“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.”
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.”