Warning, mention of sexual abuse.

Chapter Forty Two

Rosalie

I had tried with the sample I had been given but it was just too degraded to yield anything useful so I wandered over to where Darius and Emmett sat at his computer looking through a police report.

"What are you looking at?"

They both shrugged,

"Its a long shot but The Major mentioned a story he'd heard at college about another girl who went missing about two years before he and Bella started there. I wanted to see if the police had got anything on that. The news reports didn't give us much, more or less what we already knew but the police report is more interesting. They got a call from someone who thought they saw Sophie, the missing girl, in a car with a man stopped at lights in La Jolla about three days after she went missing. The girl looked distressed according to the caller and appeared to have a bruised face."

"So what did the police do?"

"Nothing, there were no other sightings in the San Diego area which was a long way from Seattle and the woman who reported it was a drug addict so they decided it wasn't reliable enough to waste time on."

"So it could have been the same guy who took Bella and her parents?"

"Well its certainly a coincidence. We're led here and another missing girl might have been seen here after her kidnap. I'm going to see how many registered sex offenders there are living in this area. There'll probably be too many to check but its worth a try."

"Narrow it down to those who lived here two years ago and still live here. If its the same guy it looks like he stayed put."

"Yeah then we'll check our where they live, he needs somewhere he can keep his prisoners without anyone catching on to him."

I watched as they did that, Darius was right, there were a lot but when he sneaked into the parole officers reports on them we could eliminate some.

"Anyone living in a boarding house or half way house we can pretty much eliminate. They'd draw suspicion if they kept disappearing to spend time with their victims."

"Do you think Sophie is still alive?"

He turned to look at me,

"He killed Renee very quickly and her body showed up a few months later but she was a lot older than Sophie and I'm beginning to think Bella was his target, the two girls look similar so maybe he's focused on young women with long dark hair. Its really supposition but if he took Bella then either he's adding to his collection which I think means there might be others, or he's replacing Sophie in which case she's dead and we just haven't heard of her body being discovered."

Emmett gave out the addresses of the suspicious candidates for the others to check out while I went back to Charlie explaining what we were doing.

"I hate rapists Rosalie. They are the one predator I could cheerfully watch executed."

I smiled a little coldly and he looked at me long and hard.

"I think you agree with me and I think I know why. You survived something like this didn't you Rosalie? Do you think Bella will survive it too?"

I didn't want to answer him, it wouldn't make him feel any better but something in his gaze drew me on.

"I'm the wrong person to ask Charlie but if anyone can help Bella its Carlisle, and of course Jazz."

"But I'm right aren't I?"

I nodded getting up and pacing the room agitated now as the memories came flooding back.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have pushed it, forgive me Rosalie."

"It's OK Charlie but its a chapter of my life I'd rather forget but I guess if it helps Bella then I'll do my best but we don't really know what's happened to her yet and I'm going to hope for the best for her sake and Jazzes."

"You know Rosalie, whatever your dark secret is, you and the others, it can't be that bad if you'd go to all this trouble for my daughter, a stranger to most of you."

"Family is important Charlie, its the only thing that really is and we are one big family even if Peter would have you believe otherwise. Bella means everything to my brother so she's important to all of us. It is a dark secret but its one I hope you never have to learn because doing so will put you in great danger."

He seemed happy to leave it there which was a relief, I liked Charlie, the way he had put everything aside to find out what happened to his daughter, much like us but he was a blood relative and we weren't, that's what puzzled him.

Darius came in a little while later and he seemed to be mulling something over,

"Charlie, you're the cop and you know how these scum bags think. I want to run something by you bearing in mind it might just be no more than a fancy so don't get your hopes up OK?"

Charlie sat up intent on Darius and we both knew he would be hopeful whatever Darius warning had been.

"OK, what have you got?"

"Well, about two and a half years ago a group of females were found dead at a picnic site, there faces totally destroyed but the police were of the opinion that the three were related, a mother and two daughters aged roughly twelve and seventeen.. None of them was on file, they could find no dental records or medical records for either of the girls although there was a possibility for the woman. The trouble was there were no medical records of the woman having given birth anywhere in the United States and she had dropped out of sight at the age of 21. She ran away from home and was presumed dead because there was never a trace of her found."

"OK, but what are you saying?"

"Well, if it was the woman they suspected it might be she looked an awful lot like Sophie, the girl who went missing about six months after the bodies were found. Also, the daughters both had long dark hair and were slim like Bella."

"You think somebody is trying to recreate the family? Kidnapping girls who remind him of his wife and daughters? I take it the murderer was never traced?"

"No, they had nothing to go on but the bodies were found only a short distance from La Jolla. They canvassed the area but no one could help. There was no sign of a family going missing and lets be fair, someone would have noticed if three females suddenly vanished wouldn't they?"

Charlie sat thinking for a while before he started talking again, very slowly at first.

"If Sophie is still alive, and remember no body has ever been found then she's been well hidden, kept a prisoner for over two years which means someone has the capability to keep a prisoner or prisoners for a while. Could it be the guy who kidnapped Sophie, Renee and Bella also kept his own family locked up for years? Could he have decided they were of no further use, killed then and then went looking for a new family, his very own recreation?"

"Well, its what came to mind so I hunted back through the police reports looking for other kidnappings that would fit the descriptions of the two unidentified female corpses."

"And you found some?"

"I found one, young girl, about eleven, long dark hair, slim build, went missing on her way home from playing at a friends house about twenty months ago. No sign of her was ever found, no one saw anything."

"So you think Bella was taken because she resembled the other daughter?"

"Well its a theory so I decided to go with it for a while and see where it led me. I started looking for a family resembling the ones found at the picnic site and I found one going back six years. The Mendoza's, mother and two daughters were found slaughtered at home. The husband was chief suspect but they could never get enough evidence to convict and he just vanished after the police shut the case as unsolved with no more leads. Alonzo Mendoza was a bully who was always beating his wife but she wouldn't press charges against him, police thought she was scared for her daughters safety."

"So if he murdered them and got away with it maybe he decided to kidnap himself a new family."

"Yes, and when he bored of them maybe he killed again and found himself another new one."

"We need to trace this Alonzo Mendoza and quick."

"Emmett's already on it Charlie, if we get anything we'll let you know."