Page 105 of Devil and the Deep Blue Fish

“And this holding, specifically,” Ellery said, pulling out the specially annotated copy, littered with Post-it notes, most of which had big black arrows on them. “Which is the property Gannett Hoover lives in and calls ‘his California ranch’—”

“In spite of the fact that he still owns a house in the Midwest,” Ellery’s mother added helpfully. For some reason, that had burned them both.

“So that’s a problem for the election board—” Maude Arthur tried to interject.

“Be that as it may,” Ellery said smoothly, “it establishes a direct connection between Valerie Trainor’s criminal child abuse in Sacramento and the potential for the same sort of childabuse in Sonora. And here,” he reached into his briefcase once again, and Maude Arthur was beginning to eye the battered leather receptacle with a great deal of dread, “is the list of children unaccounted for from the Moms for Clean Living so-called school.” Fetzer and Hardison had come through in a big way. Apparently they’d put their entire squad room on a phone canvass, and he hoped this folder would be much smaller in a few hours. “We rescued nine last night?”

“Rescued?” she asked, seeming to pounce on the word.

“As they are quoted many times saying in the course of the advocate reports,” Ellery replied, his voice hard. “So we rescued nine, we know of the whereabouts of two more, but I have a folder here withover fortynames. Now, some of those kids may live on the streets—the child advocates are compiling a list—and some of them may have returned to their homes.”

“We have people working right now on calling the parents’ homes,” Taylor Cramer said, and Ellery nodded, giving thanks for Jade, Crystal, and AJ, who compiled the contact numbers for the police to use. “But so far, there are at least eight children unaccounted for there.”

“What makes you think that they might be in Sonora?” Maude Arthur asked, and it was clear she’d been caught in the web of logic, so Ellery hoped he could close his case.

“Besides the personnel overlap,” Ellery said, “we have this.” And with that, he pulled out his tablet, opened to the small news story about finding the bodies of three adolescent boys in an abandoned mine off Old Ward Road. “This is less than fifty yards from the property line of Gannett Hoover’s residence. We have two men and a cadaver dog up in the hills at this moment, checking similar locations.”

Maude Arthur’s face swept bone white. “Bodies?” she said faintly.

“Yes, ma’am. We were hoping to go up to Hoover’s place and gain entry, look around, and see if we can discover any places for another ‘school’ like the one in Sacramento.” He paused. “Or worse.”

She stared at him. “What could be worse?” she asked faintly.

Ellery had saved this last as the cherry on the shit sundae. “Gannett Hoover’s chief advisor is his old pastor and choir teacher, formerly known as Conway Schmitt. Mr. Schmitt—Valerie Trainor’s ex-husband—served five of fifteen years for sexually abusing his choirboys, of which Gannett Hoover was one. Given that the bodies found in the mineshaft were adolescent males—”

“Oh dear God.”

It was not his imagination. Maude Arthur looked like she was going to throw up.

“Do you need a trash receptacle, Maudie?” his mother asked solicitously.

Arthur shook her head and took a hurried sip of water, and then another, seeming to get herself under control. “Yes,” she said, her voice weak. “You need FBI backup—”

“We’d prefer it if they waited on the edge of the property,” Ellery said quickly. “We’d rather obtain evidence and, you know, snoop around a little. My law partner is coming. We would like to question Gannett about the property and the holdings—my partner studied the deeds and seems to think the LLC apparatus that binds them is particularly unsavory. It appears very… money-launderingey to Mr. Henderson, and he’d like to take a look around.”

Arthur nodded, not apparently listening, which was why Ellery wasn’t stressing too much about making “money laundering” into an adjective.

“Of course,” she murmured. “Whatever you need. Just….” She stared up at Ellery’s mother with bleak eyes. “Taylor,you should know. These people—the Moms for Clean Living—donated heavily to my campaign. I will give you all the manpower you need, and all of the backup I can, but….” She glanced around the office, which was nicely appointed in cream and chrome, with wood accents and a plethora of houseplants dominating one sunlit wall.

She had made this place hers, Ellery realized, and for a moment, he felt remorse for what he and his mother had just done to her, without realizing they were firing a killing shot into her career.

“Yes,” she said with a sigh. “But better to go down doing the right thing. I just might not be able to help you once this gets out and my constituents demand my head.”

“We’ll take whatever help you can give us,” Ellery said, slightly less cold than he had been a moment ago. “But if you’re going to call in a special agent in charge and put a unit together, I’m afraid it’s got to be now. If our search party finds anything, they’re going to need us there.”

“Oh Lord,” Maude Arthur whispered. “Yes.” She gave a soft little sound of surrender. “Let’s get this done.”

SAC GERALDManning was not happy about being given fifteen minutes to assemble a team—and even less excited to be told they were to “wait outside” the fences of the mansion’s extensive grounds while Ellery, Taylor, and Galen went inside to question the congressman and his chief of staff.

“Why even call us?” Manning was a squat, muscular,very baldman in his fifties who wore his disgruntlement like a Halloween mask. It was possible this man had six kids and spent his weekends grilling by the pool, but Ellery didn’t want toeverbe invited to that pool party.

The thought made him miss Jackson, and he remembered the other thing he had to tell Manning that he wasn’t going to like.

“We don’t have a warrant yet,” Maude Arthur said, her cell phone held to her ear. “I’m trying to get hold of a judge who will issue one, but it’s going to take a lot of talking and a lot of presenting the case.”

“So why go now?” Manning asked.

“Because we have reason to suspect there are young people in danger there,” Maude Arthur told him bleakly. “And we have statements taken by licensed advocates that indicate the people at the estate are engaged in active child endangerment, if not actual harm.” Her eyes slid to Ellery’s mother’s implacable face. “Don’t say it, Taylor.”

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