18
Max was eating a large bowl of the fruit salad thing and drinking coffee at his desk. Paulette had been right; the fruit didn’t go well with coffee. But it was really tasty, and he needed the caffeine.
His cell phone buzzed. “Rhodes.”
“Agent Rhodes, this is Deputy Reiman. Detective Bolton gave me a list of names to contact and asked me to report back to you.”
“The Playground Posse?” Max asked.
“That’s them. I’ve managed to talk to or hear back from eighteen of the twenty-one names.”
“That’s a good number. What’d you learn?” Max set down his spoon and opened an app on his computer to make notes.
“Of the women I spoke to or who emailed me back, not one of them knew where Belle could be other than with her dad or grandparents. None knew of a mom or acquaintance of Ms. Beason with red hair. None of them have ever lived with Ms. Beason, and no one was aware she had a roommate.”
“Did they know something had happened to Sydney?” asked Max, frustrated he had no notes to record yet.
“Absolutely. A few found out and had already emailed the posse list. Everyone I talked to was quite upset. Three of the women had older children who had been taught by Ms. Beason and said they all adored her as a teacher. They didn’t know how to tell their kids what happened.”
“Were any of the women aware of threats to Sydney?”
The deputy paused. “This is where their answers started to differentiate a bit. Two of them blasted the ex and said Ms. Beason didn’t like him and complained about him all the time.
The same two women said Ms. Beason had come to the playground crying one day.
She wouldn’t tell them what had happened, but they managed to learn that the ex had done something.
Three others mentioned that they knew she had a boyfriend but didn’t have any details.
One said she thought he might be an electrician but didn’t know a name or company he worked for. ”
“That’s close. He’s a plumber. But none of them mentioned a specific threat?”
“No.”
Max sighed. “Any gut feelings on some of the women?”
The deputy was quiet for a moment. “One woman was very bitter toward Ms. Beason’s ex-husband. She seemed to know a lot about him but couldn’t tell me a specific issue that Ms. Beason had ever shared with her. I got the feeling this woman—”
“Had been involved with the ex-husband at some point,” finished Max.
“Exactly. Maybe dated for a bit and it didn’t end well?”
“I wonder if it was before the marriage or after,” said Max.
“Could have been during,” added the deputy. “Although I have a hard time seeing the women belonging to the same social group if one’s husband cheated with another member. Or I guess maybe Ms. Beason never knew.”
Max considered the possible relationship messes and aftermath. “Send me an email with her name. I also want to know who else complained about Trey Beason.”
“Will do. And I’ll let you know when I hear from the remaining three women.”
A dark thought cracked open in Max’s mind. “Wait. Can you go to their homes? I need to know that these three women are all okay.”
“Shit! Got it. I’ll do it right away.”
“I also want a kid check from those three women. I don’t care if their kid is at their ex-husband’s for the week or something. They need to speak with the child on the phone if they can’t visually see their child at the moment.”
“Understood.” Deputy Reiman ended the call.
Max sat back and thought over the conversation. “But no recent women or children have been reported missing,” he mumbled to himself. “Of course, no one reported Sydney or Belle Beason missing.”
The mention that Sydney had taught some of the women’s children made Merritt Blocker come to mind.
Depending on those children’s ages, Merritt might have taught them too.
He thought back over his interview with her yesterday.
Something hadn’t sat right with him, but he still couldn’t put a finger on it.
And he was a little surprised he hadn’t heard from the woman with some more information about Sydney; Merritt seemed like the type who needed to feel important.
His phone vibrated with a text from Evan.
Emailing you some tips that have sifted to the top
Max clicked on his screen and spotted the email. It was a file from NCMEC, which had received the tips and done preliminary screening. County detectives had screened them further and then assigned them to deputies and local police for investigation.
The original file listed every tip NCMEC had received, and Max shook his head.
Nearly 2,200 leads had come in via the website, phone calls, and emails.
The organization had weeded out the scammers, bots, and questionable reports and highlighted approximately 150 for the task force to consider.
Further local screening had reduced the list to forty.
The reduction from 2,200 to forty gave Max some anxiety, making him wonder if the screeners had missed something important.
