Bass continued. “Twenty-five years ago, like now, Beck had a lot of juice. Two years after Pink’s death, an FBI agent working out of the LA office was arrested for being on the take. He was thought to have passed information about federal investigations to several people, one of whom was Cyrus Beck. And this agent was privy to the case involving Harrison.”

“Beck was the one to compromise Sergeant Pink?”

“A possibility we could never prove. The agent refused to cooperate, but he was eventually convicted and sent to federal prison. He was killed in a fight after six months in custody.”

“Wow” was all Tess could say.

“When I began to poke around into Beck’s association with Cross and started to see some red flags and irregularities—he traveled a lot to Malaysia, Vietnam, countries with reputations for child trafficking—the task force was disbanded under the guise of budget cuts, and I was told to back off. I can’t prove it, but I believe Beck got the door closed on that investigation.”

Tess nodded. Unfortunately, she believed that was entirely possible. Money could and did circumvent justice.

“I kept after him anyway, on my own time. I built a file on Beck.” Bass showed her some timelines, a chronological record of the investigation of Cyrus Beck.

“You’re certain that Beck has been involved in criminal activity for at least twenty-five years.” Tess’s stomach turned at the thought of over two decades of depravity.

“I am. I haven’t had the hard evidence to prove it in court. Beck and Cross were thick as thieves for a long time before Cross’s death. He had the power to shut down my investigation for a time. But fast-forward to the present, because human trafficking is growing exponentially, it’s in the news all the time now, and another task force was formed. We scooped up Chevy and discovered that she had the iPad.”

Tess studied the timelines and the accompanying FBI notes. It wasn’t long before she saw a pattern. With every protest Beck sponsored, girls went missing. All over the world, he used his supposed environmental awareness to victimize women. Mesa, where Chevy was apprehended, was also where Beck’s main US home was located. She could see it wasn’t far from the compound that was raided. The photos of the place were impressive. It was everything you’d expect a multimillionaire to have. She bet the estate, spread along a ridgeline, was at least six thousand square feet of living space. She counted three chimneys, a manicured yard, and two swimming pools.

“He ran a brothel out of his home?”