With my little excursion at the Snuggle Inn the previous night still fresh in my mind, I was familiar with the property’s layout. The small hotel is bordered on either side by similar business hotels-a Holiday Inn to the south and a Comfort Inn to the north. My guess is that except for the names, the hotels themselves are probably pretty much interchangeable. Toni, Kelli, and I pulled into the north-side parking lot at 7:25 p.m. It was still daylight outside-the sun doesn’t set until after nine at this time of year. A light, misty breeze had rolled in, and it was cool enough for jackets-probably in the mid-fifties. We hopped out and walked up the stairs to room 303. I knocked and a couple of seconds later, Nancy opened the door. “Come on in,” she said, smiling. “You can hang your jackets in the closet there. And help yourself to some pizza,” she said, pointing to two large pies on the table. Kelli moved that way immediately. “There’s soft drinks in the fridge,” Nancy said.
“Thanks,” Kelli replied.
I looked around the room. The police had removed the television from on top of the dresser and replaced it with a thirty-inch computer monitor and a laptop PC. The monitor was split into four windows, each showing a different angle of the room next door. The laptop was connected to some sort of wireless device.
“Come on next door, and I’ll show you our setup,” Nancy said.
Toni and I followed her through the open connecting doors. Room 301 was a mirror image of the room we’d just left, only with no surveillance equipment. A garment bag was draped over one of the two chairs, and a briefcase sat on the table.
“We try to make the room look reasonably authentic,” Nancy said. “If we’re taking a juvenile down, there’s not much to worry about-we basically pop ’em as soon as the door closes. But we never know for sure if we’re going to open the door to a minor or to an adult, in which case we would need to wait for her to make a pitch. When we first started doing this, we weren’t as good as we are now. We wouldn’t have any props showing. And we found out that the lack of authenticity caused our subjects to sense something was wrong. Then they would get antsy, and the pitch would never happen. They’d walk, and we would have just wasted our time. So after that, we learned. Now we set the room all up to look like the real deal, like it’s being rented by a traveling businessman.”
“These people must be pretty wary, just by their nature,” Toni said.
“Some of them,” Nancy said. “Some are surprisingly oblivious. We just plan for the worst.”
“Good idea,” Toni said.
I looked around the room. “Nancy, I know there are four cameras in here, and I still can’t see them,” I said.
She smiled. “Pretty nifty, huh?” she said. “Look here.” She pointed to a vase that sat on the dresser. “See these little designs? Look closely at this one.”
When I inspected the vase more carefully, I was able to see that the circle in one of the diamond-and-circle patterns was actually the lens of a tiny camera. I was impressed. “Damn. That’s amazing,” I said. “James Bond would be proud.”
She laughed. “Wouldn’t he, though? This innocent-looking vase is really an RF feed video camera. It’s all solid state-completely silent. Look inside, and you still can’t see the camera.” I peered inside the vase-she was right.
“That’s pretty impressive,” I said, as I looked at the tiny camera. I handed the vase back to her, and she placed it back on the dresser.
“And it’s HD, too. Also has a built-in microphone so it picks up the audio. Sends it all to the laptop next door.” She aligned the camera and then called out, “How’s that, guys?”
“Good,” someone answered from next door.
“And there are three others?” I asked.
“Yep. In the coffee basket over there, on the desk by the phone, and in the bathroom. We cover the whole place-one person watches the monitor while the other places the cameras and checks the audio. We can be out of here in under a minute. Use to take over an hour.” She turned to me. “You were CID, right? Fort Lewis?”
I nodded. “I was.”
“Ever do one of these?”
“Not for prostitution,” I said. “I participated in a couple of stolen property stings-one with SPD and the other in Tacoma. But we didn’t have lead roles in any of them.”
“Well, you might find this interesting, then,” she said. She looked around. “Jimmy?” she called out. “Where’s Bobby?”
“Yo,” came an answer from the next room. A good-looking young man dressed in a business suit and holding a slice of pizza entered the room. “I’m here.”
“This is Bobby Brannon. Bobby gets to play our john today.”
“That’s right,” Bobby said. “Today, I’m Jimmy. Jimmy the john. You can just call me Jimmy John.”
“Jimmy John, here-” Nancy nodded toward him and smiled, “-he gets more than his share of john assignments in these things because he’s young and not very threatening-looking.”
“And I’m the best-looking,” he said, smiling.
“He looks like a kid,” Tyrone said. “No one’s scared of him. No one believes a twelve-year-old could be a cop.”
“Which," Bobby said, "is another way of saying, the rest of these guys here are a bunch of crusty old mean-looking suckers, and they’re all so scary, they can’t even get anyone to come in the front door.”
