Returned Early From Wildfire Duty—My Daughter Missing, Found Locked in Icy Cottage…

The Filing Cabinet

Sophie woke up around 8. The doctor came in and examined her. She was stable. They’d release her after lunch if her temperature stayed normal.

“Dad?”

Sophie’s voice was small.

“Yeah, honey?”

“Is Mom coming?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t want to see her. Or Grandmother.”

“You don’t have to.”

She was quiet for a while.

“Then there’s something else.”

“What is it?”

“In Grandmother’s house. In her office. There’s a filing cabinet. I saw it when I went to use the bathroom once. It has files. Lots of files with names on them.”

“What kind of names?”

“Other kids’ names. I recognized some from school. And there were photos.”

I felt my blood go cold.

“What kind of photos?”

“Kids crying in rooms like the cottage. And there were dates and times written on them, like records.”

I called the police back. The same officer came to the hospital.

“Mr. Winters, I understand you’re upset, but we can’t search someone’s property based on what an 11-year-old saw in a filing cabinet.”

“She’s keeping records. Photos of children. This isn’t just my daughter.”

“Did Sophie say the children in the photos looked injured? Were they being actively harmed?”

“They were crying.”

“That’s not enough for a warrant. Look, I’ll file a report. If there’s a pattern of complaints against Patricia Morrison or this Dr. Reeves, it’ll help build a case. But right now we don’t have probable cause.”

After he left, I sat there thinking. Then I called an old friend from the fire department who’d retired and become a private investigator. Malcolm showed up at the hospital 2 hours later. 68 years old, built like a bear, still sharp as hell.

“Tell me everything,”

He said.

I did. He listened without interrupting. When I finished, he nodded slowly.

“I’ve heard of Dr. Martin Reeves. There have been complaints. Nothing that stuck, but rumors. Rich families sending their kids to his facility for ‘behavioral correction.’ Some of those kids came back different—quiet, submissive. A few never came back at all.”

“What do you mean, never came back?”

“Officially, they ran away, or got moved to other programs, or the family sent them to boarding schools abroad. But there’s been talk. Nothing provable.”

“I need to know what’s in that filing cabinet.”

Malcolm looked at me for a long moment.

“What you’re asking me to do is illegal.”

“I know. If we find something, it might not be admissible in court.”

“I don’t care about court. I care about stopping this.”

He nodded.

“I’ll need a few days to set it up. Can you keep Sophie safe until then?”

“Yes.”

The Investigation Begins

Malcolm left. Sophie was discharged that afternoon. I took her home. Our home, not Rebecca’s mother’s house. Rebecca called 47 times that first day. I didn’t answer. On the second day, she showed up at the house. I didn’t let her in.

On the third day, Malcolm called.

“I’m in,”

He said.

“Patricia’s out of town. Left this morning, flew to Montreal. I’m in her office now. David, you need to see this.”

“I can’t leave Sophie. Is there someone you trust?”

I called my sister. Jennifer came over within the hour, bringing her two kids as a distraction for Sophie. I told her I had to run an errand.

I drove to Aurora. Malcolm had picked the back door lock. The house was silent and dark. He led me to Patricia’s office, a wood-paneled room with built-in bookshelves and an antique desk. The filing cabinet was against the wall. Malcolm had already picked the lock.

There were 47 files. 47 children. Each file contained photos, medical records, behavioral reports. The photos made me sick. Children in isolation rooms. Children crying. Children who looked broken. Some of the files had notes in Patricia’s handwriting.

“Transferred to facility level three. Intensive. Non-responsive to standard methods. Recommend advanced intervention. Family withdrew. Insufficient commitment to process.”

But it was the last drawer that made me understand the full scope. Financial records. Patricia wasn’t just sending children to Dr. Reeves’ program. She was recruiting for it, getting paid a finder fee for each family she brought in. $3,500 per child enrolled.

And there was correspondence, emails between Patricia and Dr. Reeves discussing difficult cases and non-compliant children who required permanent solutions. One email made my hands shake.

“The Morrison girl shows promise. High intelligence, strong will. These traits are valuable. If the family proves uncooperative, she could be redirected to the alternative program. Our overseas partners are particularly interested in English-speaking girls aged 10 to 12.”

Malcolm was reading over my shoulder.

“Jesus Christ.”

“We need to call the police now.”

