The girl-whatever her real name was-looked stunned by the direction her routine rendezvous had taken. Her wide eyes scanned the room quickly. I couldn’t tell her age, but I could see that she was young-no doubt a minor-Bobby at least got that part right. If I had to guess, I’d say she looked like she might have been sixteen.
Nancy radioed the officers that were stationed outside. “We’re code four in here,” she said. “One in custody. How’re we looking?”
Each officer reported no activity.
“Call in a squad car,” Nancy said. “Seal off the parking lot entry and check around. Let’s see if we can find out how this girl got here. Then, meet us in the north parking lot in ten.”
“Roger.”
Nancy turned back to the girl. “Hi there,” she said. “My name’s Nancy Stewart. What’s your name?”
The girl looked Nancy over and then said again, “Jasmine.” She did a pretty fair job of mustering up enough bravado to mostly hide any fear she might have been experiencing.
“Jasmine?” Nancy said, her tone of voice making it clear she didn’t believe this. “That’s a pretty name. Is that your real name?”
The girl nodded.
“Jasmine what?”
The girl stared at her for a moment, and then slowly and deliberately, she said, “Jasmine Jones.”
“Jasmine Jones,” Nancy repeated. “Have you got any ID on you?”
The girl shook her head.
Nancy continued. “So how old are you, Jasmine Jones?”
“Eighteen,” the girl answered.
“Got a knife,” Tyrone said. He’d been looking into the girl’s purse while Nancy talked. He reached in with gloved hands and gingerly pulled out a kitchen knife with a six-inch blade.
Nancy looked at it and then turned back to the girl. “You’re eighteen? Really? So that’d make you an adult, right?” she said. “That means you can be tried and convicted as an adult. Is that what you want?”
Jasmine stared hard at Nancy, and then she shrugged. “For what? I didn’t do anything,” she said.
Nancy smiled, then she nodded. “That’s true. You ever been arrested before, Jasmine Jones?”
Nancy got a hard stare as an answer.
“No answer? Well, that’s okay. You don’t have to answer. We’ll probably find out soon enough. Are you familiar with your legal rights in a situation like this? Let me go ahead and read them to you.” Nancy read Jasmine her Miranda rights.
“Do you understand these rights?” Nancy asked.
Jasmine nodded her head.
“Okay, Jasmine,” Nancy said. “Here’s the way I see things. First off, if you’re eighteen, I’m 107.” She looked at Jasmine for a second and then said, “Sorry, sweetie, you’re not eighteen. What are you? Fifteen? Sixteen?”
Jasmine didn’t answer.
“You don’t have to answer, but I can’t let you stay out on the street if I have reason to believe you’re a minor. So that means, tonight, we’re going to detain you and take you over to the Juvenile Detention Center. If you want to tell us who your parents are or who your legal guardian is, we’ll call them, or we’ll let you call them. We might be able to sort this out tonight. Understood?”
Again, Jasmine didn’t answer.
“Does that mean there’s no one you want us to call?”
Jasmine looked down and shook her head.
“I understand,” Nancy said. “But if you’re not going to help us out, it’s too late tonight for us to start trying to track down who you are and where you’re from. We’ll get started on that tomorrow.”
“You understand that seeing as how you’re not eighteen, your parents or legal guardian are responsible for you, right? Do they know you’re out here answering ads for an escort service? Do they even know where you are? Are you a runaway?” Jasmine didn’t respond to any of these questions.
“Next thing-and this is important. Except for providing your name, you’re not required to answer any of my questions. But if you do answer my questions, you’re not allowed to lie to a police officer. And I think you’ve already lied to me. Twice. Once about your age. Once about your name. You can get in big trouble for lying to a police officer. Do you understand?” Again, Jasmine didn’t answer.
“Here’s the last thing. Despite the fact that you’ve lied to me-twice-and despite the fact that I think you’re out here answering calls for escort services, and despite the fact that you had that knife in your purse-despite all that? We’re not going to charge you with anything. Want to know why I didn’t have my officers wait another thirty seconds for you to solicit them? You know what soliciting means, right?”
Jasmine looked at her.
“It’s simple,” Nancy continued. “We don’t want to arrest you. Not for prostitution. Not for lying to me. Nothing like that. That’s not why we’re here. We want to help you.”