“Shut up,” Tyrone said.
At eight o’clock, Nancy said, “Alright everyone, we’re all set.” She turned to Bobby. “You ready?”
“Born ready, boss,” he said, still smiling.
“You remember who we’re looking for?”
“Of course. Isabel Delgado. Hispanic teenager. Slim build.”
“Good. Let’s do this, then,” she said.
Except for Bobby, we headed next door. Both connecting doors were closed, but only our side was locked.
“We’ve got four officers outside and, counting Jimmy, four inside,” Nancy said. “We’ve got all sides of the building covered so, at least in theory, no one should be able to sneak up on us.”
“Unit one, how’s it look?” she said into her radio.
“We’re ready. It’s quiet.”
Each of the other three officers outside reported in.
“So now-,” Nancy said, leaning back in her chair in front of the monitor, “-now we just hurry up and wait.”
“Unit two to base.” Nancy’s radio crackled to life. I checked my watch-it was 8:40 p.m. We’d been in position, waiting for forty minutes.
“Go,” Nancy said.
“I’ve got a Hispanic female approaching the south stairs.”
“Roger that,” Nancy said. “Unit three, can you shift position to pick up visual at the top of the stairway?”
“Roger,” unit three said. “I’m on the move now.” A minute later, he said, “Base, unit three. Subject just reached the top of the stairs, and she’s headed your way. She’s all alone-no company. Appears to be medium height, five five or so. Thin build. Dark hair. Wearing some kind of leggings and a white coat with fur around the collar.”
“Roger,” she said. “You guys outside stay in your positions now. Watch our backs.”
Nancy nodded. “Bobby-you hear that she’s at the top of the stairs?”
He looked into the dresser camera and gave us a thumbs-up. “Got it,” he said into the radio. His voice was also picked up by the hidden microphones.
“You ready?” Nancy asked.
“Roger.” Bobby wasn’t joking now. His curt reply indicated he was all business. “I’m turning my radio off now,” he said. We watched him click his radio off and put it into a drawer. He turned back to the camera. “Test, one-two-three,” he said. The microphone in the vase with the hidden camera picked up his voice, allowing us to hear him clearly through the PC speaker.
Nancy knocked on the wall. Bobby did another thumbs-up in reply.
“I’m turning the PC speaker way down now,” Nancy said, reaching for the volume control. “There’s a bit of latency in the sound transmission, and I don’t want our subject hearing her own voice echoing in the next-door room.”
A minute later, even with the volume turned down low, we heard the knock on Bobby’s door through the speakers. On our side of the door, Tyrone and the other officer stood ready to burst into the room.
We watched the monitor carefully. Bobby-now Jimmy-walked over and looked through the peephole before stepping back and opening the door.
“Hi, there,” he said.
“Hi,” the girl said. I strained and could barely hear the voice. The front door was visible on one of the cameras, but Bobby was blocking the view of the girl.
“Come in,” Bobby said. “Come in.”
We watched as she stepped into the room. Her hair was shorter than it had been in the photo of her with Kelli, and it fell across her face as she entered.
“Kelli?” I said quietly.
“Damn,” she said. “I can’t tell for sure.” She studied the monitor intently. “It looks like her. I recognize her coat, but her hair’s shorter. And it’s hanging down in her face-I can’t see her face.”
The prearranged signal Bobby was to give if he thought the girl was a juvenile was to reach across his body with his left hand and rub his right shoulder, as if it were sore. The other officers would then enter the room immediately. On the other hand, if Bobby thought the girl was an adult, he was to wait for her to solicit money in exchange for a sex act before signaling. In this case, as soon as the girl stepped past him, Bobby closed the door, turned to face the camera, and started rubbing his shoulder as if it were dislocated.
“Go!” Nancy said forcefully.
Tyrone and the other officer flung the connecting doors open and burst into the room.
“Seattle Police,” all the men yelled at the same time. “Put your hands up! Now!”
I could see that the poor girl was completely caught by surprise-she nearly stumbled backward. She turned back to face Bobby and quickly raised her hands into the air as she’d been told.
“Hello, Isabel,” Bobby said, smiling.
“Put your hands on the wall,” Nancy ordered as we all filed into the room behind the officers.
“Do you have any weapons? Any needles on you?” Nancy asked.
The girl didn’t answer.
Nancy did a thorough pat-down and then said, “Okay, go ahead and turn around.”
Kelli gasped. I looked closely at the girl. She was young. She was Hispanic. She was pretty. And she was clearly not Isabel.
“You have the wrong person,” she said. “I’m not Isabel. I’m Jasmine.”