“I’m looking into that too,” Rodney said.
When he walked out of the office, Kate sat down and asked Owen, “Would they have actually collected the forensics evidence from that?”
“Well, they should have,” Owen said. “Was standard procedure even back then. Although there might not have been any to find. Interesting that his foster father just disappeared.”
“I wonder what happened to him,” she mused out loud. Rodney walked in just then, headed for the coffee then returned to go to his desk, listening to the conversation going on around him.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if your Simon didn’t take him out and deep-six him in the ocean, when he got old enough,” Owen said. She looked at him in surprise, but he just shrugged. “Hey, it’s what I’d do.”
“Maybe, but I think the formative years would have shaped him, yet the years that came afterward would have done an awful lot too because of who he was and who he is now today. I’m thinking the years with his grandmother should have helped,” Kate said, not sure that same destroyed little boy had the same anger as a young man and even now. “Besides, to kill his foster father, he had to find his foster father, and that might not have been quite so easy.”
Lilliana said, “I’m still not sure I believe him about the foster mother. Surely to be approved to foster kids you needed a married couple, right?”
“Who aren’t pedophiles preferably,” Owen quipped.
“Do we have anything on her?” Kate asked Lilliana, ignoring Owen.
Lilliana clicked away on the keys of her computer. “Josh Cameron was married. Seems she’s in an old folks home with mental decline. So that’s a dead end.” She typed again. “He was born to a woman named Meggie Smith—if that’s really her last name,” she said. “The father isn’t listed on the birth certificate.”
“So how did Simon end up in foster care? Did he go from Meggie to live with his biological father or what?” Rodney asked.
“Or Simon was given away,” Owen said, looking at Kate. “It could be that he was kidnapped as a child, or this Meggie person sold him into the pedophile ring.”
“And is this Meggie person alive or deceased?” Kate asked.
“I’m not finding a death certificate on file for her,” Lilliana said. “So she could possibly be alive. We have no surname though.”
“Interesting. Is there anything on her in a missing persons file?” Kate asked.
Lilliana looked at Kate over her monitor. “Why would you think she’s a missing person?”
“It just occurs to me that the birth father or the foster father probably didn’t want any baggage,” Kate said, thinking about it. “It’s one thing to take a child who you want to abuse, but to have the blood mother there, who could whine and try to defend the child, would get tedious very quickly. Maybe Josh Cameron took Meggie out for a walk and left her in a ditch someplace.”
“It’s possible,” Rodney said.
“I’ll have to hunt through the missing persons data,” Kate said, frowning.
“We can’t just contact that department?” Owen asked. “Or better yet, get Reese to check it. That’s why we have an analyst in the first place.”
With a smile, Lilliana said, “You know what? That’s exactly what I’ll do.” And she reached for her phone.
Kate added, “Plus, what about any possible Jane Doe IDs in the Vancouver morgue? Just keep our search here locally in Vancouver for the moment.”
Owen nodded. “I’ll take a stab at that.”
Kate got up, grabbed her purse, and said, “I’ll check out the address for the truck I saw last night, fleeing Nico’s place. Apparently the vehicle was reported as stolen. I need to talk to the owner,” she said.
“Do you want somebody to go along?” Rodney asked.
She thought about it and shook her head. “No, we’re spread too thin as it is,” she said. “I’ll just be an hour, as I’ll head over there and come right back.”
“Maybe,” Rodney said, “but we’ve seen things turn sideways very quickly.”
“In that case,” she said, “I have you on speed dial.” She turned and walked out. The last thing she ever expected was to get support. Chances were the offers to help were something other than the goodwill she thought they were—probably more about confirming Simon was an active pedophile, involved in these current cases of dead abused children—but, hey, she appreciated the assistance. The problem was, she had been working alone all her life, and she wasn’t too keen to have a partner now.
Her good intentions to talk to the truck owner went out the window when she stood in front of the small apartment and realized nobody was home. And neither was the truck. She’d gotten a follow-up that the truck had been found and returned to the owner earlier. Apparently he had subsequently left. She frowned and wished she’d had a chance to see him and the truck. It would help revive her memory of the man she’d seen Monday evening escaping out a window at Nico’s place.
She should go to the hospital now and check on the little drugged girl found in Nico’s basement. After the initial check at Richmond General, she’d been transferred to Vancouver General. That little girl and also the little toddler she had scooped up just in time in that alleyway. She hated to face these children again, but she had to. So she got into her vehicle and headed to the hospital. When she walked in, she flashed her ID and asked for the location of the little girl. She was given the room number, and, as she approached, she saw some family members, kept outside of the girl’s room by a burly unhappy orderly. At least Kate hoped they were family members. Only when she approached, everybody went silent. She frowned.