by Dale Mayer
As he headed out, he caught sight of Yale. He looked at him in surprise, as the two met in the middle of the block. “Hey, what are you doing here?” Simon asked.
Yale smirked. “That’s what I would ask you.”
“Not doing a whole lot,” Simon said. “Just heading home.”
“You were in a hell of a hurry to get off the boat this morning.”
“I had an appointment. Otherwise I would have stayed on until the end, as I normally do.”
Yale shrugged. “Stayed on as long as I could for the crowd, and then I had to go.” He lifted a hand and walked past. “Have a good day. See you in a couple weeks.” With that, he strolled down the street in the opposite direction.
Simon turned to watch his old friend go by; Yale was really aging. He’d always been what Simon thought was maybe a decade older, but he wasn’t sure. Now it was obvious that the lifestyle was starting to get to Yale. Something Simon himself needed to consider. Shrugging, he headed home, choosing to take the long walk instead of grabbing a ride.
He couldn’t help but still be irritated that he wasn’t allowed in on the investigation. The detective had no reason to trust him, but then she also had no reason to consider him a suspect, especially not since he sent her those numbers for the safe. And it was a damn good thing he had done that.
As he thought about her and considered what they were doing, another series of numbers popped into his head. He frowned and shook his head.
“Ha, no way.” No way he would send that to her. But, with every step he took, it was like a nail being driven into his skull. Finally he pulled out his phone and sent the numbers to her, then put away his cell. Realizing that she would likely call, he pulled it back out, shut it off. When he finally got home, he was cold and tired. When he stood in the front lobby and headed toward the stairs to his apartment, the doorman at the front smiled at him.
“Good morning, sir.”
He nodded. And then he stopped and asked, “Was it a quiet weekend, Harry?”
The doorman walked over and checked the log. “Looks like it.”
“Good, that’s the way I like it.”
“In that case, he said, “that was the weekend you should have stayed home.”
“So damn true,” he said, with a groan and a chuckle. He headed toward his apartment, then put on a small pot of coffee. It seemed like all he was doing was drinking alcohol and coffee. He brought out his laptop and checked his accounts and his projects. So far, everything was reasonably on target. That always made him suspicious as hell. He turned his phone back on and had missed several phone calls. They were all from the same number. He snorted.
“Tough shit, not everybody is on your time frame,” he snapped. Just then, the phone rang again. He figured it was her. “What?”
“Did you try?” his ex said, in a trembling and tearful voice.
Shit, this was the last thing he needed. “I’ve tried, and I’ve tried,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I haven’t had any luck.”
“You know you could if you wanted to,” she said.
“If it was that damn easy,” he said, “I wouldn’t have been dealing with all this shit, now would I? It would already be solved.”
“Would it?” she asked. “Or would you still be trying to avoid it all?”
“That’s not what I’m trying to do,” he said. “I’m sorry this is happening, but I don’t know anything.”
He hung up on her, so frustrated because, if he did know something at this point, he would say so, even if just to get rid of Caitlin. No, that wasn’t true at all; he would do it to help Leonard. That was the right thing to do, and, when he could, he would always help children. Hell, some of his real estate projects were geared toward helping single women and children who had no money. But it was all just such a crapshoot. He sat outside on the small deck and called out to his grandmother.
“You could have warned me,” he said. Of course there would be no answer; his grandmother had no cares at this point. In a situation like this, he would do a lot to help. Anybody who thought otherwise didn’t know who he was at all. And that was the problem because he’d practiced that whole isolation thing for a lifetime. When his phone rang again, he looked down at it, and this time it was the detective. “What?” he snapped irritably.
“Did you know?”
“Know what?” he said. “I’m sitting in my damn apartment, looking out at the city and wishing to hell all of you people would just leave me alone.”
“Listen. The numbers you sent me were the password to the online chat for these ugly little pedophile pukes. So why would I ever leave you alone?”
“It was?” He bolted to his feet. “Jesus, did you get something decent?”
“Well, I got something sick,” she said, and her tone revealed the depression and the disgust at whatever she’d found.
“Yes, but did it help?”
“We’re hoping so, but, of course, we didn’t get real names or anything. But we’re trying to track them down and find locations.”
“And what about children?”
She hesitated, and then her voice broke into the softest of whispers and said, “Yes, an online transaction is happening right now with one little girl.”
“Oh, shit,” he said. “How old?”
“Five, and she’s been in the system for a couple years.”
“Oh God,” he said. “Can you find her?”
“We’re working on it,” she said. “If you get anything else, let me know.”
*
Monday, Late Afternoon
Still pissed from Friday’s excursion to Nico’s house in Richmond being interrupted by the cops, he returned to Nico’s the following Monday, late in the day, wanting cover of darkness, cussing the whole trip, but watching for cop cars. At least he had scoped out the exterior the first time here. So, deciding to jump the neighbor’s fence, he quickly hopped the shared side fence, wincing as his bones rattled all the way down to the jarring landing on the other side. He wasn’t anywhere as agile as he used to be. Life hadn’t been all that easy on him either. He’d also aged a lot faster than many of his peers had. Prison would do that to a person.
