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quickly turned to Dwight, shaking his head. “Son of a bitch.”
     
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    A text came in on Kate’s phone as she sat at her desk. A picture of a young girl, not more than ten, appeared and it came from Nick. Her phone rang immediately after.
    “You get my text?”
    “Yes. Who is this?”
    “That’s what I need you to find out. We found the picture inside Stroud’s locker at the dairy farm. I need to know who she is and if she’s been reported missing.”
    “I’ll look into it right now and call you as soon as I find something.”
    “Thanks.” Nick ended the call.
    She pulled up the NCIC database, which housed twenty-one different files and over 13 million records. One such file was Missing Persons. Kate furthered narrowed her search by entering “EMJ,” which lists missing juveniles, in the search parameters. This was where she would start. Once inside, she could continue to whittle down the field by entering “EME.” That would classify a juvenile as endangered. Still, it would take some time to review the files, as they had no idea of where or if this girl was abducted. There were additional ways to narrow down the fields, including certain identifying markers. If she got a hit, the file would indicate the entering authority, thereby revealing where this girl was last seen. This was the most critical information.
    Depending upon her findings, this case might no longer merely be a sideline, but she couldn’t look too far ahead right now. Nick was waiting on her and she had to work fast.
    “Vasquez?” Kate peeked over her cubical wall. “Can you help me run a search? Scarborough’s run into something new on the Stroud investigation and I could use the help.”
    “Yeah, of course. What do you have?”
    Kate sent her a copy of the picture and they both went to work.
    “Who’s this girl?” Vasquez asked.
    “Scarborough and Jameson need to ID her fast. They think she may be a victim of the same man who took Colton Talbot, his friend’s son.”
    Vasquez began typing on her computer. The short partition between their desks allowed for easy conversation. “He find anything else of use?”
    “Not that I’m aware of, but he didn’t hang around on the line long enough for me to ask.” Kate kept her eyes glued to the screen as the search parameters were entered. “Damn. There’s a lot of files here.”
    “Same here,” Vasquez replied. “What if we narrow it down to include the eastern region first? That’ll cut down on a lot of this. If we don’t get any hits, we can widen the search criteria.”
    “Good idea.” Kate modified her search area. “How old do you think she is? Ten, eleven?”
    “Probably. Let’s enter nine, to be safe, up to thirteen. She can’t be older than that.”
    “Unless she’s been missing for a long time. But that would rule out Stroud, most likely.” Kate considered another option. “We know he was still going to work every day prior to the 20th of April. What if we pair the dates down to January to the beginning of May?”
    “It’s hard to say,” Vasquez began. “If she’s one of his victims, she could have been taken long ago.”
    Kate understood Vasquez’s point but had little time to sift through the thousands of records based on the image. She decided to use the dates and her instincts proved to be right. It took almost an hour, but the girl’s face now stared back at her on the screen. Emily Aldrich, eleven years old, missing since April 23rd from her home near the community of Stephens City, not far from Winchester. “I found her.”
    Vasquez pushed her chair away from her desk and rolled over to Kate. “Who is she?”
    “Emily Aldrich.” Kate pointed to the screen. “No question; that’s her.”
    “Definitely. Better get on the horn to Scarborough.”
    Before reaching for her cell, Kate emailed the file to him. That familiar zeal rose in her again. It was a feeling she hadn’t experienced in the past few months; as though she’d