The next morning, Thursday, June 7, I called Nancy and passed on the information Reverend Art had provided, particularly the names Donnie Martin and DeMichael Hollins, along with details about the North Side Street Boyz. She said she’d spoken to the gang-unit commander and that he was in the process of talking to the two detectives in charge of the north area. She agreed to have them call me directly.
After the call, the Logan PI team held a short meeting in the office before breaking up for the day. Reverend Art had said that NSSB was active in the area north of the U-District. Our plan was for Doc and Toni and me to leave the office at nine thirty or so and drive over to the Ravenna area, which abutted the U-District on the north. Kenny’d done a little research, and in addition to the 8 x 10 photos of Isabel he’d printed for us from the mall photo-strip photos, he gave each of us a list of half a dozen shopping centers to canvas. We decided to pay particular attention to drugstores, coffee shops, beauty supply stores, hair salons, and clothing boutiques-the kinds of places we figured Isabel, Crystal, and the other girls would visit and be remembered.
Walking the street, talking to shopkeepers, showing pictures around-this is about as low-tech old school as it gets for detective work. It’s pretty much the way it’s been done for a hundred years or so. Granted, it’s a little crude, and it’s not terribly efficient. But when you’re looking for a low-profile missing person who either by choice or by coercion is off the grid, it’s still the best way to develop leads and get the ball rolling.
Ironically, even though she was just sixteen, Isabel wasn’t completely off the grid. For starters, she’d left home with a cell phone. Kenny’d had some luck in the past using a cell phone to locate a missing person. The easy way to do this requires the missing cell phone to be equipped with GPS (most new phones are) and its owner to either have installed an appropriate app or subscribed to an appropriate service. If one of these things has happened-and if the owner of the phone gives his consent-then the cell phone can be remotely commanded to “ping” its exact GPS coordinates. This can be very useful in many situations-parents keeping track of their kids, for example. The drawback-at least from our perspective-is that absent the owner’s advance consent-something that’s basically impossible to obtain if someone’s gone missing-the phone won’t respond to a ping request.
Of course, law enforcement agencies have the ability to get around the consent requirement. And, thanks to Kenny Hale, so do we. Not legally, but from time to time I’ll make the judgment call that the ends justify the means. I won’t use it to track down someone running from a creditor. And I won’t use it to track down someone I think is just trying to get away from someone else-most often a wife trying to ditch a husband. But in the case of a sixteen-year-old girl who’s potentially being brutalized by gangbanger pimps, then the decision’s a no-brainer. I’m all over it.
I walked into Kenny’s office. “I’ve got some things I need you to check out while we’re out walking,” I said.
Doc was there, too. “No walking for him?” he said.
I shook my head. “He gets out of it.”
Kenny smiled. “Oh, darn,” he said. He turned to Doc. “You should have paid more attention in math class, dude.”
Doc gave him a little stink eye, and then he got up and left.
“Here’s the deal,” I said. I gave Kenny Isabel’s cell phone information and told him to pull the billing records and start working on trying to ping the phone while we were gone. Hopefully, she still had her phone, and it was turned on.
“Next thing, the police said another way Isabel might pop up on the grid was when her pimps decided it was time to try to put her to work. They would need to advertise, and now that Craigslist has stopped accepting these kinds of ads, there’s pretty much one game in town-”
“Backpage.com,” he said.
I looked at him. “You’re familiar with it.” It was more of a statement than a question.
He shrugged. “Isn’t everybody?” he asked. He noticed the look I was giving him. “I don’t look at the personal ads,” he protested. He paused, then he added, “Well, okay, maybe I look, but I never call them.” This I could believe.
“Just shut up while you’re still ahead,” I said. “Listen. If Isabel said things were too good to be true because the pimps had suddenly tried to put her to work, then it’s very possible that the pimps had already started to run ads. So, while we’re gone, I want you to start combing through all the ads. Take a look at the photos, and see if you can find one that matches the picture we have of Isabel. Look all the way back through mid-May if you can.”
“Got it,” he said.
“And while you’re at it, take a look at the DMV records to see if Donnie Martin or DeMichael Hollins pops up.”
He nodded.
With all the instructions given and everyone prepared, we hit the road at exactly nine thirty.
