Our staff meeting finished up fifteen minutes later. I spent the next hour in my office, paying bills and catching up on e mails and paperwork. I finished up by quarter after ten, and Toni and I hit the road. We were on our way to meet Nancy Stewart at the Seattle Police Department headquarters on Fifth Avenue in downtown Seattle. The plan was to meet Dwayne and Gus in their office by 10:45 and then have them take us up to meet Nancy.
Toni and I take turns, by date, picking music. Today was an even-numbered date-June 6-so that meant it was Toni’s day to choose. I get the odds. Toni says that makes more sense. Go figure.
Although the “picker” gets to choose anything he or she wants, we try to pick something that the other one doesn’t hate. Today, Toni chose The Black Eyed Peas’ The Beginning CD-one we both like. She fast-forwarded to “Just Can’t Get Enough” and hit the play button just as I pulled onto Highway 99 southbound.
I’m not what you’d call an old hand at relationships, but I can say that when you get together with someone you’ve been good friends with for many years-like Toni and me-there are many benefits. One of these is that you already know what the other likes and doesn’t like. You already know where you fit and where you need to be careful. For us, we’re already comfortable with not filling every moment with conversation. The absence of conversation is not always a bad thing. We both like to just sit back and listen and think-not having to invent small talk to fill all the blank spaces. Which is why I was able to just drive and listen to the music as we cut through the heart of downtown before dipping into the tunnel that ran beneath Denny Way.
I thought about Isabel as the traffic noise bounced off the tunnel walls and drowned out the music. I was blown away by the figures Richard had quoted in our meeting earlier, and I was having a hard time getting my mind around the full magnitude of the problem. In and of themselves, the statistics are bad enough-horrifying actually. But it’s worse-much worse-when you look deeper. Each number on the statistics page is its own tragedy; each number represents a separate life with its own potential. Each young person represented by a number has her own hopes and dreams. Yesterday, I’d stood in Isabel’s room. I’d seen the little-girl stuffed animals, the young-teenage posters on the wall, the young-woman perfume on the dresser. For me, even though I’d never met her, Isabel wasn’t just a number. She was real. I was damn grateful that my team was as enthusiastic about going after her as I was.
We’d just pinned our visitor badges on in the sixth floor lobby at the Seattle Police Department when Dwayne walked through a restricted-access door and greeted us.
“Morning, guys,” he said, smiling. He was dressed sharply in a navy suit with very faint pinstripes. He wore his gold badge pinned to his lapel pocket.
“Long time no see, boss,” I said. “We don’t see you in three months, and now it’s twice in two days.”
“I know, I know,” he said. “You’re fixin’ to wear out your welcome.” He laughed when he said it, but I hoped he didn’t mean that the introductions and favors he provided for us were getting a little annoying.
“Hope not,” I said.
“Nah,” he said, chuckling. “You’re good.” He must have sensed my concern. “We’re happy to help. Besides, as I said, we appreciate the free lunches you give us for payback.”
“Especially happy to help your partner,” Gus said as he entered the lobby. “My dear,” he added, “you look beautiful, as always.”
“Thank you, Gus,” Toni said. She did look especially nice today. She wore black jeans; above, she wore a lavender-colored top layered over a white T-shirt. She was beautiful. Then again, I’m probably not the one to ask. I think she looks beautiful every day.
“I’m afraid we have to be pretty quick this morning,” Dwayne said. “We’ve got a case we’re working on.”
“Let’s go, then,” Toni said. “We appreciate you guys making the introductions for us.”
“You kidding?” Gus said, holding out his arm for Toni. “I don’t care what the boss says. I’d rather escort you around than do police work any day.”
Toni smiled and took his arm. “Lead on, kind sir,” she said. Gus beamed and headed for the elevators.
Dwayne and I followed. Dwayne shook his head and laughed softly. “That guy brightens up whenever she’s around like nothing I’ve ever seen. Just like a daylily that opens up in the morning when the sun hits it.”
“She has that effect,” I said.
The Vice and High Risk Victims Unit is located on the tenth floor of the SPD building. Dwayne announced us to the receptionist, who made a phone call. A couple of minutes later, a short, middle-aged woman with shoulder-length blond hair came out to greet us. The woman wore a beige tweed dress suit over a black blouse. Her police badge was clipped to the pocket of her jacket.
“Hi, Nancy,” Dwayne said, smiling broadly. He stepped toward the woman and gave her a warm hug.
“Hello, Dwayne,” she said, also smiling. “It’s so good to see you. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised to hear from you yesterday.”
“It’s been a while,” he said. “Here we are, just four floors apart, and it’s like we’re in two different cities.”
“So true,” she said.
“You know Gus, right?” Dwayne said.
“I do,” she said. “Gus-good to see you.” She smiled and shook his hand.
Dwayne turned to us.
“Lieutenant Nancy Stewart, I’d like you to meet Danny Logan and Toni Blair. They’re with Logan Private Investigations.”
“Danny Logan,” Nancy said, stepping toward me and offering her hand. “I’ve heard of your company. I know you by reputation.”
