Rodney poked his head out of the bedroom. “Now what?”
“He’s a twin, and his sister is one of the most preeminent psychologists in town. Dr. Yolynda Brown. We use her a lot for our cases and often call her in on our criminal trials. I was supposed to contact her about these cases but never got a chance to do so.”
He looked over and frowned. “Well, I guess even pedophiles have family,” he said.
She nodded, but something about it just felt terribly off. “I’ve notified Colby.” She kept reading the summary and realized that this perv had been picked up once and had served a couple years. He was on the record as an abuser but had kept a very low profile ever since.
She pocketed her phone and kept going through the apartment. As long as they were here, she knew the perv wouldn’t come back, but she didn’t know if he understood that he’d lost his home base. Surely he had another base too. Yet, considering his current lifestyle, she was uncertain of that. She walked through to the bedroom and asked Rodney, “You find anything?”
“Nothing incriminating, just nasty-assty shit,” he said. “All kinds of condoms in the drawers, but all the packages are unopened.”
“So he’s ready but not here maybe?”
“Maybe, or he stopped using them.”
“That’s possible too,” she said. “I hope so. Surely his DNA is bound to show up somewhere.” She glanced around, walked over to the window, drew back the curtains, and opened it wide. “Ground floor, minimal light, kept the curtains closed,” she murmured. “He was hiding.”
“Pedophiles are always hiding,” Rodney said, “but hiding in plain sight. So we never know who the hell they are.”
“Well, this one is about to be exposed,” she said, “because we’re about to get him.” She knew it was false confidence, but she was determined to solve this.
“It would sure be good timing to have any fancy numbers your boyfriend could provide for you.”
She froze at his use of the term. “Simon is hardly my boyfriend,” she said carefully.
“Whatever,” he said.
“Could a safe be here?” She viewed the walls with interest, and he immediately stopped his search and started helping her.
“It doesn’t look like the kind of place that would have a safe, does it?”
“No, and I’m not too sure if this is actually a place he’d bring victims to or not,” she said. “It’s prettyunlived-in.”
“You mean overly lived-in, don’t you?” he asked.
“Yeah, I mean, it looks lived-in for him but not for a child.”
“Depends on how long he had them for,” he said. “That little girl Simon called in had been drugged all to hell before her neck was broken. Then the lost little girl you found at Nico’s place had also been heavily drugged for a long time too, so she’s not been consciously aware of what she went through for the last while. Which is a blessing in a way. I wonder how long Nico actually held her at his place.”
“Good point,” she murmured. She studied the apartment with a new eye. “So this is where this perv lived,” she said, “but there’s no hiding place for kids in this dive.”
“Storage lockers,” Rodney suggested. “Usually in the basement.”
She looked at him, frowned. Then, as she walked out, she said, “I’ll go talk to the manager.” She roused the manager from his apartment and had a quick conversation. “How long has he been here?”
“Since he got out of prison.”
“So you know about his prison record?”
He nodded. “It was part of the reason I gave it to him.”
She stared at him in surprise. “He came with good references?”
“Ready to turn over a new leaf.”
“And yet children are in this building, and, as a registered pedophile, he has to stay a certain distance away from children.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” he said, backing up. “Besides, I don’t think we have any kids right now.”