Gasping, she stared down at very faded lines on his wrist. So faint they were mostly scar tissue. Still shocked, she looked from the photo to his wrist and then back up to him.
“You were one of them?” She narrowed her gaze. “But were you a pedophile or a victim?”
He glared at her. “I was a victim,” he said. “But I already know who put these marks on my wrist,” he snapped.
She stared at him in shock. “Who?” she demanded. “Who was it, Simon?”
Chapter 23
Tuesday, 8:00 a.m.
Kate bolted intothe station later that morning at eight. She was still rubbing the sleep from her eyes, having only collapsed in her bed at four. After dropping his bombshell the previous night, Simon had disappeared almost immediately. She’d done everything she could to hold him there, but he walked, and she saw how terribly difficult it all was for him. Just as he left, she made a plea. “The station, eight a.m., this morning. Please.”
He’d frozen in the hallway, turned to look at her, and then stepped inside the elevator, disappearing. She hoped not forever, but a part of her wondered.
As she raced into the office, the rest of the crew looked up and frowned. She said, “Ground zero.”
Eyebrows shot up, and people bolted to their feet. “Another body?”
She took a slow deep breath. “Not quite,” she said. “I need to write down some stuff that we should go over, and I must do some research.”
Colby walked in and said, “No. First you tell us what’s going on.” She glared at him, but he didn’t waver.
“Well, I can’t really tell you right now. I found somebody with that same mark on their wrist. Someone who is alive today, but was a victim of a pedophile decades ago.”
“Who?” Colby asked.
She shoved her hands in her pockets, hating to even bring it up. “Simon.”
He just stared at her, and his eyebrows went up. “Are you serious?”
She nodded slowly. “I saw it last night,” she said. “He said that his foster father gave it to him, and that he’d been a victim for many years when he was just a child.” Several gasps came from those around her. She turned her gaze on each, trying to decide if they believed her or if they thought she was making it up. Or worse, that Simon was making it up. It was Lilliana though, who offered another theory that Kate hadn’t considered.
“You do realize,” Lilliana said, “that he probably wasn’t the victim of a pedophile but was part of the adult pedophile ring, correct?”
Colby’s frown deepened, and he looked at Lilliana and said, “Go pick him up.”
“Wait,” Kate said. “I guess that, to you guys, that probably is the next logical step. But he gave me combos, license numbers, and names.”
At that, they all turned and stared at her. She nodded. “He didn’t want to share anything personal, but he told me to look it up, if I didn’t believe him. I think he realized, once that symbol came up, and he showed me his wrist, that he would be assumed to be part of the ring,” she said quietly. “At least let’s give him the respect of checking out the case number.”
“What’s the number?” Owen said from his computer. She pulled out her phone, checked the note she’d made for herself, and read the number out loud. He typed it in and brought it up. “Jesus, well, this is pretty ugly. It’s definitely a pedophile case involving a six-year-old boy named Simon.” His gaze shot up over the top of the monitor to look at her.
Behind him, Lilliana said, “That doesn’t mean it’s the same Simon.”
“What year?” Kate asked.
“Thirty-one years ago,” he said. “We’ve got just a bit of a digital file here.”
“Who was the abuser?”
He continued to read, handing out bits and pieces of information. “The child had been abused for years by the suspect, his own foster father. Wow,” he said. “This is a pretty shitty deal.”
“It is,” Kate said. “And it follows everything he said.”
“But nothing is in there about the marks on his wrist, is there?”
“Not that I’ve read yet,” he said. “Not to mention, no photograph of it either.”