by Dale Mayer
Then he tossed his phone on the passenger seat and, grinning, made his way back home.
The thought of having a little girl who had already been groomed and made ready for him had him salivating. He felt himself getting hard just walking to his apartment. He made a dash in half the time he normally did. And, once inside, instead of calming down, his bloodlust grew. Swearing, but still anticipating, he headed into the shower to take care of himself. As he ejaculated all over the shower wall, he groaned. If it wasn’t that little girl, it had to be the little boy Leonard. Only he didn’t know how to find that one, and that pissed him off too. He had to do something, and he had to do it soon.
Chapter 17
Tuesday Morning
“Finding the safe in our DB’s apartment is a huge break. The search for Leonard will never be called off,” Colby said in the next morning’s meeting, his tone quiet. “But now a week later, we are the hell a long way past the first forty-eight hours, and you all know what that means.” The atmosphere was somber, silent, because everybody in that room knew exactly what it meant. “We are still looking obviously, and the Amber Alerts are out, but we have no vehicle, and we have no idea where or how. Somewhere from the school on the way home. If there is any connection from Leonard to that DB, let’s find it—and fast.”
“They checked the city street cams, right?” Kate asked.
Her sergeant nodded. “As is our standard procedure.”
“I know,” she said, “but sometimes the basics can get missed.” Nobody laughed at her or made any comment because, in the case of a missing child, they’d rather double up on the work and request something twice, rather than assume and have a lead get missed.
“He’s only seven,” Colby said.
“Prime age,” she murmured.
He shot her a hard look and then nodded in agreement. “We have a lot of city cops still looking,” he said, “but we need to focus on our concurrent cases. You never know where the next tip will come from. Meanwhile an entire department is working on finding Leonard.”
She winced at that. “And that just means he could end up as one of mine.”
“What about that mark on the wrist? Did you track it down?” Colby asked her.
“I’m working on Ken’s history now, every known associate, and whoever he was in jail with. A couple people he got close to in the prison system. I want to talk to them.” She hesitated, then asked, “Can we bring in a profiler? Someone to help us build a profile on our future suspect in these related cases?”
He looked at her for a moment, frowned, then shrugged. “If you think it would further the Leonard case, but remember these others are cold cases and not yet linked to Leonard’s disappearance.”
“They are all connected,” she said coolly. “One of the predators is now dead and is lying in the morgue, so it’s hardly a cold case. Plus, our little girl bore the same mark.”
Colby immediately nodded. “And that becomes our priority now. Contact Dr. Yolynda Brown. She’s one of the PD’s consultants on serial killers. She also specializes in child cases.” He looked at the others. “What about the other cases?”
“We have the husband with his wife stabbed to the wall,” he said. “And that odd 9-1-1 call.”
Colby slid his gaze back to Kate.
She shrugged. “I asked Simon, and he said he didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Do you believe him?”
She frowned, replaying the conversation in her mind. “You know what? He didn’t come right out and say he didn’t do it,” she said, “so maybe not. He’s definitely been a little cagey at times, as in all over the map.”
“Did you tell the team about the safe?” Rodney asked her.
“The combination to the dead perv’s safe did come from Simon, and I asked him about that. He said he had no idea where I was or what I was doing, but those numbers flashed in his mind associated with me, so he texted them to me.”
Owen jumped up and said, “Seriously?”
She twisted in her seat, looked back at her team member. “Yes. I was standing in front of the safe with Rodney, talking about how to crack it and what we could do to get somebody in to look at it, when, out of the blue, I received a text. I looked down and saw the numbers. I tried them and opened the safe.”
“And you hadn’t told him where you were?”
She shook her head slowly. “I hadn’t talked to him all day.”
“Interesting,” Owen said. “And kind of disturbing.”
“In many ways,” Kate said. “Like I said, I did ask him about it afterward, and all he said was that he felt compelled to provide me with those numbers, but he didn’t know why.”
“We do have a lot of videos to go through now,” Rodney added.
“Forensics has them all at present,” she said. “Although they sent the first group back already. Some of these go back fifteen to twenty years,” she said quietly. “There’ll be nothing on those videos that we want to see.”
“But we have to,” Owen said, his voice equally quiet. “Because we don’t know what else we might find. Even if it’s only to narrow down a location of where he may have held these children, because there’s absolutely no indication that they were at Ken’s home.”
“No, he probably has a hidden location. I’m also wondering if he has a connection with other pedophiles,” she said. “Then again there were those black marks on the walls at a child’s height, so maybe Ken kept them there, then moved them.”
“Possible. Online, definitely,” Rodney said. “These guys tend to cluster.”
“But, in person, I don’t know,” Owen said, shaking his head. “I don’t think they share well.”
“Space?” she asked him. “Or spoils?”
He winced. “I don’t know. Either probably.”
She nodded. “And yet it still seems like it’s some sort of club.”
“Because of the mark?”
