Harri needed to get it together to find this girl. She closed her eyes and imagined her sister on that last day, so hopeful about going on a hike in the woods. Another girl was missing. Her entire life in front of her. Just like her sister. She would find her. This time she would find her in time.
3
Day 1
Jake Tepesky sat at his kitchen table looking out over the hills toward the Hollywood sign. It was an impressive view and one that usually calmed him. Today wasn’t one of those days.
He sipped his coffee and shuffled through the file that Harri and he’d put together on Jerome Wexler, the man whose name was on the lease for Black Rock Island, the site of Nightwood Camp.
The camp had been a front for a child pornography operation and served as a remote location where pedophiles went to abuse boys. Harri’s older sister, Lauren Harper, had been murdered there along with nine other children twenty-five years ago. Both Harri and Jake vowed to discover who’d ordered their deaths and the men who had carried them out.
Lauren’s remains had taken weeks to be released and they’d finally been able to hold a funeral at the end of October, close to twenty-five years to when she’d originally gone missing.
Since then, they’d channeled their grief by immediately getting to work. Jake searched through numerous databases for Jerome Wexler’s current whereabouts. Harri had done the same and so far, both had come up empty. The man had become a ghost, vanishing in the wind.
They’d also searched for John, Paul, and George, the men that Richard Miller had named as the ones who’d herded all the kids out of the camp that last night. They’d had no luck finding any leads on them, either. There was just too little to go on.
Harri had pored through arrest records for the entire Pacific Northwest for known pedophiles and child pornographers with those names or aliases but had come up empty. No men matching their ages or names showed up in the records. They had no descriptions to follow up on.
Jake wasn’t as sure as Harri about the names of the men anyway. He believed they used aliases. Harri thought they felt safe enough to use their real names. The pedophiles had chosen and groomed their victims well. They never expected for any of the boys to speak out against them. Who would believe them?
Lauren was a whole other story, though. That’s where Harri’s argument about the real names fell apart. There was no way the perpetrators would have used their real names around Lauren, and adult woman who wouldn’t hesitate to testify against them.
Jake had always been a proponent of trying every direction on a case to see what would turn up. The arrest records were just the basic first steps. The money trail tended to show more results. When he turned in that direction, things went weird.
Jerome Wexler emptied his accounts soon after he fled the country, just before the joint task force could arrest him on charges of child endangerment and child pornography. It was an understandable move on Wexler’s part, but Jake was surprised at how quickly he was able to do it. Even before Homeland Security came into being and the banking laws changed on large cash withdrawals, cashing out that big was not easy. Wexler had been able to liquidate almost immediately. Jake was thankful that he was looking at twenty-five-year-old data. The good thing was there was a trail. The bad thing was that it was incomplete. If the situation was current, there would hardly be a trail at all, as everything would be offshore accounts over the internet.
The larger mystery appeared when Jake went searching for how Wexler made his money and where he came from. He struggled to put together a dossier they could use to track family, acquaintances, and close associates to Jerome Wexler's current location. What Harri and Jake discovered though, was that Jerome Wexler didn't exist before 1985.
Wexler made a big splash in 1987 when he turned up as the main financial advisor to one of the wealthiest men in the Pacific Northwest.
Reginald Smith had founded the Regional Hardware franchise with dozens of locations throughout Washington, Oregon and even Northern California and Idaho. Reginald had made millions upon millions through the stores and Jerome Wexler managed his entire fortune. Wexler had sole discretion on buying and selling company stock, as well as other lucrative investments and trade transactions. Within that first year, Jerome acquired a portfolio of expensive properties throughout the Pacific Northwest. When Jake spoke to his contacts in the finance industry, he uncovered what looked to be Wexler’s siphoning off of Reginald’s money into his own private accounts.
Unfortunately for them, Reginald Smith was long dead with no surviving family. Regional Hardware had been chopped up and sold off more than a decade ago. This was just one of the difficulties investigating long cold cases. Some trails just disappeared into thin air. Reginald Smith’s and Jerome Wexler’s money trail definitely had.
When they turned to looking into how Jerome Wexler had left the country right after that fateful night, they hit another roadblock. Jake dug up flight manifests from a private airstrip outside of Portland, Oregon. It was where Wexler kept his private jet and supposedly flew to Europe to escape prosecution. The manifest indicated they were headed to the Netherlands. Convenient the Netherlands doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the United States. Jerome Wexler had chosen well.
Jake reached far into his contacts to find someone at the National Central Bureau (Interpol) at the Hague. After three different officers, he’d finally found someone who might be able to help and he was anxiously waiting on the call back.
The frustration at the flight manifest not panning out still caused Jake’s neck to tighten up. It’d taken him a week of digging through dusty, old boxes to even find the records for that flight. At the time, he’d thought he’d struck gold. Then he found Jerome Wexler had dropped off the face of the earth. If Wexler was still alive, he must have used his money and power to buy a completely brand-new identity.
