Page 17 of Wrong Way

Hahn kept his expression even. "And billing is still active under that name?"

"Current as of this month, but I can’t—"

“You can’t give it to me. Yes, I know. Tell me, has Ms. Parsons been in since the change? Accessing the unit herself?"

"Not that I've seen, and I'm here most days." She paused and frowned again. "Is she dangerous? Should I be concerned if she comes in?"

"She's someone I'm trying to learn more about, and that is all," Hahn said. "I don't want to alarm you unnecessarily. But if she does come in, or if you see anyone you don't recognize accessing that particular unit, I'd really appreciate a call." He took a card from his jacket and set it on the counter. "My cell is on there. Feel free to call me at any hour."

He nodded and went back outside. He sat in his car outside the gate for a few minutes, working through what he had. Nelson Banks was a name that had appeared nowhere in his research on Parsons, which meant it was either someone she trusted enough to put on a storage account or an alias she had constructed for the purpose. Either way, she had put deliberate distance between herself and the unit three weeks ago. People didn't do that without a reason, and the most common reason was that they didn't want the unit connected to their name if someone came looking.

He thought about the fourteen months of cesium purchases, spaced carefully across multiple vendors to avoid triggering any single company's internal flagging. The employment history that gave her working knowledge of procurement systems. The storage unit now sitting under a name that wasn't hers. Each piece had an individual explanation. Together they described someone who had been planning something for a long time and was careful about not leaving a straight line back to herself.

He opened his laptop on the passenger seat and began working on the warrant application. He had most of the supporting documentation already compiled: the purchase records, the employment discrepancy, the social media post, the timeline. The storage unit and the name change would add meaningful weight. A judge looking at the complete picture would see what he saw.

While the document was open, he texted an analyst named Chadwick back at the field office, someone fast who didn't ask unnecessary questions. He sent the name Nelson Banks and asked for a full background workup, anything connected to Portland, Maine, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, or to Jennifer Parsons directly.

Chadwick responded in under a minute: on it.

Hahn had worked with Chadwick twice before on smaller cases, and the man had a talent for finding connections in records that looked unrelated on the surface. If Nelson Banks had any documented existence anywhere, Chadwick would find it. If the name was entirely constructed, that absence would be its own information.

Hahn set the phone down and looked out at the facility gate. The units sat in their rows behind it, identical and windowless, and one of them held whatever Parsons had been building toward. He was aware of how thin parts of it still appeared from the outside. Suspicious, certainly. Enough for a warrant, he believed. But not yet enough for an arrest, and the distance between those two things was where the remaining work was.

The thought moved through him that he might be wrong about all of it. That Parsons was a private person with unusual interests and a legitimate explanation for every purchase, and that he had spent three days and most of his standing with Ortega chasing a thread that went nowhere. He let the thought complete itself and then set it aside. He knew the difference between a hunch built on nothing and a pattern built on verifiable evidence, and what he had on Parsons was the second thing.

He put the car in gear and pulled out of the lot, the warrant application saved and ready to file.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The address they’d pulled from the personnel file for Rivera was a rental house on Chestnut Avenue in East Austin. The house was a bit on the deteriorating side, a narrow one-story with a cracked driveway and a dead plant on the porch. Nobody answered when Miles knocked. He knocked twice more and they stood there for a moment in the morning heat.

“It is rather late in the morning,” Vic pointed out. “He could be at work.”

As she said this, Miles noted a man in the neighboring yard, working a pair of hedge clippers along the top of a low shrub. He wasn’t making much of an effort to hide the fact that he was watching them closely.

"He leaves early," the man said when it was clear the jig was up. "Seven, seven-thirty most days. Big white van."

"You know where he's working?" Vic asked. She came down from the porch, approached the shrub, and showed the man her ID.

The neighbor looked appalled for a moment as he studied the badge and then looked rather nervous.

“He works with an electrical contractor. Miller and Johns.”

“Are you close with Mr. Rivera?” Miles asked.

"Nah. We'll have a beer out on the back porch every now and then, but that's about it. He seems like a good enough man, though…if that helps."

“Thanks,” Mile said, already typing Miller and Johns into a Google search. The name and number of a local electrical contractor popped up. He called the number as he and Vic walked back to their car. The woman on the other line was very helpful and was able to give them the address of Rivera’s current, active job in under two minutes.

The drive from Rivera’s address to the location took another fifteen but Miles still felt like they were making fairly swift progress. The location of the job was a small commercial building on Berkman Drive. It was two stories of pale brick with scaffolding along the front face and a dumpster in the parking lot filled with demo debris. A white panel van was parked along the side of the building with the rear doors standing open.

They pulled into the lot and got out. Even before the entered the building, Miles could smell the scents of renovation. It smelled of sawdust and fresh concrete, and through the open front entrance they could hear power tools running somewhere on the interior. Within just a few steps of entering, Miles saw two men. One was tall and African American, inserting a series of screws into the wall along the back. The other looked to be of Hispanic descent, in his mid-thirties, working near the building's exterior junction box. He was lean and dark-haired with a tool belt around his waist and a coil of conduit leaning against the wall beside him.

“Are either of you men Marcus Rivera?” Miles asked in a loud voice.

Both been turned toward them, and the Hispanic-looking man closer to them raised his hand hesitantly. “Yeah, that’s me.”

His posture instantly went rigid before they were within speaking distance. He set down the metal tool he was holding. His weight shifted toward the far side of the parking lot in a way that was not subtle. As they got closer to him, Rivera’s eyes moved between them and then to his van and then back again.