“Yeah, some meaning must be behind it,” she said. She pondered it for a moment, then nodded. “Like a tattoo or the stamp you get when you walk into a nightclub, isn’t it?”
“Only this is a little bit deeper, and it’s not something that rubs off,” Rodney said.
“So then what is it?” Owen asked. “What makes the mark?”
“Likely a hot iron,” Kate said. “At least that’s what the coroner suggested. A brand.”
“And it would be faster that way than a tattoo,” Owen said. “These are children, after all.”
“Branded, probably done while they’re unconscious,” she said. “And the marks aren’t deep. A part of this club membership.”
“So we focus on the DVDs first,” Colby said. “Kate, you and Rodney handle that. See what you find. Then, Owen, Lilliana, and Andy go through it again. Maybe Reese too depending …”
“Reese is swamped, and, unless it’s mandatory, no way she’ll want to go through those tapes. If there’s something to be identified, maybe, but likely forensics will hunt that down. She, on the other hand, is tracing Ken’s history right now.” Owen turned to look at Colby and nodded. “I’ll set up the arrangements to speak to the two prisoners Ken did time with. I’ll let everyone know if they have anything helpful.”
“Yes, do that too.”
Knowing she had a long ugly day ahead of her, she filled a coffee cup and headed into one of the boardrooms, where they had the VHS tapes and DVDs set up that had been released by that Forensics Division. She brought along a large notepad and said, “I really won’t like today, will I?”
“None of us will,” Rodney said. He sat down and popped the oldest one into the equipment.
She sighed. “These guys still use a VCR? Jesus.”
“We still have machines that play them, so it’s no biggie.”
As it started, she saw it was an ugly home movie. A toddler sat quietly, clutching a teddy bear, rocking back and forth. His face—at least it looked like a little boy—seemed vacant. She sucked in her breath. “Ah, shit.”
<
br /> And that’s how her day began. Unfortunately it didn’t get any better, as Forensics Division dumped the rest of the VHS and DVD tapes with them about noon, having digital copies now for Forensics to work with.
Rodney and Kate made their way through seventeen different sets of home movies. By the time she was done, she had numbered them all and had written brief descriptions of what was in each. Some of them had interiors of houses but nothing to define where they were.
They’d gone back and forth on a couple, looking for street signs outside big windows, looking for something that identified the interiors of these houses. She’d written down descriptions of the wallpaper patterns, though everything was black-and-white, so it may not be that helpful.
“I think that’s all I can handle for the day,” she whispered.
“Yeah, me too,” Rodney said, looking more than a little tired and sick.
And, so far, they hadn’t seen anything of much value.
“Not only that,” he said, “I don’t think most of these victims have been located.”
She looked at him and said, “Ken’s record said he was charged with four?”
“Yes, but at one point in time he supposedly confessed to three times that many.”
“So twelve.” Kate shook her head. “Just by him.”
Still rattled by the videos, Rodney said, “We haven’t seen any duplicates yet caught on tape, so just these initial tapes that we’ve been through account for at least four times if not more than that. Forty-eight kids and counting. Some of the kids in the other tapes that we haven’t seen yet could be more recent too.”
It was almost 10:00 p.m. when they called it a night.
*
Wednesday
Kate and Rodney resumed their second day of going through Ken’s pervert videos. It made for a soul-crushing day. Meanwhile, Andy, Lilliana, and Owen were set up in another boardroom, going through the first batch of tapes that Kate and Rodney had scoured yesterday. Maybe the other team members would find something they had missed.
Hours later, Kate frowned, looked at Rodney, and said, “Well, we have the DVDs yet too, and those would likely be newer.” Shaking her head, she swore. “Fuck! I’ll stay here and go through them. I don’t want to get up and have to see this shit tomorrow. If we can use anything here, we need to find it now. Leonard, if he’s part of this same vicious group, is out of time.”
“Hell, you’re right,” Rodney said. “Come on then. Let’s get through them.”
*
Thursday, Wee Hours of the Morning
It was after midnight by the time Kate and Rodney got to the third-to-last DVD; she had shut down inside, almost numb to the abuse going on in front of her.
From the crying children of every age, barely crawling to about ten years old. And she wouldn’t count on that age being correct either. Some of the children appeared to be fairly stunted. Also mostly a blend of Asian and Caucasian children. What she wasn’t seeing was too many other ethnic groups, but the old black-and-white videos didn’t help.
“Stop!” Rodney said. “Look at that.”
She hit the Stop button, turned to him. “What is it?”
“Back up,” he said, “About thirty seconds.”
While she’d been too numb to notice, he’d caught sight of something. She leaned forward, as she replayed the last thirty seconds. “What is it?”
“That,” he said, “is a different room, in a different house.”
“Sure, and what does that mean?”
“I’m thinking that either he moved, or this is his and that child’s home.”
They quickly went through the video again and then once more. On the third time through, she stopped and said, “That’s a living room.” She got up, walked over to the large screen and tapped at the corner. “Can we get a close-up on this? A street sign is there, which means the house is on a corner.”
