two reports from Detective Paul Brefka, one of the part-time detectives Captain Quintus had promised us.
Brefka was obviously an efficient and intuitive investigator. Given the name of the holding company that owned the Superior Spa—Relax LLC—he followed a hunch and searched for other limited-liability corporations with the word relax in their name. He found nineteen, all registered in Delaware.
Trenton Wiggs—the listed owner of the Superior Spa—was not named in connection with any of those companies. But a Harold Trenton and a Charles Wiggs were. According to the papers, the men were partners in Total Relaxation Ventures, with offices in Reston, Virginia. It sounded to Brefka and it sounded to me as if one person was using at least three identities to control a massage parlor empire. I jotted a note: Pay a visit to Total Relaxation.
Detective Brefka’s second report focused on Cam Nguyen.
Using the texts and recent phone calls on her iPhone, he identified and talked to many of her friends and fellow students, all of whom claimed to be dumbfounded when they learned she’d been working as a prostitute. So did her boyfriend, a GW student who’d been washing dishes at the Froggy Bottom Pub the night of the killings. He and the rest of Cam Nguyen’s friends had not heard from her since.
A check of her bank account showed she had nearly fifteen thousand dollars in savings. According to her debit card records, the missing girl had a history of spending freely, a history that had come to a screeching halt the night of the murders.
“Are they connected?” Captain Quintus asked, startling me as I stared at the reports. “The shooting of Francones and the poisoning of Jackson?”
“Got to be a hell of a lot more than a coincidence.”
“Security tapes?” the homicide supervisor said, moving to take a seat.
“Elvis was good,” I replied. “Real good. Never gave us a decent look at his face, and he must have been wearing gloves because he left nothing in Jackson’s hotel room. At least so far.”
“Who would want Francones and his widow’s lawyer dead?”
“Maybe the Mad Man’s widow, though I doubt it,” said Sampson, coming in with coffee. “Or maybe one of the three creeps who’ve been stalking Mandy Bell. Or Francones’s agent and manager.”
“Snyder and Timmons,” I said, nodding. “They did have a strong reaction when they found out Mandy had married Mad Man.”
“They trying to control her in some way, killing Jackson?” Quintus asked.
“Seems heavy-handed,” Sampson replied. “I mean, their future earnings were tied to Mad Man, not her.”
“Check it,” Quintus said. “Check all of it.”
I smiled wearily. “We always do, Captain.”
Chapter
35
While Sampson tried to reconnect with Mad Man Francones’s agent and manager, I got a car and drove toward the Fourteenth Street Bridge, bound for the offices of Total Relaxation Ventures in Reston, Virginia.
Until my cell phone rang. It was Bree.
“Hey, you,” I said. “Finish with Prough’s statement?”
“Yes, but I haven’t turned it in, and I still feel shitty about letting Prough go yesterday.”
“No reason to hold him,” I said.
There was a pause. “Hold on a second.”
There was silence for several moments, and then she came back on the line with urgency in her voice. “Where are you?”
“Heading toward Reston. What’s wrong?”
“There’s been another kidnapping,” she replied. “And this time it’s high-profile. He’s the baby boy of a cardiologist at GW and a big-time lobbyist on the Hill. I need you on this.”
“I’m working four capital cases as it is, and I’m getting nowhere on all of them,” I said in a strained voice.