He snuck up to the side of Nico’s house and just stood here, waiting for something, … for anything really. When he couldn’t hear anything inside or out, he crept down the house, closer to where he thought the kitchen might be, so he could peer inside. No light was on except for one over the stove, sending out a warm glow across the kitchen. He snorted at that. It was such a high-end kitchen that it made him sick. He used to live in a house like this. Had grown up in a house like this.
He swept around the corner to the back-porch door and, with a gentle hand, reached out and twisted it. It opened easily enough. No alarm went off, at least not an audible alarm. He studied the back side of the house, looking for video cameras, sensors or the like, but found nothing. With the door cracked open ever-so-slightly, he pushed it open another few inches, and, when still no alarm was raised from inside or out, he slipped into the kitchen and let the door close silently behind him.
“Now,” he whispered to himself, “where is she?”
He went through the whole main floor and hadn’t found anyone yet. He didn’t know if Nico was even here. He had found some mail in the kitchen that had Nico’s name on it. He quickly took photographs of several places around the house. He didn’t dare stay too long, in case Nico came back. So far, he hadn’t found what he was looking for. He may have to come back for a third trip this way, but it would be faster now because he knew the layout.
He did a quick circle of the upstairs and then raced downstairs, knowing that time was of the essence. And then he saw the basement door. Of course the house had a basement, though it was pretty damn stupid, considering Richmond sat on reclaimed land. But, hey, if they wanted to play the water-in-the-basement game, that was fine with him.
He slipped downstairs, staying in the dark, until he got to the bottom, where he searched for a ligh
t switch. He quickly turned it on, only to find that it was just a basement, storage and all. He quickly swept around to inspect the side walls, and finally, behind a bunch of boxes, he found another door. He brought his hand up in anticipation and slowly reached for the doorknob.
Chapter 20
“So now that we are in on the chat, what have we got?” Kate asked the forensic tech. “And is this something we should be involving ICE, Sex Crimes Unit, and the International Crime Division?” It was enough to make her head spin. But if there was any chance that these men and their sick games went farther than Vancouver, which the images at least had, she wanted everyone on board.
“I’ll update them when I’m done,” Doran said.
“The talk was about the sale of a little girl, with a price war between these two online handles,” said one the techs. She didn’t know his name. “But currently we have no idea who they are. Nor do we have a location for the little girl. Correct, David?” he asked his coworker.
“Not yet,” he said. “We’ve seen a couple similar versions of these handles in other chats though.”
“So, it’s likely the same guys?” Kate asked.
“I would think so. They are fairly distinctive. And usually so on a child porn site,” David said, having both downloaded and uploaded images.
“So, what do we have to do to catch these guys?” Kate asked David.
“We are trying to track back the IP addresses, and we’ll see if we can get the data from that in order to find out where they are coming from.”
“Another one of those laws we can’t break, right? We don’t have access to them?” Kate sighed with frustration.
“No, the communications companies have the information.”
“So, what else are we supposed to do?” she whined.
Just then, one of the men at the side leaned over and said, “We’ve got a chat here that’s making me a little suspicious.”
“Bring it up on the screen, Aaron,” David said, now standing beside her. They brought it up and quickly went through the conversation. “So, he got the price down to twelve hundred, and then what?”
“He wants until Monday night—tonight—to get the money together, But I think he’s fishing,” Aaron said. “He is asking for proof of life, but he also wants something outside. Like a photo from outside.”
“Meaning?” Kate asked.
Aaron hesitated and said, “Honestly, I’m wondering if he is looking for a landmark to pinpoint the child’s location, possibly to kidnap the child himself instead of paying that price.”
“Wow. That takes a lot of nerve. Do you think they are local?” Kate asked him.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “They are obviously still being very cagey with each other, and, although they are friendly, they aren’t giving up personal information.”
“Which would be the stupidest thing anybody here in this chat could do,” she muttered.
“But we do see it happen, and these guys have been online for a while. We’ve gone back at least four or five years with these two, plus Ken.”
“But part of the time Ken had been in prison. How does that work?”
“Yeah, he sure was, and sometimes he managed to get onto the chat anyway.”
She shook her head at that. “What? Isn’t that restricted?”
“These guys make a life of finding ways to get around the rules.”
“What about that image that I sent you earlier with the street number?”
“I’ve got it right here,” Aaron said. He switched to a second monitor, with a different window up, and brought up a street.
She looked at it and frowned. “Do you think that’s it?”
“Not only do I think that’s it,” he said, “but I think it’s taken from inside this house here.” He brought up a Google map and quickly pointed, placing himself right on the street.
She nodded. “Give me that address, and I’ll go check it out.”
“It’s in Richmond,” Aaron said.
