much opportunity to take advantage of anyone, nor had any reason to regularly interact with the mentally ill. If anything, she lived a life where she was more likely to be a victim.”
“We’ll keep gathering information on her,” Ransom said. “Maybe something will come up.” Maybe. Reed’s least favorite word.
Reed began collecting his things, glad they’d gathered a few more crumbs toward the case. But if what they were thinking was true, that those preying on the disabled were being targeted, the perpetrator had a story to tell. And it may have only just begun. But why? How were they linked? A feeling of doom expanded in his chest that he had no way to explain.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Reed and Ransom walked toward their car in the corner of the front lot at Lakeside Hospital. “Sophia Miller,” Ransom said, reading the name off the piece of paper holding the name and address of the girl who had filed the complaint against Steven Sadowski three years before when he’d worked at Valley Children’s Hospital, a mental health facility in nearby Kentucky, serving the needs of three to seventeen-year-olds.
“Have you ever been to Valley Hospital?” Reed asked, clicking the key fob and unlocking the doors of the city car.
Ransom shook his head. “No, but how much do you want to bet there’s no goddamned valley in sight?” He opened the car door, looking at Reed over the roof and tapping his index finger to his head. “They’re messing with people. It’s not right. I say we do an exposé on this. Blow the story wide open.”
Reed let out a small snort as he opened the driver side door and slid inside. “Before we dig in deep on that one, let’s go see what Sophia Miller has to say.” The car grumbled to life and Reed pulled out of the lot, sparing a glance up at the floor where Liza worked. He wondered if she’d come back to work today, or if she was still holed up in that hotel room. He forced his mind away. It wasn’t his business. He’d even resisted the urge to stop by her office since he was at Lakeside requesting Steven Sadowski’s personnel file.
Although he had made a call to a buddy who worked uniform patrol in the district where Liza lived and asked that he drive by her apartment during his shift and make sure he didn’t spot anything unusual.
But that was just part of his job. At least that was what he was telling himself. And it was mostly true, so he decided to let himself slide.
“So, as it turns out, Sophia Miller wasn’t lying about catching peeping Sadowski. I wonder why she recanted,” Ransom mused.
Reed shook his head. “Maybe Sadowski pressured her to? If she was at the Children’s Hospital, the most she could have been was seventeen. Maybe she just got scared. She was only a kid.”
“Didn’t the report say, she said she was angry because he confiscated her cigarettes? Even if she was seventeen, she wasn’t old enough to have cigarettes.”
“Thank God no one ever breaks laws, Detective Carlyle. Or we’d have a job or something.”
“Point taken, smart-ass.”
Reed pulled onto the highway heading toward the Brent Spence Bridge that crossed over into Kentucky where Sophia Miller lived. And coincidentally, close to where Reed had grown up in a quiet residential neighborhood at the end of a cul-de-sac.
“If Sadowski was twisted enough to take nude photos of underage patients, I can’t imagine he’d be above threatening one of them in some way if they threatened to expose him. No pun intended.”
“Is it wrong that I’m beginning to understand why someone would have a motive to strangle that dude?” Ransom asked.
Ransom said it sarcastically and off the cuff, but it was the age-old question all law enforcement grappled with at some point. Did people sometimes deserve the crimes committed against them? Was it wrong to pass that sort of judgment on a victim? Even a victim who’d perpetrated appalling acts? A victim who’d victimized others?
Law enforcement officers were only human. They couldn’t approach crime and victimhood as emotionless robots who felt nothing. Still, their job was to be as impartial as possible, gather the facts, and hand the decision-making over to a judge and jury.
Charles Hartsman had made the choice to be a one-man judge, jury, and executioner. On some level, Ransom’s question scared Reed, because it forced him to wade into waters his father had drowned in.