“Uh-oh,” I said, shaking her hand.
She laughed. “All good,” she said. “Nothing bad. You guys are held in high esteem in this building. All the old guys around here know Richard Taylor, of course. And now, you guys are making quite your own name for yourselves. You seem to be very professional-very effective.”
“Thanks,” I said. “We work hard at it.”
She turned to Toni. “Hello, Toni,” Nancy said. “It’s very nice to meet you.”
“Nancy and I used to work in the same unit,” Dwayne said. “That would have been in. .” he looked at the ceiling, thinking.
“That was some time ago,” Nancy said, interrupting him. “Let’s just leave it at that, okay, Dwayne? No sense dating ourselves.”
Dwayne laughed. “Okay,” he said, holding up his hands in surrender. “That works for me.”
“Are you guys going to be joining us this morning?” Nancy asked Dwayne.
Dwayne shook his head. “No, I wish we could, but we can’t,” he said. “We’ve got a meeting with the DA at eleven.”
“Good luck,” Nancy said.
“Thanks,” he said. “But I do want to get together and do lunch. We can talk about the good old days. I’ll bet we’ve got a lot of catching up to do-a lot of secrets to share.”
“Shhh!” Nancy said, smiling. “It’s a date.”
Dwayne and Gus left, and Nancy escorted us back to her office.
“That Dwayne is a fine man,” she said, as she took a seat at a small table in her office.
“He’s great,” I agreed. “He and Gus both.”
“Dwayne saved my life once,” Nancy said. “Knowing Dwayne, I’ll bet he didn’t tell you.”
I shook my head.
She thought for a couple of seconds. “Bad situation. Very bad-April 7, 1997. I’ll never forget.” She looked at us. “You should get him to tell you about it one day.”
“Dwayne’s a pretty modest guy,” I said. “He doesn’t blow his own horn much.”
“Well one day, you ask him about Raymond Allan Johnson. Mr. Johnson-may he rot in hell-nearly had my number. Dwayne fixed it for me. I’ll owe him forever.” She thought for a few more seconds, and then she focused on us and smiled. “But you’re not here to hear about my old war stories. Dwayne tells me you guys have a problem that falls into our purview.”
I nodded. “I’m afraid we do.”
I was just about to launch into the story when a handsome black man in his mid-thirties entered the office. He wore a badge clipped to his belt, alongside a holstered Glock. “Sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t get off the phone.”
“Danny and Toni, this good-looking young guy is my assistant, Detective Tyrone Allison.” We shook hands and Tyrone pulled a chair up to the table.
“Ty, your timing’s good. Danny was just about to start explaining what’s happened.” She turned to me. “You ready?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks. Yesterday, Toni’s little sister, Kelli Blair, approached Toni and me. Kelli said she was worried about her friend, Isabel Delgado.” I went on to explain Isabel’s story to Nancy and Tyrone, all the way up through the details of our visit to Isabel’s house. When I was done, I showed them copies of Isabel’s text messages to Kelli. After they’d read the messages, they looked at each other for a second, and then Nancy looked at me.
“What’s your initial impression?” Nancy asked. “What do you think happened?” If I was reading her correctly, she was probing, trying to figure out how to deliver bad news, wondering how to break it to us.
I nodded. “Let me start by saying you should know you can speak plainly to us-you don’t have to worry about saying anything that will shock or offend us.”
She nodded, and I continued. “That said, we’re starting to think that it’s possible-maybe even probable-that Isabel’s gotten herself caught up in some sort of underage prostitution racket, perhaps with a gang.” I looked at her. “We believe that Isabel probably felt like she needed to run away to escape her stepfather. She hooked up with some people and at first, her text messages seem to indicate that she was happy. Then, at some point, Isabel apparently came to some sort of realization that things weren’t as rosy as she’d been led to believe. No word since then.”
Nancy seemed to relax, knowing that she wasn’t going to have to deliver unexpected news. “I’d say there’s almost no doubt that that’s exactly what’s happened,” she said. “As a matter of fact, this seems like a classic case of a runaway being scooped up. Let’s start at the beginning. We usually figure that a runaway girl has less than forty-eight hours before a pimp approaches her. Of course, the pimp won’t actually say he’s a pimp-he’ll just offer shelter, clothes, food-stuff like that. A huge number of these girls don’t have any alternatives. The pimp’s initial offer is like a life ring to a drowning person. The next thing she knows, the girl’s completely caught up in the life.”
I leaned back in my chair. “Until yesterday,” I said. “I hardly knew anything at all about this. I had no idea the problem was so big.”
She nodded. “It’s very sad. We probably have somewhere around one thousand minor-aged girls actively being prostituted in Seattle right now. Basically, they’re sex slaves. And it’s growing faster than we can stop it.”
I shook my head. “It makes me wish there were more we could do. But at least with regards to Isabel Delgado, maybe we can help out.”
“We’ll take one-at-a-time victories,” Nancy said. “Sometimes, we’ll arrange stings where we can get five-maybe ten girls even. But one-at-a-time works well, too. Everyone we can pull out is one young life potentially saved.”
