Chapter 13

THIRTEEN

They stopped by the greasy spoon beside the motel to collect four cups of coffee. When they arrived at Shoebridge's house, Beth took two to-go cups to the deputies on stakeout. As they buzzed down their windows, she gave them a bright smile. "Anything unusual happen while you've been on duty?"

"It's been as quiet as a mouse." The deputy sipped the coffee and sighed. "Thanks for bringing the coffee. It's been very cold today. I assume you've done your share of stakeouts?"

Beth nodded. "Too many to count." She gave them a wave and headed into the house.

In the kitchen she found Styles wearing examination gloves and spreading out the evidence bags across the kitchen table in piles of various sizes. Beth collected a pile of medium-sized bags and looked at him. "I figure we leave all the forensic stuff to Wolfe's team and rip this place apart looking for video or image files. Any evidence we find will give us an idea of the number of girls that Shoebridge abducted and sold. We might have a chance of tracing the girls now we know the doctor was involved, or at least their babies, if they were part of the scheme, and from what Ginny told you, I figure he didn't stop with Ginny."

"You've searched the dark web. What kind of money are we talking about when it comes to buying a child?" Styles removed his Stetson and dropped it on the table and pushed a hand through his light brown hair. "Thousands?"

Holding the evidence bags to her chest, Beth breathed in between her teeth. "It depends on the quality. From what I can ascertain, it can be hundreds of thousands. Not just little girls, they sell little boys as well, so if you figure they kept Billy because he was male, you'd be mistaken."

"I'm fully aware of pedophiles' preferences, Beth." Styles pushed his hands into the front pockets of his jeans and inclined his head to look at her. "If you want my opinion, I think Shoebridge kept Billy to appear like a normal family man to the neighbors and his workmates. I figure someone would have noticed that Ginny was pregnant at the time. I'm sure she went to the stores and he didn't keep her locked in the house all the time. Like you said, by the time she went to high school she was well and truly brainwashed. She had lost her identity and believed every word that came from that assclown's mouth." He straightened, slapped his hands together, and turned toward the passageway. "Let's get at it." He headed toward the den, switching on lights as he went. "That's strange." Styles ran the scanner over a desk. "No prints. The place has been wiped down. Hang on, I'll check the other rooms."

Beth pulled on gloves and headed after him. She pulled out her scanner. "I have one set of prints that must be Billy's." She stared at him. "He wiped the place down before he left or made Ginny do it."

The den had a distinct smell of cigar smoke and an ashtray sat beside the computer. A half-smoked stogie lay in a pile of gray ash. She wrinkled her nose. Wanting to push the ashtray to one side but thinking better of it, she took out her phone and captured an image. She lifted the ashtray, holding it away from her and looked at Styles. "Here, I photographed this. You can deal with it. I can't stand the smell of cigars."

"Me either, but that's perfect for a DNA sample. Why did he leave a cigar and wipe his prints?" Styles opened an evidence bag and Beth dropped the ashtray inside.

A prickle of uncertainty ran across Beth's neck, and she stared at the cigar. "Unless it's not his and he's directing us toward someone else?"

"It's possible." Styles raised both eyebrows. "Ingenious, if he's that smart. I'll make sure the ME Dr. Wolfe gets it. If he made a mistake and left it here, we'll have a chance of tracing Shoebridge with his DNA. Security guards are required to take drug tests. If he happens to take another position, anywhere in the next month or so, we can get a warrant to obtain all the samples collected and run them against the result from this to get a match."

Beth sat down at the computer desk and powered it up. "I hope it's his. I guess they could use Billy's DNA to confirm it?"

"He wouldn't be a reliable source." Styles frowned. "We have no idea how many men Ginny was exposed to over the time she lived with Shoebridge. From what we've discovered in the past and from the cases that I've dealt with in my time in the FBI, I know that pedophiles share."

Beth grimaced. "Point taken." She made a few keystrokes and smiled. "I'm in." Taking a thumb drive from her pocket, she pushed it into the USB port on the computer. "I'll download the hard drive files onto a thumb drive and place the computer into evidence." She smiled at him. "For an organization of this size, their encryption codes were weak. If this is the standard of protection they're using on their hardware, we'll be able to track them down with ease."

"I've found a pile of DVDs. Can you look at these and download the hard drive at the same time?" Styles handed her a stack of plain white DVDs with just a number written on them in pen.

Nodding, Beth took them. "This might be a general collection. These monsters usually have a private collection secreted away somewhere. It will be in a place he can come back to if he needs to leave in a hurry." She played the first DVD, and distaste crawled over her like a swarm of angry ants. "Okay, that's enough. They have people in the FBI who can cope with this, but I'm not one of them. I didn't notice any of the men visible, so whoever filmed them was taking precautions not to be seen on film. The fact he didn't take these with him proves my point."

