At Logan PI, we don’t have a motto, but if we did, it would probably be: “When in doubt, get back to the basics.” No question about it, we were in doubt now. No one knew exactly where Isabel was. Unfortunately, since she was too young for a bank account or credit cards that we could trace, our magic shortcuts list had pretty much been reduced to one item: her cell phone. And Kenny’d tried that and struck out. So we were left with no choice but to fall back on the basics-back to good old-fashioned nuts-and-bolts detective work. We needed to eliminate some of the unknowns.
Nancy had someone send us an audio file of the recording of our interview with Paola and now the whole Logan PI team was assembled in the conference room, listening to the playback from one of the PC speakers. We’d suffered two unfortunate setbacks in the last sixteen hours. First, of course, was the simple fact that the girl who’d showed up at the sting last night wasn’t Isabel. We’d been excited to see the ad with Isabel’s pictures, and we’d gotten our hopes up, only to see them come crashing down. Now, even after Nancy’d worked on Paola this morning and gotten her to loosen up a little, the only information she had offered didn’t sound too good for Isabel. She’d been “punished,” and Paola’d had no contact with her for a while. Worse, Paola wasn’t certain that Isabel was even still around. For all she knew, Isabel might have been sold. Or she might even be on the run. Again. This was beginning to look like a bigger job than I’d originally anticipated.
“There!” I said, focusing back on the recording. “Back it up and play that part again.”
Kenny started the recording again. “They live across the street from the park-by the-,” Paola’s voice echoed on the recording.
“Stop,” I said. “I knew she said something about a park.” I was thinking that if we could figure out where the houses were located, maybe we could discover something about where Isabel was. Or where she wasn’t-either way would be helpful.
“Good memory,” Toni said. “I wonder which park she meant?”
“She wouldn’t say, but we know-or at least we think we know-that it’s in the area north of the U-District.”
Doc was standing by a whiteboard mounted to the wall opposite the window. I turned to him and said, “Write it down anyway, okay?”
Up to this point, clues were pretty scarce, but we were still writing down what we had. So far, Doc had written:
CLUES
Donnie Martin-BMA-early twenties
DeMichael Hollins-BMA-early twenties (?)
Crystal-??
Auto: white BMW with tinted windows
multiple houses
— girls’ house
— boys’ house
— big house
north of the U-District
To this he now added:
across from a park
We stared at the board.
“Not much to go on,” Toni said.
I shook my head. “Not much.”
“Well,” Kenny said. “We could always just jump in the car and drive by the houses around all the parks north of the U-District looking for a white beemer with two black guys in it.”
I looked at him then at the board. Then I looked back at the group. “I suppose.”
“Really?” Kenny said.
I shrugged. “It’s a simple answer.” I looked at the board again. “But sometimes the simple answer is the right answer-especially when you don’t have any others.”
“It’s called Occam’s razor, dude,” Doc said to Kenny.
I looked at Doc and smiled. “Doc, you never cease to amaze me.”
“Part of my job description,” he said, smiling back. “So how many parks you think are up there, anyway?” Doc asked.
“We can look on a map and count ’em out,” Kenny said.
“How long will it take?” I asked
“We can do it right now,” he said. “While you wait.” He opened up a map program and zoomed to the area north of the U-District.
I studied the map for a few seconds. “It’s a pretty big area, but according to the map here, there aren’t that many parks-maybe fifteen or twenty if you count school playgrounds.”
We all looked at the map for several seconds. Finally, Toni said, “This is a big area, Danny. Are you seriously thinking about driving around up there looking for a white BMW?” She looked like she thought it was a bad idea. Looking at the map, I started to think that it might not be such a great idea. We’ve done this before, and it usually doesn’t amount to much. Then again, we were short on clues. That said, I decided to give the creative process one more shot.
“As a last resort,” I said, “we’ll drive the area. But before we go burning gasoline, let’s use our heads and think this through. Kenny,” I looked at him, “I really need you to come through for us. I want you to go back to your office and close the door. Then, I need you to sit there where it’s all nice and quiet, and just think. Figure out some little angle that we’re missing-something you can use to help us find these guys and short-circuit this groping-around-in-the-dark search of ours. Then, maybe we can zoom right in on Isabel. You can search a lot faster on your computer than we can in our cars. Be a detective for us.”
Kenny considered this for a second, then he nodded. “Okay,” he said. “I’m on it.”
“Good.” I turned to Doc. “Doc,” I want you to take the DMV records and the property records that Kenny found earlier and start assembling them into a report we can give to Nancy. If we find anything, we’re going to need her to move on it, and she’s going to need the backup.”