But NCMEC knew what it was doing. It worked with the FBI every day.
He took a quick look at the original list. Some of the entries were incoherent.
Others were identical, the same sentences used in dozens of them.
A sure sign of bots. IP addresses and other metadata eliminated other tips.
Some of them included photos or videos that the NCMEC had eliminated as AI or simply not of the right child.
It was a truckload of analytical work that saved the FBI and other law enforcement agencies a lot of time.
Leads that were being investigated in person included local sightings of Belle with no actual photos. Those from people convinced they’d seen her but who hadn’t taken a photo. Restaurant workers. A convenience store clerk. Hikers. Campers.
Max focused on a tip from campers who were convinced they’d seen the girl with a man and a woman camping at LaPine State Park.
The entry said the child resembled Belle and that she was silent and cowered next to the “parents,” who also hadn’t been friendly.
Max noted it had been assigned to the Deschutes County substation in the area.
That’s the kind of tip we want to follow up on.
Other good ones included security footage from the area Target and Fred Meyer stores.
Bend police were investigating those. Max clicked on one tip with security footage and watched a pretty good video of two adults and a little blonde girl who was holding hands with both.
Behind them trailed three other children.
His computer wouldn’t zoom in clearly on the child, but he knew the Bend police would get the original footage and have a much clearer image.
Could she be with a family? Does that mean the other kids were kidnapped too?
He scratched his chin. It felt like an unlikely scenario.
A small mom-and-pop restaurant in Prineville had a waitress who swore she’d waited on Belle Beason and her “parents.” She’d given the child crayons to color her menu. The restaurant didn’t have cameras, but the local police department would check other cameras in the area.
Another sighting with “parents.”
Max looked at a map, judging the distance between the sighting in the state park and the restaurant.
It could probably be nearly an hour and a half’s drive, depending on the traffic in Bend.
He frowned. That would mean the kidnapper—if there was one—had taken the child south to the state park and then come back through the city to go to Prineville.
They could skirt the area a bit, but it still meant possibly being seen somehow.
Why would they risk returning to the city?
He shook his head. Most likely the tips were not about the same people.
His phone buzzed with a call. Noelle.
“Hey,” he answered, still leaning forward to look at the little girl in the video footage.
“None of the female victims from the killer’s burial ground are Crystal Chambers.
Lacey is positive,” Noelle stated immediately.
“But the gun has me wondering if the male victim could possibly be Gage Chambers. I’d already tried to find dental records on him when I was looking for Crystal’s.
” Noelle was talking fast. “I think I got lucky that Crystal went to the dentist a couple times, but as far as I can tell, Gage never did. At least not in the area. I know he spent some time in Lakeview before he and Crystal got married, but I contacted all the dentists down there with no results.” She took a deep breath.
“Noelle,” he said before she could continue. “Are you in a rush?”
She paused. “No. I’m waiting on the autopsies for the other two victims to start. Sorry. I’m a little wound up thinking about Gage Chambers.”
“And having to wait in the medical examiner’s building.”
“Not my favorite place. I need to come up with a way to check if that male victim is Gage Chambers. I wonder if he’s ever broken any bones.”
“Noelle.” Max paused, knowing she’d figure out what he was thinking.
“Oh, God. That didn’t even cross my mind,” she said. “I don’t know if I can do that to Emma right now.”
Checking Emma’s DNA against the victim’s.
“Why not? She’d want to know.”
“I’ve already put her through the wringer today with the possibility that one of them was her mother. I don’t want to do that to her again.”
Max said nothing.
“No, I don’t want to take her DNA without her permission,” Noelle said firmly.
She’d followed his thoughts for the second time.
“I understand,” said Max. “Perhaps the victim will match to one of the missing men’s records. You can consider how to approach her if we hit a brick wall down the road.”
She sighed heavily. “I’ll keep it in mind. What are you doing?”
Max updated her on the Playground Posse and tip line results.
“Sounds like good progress,” said Noelle. “You’ll find Belle.”
It felt like a needle in a haystack to Max, but he knew the right tip would lead them to Belle.
It could even be in this file.