“Speaking of that,” Toni said, “what happens to these kids after you arrest them? We were wondering what would happen to Isabel when we find her.”
“We don’t actually arrest all that many kids anymore,” Nancy said. “Not unless it’s the only way to help them. A few years ago, the law enforcement community finally came to the realization that thirteen- or fourteen-year-old girls being coerced and manipulated by an older man into prostitution aren’t really the criminals in the equation. They’re actually the biggest victims of all-even if they are doing something illegal. That’s when we changed the name of our unit from just plain ‘Vice Squad’ to ‘Vice and High Risk Victims Unit.’ It turns out that the kids are the high-risk victims-have been all along. They’re subjected to physical violence from either the johns or their own pimps. They’re exposed to deadly diseases. If they live through it, they almost always have emotional scars that last the rest of their lives. It’s enough to make you cry. You wouldn’t have thought that it would have taken law enforcement so long to figure that out, but bureaucratic inertia sometimes takes a while to overcome.”
I nodded. “I was in the army,” I said. “I understand how large organizations work. Let me ask, then, where do the kids go now if they don’t go to juvenile hall? Some sort of shelter?”
“A shelter or back to their home if it’s possible, although a lot of the kids can’t go home. Like with Isabel, a lot of kids had their problems start at home in the first place.”
I pictured Tracey Webber. “I agree 100 percent with that,” I said. “There’s no way Isabel can go back home with her stepfather still in the picture.”
“Agreed,” Nancy said.
“Any hints on the best way to tackle finding Isabel?” Toni asked. “I think we’re basically planning to treat it like a missing person case.”
“We don’t spend much time hunting down specific individuals,” Nancy said. “But I think you’re probably on the right track. You said the mother was going to file a missing person report? When she does, that will get the case entered into the NCIC and WACIC databases. After that, like you say, it’s pretty basic stuff-a lot of interviewing and legwork.”
“But it’s made all the more difficult because your subject is a minor,” Tyrone added. “She’s not going to be leaving any electronic traces-no credit cards, no bank withdrawals, nothing like that.”
Nancy thought about this for a second. “On the other hand, there are a few things that might help you out. First, if there’s a gang involved-and odds are that there is-then you might be able to work another angle and get some help from our Gang Unit. They might have some information on the gang itself. Can I see those text messages again? What were the names of the people Isabel ran into?” She looked over the transcripts.
“Crystal, Donnie, and Mikey.” She turned to Tyrone. “Any of these sound familiar to you?”
He thought about it and then shook his head. “No.” He looked at me. “But don’t read anything into that. Unless we’re dialed in on someone as a subject of one of our investigations, we probably wouldn’t bump into them during our normal course of business, and we’d have no reason to know their names. The Gang Unit might, though. They bounce around in those circles all the time. I’ll hook you up with those guys before you leave.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Nancy continued. “The second thing is that, as I was saying, whoever Isabel’s gotten herself involved with is going to try and prostitute her-most likely on the Internet. That may be what led to this last message-the one that reads ‘too good to be true.’ She may have finally been exposed to the big picture-the timing seems about right. She might have even tried to resist. As distasteful as it is, I’d start monitoring the Backpage.com website. Leave us a picture, and we’ll keep an eye out, too. That’s something we can do-we monitor Backpage all the time anyway. That’s where most of the pimps run their ads. There’s a reasonable chance that you’ll see a picture of Isabel in some provocative pose posted there. Brace yourself.”
The thought disgusted me, but the tactic made sense.
“Another lead we can give would be to talk to Annie Hooper at Angel House. Angel House is actually a series of houses that the city has recently purchased and fitted out as safe long-term places where these girls can live while they’re trying to break free from their pimps. They keep the locations pretty secret, and they’re heavily securitized, although from the outside, they look just like a regular house. Each house takes six or eight girls. They’re able to stay in a safe, structured place without having to worry about their pimps coming after them. If you’d like, I can call Annie and see if she’d agree to a meeting.”
“That would be great,” Toni said.
“Annie likes to encourage her girls to speak out. She feels that it can be therapeutic for them if she can get a girl to the point where she’s actively trying to help other girls break free. It’s possible one of her girls might recognize these names. If it’s okay with you, I’ll pass on that information as well and get back to you with meeting arrangements.”
“Fantastic,” I said. “That’d be a big help.”
“I wish we could do more,” she said, “but we’re not set up to hunt down individuals. It sounds like what you were planning is the right approach-you need to do some missing-person-type work to try and find Isabel.”
“Agreed,” I said. “We specialize in missing persons. I’m betting that we’ll find her.”
“Good. When you do, I’d like you to call us before you try any sort of intervention. It could be that us going after her pimp might be the safest way to rescue Isabel. Besides, if Isabel’s pimp is a gang member-highly likely-then that makes it quite probable that he’s armed and dangerous. We can certainly match our resources to the specific problem. We should definitely work together.”
“Agreed,” I said again. “We’ll gladly take whatever help you’re willing to provide.”