Doc nodded. I turned to Toni. “You,” I said, “you and I have an appointment with Ferguson and Sons. We’ve got to keep the money engine running.”
Two hours later, Toni and I were on the way back from the SODO district of Seattle where Ferguson’s main warehouse is located. We’d presented them with a contract for review, and we’d agreed on a start date a week from next Monday. The stereo was on, and Toni had chosen “Something in the Water” by Chris Webster. Just as we exited I-5 onto Mercer, my cell phone rang. Caller ID: Kenny.
I tapped the speakerphone button. “Hey there,” I said.
“Got something,” he said.
“Go.”
“I checked out the name ‘Donnie Martin’ with DMV, and there was nothing, so I checked ‘Donald Martin’ instead and bingo! — I got a match on a Donald Allen Martin on Twenty-First Avenue. Didn’t you say Donnie Martin’s aunt lived in the Central District?”
“Interesting,” I said, thinking. “Hold on a second-I need to pull over.” I pulled the Jeep into the parking lot at the Lake Union Park. “So you’re thinking that Martin still has his driver’s license address at his aunt’s old address, then?”
“It gets better,” he said. “I’m pretty sure of it because there’s also a car registered to the same Donald Allen Martin at the same address.”
“And?”
“2005 BMW 750i.”
“Bingo!” I said.
“Wait, boss,” he said. “There’s more. We’re pretty sure the guy we’re looking for lives up north of the U-District, not in the CD. So I started thinking, what would the guy have to have at his new house-wherever it might be-that would most likely match up to the place where he actually lived? Now that I know his name, I had something I could work with.”
“Did you hit something?”
“Yeah.”
I waited for a second, but he didn’t answer. He wanted me to pry it from him. “Come on, man, quit playing games,” I said impatiently. “Tell me what you’ve got.”
“Electric bill,” he said. “The service address on the electric bill has to match up. I took a quiet little peek into the Seattle City Light records and voila! Donald Allen Martin has power service at 6345 Fortieth Avenue Northeast-right up where you guys are looking. And I looked on the maps-the house is right across the street from the Bryant Neighborhood Playground.”
“Dude, you’re a genius!” I said.
“Yeah, I know.”
“And humble, too,” Toni called out.
We were excited again. We were back in business. Now that we had an address, it looked like a good old-fashioned stakeout was in order.
We have three vehicles that we’ve converted especially for surveillance over the past four years. The first two are nearly identical windowless vans-a white one and a dark green one. Seeing as how we’re particularly clever, we generally slap a colorful commercial sign on the sides of the vans to disguise us. The vans are tricky, but our mack daddy, crown-jewel surveillance rig is our 1982 Winnebago Brave motor home. No one ever suspects it.
With their work areas concealed by a curtain, all three vehicles look harmless from the outside. Inside, though, they’re all business. They’re loaded with audio, video, communication, and computer gear and with a bevy of recording devices. We can take clear photos from one hundred yards, clear video from fifty yards. With a boom mic, we can record a conversation from nearly one hundred yards away if ambient conditions are favorable.
In addition to being workhorses, the vehicles are also long on creature comforts-especially the Winnebago. All the vehicles feature a sink and a microwave, a mini-fridge under the desk, and-best of all-a small enclosed toilet. Anyone who’s ever spent time on a stakeout in an automobile would look at a surveillance assignment in any of our vehicles and think they’d died and ascended to the right hand of God. With all these features, it’s easy to remain on station for hours at a time. I figure that by rotating the crews, the vans are good for a full day in place without attracting too much attention, while the motor home should be good for three or four days without arousing suspicion. The Winnebago would be the perfect choice for watching the house on Fortieth for a couple of days.
The Bryant Neighborhood Playground, directly across the street from our target house, has a parking lot at the north end alongside 165th. By parking in the far western part of the lot, the target house would be only 150 feet from the motor home-perfect surveillance distance. At ten the next morning, I backed the motor home into a parking space such that our left side faced the target house across a corner of the park. The parking spot was ideal-close enough for effective surveillance, and far enough removed to be essentially inconspicuous. Even if someone did notice us, what was threatening about a small motor home in a park? Toni followed me in her car and pulled in on my east side, blocked from view of the house by the motor home. She left an empty space between us. We were to take the 1000 to 1400 shifts plus the 1800 to 2100 shifts on both Saturday and Sunday. Kenny and Doc would relieve us at two o’clock and cover the 1400 to 1800 and 2100 to 0000 shifts. It wasn’t round-the-clock, but we only have four people, and it would have to do.
