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 light 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 thatwe 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?”