"The numbers on each disk should correlate with a record somewhere. Can you search the hard drive and see if you can find it?" Styles went back to collecting the disks and placing them into evidence bags. "I figure these were like a sales catalog."

Beth's fingers flashed over the keyboard. "I'll search for any recent uploads and see if I can locate the server they are using. It's likely protected to the max." She bent her head and went to work.

She appreciated the fact that when she was working on the computer and delving into the dark web Styles remained silent. After about fifteen minutes had passed by as if in an instant, Beth looked at him and shook her head. "I found it, but I can't break into it. It's going to take a lot longer than we have time for tonight. Now, I have the contents of the hard drive I can work on it from my motel room."

"I believe I've collected every piece of evidence from this room." Styles turned a full circle. "I've checked for a safe but found nothing. There are no secret panels I can find, and I've looked all over. Where next? The bedroom?"

Beth often thought like a criminal. Putting herself in their position often yielded amazing results when hunting down a perpetrator. She shook her head. "That's too obvious. We'll go and look around outside because if he needed to sneak back here without anyone seeing him, he would have hidden his trophies in a location he could easily access."

"Okay." Styles smiled at her and brushed the tip of his nose with the back of his hand. "You think like them, don't you?"

Beth looked at him aghast. "Pedophiles? I sure hope not. If I did, I figure I'd eat a bullet."

"Criminals." Styles gave her an apologetic look. "It's as if you have the ability to see through their eyes sometimes. It's an investigating tool I've been trying to perfect over the last ten years or so, but it seems to come naturally to you and so fast. It's as if you don't even have to think about it."

Unsure if this was a compliment or not, Beth stood from the desk and pushed the thumb drive into her jacket pocket. She went about opening the computer and removing the hard drive. She handed it to Styles. "Keep an eye out for a laptop or tablet. It doesn't make sense that he only uses an office computer. If he was using photographic gear in the root cellar, where it seems most of these videos have been taken, he would have been viewing the footage on a laptop for sure."

"That would have been easy enough to take with him." Styles headed to the front door. "There's a chance he has all his trophies on there as well and we're looking for something that doesn't exist."

Beth shook her head as she followed him into the kitchen and they dumped the bagged evidence onto the table. "He wouldn't risk losing the data. He'd have a backup hidden somewhere close by for sure."

"If it's here, we'll find it." Styles pushed his hat on his head and headed for the door. He whistled to Bear, who was rolling in the last remnants of fall leaves, and turned to Beth. "We'll leave the root cellar to Wolfe and concentrate on anything that looks out of place."

Beth scanned the yard, taking note of anything easily accessible from the road. They walked back and forth, searching hollowed-out trees, and then she noticed a small pile of leaves. She kicked them to one side with her foot and stared at the maintenance hole cover. Made of cast iron, it had obviously been stolen from a town somewhere. She waved at Styles. "I believe I've found something."

"That looks interesting." Styles crouched down and took hold of the ring in the maintenance hole cover and pulled. It opened with a whine and bumped on the ground as he tossed it to one side. "What do we have here?"

It wasn't a set of steps leading away to the sewers but a plastic box. Inside they found a second plastic box. Thrilled to have found something, Beth waited impatiently for Styles to open the boxes. The second box, as she had suspected, carried a number of thumb drives. "I think we've just hit gold." She grinned at him. "Although I hate looking at what's on them, they might give us positive proof of who was involved." She opened an evidence bag for him to drop the thumb drives into and turned toward the SUV. "We can look at these on my laptop. If they're not what we're looking for, we'll have to continue the search."

"Time is getting away from us, Beth." Styles followed her to the SUV with Bear on his heels. "I want to get to the doctor's house today. If we clear his house, we can get back home first thing in the morning and start investigating the case using your equipment."

Beth gave him a long look. "I agree that finding these kids is a priority, but we can pass most of this onto another team that deals with child abuse. They will have the most up-to-date listings of missing kids. Giving them that part of the investigation will speed things up for us immensely. Our goal is to bring down the kingpin of this organization. Don't you agree?"

"Yeah." Styles gave her a sideways glance as he opened the back door for Bear to jump inside. "So how would you suggest we proceed?"

Surprised that Styles had dropped back and literally given her the lead in the investigation, she nodded. "By the morning, most of the drugs will be out of Ginny's and Ava's systems. I would suggest we go and have another word with them. I know Ginny has lawyered up, but Ava is only being supported by the social worker at Her Broken Wings. What we need to do is convince Sheriff Alton to bring the girl from the safe house to the sheriff's office so we can speak to her." She slipped inside the SUV and reached for her laptop. "You know her. Can you give her a call and set something up for first thing in the morning? While you're doing that, I'll take a look at these thumb drives."

"That sounds like a plan." Styles smiled at her and pulled out his phone.