His cellphone buzzed and he grabbed it. “Jake Tepesky speaking,” he said. A crackle came through before a distorted voice screeched in feedback and Jake pulled his ear away from the phone, waiting until the line settled.
“Officer Jan DeVries speaking,” the voice said on the other line.
Jake looked down at the name he'd been given by his friend Jerry who worked at the Hague and confirmed DeVries was the name of the contact.
“Thanks so much for getting back to me, Officer DeVries,” Jake said.
“I hear you have an old one for me,” he said. His voice was bright and cheery with a thick Dutch accent ending each sentence with a light lilt.
“It is an old one. A known pornographer named Jerome Wexler took a private jet to the Netherlands in 1994,” Jake explained. “I’m searching for his current whereabouts. My contact Jerry Blyth did a preliminary scan and found no individual by that name currently living in the Netherlands. I wanted to know if Jerome Wexler might have crossed your radar? Might be during any investigations into human trafficking or pornography rings?”
He heard a shuffling of papers on the other end.
“I ran Jerome Wexler through our archives going back to 1994, DeVries replied.” Jerry provided me the information for this phone call. Unfortunately, I found no mention of this individual in cases either open or closed. That doesn't mean that he is not here, but if so, he's been a good quiet citizen.”
“That's hard to believe because these men never give up that kind of work.”
“I agree,” DeVries said. “Would you by chance have any other aliases that he used in the states?”
“Unfortunately, I don't. Jerome Wexler is all I have.”
“Here is the interesting thing that I found,” Officer DeVries said.
“Interesting in a good way or in a bad way?” Jake asked.
“I spoke with immigration and did some digging of my own through the necessary channels here in the Netherlands and we don't have any records of a Jerome Wexler arriving in the country on any date.”
“Did the private jet land at any of your Airports of Entry? He’d have to h
ave gone through customs. One of those airports would have records?”
“I checked all of those airports. Luckily, we computerized the records going back that far. That private jet never landed in this country.”
Jake’s shoulders slumped. He’d fully hit a dead end.
“Thank you so much for all of this information. It’s disappointing, but I really appreciate your closing the loop on this part of the investigation,” Jake said.
“I'm sorry I couldn’t give you more helpful information,” Officer DeVries said.
“One more question. Have you uncovered any major human trafficking or child abuse rings in the Netherlands?”
“As you can imagine, I cannot speak to open cases and active investigations,” DeVries said. “Speaking more generally, most of the human trafficking right now is coming out of the Middle East and Syria. There are several ongoing child pornography ring cases going on at Interpol currently. You’d need to speak to my colleague in the Cyber Crime division. Would you like her number?” he asked.
“Please. I'd really like to speak to her,” he said.
Officer DeVries gave him the contact information for an Annika Stoop. Jake thanked him again and hung up.
The pit formed in the bottom of his stomach and exhaustion flowed from his head down to his toes. He’d been so hopeful those flight manifests would lead to something major and he’d come up empty. He breathed in deep and tried to swallow the frustration that welled up once again.
This criminal was going to be difficult to find, he thought. Difficult, but not impossible. Jake knew Harri would never stop looking for Jerome Wexler and he cared too much about Harri to let her track him down alone. Lauren never deserved to have her life end that way. Jake owed it to Lauren to help Harri bring Jerome Wexler justice.
He got up from the table and put his coffee cup into the sink. He looked over at the files piled up on the table, trying to decide whether he could use another coffee or if it would make him too jittery to work. He’d checked his email earlier that morning and had two consultation cases in his mailbox.
As a former Quantico profiler, he typically freelanced with police departments to help them on tough cases. He’d taken a two-month break from the work to help Harri find Lauren. When they discovered her remains, he put together the funeral and handled whatever business that Harri couldn’t.
He liked his work and didn’t need the money. He had enough stashed away. Truth be told, his job kept his own dark thoughts at bay. If he didn’t have the work, he wouldn’t get out of bed.
Depression had hit him hard after all the cases he’d profiled. One of the reasons he had quit. He could no longer compartmentalize all the horror. He turned back to his computer. Harri wouldn’t like the news on this lead. At least he had another contact to call. If Jerome Wexler was still alive, they would track him down.
4
Day 1
Juliet Adamson excitedly ran up the walk of the Hollywood Hills home that her and her boyfriend Roger had rented for the weekend. It was her birthday and he’d sprung the surprise on her which she loved him for.
They lived in a small one-bedroom apartment in the middle of Hollywood. The cramped apartment was stuffy and hot. Frankly it just wasn’t very romantic. She wanted to turn thirty in style and spending it in a Hollywood Hills designer home was just the thing to perk up her mood.
Roger found the keys in the key box hanging on the statue of a dog to the left of the front door.
“Cute layout,” Juliet remarked.
Roger grinned. “Let’s hope this place is as cool as advertised.”
He opened the door and stood back. “Ladies first.”
Juliet rolled her eyes and stepped into the foyer. The house smelled musty and lived in. She wrinkled her nose.
