Finding evidence (2)

Sarah was in the study room going through results of facial recognition run. There was a lot of results, and it was difficult to sort them out. Sarah went thought number of them, and there was a mix of images, newspaper articles, and blogs. She asked Eve to sort the results based on images, and to label them with timestamps of when they are created originally. That created large number of folders, but it still seemed more organized.

She picked one folder and found that files in there are related to some party on a boat in San Francisco. Philip was there on few pictures. There was also a newspaper article with one of the pictures from that party which talked about youth and excessive consumption of alcohol and drugs. It also mentioned that two girls went missing after that party. Two girls were 16 and 17 years old, since they are minors, only their initials are mentioned. Sarah thought for a bit before going to check police reports, she found a police report with matching date, and the accuser had same initials as a 16 year old girl that went missing. Report was filled one month after the party, but the date and location in the report for the incident, matched the date of the party. 'Can this be just a coincidence?' Sarah could not find any police report with initials of the missing 17 year old girl mentioned in the newspaper article. 'Does this mean that she was not found?' Sarah didn't want to go that way in her thoughts. She just didn't file a report, right? Or maybe she did file a report, but Omega didn't send her all the reports that exist. One of the photos from that party showed Philip with two girls, one blonde and one brunette, who appeared to be a match in terms of age for the girls in question. Sarah decided to do a facial recognition search for those two girls and see if she can match faces with some names. She told Eve to take over that search.

Sarah sighed thinking how all this will take a lot of time. Matching images, faces, events, dates. 'It's a pity that police didn't do more investigation... what can I do even if I connect all these events to Philip, Mimi and others? If police will shut down everything before any investigation is done, I am only wasting my time here.' But she could not let it go... it was bothering her. Something was ignited in her, and she had a need to keep digging, to find a closure. For herself and for all those girls whose reports ended up being dismissed before any action was taken.

Sarah looked at some articles which were not matched to any folder. "Eve, I see number of files that are from facial recognition results, but not sorted anywhere. What files are those?"

"Master, those are match with multiple folders."

'Then these should be interesting.' Sarah thought that these can be a link between cases and opened one. It was an article about parties organized by high school students for spring break.

She opened another one, it was in a language she didn't understand. Sarah asked Eve to translate it to English. Article talked about a girl who was found next to the side road in South Africa. There were few photos of the girl. One photo stood up, it was a high school photo of a brunette with bright eyes and a lovely smile. Sarah thought she looks familiar. Then she compared that photo with the one where Philip is with two girls, at a party in San Francisco. "Eve, compare these two photos. Is this the same girl in both photos?"

Few seconds later, Eve responded. "Facial features match is 99.6%"

Sarah started reading article carefully. The girl was found next to the side road in South Africa by people who were going to work early in the morning. The girl had injuries all over her body. Local hospital examined her and found that she had old and new injuries typical of sexual assault, and she also had several recent surgeries. She was missing one kidney and a liver. The perpetrators were not caught, police had no leads. The girl died one day later due to mix of malnutrition, infection and blood loss.

Checking the dates, the girl was found three and a half months after the party in San Francisco.

'All this is too much to be called a coincidence... It's not only for sex trafficking, but for selling body parts as well?' Sarah felt that she is running out of breath. This was too much to handle. She watched movies and read stories where people hurt other humans for their selfish reasons such as profit or pleasure, but somehow, she always thought that is something distant, something that happens to others, something that happens on television. Now that Sarah is aware that people she knows are doing these things, she feels disgusted. When she thinks that there is a chance they are targeting her, mix of panic and fury is boiling inside her.

"Eve, run the facial recognition for blonde girl only." There was no point to run a search for a girl who perished. Sarah thought that if she finds blonde girl maybe she can talk to her and find out more... or maybe not. 'What am I doing? I can't just approach a victim and ask her about what happened. How am I going to explain how I know stuff?' Sarah sighed. "Eve, stop the facial recognition search."

'I need to calm down and think about this. I can go through few more folders and see if I find something that makes sense. But I can't go and approach people. No one should know I have this information.' Then she thought that Omega knows, after all he sent her the reports. 'Why did he send me these files? How come he knows so much about me? ... What do I know about him? Other than he has great computer skills and that he is a male student at Tesla University... and that he knows a lot about me... I don't know anything else. He might be one of my classmates, and I'm clueless about it.' Sarah felt that her mind is running in circles.