If you divide Seattle up into quadrants using I-5 as the east-west divider and the Lake Union/ship canal waterway as the north-south divider, then you’d find the University of Washington nestled toward the center of the city in the upper-right, northeast quadrant, right along the waterway. The entire area surrounding the university-from Lake Union on the south to Ravenna Boulevard on the north and from I-5 on the west all the way to Lake Washington on the east is called the U-District. The area immediately north of the university is dominated by dense student housing and commercial shops, most of which exist to support the students or the thousands of workers who are employed in and around the university.
As I drove through the tight, crowded streets on my way up to my first shopping center on Ravenna Boulevard, I immediately saw what a smart idea it had been for Donnie Martin to base his operations around here. What better place to hide a group of teenaged girls but right smack-dab in the middle of thousands of other young people. The University District is a teeming cauldron containing an eclectic, funky mix of people. Eccentric dress, eccentric behavior, eccentric hours-hell, eccentricities are the norm for people around here. In fact, around here, it’s the normal people that stand out. Donnie’s girls could basically come and go as they pleased, with no one even noticing them. For that matter, the gang members themselves would also become effectively invisible in this area. In some areas of the Puget Sound, three or four young black men living in a house frequented by young pretty white girls would definitely not go unnoticed. But here-here in an area surrounded by an eclectic mix of young people, they would blend in.
I parked at my first designated shopping center and started talking to people and showing them Isabel’s photo. For the next two hours, I went door-to-door, showing the picture and asking if anybody recognized her. I visited four shopping centers. I got the same answer over and over. People were polite-some even seemed concerned. But no one could remember ever seeing Isabel. Doc and Toni had the same experience.
“It’s not surprising,” I said, as we gathered over lunch. We’d selected a Mexican restaurant on Ravenna Boulevard just after noon. “Did you notice how many shopping centers there are around here?”
Toni nodded. “A lot. There’s a lot that can go wrong-get in the way of us finding Isabel,” she said. “We could be hitting the wrong stores, for starters. Or Donnie Martin might not be letting Isabel out.”
“Or the store people might not be telling us the truth,” Doc said.
I nodded. “Most of the people I talked to sounded pretty sympathetic,” I said. “After I told them that Isabel was just sixteen.”
“I got the same thing,” Toni said. “Still, we’re only just a little better off than if we were looking for a needle in a haystack.”
“You’re a city girl,” I said. “You’ve never even seen a haystack.”
“I most certainly-,” She was interrupted by my cell phone. Caller ID: Kenny.
“Hold that thought,” I said to her. I tapped the talk button on the phone. “What’s up?” I said.
“Hey boss,” he said. “I got nowhere on the cell phone so far, but right away I think I’ve got a match on the personal ads.”
“No shit?”
“Yeah. I mean, I can’t be certain, but I’ve found an ad on Backpage, and the girl on the ad sure looks like the picture of Isabel we have. Looks older-sexier to be sure. But it still looks to me like it could be her.”
“Excellent. Good work, dude.”
“Thanks. You guys get any hits?”
“Not a one. Hold on for a second.” I turned to Toni. “Kenny thinks he has a match.”
“Cell phone or Backpage ad?” Toni said.
I nodded. “Backpage. He says the girl in the ad looks older and sexier than the picture we have of Isabel, but he thinks it’s her.”
“I’ll call Kelli and have her come in,” Toni said. “She’s the one who really knows what Isabel looks like.”
“She can come in now? No school?”
“I think she’s done,” Toni said. “But even if she’s not, she had a short schedule this last semester. Mornings only.”
“Good. Go ahead and do it,” I said. I brought the phone back up. “Kenny? You still there?”
“Yeah.”
“We’re going to finish up with lunch, then we’ll be back in the office. Probably just a little after one or so. Toni’s calling Kelli so she can come in and confirm the ID.”
“Cool. I’ll be ready.”
“Well done, dude,” I said, before hanging up.
Toni made her call and said that Kelli was “very anxious” to come in.
We all walked into Logan PI together at 1:15 p.m. Kelli was already there, talking with Kenny in the lobby. We said hello to Kelli, and then I turned to Kenny. “You ready?”
“Yeah. I’m all set up on the big screen in the conference room.”
I nodded. “Good.” I led everyone back. It was nice outside, so while the others took their seats, I closed all the blinds to darken the room, but I propped the outside door open a little to let in some fresh air.
I sat down and said, “Okay, Kenny. It’s all yours. Show us what you found.”
“First,” he said, as a picture flashed on the screen, “here’s the picture of Isabel that her mom provided for us.” The blowup was from the picture strip, and it showed Kelli and Isabel together. “I scanned it and then used Photoshop to clean it up a little. Lightened this area, darkened that one. Basically sharpened up the focus and enhanced the contrast. It’s how I normally treat ID photos.”