Once we were in position, we started watching the house. Donnie Martin’s white BMW was parked in the driveway, alongside a red late-model Honda Accord. I called Kenny and read him the Honda’s license plate number. Ten minutes later, he called back with the owner: Patricia Denise Wallace with a Kirkland address. Was this Crystal?
The house was a neat, little two story with well-kept landscaping. It appeared quiet. I fired up the high-powered video camera mounted to the roof of the motor home. The camera is hidden inside a smoked plastic dome on the roof that looks a little like a satellite dish. When I pointed the camera at the front door, I was able to nearly fill the screen with a pretty sharp image-good enough for our purposes.
We opened the main door on the “away” side to let some air in. I extended the awning, rolled out the carpet, and set up a couple of chairs. We wouldn’t be spending any time sitting outside, but it made the cover story all the more convincing.
Being that it was June 9-an odd-numbered date, it was my day to pick the tunes. I couldn’t get too wild and crazy, though. After all, we were scheduled for the next day as well. Best not to annoy Toni if she and I were going to be spending the better part of the next two days elbow to elbow.
“Movement!” Toni whispered, excitedly. It was her turn at the console, monitoring the front door of the residence. I’d been leaning back, completely relaxed, in the motor home’s lounge chair, listening to “Uncaged” by the Zac Brown Band. I snapped out of it quickly, though, and looked at the clock on the wall. It was 12:10 p.m. I looked at the console. A tall, thin, well-dressed black man and a white female with medium-length dark hair were coming out of the house.
“Tighten up,” I said. Toni twisted the control, and the camera zoomed in closer on the two.
“Donnie Martin?” I asked.
“Watch,” Toni said.
The two walked over to the white beemer and got in. A second later, the car fired up. A few seconds after that, it backed out of the driveway and headed south on Fortieth.
“It’s him,” Toni said.
“How do you know?”
“He got in the car. It’s his car.”
Duh. “Good point. You’re probably right,” I said. “You think that was Crystal?”
“Could be. The age fits. That woman didn’t look like a teenager to me.”
“True,” I said. “But in the photos, Isabel didn’t look like she was just sixteen, and Paola didn’t look like she was fifteen, either. It looks like I’m no judge.”
“It’s hard. Especially since the young girls are trying to look older and the older girls are trying to look younger.”
“Geez,” I said. “No wonder I can’t figure it out. Roll back, will you. Let’s have another look at these two.”
Toni went back to the two of them coming out of the house. “Can you capture that? Let’s see if we can clean it up with Photoshop and print.”
We kept an eye on the house for the next hour and a half while we worked on enhancing the photos. In the end, we were able to isolate each person, compensate for grain and shadows, and end up with a pretty decent ID shot. “That oughta work,” I said.
“Cool,” she agreed.
My phone rang-caller ID: Doc.
“What’s up, Doc?” I said. I know. It’s corny.
“We’re two minutes out. Clear to relieve?” Doc was asking if there was any reason why he shouldn’t pull in next to us now-like, for example, if the subjects were out in their front yard or something like that.
“Stand by,” I said.
I panned the camera as far down Fortieth Avenue as I could. There were no cars visible and, more important, no potential bad guys standing around who might get suspicious of us being there.
“Come on in,” I said. “You’ll see Toni parked east of the rig. The spot on the east side of her is open. Go ahead and park there.”
“Roger,” Doc said.
A minute later, they pulled in. Kenny was driving. He shut his car off and hopped out. “Hey, this is nice,” he said as he checked out the awning and the chairs. “I haven’t seen it since you added the awning. All we need’s a barbecue.”
I laughed. “I should bring my Weber grill,” I said. “That would make for a pretty sneaky surveillance setup, you think?”
“No shit,” he said. “We’d be sitting right in front of them barbecuing Kobe burgers, completely invisible.”
“Best way,” I said.
Doc walked up. “I don’t see a beemer,” he said.
“Yeah, they left a half hour ago,” I said. “A guy we think must be Donnie Martin and a white girl-might be Crystal.”
“Nothing else?”
“Nope. Four hours. That was it.”
“Show me,” he said. As usual, Doc was all business.
We went inside. “Here’s a couple of photos we took. We think this is Donnie Martin-at least he was driving Donnie Martin’s car. And this is the girl who could be Crystal.”
Doc and Kenny peered in. “She looks a little older,” Kenny said.
“Exactly,” Toni said. “If she’s the bottom girl, that would make sense.”
Doc nodded.
“That your log?”
“Yep. That’s it. They left at 12:12 p.m.”
Doc nodded. “Okay then,” he said. “You guys are relieved. We got it.”
“You boys play nice,” Toni said, smiling.