‘Yup. His father installs security systems, his mother’s a homemaker. Some agents went to visit, but saw no sign of Shannon.’

‘Okay. What about the guy who fled the dump?’

‘Well, I’ve never had to put an APB out on a tractor before,’ Thistle said. ‘So that was fun. Houston PD found it abandoned in a field near the edge of the city. We’re still looking for the driver, but I’m thinking he’s in the wind. We don’t know his name, and he’s had time to change clothes by now.’

‘You can’t get his name from Edwards’s employment records?’

‘Oh, that’s the other thing. The records are bogus. Full of made-up names and addresses.’

I remember noticing all the Anglo-Saxon names in his files. Half the workforce was Latino—I should have figured the records were fake.

‘Let me guess,’ I say. ‘A bunch of his workers were undocumented—including the guy who ran. Edwards is claiming he didn’t know, and that those were the details they gave him.’

‘Bingo,’ Thistle says. ‘Half his employees didn’t show up for work today. We must have scared them off. Most of them were smart enough not to run in such an obvious way, though.’

Maybe the guy ran because he thought we were from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. For undocumented workers, ICE is as frightening as the Gestapo in Nazi Germany. But it’s possible that this particular man had more reason to flee than the rest.

‘Serves Edwards right,’ she continues. ‘The pay records are pretty shady-looking. Best guess, he was paying those workers much less than he said he was. The IRS is interested.’

‘And Biggs’s car?’

‘The crusher made it pretty much impossible to get fingerprints off the inside, and a lot of people have touched the outside. But the CSI techs found some blonde hairs stuck to the headrest of the driver’s seat.’

Interesting. ‘Long or short?’

‘Long.’

‘DNA?’

‘Most of the hairs seem to have been cut off rather than fallen out,’ Thistle says. ‘But we got lucky with one strand—the follicle was still attached. We’re testing it now.’

‘Cut off’ sounds like planted evidence to me. I stare out the window at the other cars. SUVs with no passengers, drivers staring like zombies at the brakelights ahead. A woman doing her make-up while she’s stopped at a light.

‘So I talked to Zak,’ Thistle says after a pause.

‘Who’s Zak?’

‘My ex-husband.’ She keeps her eyes on the road. ‘He didn’t introduce himself?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘In my head I was calling him “the lumberjack”. You know, because of the shirt?’

She fights back a smile, but still doesn’t look at me. ‘So anyway, he thinks you’re my boyfriend.’

‘I didn’t tell him that.’

‘No. He assumed it because of how you stuck up for me.’

She looks at me.

‘Oh,’ I say.