Also confronting him does not exactly seem like a better idea now than it did before.

Not that he is going to argue about this now, obviously.

Couple bullets to the brain kills anybody once.

Frank is feeling much better after some sleep.

"Frank, if you're ready for it, we'd like to head out early."

"All right. Seems good to me, I don't fancy staying in the same town as those Asian thugs much longer."

????????

"-- we did not exactly do much catching you up on context, sorry Mr. Aarons. Uh, I can sort of kind of a little bit explain the thugs," and then he explains the thugs.

"Well, that's romantic."

She gets out a notebook. "All right. Options. We can have Oswald negotiate with Mr. Trammel. We can attempt to break into the house and free Lacie, should she still be alive. We can confront Mr. Trammel directly, while armed. Or we can call the cops, and attempt to convince them that Mr. Trammel is holding or has killed Lacie. None of these options are great, but some of them are probably more terrible than others. I am at this time against Oswald negotiating alone. Trammel knows we're onto him, and it seems likely that whatever happened to Lacie will also happen to Oswald."

"I'm still fairly certain he has more pull with the police than we do although that doesn't necessarily make it a worse idea than breaking into his house."

"He has more pull with the police in a vacuum. I assume there is some level of evidence at which point someone in the police force gets concerned? And we have those photos." ...I should really look at those and see whether any of them implicate Trammel. Oswald should look at them, I don't even know what this guy looks like."

"Negotiations are probably out but I should plan for them anyways, in case it turns out somehow that convincing him to drop this is going to make or break things. Breaking in by ourselves is a bad idea. Confronting Trammel with weapons only works if he's not guarded and he's always guarded. Continuing to gather evidence until we have enough to take him down is slow -- I handle his financial records, there's plenty I could drag into the light, but I'm not sure how much that will actually damage him -- enough to get Lacie out if we can and then run for it, maybe--"

"Well. We do have a plane. What do the cops need for a search warrant?"

Lev starts to read a book, realizes that his meds don't let him focus enough to read, and stares out the window.

"Probable cause of either a crime taking place or evidence of a crime to be found."

"Is the lying about the cab and her brother's belief that she's in danger enough for probable cause?'

"Maybe? Usually someone makes a written statement under oath but the thing they say is usually more substantial than that. The photographs might be but I'm not sure."

"Well, we know that she went to see her father, and that she hasn't come back, and that when asked about it he lied about the manner in which she had supposedly left the house."

In a vacuum, Oswald totally knows enough to take down his father!

In practice, he is aware that he's spent the past few years working on a lot of ledgers with items like "Police Benevolent Association Donation: $1000" and "Police Chief Birthday Gift: $100."

Oswald conveys in rough terms both the amount of crimes and the amount of police bribing that is going on here to the others. (The crimes that he knows about, anyway, he only handles the financials.)

"Do you have to get the whole police office on board? Is it possible to get individual cops on board in a dire situation? We don't urgently need him to be brought to justice, we just urgently need to find out what's happened to Lacie. Longer term we can talk to Mrs. Winston-Rogers, I'm sure she's got to have decent lawyers."

"We can maybe give him enough trouble to get in and get out. At least a -- surprise search or something -- no, I'm not sure how much sense that -- he's probably keeping her in the basement--" he pauses uncomfortably, making some horrible connections. "We were... never allowed in the basement..."

"Well that's lovely. I really think that if you don't think we can break her out, the only thing to do is to go to the police. We can have the pictures on us to explain why Lacie would have been targeted. Several thousand dollars might buy you one murder, but I dunno that it buys you dozens."

"We'll have to go about it very carefully. Do you know anyone on the force, do you trust any officers you know..."

Helpless headshake. "I sure don't. Maybe we can ask the others when we reach LA," she says, somewhat dubiously.

He sighs. Searches for another angle, has to go out a bit to find something fresh. "Hey, Aarons," he says, after a few minutes. "Trammel's working for someone called the Black Man. Really don't think it's Echavarria. Might be Ethiopian. Ring any bells?"