“Ew. Gross. What’s that smell?”
Roger was right behind her and sniffed. “We need to open all the windows.” He dropped their bags to the side of the door and went around the living room opening up the windows.
She walked over to the French doors leading out to the backyard and squealed in delight.
“There's a pool,” she cried. “There's a pool. Roger, you did such a good job getting this place.” She grabbed him and planted a big fat kiss on his lips.
“I aim to please,” he said and went in for more.
She pushed back from his embrace. “You smell that?” she asked.
There was a different smell now and it wasn't musty and stale. It smelled foul, like something had died in the wall.
They crossed through the kitchen into the dining room and noticed a damp brown patch on the bottom of the back wall. The sheetrock had peeled off in that corner. Something had cracked through the brittle interior of the sheetrock.
“Oh God. I do smell that,” Roger said. “Something died in that wall,”
“We should call the owner,” she said, covering her nose and mouth with her hand.
Roger dialed their B&B host. The call went to voicemail.
“We can't stay here,” she said.
Roger groaned. He’d spent a lot of money on this surprise. “What if we open up the wall? Get the dead animal out of there so the smell can clear out. Tom has that cleaning company. I’m sure he could come and clean it today so we can enjoy your birthday weekend,” Roger said.
“The B&B host should be doing that,” she whined. This was her birthday weekend and she didn’t want to be dealing with something gross like this.
“I know, babe.” Roger sighed. “It's a solution, though. He's not picking up and we can tell him that we did him a favor and he could clean it up after we leave,” Roger said.
“Okay.” Juliet nodded. “How are we going to rip this wall open?” she asked as she went back to the living room and rummaged in her bag to find a scarf to put over her face.
Roger headed to the kitchen. He opened drawers and cabinets until he found what he was looking for.
He walked back to her waving a hammer.
“That’s what you are going to use?” she asked skeptically as she wrapped the scarf around her neck to cover her nose and mouth.
“I’m strong, baby.” He flexed his biceps and grinned. “I got the muscles,” he said and got to work.
“Wait.” Juliet followed him back to the dining room and the rotted smell.
Roger turned back to her and she put a rolled-up tank top around his neck to cover his nose and mouth. It was pink and he flinched as she tied it in the back.
“Stop it,” Juliet said. “No one’s gonna see you. There could be mold in there.”
It only took two good swings of the hammer for the damaged sheetrock to give way. After he opened a good four-foot opening, he peered inside.
“There’s plastic in here,” he said.
The smell of death filled the air. Juliet swallowed her rising bile. She was going to puke if she stayed in the room.
She ran over to the kitchen windows and threw them open to get more fresh air. This was turning out to be a lot worse than just a dead rat. There was no way that smell was something small.
“Oh shit,” she heard Roger say. She watched as he scrambled away from the hole. That didn’t bode well.
“What is it?” She called from the kitchen, afraid of his answer. “A raccoon? Or?” Even though the words had left her mouth she already knew it wasn’t a dead animal.
It was a dead body. There was no way around it.
Juliet had watched enough real-crime documentary shows and missing person news segments with her mother to know they had stumbled across a dead body. She watched Roger as he watched her pull her cell phone from her purse.
“911 what is your emergency?”
“Hi,” Juliet began and then hesitated.
“Hello? What is your emergency?”
“We found a dead body in the wall.” The words came out louder and faster than she intended.
Roger rushed to her side and grabbed the phone.
“Hello, are you there? What is the ad
dress?”
Roger held her hand as he gave the 911 operator the address of their B&B.
Juliet stared at the hole in the wall as Roger spoke to the 911 operator. She might not be getting her romantic birthday weekend, but it would definitely be something interesting to talk about.
5
Day 1
Debi Mills sat in the casting office with six other girls who looked like they could be her twin. She was waiting for her turn to audition for a web commercial for a software company she’d never heard of. Her agent kept sending her out on commercial auditions because she had the girl-next-door look they always wanted, but she also had the strawberry-red hair that gave her a quirky look that was all the rage right now.
Unfortunately, her natural shade seemed to have been readily available in the box because five of the girls that sat in the cramped waiting room looked exactly like her all the way down to the bangs.
She nervously glanced to the side and then casually around the room. She had her lines memorized and repeated them in her mind to distract her from the other girls in the room. It was a high-energy commercial about a girl who had just gotten her new computer and was thanking her parents for her birthday gift.
Debi was seventeen, but looked more like fourteen and her agent said she was a shoo-in for this specific casting director. Marguerite liked the younger actresses coming in too, he added.
A girl came out of the side door looking pretty upset. An audition gone bad, Debi thought. The young actress looked like the rest of the girls in the waiting room. She hurried past everyone to the exit as an assistant peeked her head out of the same door and called another girl’s name.
One of her doppelgängers stood up and followed the woman inside. Debi just couldn't believe how many girls there were that looked exactly like her.
The Broken Trail: A Chilling Serial Killer Thriller (Harriet Harper Thriller Book 3) Page 3