Jasmine sniffed. “I don’t need your help,” she said, softly.
Nancy shrugged. “Maybe you do and maybe you don’t. I can’t make you accept it,” she said. She paused and looked at the girl. “Jasmine, I don’t know anything about you or your home situation. I know that if you’ve run away, we’ll eventually find out. But I also know that sometimes there are reasons why you have to get away. I’m not blaming you.”
The girl dropped her eyes.
“Listen,” Nancy said. “I work with dozens of girls just like you. Exact same position, Jasmine. You can say what you want, but I know what you’re doing, and I know how you live, believe me. I see it with girls just like you every single day. I know you have a quota. I know you have to come out most every night and have sex for money with guys you don’t know. I know you have to bring that money back to your pimp. Jasmine-I know what you’re going through, and I know how it’s making you feel inside. And I’m here to tell you, it doesn’t have to be that way. My one goal is to help you. You can have a better life. Your own life with your own dreams and goals. The only person you’d have to answer to is yourself. There’d be no one lording it over you, telling you what to do, where to go-whom to have sex with.”
I couldn’t tell for sure, but it looked like Jasmine’s features were softening just a little bit.
Nancy continued. “We’ve helped hundreds of girls who’ve come before you. You can talk to them if you’d like. We can help you, too. Understand?”
Jasmine looked at her for a second, then she dropped her head and nodded. Maybe Nancy was starting to get through to her.
“Good,” Nancy said. “Tomorrow morning, I’m going to come over and see you, and we’ll try talking again. Jasmine, look at me.”
Jasmine looked up again.
“You might not believe it, but one day you’re going to look back at tonight and you’re going to look at it as one of the best, most important days in your life. Tonight’s the night that good people-people who really care about you as a person-are standing up for you and stepping in to help you. Tonight’s the night you get to take back control of your own life. Understand?”
Jasmine looked at her and nodded.
“Are you okay?” Nancy asked.
“Yeah.”
“Good. Are you sure you don’t have someone you want us to call?”
She looked down and shook her head.
“That’s okay,” Nancy said. “You don’t need to. You’ll be okay tonight. You’re going to ride with these guys now. They’ll take you downtown. Like I said, I’ll come by in the morning. If you want, we can talk then.”
Tyrone and the Bobby led Jasmine out of the room to the waiting squad car.
“That went pretty well,” Nancy said. “At least she didn’t scream at me. That happens sometimes.” She looked up suddenly. “I hope you don’t mind my not asking about Isabel just now.”
“I understand,” I said. “It’s too early. This girl’s still in a state of shock over everything else that’s happened. Maybe she’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Nancy said. “I’ll give you guys a call in the morning and let you know how it’s looking.” She looked at Kelli. “What do you think about what you saw?” she asked.
Kelli shook her head. She had a tear in her eye. “It’s sad,” she said. “She’s just a kid. All dressed up but still, just a kid.”
Nancy nodded. “You’re right,” she said. “It’s very sad. But maybe tonight, we saved a little girl. And if it has to be one at a time, then that’s fine with me.”
It was quiet in the Jeep on the way back to the office. We didn’t talk much about Isabel or anything else, for that matter. I guess everyone was still trying to recover from the disappointment of Isabel not being the girl who showed up, combined with the reality of seeing a girl like Jasmine up close-a girl who, except for her rather desperate circumstances, seemed like she wasn’t much different than the girl next door.
“We have to call Marisol,” Toni said, breaking the silence.
“Right. I’ll do it as soon as I get home. I don’t feel like making that call while I’m driving.”
“You okay, Kell?” Toni asked, looking in the backseat where Kelli was seated.
“Yeah,” she said. “It sucks that it wasn’t Izzy.”
I nodded. Too true. “Nancy said that when she talks to Jasmine in the morning, she’s going to ask her if she’ll talk to us about Isabel. Maybe we’ll find out something then.”
“What happens if she doesn’t want to talk?” Kelli said.
“Then we’ll just go back to canvasing the neighborhood,” Toni said. “If we do that and if we have Kenny monitor her cell phone, eventually we’ll find her.”
“That’s right,” I said. Of course, I was thinking it could be a whole lot faster if Jasmine knew Isabel and agreed to talk to us about her. I crossed my fingers.