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“I don’t know. I don’t know Yuran well, but Morton’s murder seems sloppy to me.”
“Sloppy? One bullet and he’s dead.”
“Yeah—but Yuran is better than that. Still,” Noah said, turning onto the freeway, “Morton was into something that got him killed, and that means someone even more dangerous is involved in whatever plan Morton had up his sleeve.”
“Where to now?”
“Yuran. I have to call it in, I’m sure one of our people is watching him closely. I don’t want to risk any existing undercover op, but he knows something or Shuman wouldn’t have seemed so nervous.”
Driving back to D.C., Noah called Hans Vigo to learn the status of any investigation involving Sergey Yuran. By the time Hans returned his call, he was pulling into FBI headquarters.
“You were right to call,” Hans said. “Immigration has had him under surveillance for months, and they don’t want us involved at this point. I did, however, get some information out of them. Good news, bad news. Or good news, neutral news, depending on your point of view.”
“Give it to me.”
“Yuran and his key men are all alibied for last weekend—they were in New York City.”
“Doing what? A human trafficking convention?” Noah added sarcastically.
“They didn’t say, I didn’t ask. Immigration is touchy these days.”
Noah said, “He could have put a hit out on Morton.”
“True, but there’s no whisper of that. According to my source, Morton and Ralston aren’t even on their radar. There are no signs that Yuran is even looking into the online sex trade; he prefers to deal with live people.”
Noah didn’t think that Shuman was blowing smoke up his ass. “My source says Yuran was a possible source of capital to launch the venture.”
“That may be possible, but only from a money perspective. Yuran has been known to loan money, at huge cost. You think that’s why Morton and Ralston were killed? They didn’t pay up?”
“No,” Noah admitted. “That doesn’t feel right—there’s no sign that either of them had any cash, even for a short time. Yuran isn’t an idiot; he wouldn’t kill them without a reason.”
“I agree. I think Yuran is a dead end, but I did ask my ICE contact to research the matter. How many emails were exchanged between Yuran and Morton?”
“One.”
“Doesn’t seem like a good bet. Does Kate have the content yet?”
“No. Anything else?”
“Yeah, the neutral-to-bad news.”
“I thought you gave me the bad news.”
“Because you didn’t close your case? That’d be too easy. But you should know that Sean Rogan paid a visit to Sergey Yuran yesterday.”
Noah tensed. “Rogan?”
“Stayed for twenty-seven minutes. Went to his bar before it opened. The timing suggests it was right before he found Ralston’s body.”
“Yuran sent him there?”
“Doubtful—Ralston was an associate of Morton’s, Sean was working the case like you were.”
“Obstructing justice.”
“I’m saying, you might want to use Sean and RCK where you can. They have a little more freedom than we do.”
Hans wasn’t explicitly giving him an order, but it felt like one. Noah didn’t want to cross that line. Bringing in a private consultant was one thing, but a gray-area firm like Rogan-Caruso-Kincaid? “I think I’ll just ask Rogan what he and Yuran talked about, and then tell him to stay the hell out of my case.”
