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“That may be part of it. If it’s the only reason, the children are already dead, so I hope it’s not the case.”

But neither ransom nor revenge made complete sense to me, which left leverage. By holding the children, Vaughn was hoping to pressure Urrea, but that still left the certainty of Urrea seeking payback later. As Louis, Angel, and I had discussed, the only way I could see Vaughn coming out of this with some hope of reaching old age was by fatally weakening Urrea. Could Urrea have been responsible for protecting the children so that whoever had entrusted them to him would punish him for his failure?

Saunders folded the remaining half of her sandwich in paper and set it aside.

“The wreckage left by that Iraq incident still hasn’t been fully cleaned up,” she said, “and I doubt it ever will be. Your involvement hasn’t been forgotten either.”

Nothing makes a man feel anxious quite like being hated by an army.

“If I can track down Wyatt Riggins or Emmett Lucas, I may be able to handle this quietly,” I said.

“Are you serious?”

For the first time since we’d met, Saunders grinned, though it might have had more appeal if she hadn’t looked so skeptical.

“Okay, I’m being optimistic,” I said. “With both Vaughn and Urrea involved, I’ll be lucky not to end up dismembered or buried in a barrel.”

“As I said earlier, your luck on that front is holding up surprisingly well. From what I’ve heard, you’ve been at Death’s door so often, he’s probably left a key under the mat for you.”

She took in the park. A pair of dads, either stay-at-homes or guys goofing off with their kids for the day, were kicking a ball with three young boys while a white terrier did its best to complicate matters. I knew how the dog felt.

“I have two girls of my own now,” said Saunders. “The youngest is less than a year old.”

“Congratulations.”

“If someone took them, I wouldn’t rest until whoever did it was dead.”

“That would be Urrea’s line of thinking.”

“So what do you want from me?”

“Whatever you can find out about Riggins: people he was close to in the service and people he remained close to afterward, including his childhood friend Emmett Lucas, as well as pertinent material from his medical records and anything else that might prove helpful. I’m in the dark here. It’s down to his training, but Riggins is proving hard to locate.”

“If your information is correct, and Riggins was attached to Civil Affairs, I may struggle for access. If I start digging too hard, alarm bells will sound. Do you have a name for the clinician who prescribed the medication found at the Nadeau house?”

I did: Noah Harrow.

“I’ve had some dealings with Noah,” she said. “He’s been working with the VA for a long time. He’s a realist about the scrapes veterans can get themselves into. There may be some leeway with him.”

I thanked her.

“Don’t thank me yet. I could come up with a big fat zero.”

She put the rest of her sandwich in her pocket and prepared to leave. I stayed where I was. I’d give her time to drive off before I returned to my car.

“If you decide to go to the police—” she began.

“Your name won’t be mentioned.”

“Likewise on my side, for obvious reasons. By the way, it was smart of you to seal your business card in an envelope.”

“Sometimes I think I might even be able to make a career of this,” I said.

Out on the grass, the terrier took a hard ball to the head and stopped running.

“Or maybe not.”

CHAPTERXLIII