“We’ll send this to Forensics and see if they can get it blown up a little more.”
Kate said, “Just use the controls on that and see if we can get anything now.”
They managed to get it blown up enough to see the RD for road on the sign.
“Can you make out anything else beside it?” she murmured.
“It ends in an E, and I see either a T or an L right before it,” Rodney said.
“Well, that’s something,” she said. “Let’s get somebody from Forensics on this, and we’ll work this angle.”
Feeling better after having found something, they quickly went through the last two videos. When they finally got to the last one, she gasped. “Oh my God!”
“What?”
“It’s our little princess, Candice Ferguson,” she said. “That bastard Ken had her.”
“Are you sure?” Rodney leaned forward and shook his head slowly. “I think you’re wrong. I think it’s a different one.”
She turned and stared at him. “Seriously?”
“I hope so,” he said. “This DVD file is dated more than four months ago.”
“How long ago did she go missing?”
“About four months.” He nodded slowly and then frowned. “You’re thinking that he had her all that time?” he asked, clearly disturbed by the thought.
“I don’t know what to think,” she said flatly, “but at least now we’ve got the two of them together.”
“We don’t actually,” he said softly. “What we have is him taking a photo of her, but she is even a little bit farther away. She is walking on a street here. Almost as if he were casing her as his next victim.”
“But there aren’t any images of her as a victim, are there?” She quickly got up and checked to make sure they had been through all the DVDs. “Maybe he didn’t have time to make one?”
“Or he wasn’t the one who actually had her,” Rodney said, staring at her. “Which kind of supports your theory that more than one perv could be involved, a ring of deviants.”
Her stomach churned. “We have to do a wider circle, do a complete canvass of the neighborhood, all the streets around, to see if Ken was ever seen with a child, if he was ever seen taking photos, movies, things like that.”
“I’ll get someone on that,” Rodney said. “And we’d better get back to Forensics, to see if they can find anything more on that address in that screen.”
“And I think fresh eyes need to go through some of these,” she said, rubbing at her eyes. “We’re exhausted.”
“And we could be going through this again and again,” he said. “It’s a horrible stash of child porn from a pedophile. We don’t know what all else could be there.”
“What about his little black book that we found in the safe?”
“Forensics kept it,” he said. “But I’ve asked for photocopies. Let me check.” He pulled out his phone, nodded, and said, “Yeah, we’ve got them here.”
“Send them to the printer,” she said. “I’ll take a copy home with me.” The idea of going home, even as exhausted as she was, seemed wrong. Maybe with a shower and a couple hours sleep she’d be refreshed. She said, “I don’t know what else is going on here, but we’ve got enough that we should crack something. And to think that Ken’s already dead? Well, that just pisses me off even more.”
“But who murdered him? Who would do that? That is the question.”
“The little girl’s father,” she said instantly. “Think about it. If that was your daughter, and you knew who’d taken and abused her …” She said to him, “Spin it around. Wouldn’t you?”
He looked at her and winced and said, “Yeah. Damn right, I would. If it was my son or daughter that he’d done all that to, hell yeah. You know that most of the people on the planet would say the world is better off without the sick son of a bitch. But, of all those people, who is the one who had the balls to do it? And why now? Why not when he had the little girl—if he had her—and rescue the child?”
“I don’t know, but I’m damned determined to find out.”
*
Friday Afternoon
Simon walked onto the cruise boat, heading out for the weekend. If nothing else, he needed to get away, to just refresh his mind and to go back to something he knew. It wasn’t about making some money by gambling, not that he ever said no to money. Still, after getting that cashier’s check from the local land-based casino, he was fine. But one never had enough money, not in this world. As he walked into his cabin, he shrugged off his jacket and hung it up. He brought three suits with him for the evenings. They had another hour until they set sail. He was restless and headed out onto the deck.
He was in jeans and a T-shirt at the moment, and the Vancouver air was warm and a perfect temperature for this cruise. By the time he got to the front side, he stopped, picked up a gin and tonic from the bar, took a sip. He knew instinctively that the detective would return to his place to look for him, and maybe it was cowardly, but he didn’t want to see her.
Every time he saw her, the connection between them deepened, and so did his abilities. It only occurred to him this morning that somehow she was strengthening his abilities—a scary thought. But all the more reason to stay away. His phone rang just then, and he glared at it but didn’t answer it. It wouldn’t stop ringing. He swore, downed the rest of his drink, and answered it.
“Detective, I’m on a cruise, and I’ll be heading into international waters soon,” he said. “So I won’t be answering your calls.”
“When are you back?” she asked, all businesslike.
“Early Monday. I plan to have a late breakfast and debark midmorning on Monday. Why?”
“We’ve had some breaks in the case.”
“Interesting,” he said. And, in spite of himself, he asked, “Something that’s useable?”
“The safe had a lot of videos,” she said. “I’m sure you can imagine of what.”
