didn’t have time. Jasper Otis was walking free. Beto Estrada was in danger. Milly Estrada was dead in a freezer, her murder unsolved.
And there was her own life too: a new job starting up next week, a boyfriend trying to reclaim his life, and a sister just trying to keep her head above water. All that was already on the back burner at this moment and she was going to take on another responsibility?
And yet some part of her knew they’d understand. If she told them that she had a chance to stop the sex trafficking of teenage girls, but doing so required her to be here now, they’d support her. She was sure of it.
“I’ll make time.”
The other detective shrugged.
“Fine,” she said, handing over a small piece of paper. “I looked up these files this morning. They include every mention of our mogul friend in any case in the last ten years. I also pulled all the files that allege sex crimes against an HPI.”
“HPI?” Jessie repeated.
“High profile individual,” Parker said. “We use the term in reports so we don’t have to open the can of worms that comes from mentioning names before we’re ready to charge. It protects us and allows us to do back searches without drawing attention.”
“How do you distinguish among HPIs?” Jessie asked.
“We usually put a footnote in the report corresponding to the first mention of the HPI. It includes a description. You’ll have to go through those footnotes to see who’s under suspicion. I can tell you that our mogul friend is in there quite a bit. I believe he’s described as a ‘bald, middle-aged international media professional.’ If you come across that phrase, you know you’ve got our boy.”
“Okay, thanks,” Jessie said. “How many files are we talking about?”
Parker looked at her with something close to pity in her eyes.
“I’d rather not say. I don’t want to depress you.”
*
Depressing was an understatement. Hopeless was more accurate.
After nearly two hours in the tiny annex office of the file room where she’d set up shop, Jessie needed a break. She stood and stretched, trying not to let the dozens of horror stories she’d just read overwhelm her.
There were over two hundred HPI cases in the files from just the last decade. Of those, seventeen used the description that Parker told her matched Jasper Otis. In addition, there were six additional cases that specifically mentioned him by name.
But in every instance, something happened to undermine the case, making it impossible to proceed. Evidence disappeared. Victims retracted their statements around the time that their bank accounts became suddenly flush. Others were threatened with lawsuits that mentioned everything from slander to harassment. In each case, those girls retracted their statements as well. Two girls went missing soon after giving their statements. They were never found and no one followed up.
From everything that Jessie had read, Jasper Otis was a serial sexual predator. Assuming that half of what these girls claimed was true, he had committed multiple crimes. He forced bound girls to have sex with him. He ordered them to have sex with other men in front of him.
One girl alleged that he had taken a group of them on private planes to a foreign country. She and some girls returned stateside. But others were sold to men from the other country and left behind. There were other, more specific allegations that Jessie didn’t feel up to replaying in her head again. Independent of whether he was responsible for Millicent Estrada’s death, the man was a monster who had to be stopped.
She got a text from Hannah telling her that Nurse Patty was leaving, to be replaced by the night nurse, a guy named John. Jessie texted back that she’d be home within the hour. Then she carefully returned the files, all of which she’d taken screenshots of, to their proper locations. She didn’t want to leave any out that the mole could use to retrace her steps. Then she went upstairs to confront Captain Decker with the magnitude of the situation.
She was walking across the bullpen to his office when a smallish, sweaty guy in his early twenties wearing a sweatshirt and bicycle shorts approached her. He looked so skittish that her hand involuntarily went to her holster.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“Yes ma’am,” he said politely. “I spoke to the front desk sergeant and he had me wait over in one of those chairs.”
She looked over. He had indicated the spillover area where suspects and witnesses