Free One to the Wolves, On the Trail of a Killer by Lois Duncan

don’t doubt that at all,” Jim said. “Such crooks aren’t one dimensional. Many of
     those same people import drugs from the Orient. High purity white heroin from Asia
     is worth much more than black tar heroin from Mexico. The thing is, we have the equipment
     to track down the car scams, but not the drug smuggling. So this is the path we have
     to follow.”

    Soon after that Jim phoned to tell me that they’d found Bao Tran.
    “You’re not going to believe this,” he said. “On a whim, Michael Bush decided to dial
     one of the numbers you found on Kait’s final phone bill. It was good! Bao Tran called him back!”
    “Tran reinstated his phone numbers?”
    “I guess he must have,” Jim said. “Anyway, not knowing who’d called him or what they
     wanted, he returned Michael’s call. Tran said all the things you accused him of are
     lies.”
    “I only reported what Dung told the police,” I said.
    “Dung is Tran’s least favorite person in the world, next to you,” Jim said. “He said
     the calls from Kait’s apartment couldn’t have been made to him because he was in Vietnam.”
    “Can he prove that by showing his passport?”
    “He says Dung’s alibi witness, An Quoc Le, has forbidden that. An Le is back in Albuquerque
     at that communal address on Kathryn Street they all keep using and seems to be controlling
     things from there.”
    “Did Tran say where Dung is?”
    “Tran said the last he’d heard of him he was in the Pacific Northwest with some Caucasian
     girl. That’s where they seem to be going now. A lot of the guys who were staging accidents
     in California are now in Portland.”
    “Is there any way to force Bao Tran to give a statement?”
    “If we can get the DA in Albuquerque to cooperate with the DA in Orange County we
     might be able to,” Jim said. “According to protocol, the Orange DA has to receive
     a request from the DA in Albuquerque before he can do anything.”
    “So all it will take to get Bao Tran deposed is a request from Bob Schwartz?”
    “That’s right,” Jim said. “And it’s the only way to make Tran talk. Michael’s volunteered
     to take on the job of convincing Schwartz since I’ve become unpopular at the DA’s
     office. The last time I talked to their investigator I lost my temper and told her
     I think it’s criminal the way this case has been mishandled. That didn’t go down well,
     since her husband is a captain with APD. I’ve sent them boxes of information about
     this fraud ring and there’s no indication that anyone has followed up on any of it.”
    On the heels of Jim’s call, I received a call from Michael Bush.
    “This case draws me like a magnet,” he told me. “When I read your book I recognized
     the lawyer Minh Nguyen Duy. He and I were currently involved in litigation. I want
     to go to Albuquerque and meet with the D.A. there. He’s got to be made to understand
     what it is we’re dealing with.”
    “What will you charge us for doing that?” I asked him. Now that Don was retired and
     I no longer was churning out suspense novels our income had dropped significantly.
    “No charge,” Michael said. “What I’m striving for is pure motives. Once you start
     doing something for compensation, even expenses, things get fuzzy. What if I turn
     up evidence of something you don’t agree with? I don’t want you and your family to
     be in a position to tell me not to expose that. I just want to see if I can help you
     get to the truth.”
    When I repeated that conversation to Don, he shook his head in disbelief.
    “When something seems too good to be true, there’s usually a catch,” he said. “Why
     don’t we see what Betty Muench has to say about this?”
    Betty’s reading came back by return mail:
    QUESTION: WHAT MAY I KNOW ABOUT MICHAEL BUSH AND ABOUT HIS ROLE IN SOLVING THE MYSTERY
     OF KAIT’S MURDER?
    ANSWER: There is in Michael this energy which will have had him in a distant time
     — a past life —