“We can’t. This was an illegal search. None of this is admissible.”

“Then what do we do?”

Malcolm thought for a moment.

“We photograph everything. Every page, every file. Then we put it all back exactly as we found it, and we find someone who can get a warrant legally.”

We spent three hours photographing. Every document, every photo, every email. Malcolm had a high-resolution camera and worked methodically. When we were done, we put everything back. Malcolm locked the filing cabinet and the back door. We left no trace we’d been there.

In my truck, Malcolm made a call.

“Janet? It’s Malcolm Pierce. I need a favor. Yes, the big kind. I have information about child trafficking. Potential dozens of victims. I can’t tell you how I got it, but I can point you in the right direction. Tomorrow. Perfect.”

He hung up and looked at me.

“Janet Kwon, investigative journalist. She’s done three major exposes on child abuse networks. If anyone can get this story out without burning the evidence, it’s her.”

Exposing the Network

We met Janet the next morning at a Tim Hortons in Newmarket. I brought printed copies of the photos Malcolm had taken. I’d been up all night organizing them, creating a timeline. Janet was in her 40s, Korean Canadian, with sharp eyes that missed nothing. She looked through the files without speaking, her expression growing darker with each page.

Finally, she looked up.

“Where did you get this? Does it matter?”

Malcolm asked.

“If I’m going to burn my career on this story, I need to know it’s real. That it’ll hold up.”

I told her everything. Sophie in the cottage. Rebecca’s complicity. Patricia’s recruiting. Dr. Reeves’s program.

“I’ll need to verify everything independently,”

Janet said.

“Talk to other families, get official records. This is a months-long investigation.”

“We don’t have months,”

I said.

“There are children in that facility right now.”

“Then we do both. I publish a preliminary piece to force the authorities to act, and I continue investigating for the full expose.”

She looked at Malcolm.

“I’ll need your photos as background. I can’t use them as evidence, but I can use them to know where to dig.”

“They’re yours,”

Malcolm said.

Janet published her first article 3 days later. It was careful, sourced, and devastating. She tracked down six families who’d enrolled children in Dr. Reeves’ program. Three families spoke on record about their regrets. Their children had come back different, traumatized. One 14-year-old boy had attempted suicide twice since leaving the facility.

The article named Patricia Morrison as a recruiter and quoted from emails Janet had obtained through a Freedom of Information request to Dr. Reeves’s licensing board. The response was immediate. The College of Psychologists of Ontario launched an investigation into Dr. Reeves.

The Aurora Police Department, embarrassed by the media attention, finally got a warrant to search Patricia’s house. They found the filing cabinet. All 47 files, the photos, the financial records, the emails about the alternative program.

Dr. Reeves’ facility was raided two days later. They found 31 children. Eight were from Ontario, the rest from across Canada and the United States. Conditions at the facility were horrific. Isolation cells, insufficient food, systematic psychological abuse.

Three children were missing. The record suggested they’d been transferred to partner facilities overseas. Interpol got involved. Patricia was arrested and charged with child endangerment, conspiracy to traffic children, and fraud. Bail was set at half a million dollars. She made it in 6 hours. Dr. Reeves fled the country. Last I heard he was in Costa Rica fighting extradition.

Rebecca called me the night Patricia was arrested.

“I didn’t know,”

She said.

“David, I swear I didn’t know about the trafficking. I thought it was a behavioral program.”

“You knew about the cottage.”

“She told me it was isolation therapy, that it was standard practice. That I was being overprotective if I objected.”

“And you believed her?”

“She’s my mother. She’s a pillar of the community. She volunteers at the hospital. She’s on the library board. How was I supposed to know?”

“You could have trusted your own judgment. You could have protected our daughter.”

“I was trying to protect her from herself! From making my mistakes!”

“What mistakes? Rebecca, you have a good life. A family, a home. A life my mother never approved of. She told me every day that I was wasting my potential, that I’d trapped myself. That Sophie was showing the same defiant streak and needed correction before it was too late.”

“So you let her abuse our daughter.”

Silence.

“I want Sophie back,”

Rebecca said quietly.

“No. She’s my daughter too.”

“You gave up that right when you left her in that cottage.”

“David, please. I’ll do anything. Therapy. Divorce my mother. Testify against her. Anything.”

“It’s too late.”

I hung up.