David Kent - The Triangle Conspiracy

“Do I, now?”

“Shit.” Owens tilted his head back again. “Damn, that hurts.”

“Well, you should watch what you say. Don’t worry, it’s not broken. I didn’t hit you that hard, counselor.”

“Feels broken.” Owens felt along the ridge of his nose, wincing.

“It’s not. You wouldn’t be talking so well if it was broken. I have a reputation?”

Owens blinked at him. “For finding things. For finding people with not much of a trail to follow.”

Sean remembered Sonny Weller’s words this morning. It had seemed like a long time ago. You’re good at putting things together with only a little to go on. Most of the guys in this office aren’t half as smart as you are.

“So?” Sean said, but with less vehemence.

“Whether you like him or not, Senator McDermott has kept up with the work law enforcement is doing here on the border.” He breathed through his nose, a wet, rattling sound. He winced again. “Your career has just taken a nosedive. You have a skill that can help the senator, and maybe you’ll get a chance to…what’s the best way to put it?…to redeem yourself.”

“News doesn’t travel that fast. I just got suspended this morning.”

“You have a friend in the office, a Mr. Helms?”

“AJ? What about him?”

“It seems he is currently dating a young woman whose sister works in Senator McDermott’s Tucson office.”

Sean shook his head. “You’d think Tucson was some little town, not a major city, the way things go around.”

“The way of the West, Mr. Kelly. Are you interested?”

“What’s the deal?”

Owens pointed at the envelope. Sean undid the clasp and shook out the contents. Papers, newspaper and magazine articles, long narratives, and several photos, all of which included pictures of a striking young woman with dark hair and eyes.

“Daryn McDermott,” Owens said. “The senator’s daughter, age twenty-four.”

“What about her?”

“She’s missing.”

Sean looked up sharply. “I haven’t seen or heard anything about this.”

Owens sighed. “Senator McDermott has kept it out of the media. Daryn is…well, Daryn is…difficult.”

“Difficult?”

“The girl is…how should I say this?…she’s out of control. She doesn’t feel that the rules of society apply to her. She’s done things and said things that have been politically very…difficult for the senator.”

Sean blinked, thinking through the bourbon. He’d seen something on TV a while back.

“She’s the one,” he said, “that was arrested for public nudity in front of the U.S. Capitol.”

Owens nodded. “Protesting her father’s stand on allowing the government to access records of what people check out of libraries. Her point was that the government had no business knowing if someone read a book or a magazine that, say, had nudity or sexual references in it.”

Sean stared at him.

“You’re in law enforcement. Surely you understand the power of having the right information.”

“Don’t assume anything about me,” Sean said. “She did other things, too, didn’t she? Even more radical things.”

Owens nodded again, touching his nose gingerly. “She went on a cross-country tour, trying to raise support for legalizing and regulating prostitution. She would go into a city and get an army of prostitutes together and they would descend on the city hall or state capitol, generating all kinds of media coverage. She wants drugs legalized and regulated too.”

“So her father,” Sean said, “the keeper of morals and traditional values, is embarrassed, personally and politically.”

Owens’s voice rose slightly. “He’s given her everything! Put her through Georgetown, even allowed her to get a worthless degree in sociology, of all things. He pays for apartments in D.C. and in Phoenix for her, and she repays him by embarrassing him.”

“You think she’s just a spoiled princess acting out, trying to piss off her father, or is it a real issue for her?”

Owens’s voice softened. “A bit of both, I’d say. Daryn actually does believe all these ridiculous things she spouts. But just because she has money and influence and a name, she gets a more public arena to speak out on all this drivel.”

“And now she’s missing.”

“For nearly a month now. It’s not like her to take off and not be heard from. I mean, in the past when she’s taken off, she turns up in the media in places like West Virginia and Oklahoma and South Dakota. But now she’s gone without a trace.”

“And the senator didn’t contact the FBI? I would think they’d pull out all the stops to find a U.S. senator’s daughter.”

Owens shook his head emphatically. “The senator wants this handled discreetly. He first hired private investigators in Washington and in Phoenix. All the traditional methods were dead ends. She hasn’t used her credit cards, hasn’t accessed her bank accounts. Her car is in its garage in D.C. None of her friends know anything. She’s simply…gone.”

“You think she’s just run off again, or something else? Something criminal?”

“We don’t know. There’s been no kind of ransom demand, nothing like that. So the senator’s presumption is that she’s on her own somewhere. And he wants her back.”

“The loving father?”

Owens picked up the sarcasm. “Look, they aren’t close, as you might imagine. Daryn, the ungrateful little brat that she is, calls her father part of ‘the ruling class,’ as if we were living in some kind of aristocracy. It’s one thing for a child to disagree with their parents’ values. We all go through that, to a point. It’s another for her to criticize and vilify everything her father stands for, and to do it as publicly as she can. He just wants her found before she…” Owens looked uncomfortable. He glanced toward the bar, then looked quickly away. The old smokers were still staring.

“Go ahead, say it,” Sean said.

“Before she does something either stupid or embarrassing,” Owens said.

“What makes you think I can find her?” Sean said. “I’m a Customs agent on suspension for screwing up an operation. There are those in this world who believe I have a drinking problem.”

“As I said before-”

“Yeah, I know, I have a reputation.” Sean tossed back another shot. He felt himself giving, bending, like power lines in high wind. And the painful truth was, he had nothing else to do, nowhere to go. If a United States senator wanted to pay him to look for his wayward daughter, who was he to question that?

“How much?” he asked.

Owens looked relieved. He withdrew another envelope from the briefcase. “Here’s twenty thousand dollars cash.”

Sean leaned forward. “I’m sorry. Say that again?”

“Mr. Kelly, the senator is hiring you based on your reputation, but he’s counting on your discretion. It’s a delicate situation. You can’t just track down Daryn, pick her up under your arm, and bring her home to her father. Do that and she’ll go straight to the media as soon as she’s back in Washington, and it’ll be an even worse nightmare. Not only do you have to find her, you have to gain her trust. Make her believe it’s her choice to go with you. All this will take time. Also, the investigation is off the books. The senator wants it all done quietly. No one should ever know Daryn was missing in the first place.”

“And all this because he’s afraid she’ll embarrass him politically?”

“I’m only Senator McDermott’s lawyer, not his conscience, Mr. Kelly. He pays me well.” Owens gestured at the envelope full of money. “Another amount equal to that will be paid when Daryn is safely, discreetly returned. Don’t try to get in touch with me or with the senator before that time. Once she’s home at her apartment in Washington, the senator will know.”