Chapter 26: Art to the Rescue

At nine the next morning, Detective Springer came to Camelot to talk with me about a case he had been assigned. It turned out that there were an inordinate number of missing girls and young women in the area. In each and every instance the girls disappeared without a single trace. Advertisements had produced a flurry of leads but Detective Springer's team had checked out every one and came up totally empty. There were no leads which did not end up in a dead end. They tried everything they could include: TV spots, newspaper ads, billboards, Amber alerts, milk cartons and fliers around the area.

All of my previous rescues had been thrust upon me or I stumbled into them by accident. This would be the first time that I deliberately undertook a rescue from the get-go. I got together with the team to go over what they had been able to determine. We were working on 22 instances of missing girls. While I would be duplicating the team's efforts I was determined to investigate every possible avenue. I personally interviewed each team member to discuss what they had done. I went even further to ask them if they would have done anything different if they had had virtually unlimited resources. I put together a lot of valuable information that would set the direction we took in the investigation.

My first analysis would be to determine what commonality there was among the cases. I looked at suspected locations, ages, hair color, clothing styles, life styles, weight and a host of other factors. The objective of that study was to determine if there were multiple separate perpetrators or a single organization. What I came up with was that the majority of the cases were similar enough to indicate a single individual or individuals working in concert with each other.

One advantage I had over the government agencies was that I was not restricted to rules they had to observe. I could go anywhere and do anything I felt would result in getting as many of the victims rescued as possible. My main objective was rescue. While prosecution was a desirable factor, I did not let it rule my approach. Another advantage that I had was the ability to offer cash rewards for information.

I estimated that at least half of the girls were being held somewhere locally and together. Since the most common reason to abduct girls is the sex trade it would be in the best interest of their captors to keep the girls healthy which necessitated the purchase of substantial quantities of food. Since every grocery store had computers which recorded purchases it was just a matter of examining the largest recurring purchases. We did determine that there were five customers who fit the criteria. We were able to track down their addresses and set up surveillance on their locations.

I hired some friends to review security and traffic camera recordings looking for recurring vehicles at unusual locations. One guy had a computer program that would keep track of individual vehicles and compare locations to develop a pattern algorithm. While that method was time consuming, it did yield a couple of hot leads. One of the vehicles in question was a dark blue van which turned out to have stolen plates. We then correlated the grocery purchases and their parking lot tapes looking for the blue van. We were very lucky and hit recurring instances where a single male driver was buying groceries on a regular basis. Adding to our luck was the fact that he used a credit card to pay for the groceries. That was not too smart when you want to cover your tracks.

Detective Springer set up surveillance at the store in hopes of finding the van and driver repeating his actions. The credit card address was a post office box so a stake-out was instituted at the post office. A further check with the credit card company got us the bank account used to pay the card bill. The address on the account was another post-office box so surveillance was added there.

With everyone diligently closing in on the perpetrator we were making progress. It was very slow but was, at least, moving forward. Sure enough, on a Wednesday the blue van showed up at the store and the guy bought over four-hundred dollars of groceries. The officers on duty at the store were advised to not stop the suspect but to follow him.

He did exercise some intelligence in making a very circuitous route through the city before he headed out of town. Contact with the van was lost in traffic; however the traffic cameras did track him as he left town. Several units converged on the van and the decision was made to take him down.

Detective Springer was on scene when I pulled up to help interrogate the suspect. He was being totally uncooperative and would not answer any of their questions. I convinced Springer to let me have a go at him. The methods I planned were quite illegal but with the help of a couple of retired Marines I was hopeful we could get the information we needed. I loaded the suspect into my SUV and took him to a remote location where we three could question him.

After a couple of hours of combat-zone-style interrogation the suspect coughed up some useful information. He gave us the whole story and stated that he was to drive the van to a warehouse on the west side of town where another driver would continue the trip in another vehicle. My two Marine buddies and I got in the van and had the driver continue on to the warehouse. When we arrived, there was another van there with a driver waiting for us. It was a simple matter to subdue that driver. We used some creative interrogation techniques and found out where the groceries were to be delivered.

Again we loaded up in the second van and had the driver take us to the destination. We were followed at some distance by the SWAT team in their van. We arrived at a rather large house in an affluent neighborhood. The driver used the remote to open the garage door and pulled in. Another suspect came into the garage and we subdued him and entered the house with guns drawn. A third person came to see what all the commotion was about. He was armed and foolishly tried to engage my Marines. One shot dropped him like a sack of potatoes.

Using combat techniques, we searched the main and upper floors of the house and came up empty. We then proceeded to the basement. Down there we encountered a locked door and heard a lot of screaming going on behind the door. The SWAT team made short work of the door and opened it up to reveal about twelve terrified girls huddled in a corner. They were crying and shaking as they were in fear for their life. A female uniformed officer entered the room and immediately proceeded to calm the girls, convincing them that they had been rescued.

An ambulance had been called and the paramedics came in to check out the girls. Fortunately they were all found to be at least in good physical condition. Emotionally they were virtual wrecks since they had been living in stark terror for up to a couple of weeks. In addition to the girls there were a man and woman being held there. It turned out that they were the owners of the house and had no involvement in the kidnappings and were victims themselves.

Detective Springer called for DSS to send an agent by to arrange for the girls to be transported to a safe house. It turned out that, like a previous time, they did not have anyplace to take the girls. I offered to take them to my house where they could get cleaned up and fed until their families could pick them up. I was already registered with DSS as a foster home. The DSS agent knew me so that was the plan.

I called the local bus service and ordered up a Greyhound to transport the girls. Detective Springer and two other officers would accompany us on the bus to Camelot. I called ahead, talked to Grace and told her to expect a bunch of company. I gave her a brief rundown of what had gone on so she could get everybody prepared. Detective Springer called one of his people at the office to start calling the families of the girls to have them come to my house to be reunited with their girls.

During the ride the officers talked to each of the girls telling them what was going to happen. They told them where they were going and that their families were being contacted. We arrived at Camelot, the girls got off the bus and were escorted into my great room. We had enough couches and chairs so they all could be comfortable. The officers would have to wait until the families arrived before they could take statements from the girls since they were all minors. While most of the girls were very nervous and scared there were two who were very subdued and quiet.