Chapter 23

TWENTY-THREE

After removing his coat, hat, and gloves, Styles chose a bowl of chili and a bag of crackers from the selection on the counter. He carried them to his desk with a cup of coffee that Beth had poured for him. He dropped into his chair, and Beth sat opposite. As he removed the lid from his bowl of chili, he looked up at her. "I'm not expecting Cash to get any hits on the APB he issued across the state. I believe if our suspects followed the normal bugging-out protocol, they'd have a different vehicle and identification papers ready to go."

"Yeah, they could have swapped out the vehicles and left their current one in a garage anywhere across the county." Beth sipped a cup of pumpkin soup and dabbed at her lips with a napkin. "Our chances of finding them would be zip." She looked up at him over the rim of her cup. "Kids that are victims of opportunistic thrill kills are usually murdered within the first few hours of their abduction. The bodies are dumped and the victims usually discovered within the first twenty-four hours unless the perpetrator buries them somewhere, which in the case of opportunistic thrill kills is an unnecessary waste of his time. He would be long gone by now, but the missing girl isn't our priority if she's dead." Beth sipped the soup and placed the to-go cup on the desk. "Her going missing would fit perfectly into our case. It is too much of a coincidence to believe that this girl went missing within twelve hours of Shoebridge vanishing. From what you've told me about your sister's disappearance, it fits his MO."

Styles sprinkled crackers over his chili, his mind going back to the day when his sister was abducted. It had happened so fast. One minute she was there and the next minute she had vanished. "If Shoebridge did take this girl, how did he know that she'd be walking home alone at that time?"

"She was already a target." Beth nibbled on crackers between sips of soup. "This is exactly how a pedophile ring works. Think of it like a baseball club. They have scouts out hunting down possible players. These people are well paid for information on vulnerable kids and protected by the organization." She finished her soup and reached for a pink donut from a box she'd carried to the table. "I have no doubt that Shoebridge was whisked away to a safe house in another county and collected the girl along the way. Ginny told you she went with him willingly because she believed he was a cop. He'd be using the same ploy every time." She held the donut in one hand as she sipped her coffee. "His security guard uniform could easily confuse a kid."

Allowing her speculations to percolate through his mind, Styles swallowed his last spoonful of chili and leaned back in his chair. "If you're correct, then we know which direction he's heading. We could narrow down our search to heavily forested counties. Somewhere where he could have an isolated cabin in the woods, but not a small hunting cabin, something more substantial."

"He'd also need to work. He'd establish himself in the town as a nice guy so nobody suspects anything." Beth licked sugar from her fingers. "Agreed. Some pedophiles would hide in the forest off the grid, but we've already established that Shoebridge's involvement goes a lot deeper than just abducting kids. If he weren't deeply involved in this organization, we would have found him on the side of the road with a bullet in his head. The same with the doctor. What we've stumbled over by accident when we hunted down your sister is two of the key players."

Styles brought up files on his computer and scrolled through them. He turned the screen to show her. "I'm just looking at the file of the incident that happened in Black Rock Falls last year. Sheriff Alton discovered a missing girl by accident which led her to three men living off the grid in Cottonwood Forest. These men purchased suitable girls from foster care. The girls were reported as runaways. They were kept as slaves for years and their babies sold to an adoption agency. It says in the files that although the foster parents were charged, the adoption agency and the judge who signed over the children escaped justice. The adoption agency was working through a doctor who brought them unwanted babies with paperwork signed by the mothers giving up the babies for adoption." He raised both eyebrows. "They had the paperwork from a doctor, and the judge put through the adoptions. The parents no doubt paid a fortune for the babies, but they went through the normal screening process. The hope is they went to loving, rich parents."

"A doctor?" Beth rubbed her forehead and stared at him. "Ginny mentioned a doctor who came and took away her babies. Do you figure our Dr. Paul Benson is the same man?"

Styles had mulled over this case all night and nodded. "It makes sense that it's him. He had a practice in Blackwater, which is driving distance to Cottonwood in Black Rock Falls. It's a central town with good access roads to surrounding counties. If we could discover the doctor's name on the paperwork, we'll know for sure."

"What about the girls taken from foster care?" Beth rested her hands on the table peering at his screen. "What did Sheriff Alton discover about them?"

Scrolling through the files, Styles frowned. "It wasn't in her jurisdiction. The foster parents claimed the girls ran away but were charged with endangering the welfare of children. So we don't know how many people are actually involved. Seems to me there are three separate things going on here: the abductions, the selling of foster kids, and the baby adoption racket."

"Reading these files, we can add murder from our own files, and sex slavery." Beth shuddered. "It can start in foster care. Kids are abused, passed around, and then vanish. I ran away, but I figure if I'd become compliant, I'd have been sold. I believe Shoebridge is running a halfway house. He prepares the girls so they can be sold at a higher price. Either by using drugs or locking them in small spaces until they obey him." She rubbed both hands down her face. "This is just one side of the coin. We're assuming Shoebridge and Benson deal exclusively in young girls, which leads me to the question of who in the organization is dealing in young boys?"