“Even better. I can get there in twenty minutes and check this out.” And, with that, she grabbed the address and walked away. She called back as she left, “Let me know if you get anything on that chat room.”
“Will do,” he said, and she headed out.
She didn’t bother telling Rodney or Owen because there wasn’t anything specific to tell them. They were working on the other murder.
For Jason, they were still waiting on the drug tests.
The traffic was heavy at this time of day—rush-hour traffic on a Monday evening no less—and, by the time she made it to the address, she was swearing at the forty-five-minute trip. She quickly drove around the block and back and then checked out who else was living on this street. None of the names rang a bell, and none of them had popped up in her criminal database.
Until she got to the search of the house at the far end. Some names of owners for houses in the middle of the block didn’t appear yet either. She quickly brought up the corner house on her tablet and then phoned Rodney from her car.
“I’m in the middle of the block on the road that we saw on that video,” she said. “The picture we found inside Ken’s living room? Well, Aaron thinks the photo was taken from inside the house on the corner—just like we thought with the road signs we found. A porch goes around the front side of the house. So that road sign is just barely visible through the front window. The online record states Ken Roscoe is the owner—a pedophile, convicted, served his time, released to a halfway house, now lives here. No issues since his release. So that’s Ken’s property. It’s all dark right now, which we would expect with a dead guy as the owner.”
“Well, he should have popped immediately with that address. I’ll get Forensics out there pronto.”
“Good. Now I’ve run across another registered perv. This Nico guy, also living in this same block, he did show up in my search, but we hadn’t had any problems with him either, and it’s his family residence, so it’s not like he’s just out of the halfway house.”
“So, as long as he stayed low and out of trouble, he just was a name.”
“Exactly. The database tells us he lives here, but it doesn’t tell us anything else. So … I’m wondering if that house on the corner was another playhouse for Nico to share with Ken? Or is it possible for two pervs to live on this same street and operate out of the same child porn ring, sharing children?”
“Anything’s possible. Any sign of life around Nico’s place?”
“Lights are on,” she said. “It’s early evening on a Monday. A vehicle is parked in the back alley, but it just appears to be one of the neighbors.”
“Well, go on up and ask. See if anybody is there,” Rodney said. “You should have called me though. I would have come with you. And we need to call Richmond RCMP. You’re in their turf,” he warned.
“I would have if the tech guys had found anything constructive on the two players trying to buy slash sell the little girl online,” she said, “but they didn’t—not yet anyway—except that these two guys had been in this child ring online for at least four to five years.”
“They got access while they were in prison?”
“Aaron in IT doesn’t seem to think that’s out of reason.”
“That’s even sicker than normal,” Rodney said. “We send them to prison as a punishment, not to create support groups to help each other hurt kids.”
“Exactly. Call Richmond RCMP for me, will you? I’ll take a walk and see what I see.” She pocketed her phone, hopped out of her vehicle, and walked through the gate and up to the front door. She rang the doorbell and waited. There was a big long echo, a hollow emptiness on the inside. Yet it made no sense if he were living here. It was obvious that he could have gone somewhere for the afternoon, but it didn’t have that kind of feeling. It had an unlived-in feeling.
She walked the porch and peered in through the big windows on the ground to catch a glimpse. But it was all full of furniture, old-money kind of furniture. She frowne
d again, walked back to the front door, and rang the doorbell again, then quickly sent Rodney a text, saying she’d gotten no answer.
“Not surprising,” Rodney said, when he called her instead of texting. “According to the record, there’s been no calls to that address. At least not in the last couple years.”
“I wonder if this guy went to jail,” she asked.
“Seven years ago,” Rodney said. “He’d been quiet before then. Nico Dunfer. He’s a professor, a botany professor. Richmond RCMP are on their way to your location.”
“Interesting. Okay, I’ll keep it up.” She popped her phone back into her pocket, and, just as she was about to come down the front steps, she heard a sound. She moved around the side of the house, and, sure enough, somebody was sneaking out a window. Annoyed, she held up her badge and called out, “Police. Stop!”
Instead he shot her a terrified look and bolted. He jumped over the fence, even though she came racing behind and jumped over after him. But she was just that split second behind. He had dumped the garbage can, so she landed on it and rolled to the ground. She was on her feet in seconds, racing down the same direction, but he hopped into the vehicle that she’d seen parked up ahead and took off.
Good thing she had taken a photo of the license plate. She swore and called Rodney back. “Somebody escaped out the rear window,” she said. She quickly gave him the license plate number.
“I’m on it,” he said. “Hold up.” And then he swore. “Well, damn, that’s registered to another convicted pedophile.”
“What are you talking about?”
“A different one entirely,” he said.
“Do you have an address for him?”
“Yeah, but its back down in this corner.”
“So, what the hell is he doing in his buddy Nico’s house in Richmond?” She stopped, turned, and looked back at the house. “I need a warrant to get in. No Richmond RCMP here yet either. I can’t get rid of the feeling something is going on here.”
“Hang on,” he said. “Let me make some calls.”