The image changed. “Next, I cropped this enhanced image into a headshot of Isabel. This is the picture you guys have been carrying around all morning.” The picture was hardly recognizable as being from the snapshot. Kelli was gone, cropped away. Isabel’s image was much clearer and had much better contrast. Kenny continued. “When I crop it and then enlarge it like this, the resolution starts to work against us, and you see the start of a little pixilation, but I smoothed it up a little, so it’s still pretty decent. Better than a newspaper, for example. So hold that image. Now, let me switch and go to the Internet.” He closed the photo and opened up the Internet. “Here’s Backpage.com. Backpage is a nationwide site. You tell it what metro area you’re in, and it feeds you ads just for your area. You can see here that I’ve picked Seattle.” He waited for the site to catch up. When it did, he said, “Now you see these categories? Most of their categories are legit, but you see way over here on the right is a section called ‘Adult.’ We’ll pick the Escorts category from the Adult section.”
A screen titled “Disclaimer” popped up. Kenny continued, “Now you get this hokey little disclaimer page where you have to swear you’re at least eighteen. Like this is going to slow someone down, right? Just for shits and giggles, we’ll say we agree,” he clicked the appropriate button, and the screen changed. “And we’re in. That right there appears to be the extent of their age screening.”
“Now over here on the left, you can see that there’s a long list of advertisements. And these ads are all real-time. Someone posts an ad, and it pops right up. You can see that they’re separated by the days the ads were posted. I counted up today’s ads a little while ago. As of eleven o’clock this morning, there’d already been sixty-something posted for so-called escort services. And that’s just for Seattle, remember.”
“Now let me show you some of the ads.” He clicked on the top headline. Immediately, the screen was filled with very provocative photos of a barely dressed woman on the right and a bunch of text on the left that left little doubt as to what the woman was willing to do-which seemed to be pretty much anything somebody’d be willing to pay for.
Kenny closed the page and clicked on several more. The faces changed, but the message remained consistent.
“Sometimes the photos hide the faces, sometimes they don’t,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s about one-third hidden, two-thirds not hidden.”
Toni said, “When it says ‘200 roses H-120 roses HH’ does that mean-”
“It’s a simple little code. I’m pretty sure it means $200 for an hour-$120 for a half hour,” Kenny said.
“Holy crap,” she said. “That’s what I thought it meant. They’re just out and out advertising sex for sale. It’s like a catalog for prostitutes.”
I nodded. “That’s exactly what it is,” I said.
Kenny closed the ad. “I showed you all these because I wanted you to be a little prepared for this next one.” He scrolled down and clicked on an ad. It opened up and immediately, Kelli gasped.
“It’s her,” she said, her eyes fixed on the screen. “It’s Izzy.”
The ad showed Isabel in several provocative poses wearing a string bikini bottom and a very skimpy string top. She was smiling seductively into the camera. The ad wording looked similar to the other ads.
“Let me do this,” Kenny said. “I captured the face from the Backpage photo. Then, I enlarged it, enhanced it, and cropped it.” He split the screen in half. On the left half, he brought up the ID photo of Isabel we’d been using. Then, on the right, he showed the image he’d captured off the Backpage ad.
“They look almost identical,” I said.
“It’s her,” Kelli said again, her voice steely.
“Are you certain?” I asked.
She nodded but didn’t speak.
I looked at her. “Are you okay?” I asked.
She nodded again, face resolute. “I’m okay. But I want to kill the guys who’re making her do this.”
“Don’t do that,” I said, trying to joke with her to lighten the mood. “We’ll get ’em. We have to take it one step at a time, but we’ll get them.”
“When do you suppose this picture was taken?” Doc asked.
We thought about this for a moment, and then Toni said, “I’d bet this was taken somewhere between ten days and two weeks ago. Think about it. It had to be long enough after these guys picked her up for her to feel comfortable enough wearing clothes like that to pose for someone taking pictures. She doesn’t look like she’s under any duress here.”
“Although that might be hard to tell,” I said.
“True. But for the moment, all we have to go on is what we see.”
I nodded.
“So the picture would have been taken-what-a couple of weeks after she got picked up? When was the text saying that she liked Mikey?”
“May 17,” Kenny said.
“May 17. And what-ten days later she’s writing to say that it was too good to be true?”
“May 28.”
“So my guess is that sometime in that window-starting around May 17 and definitely ending by May 28-that’s when this picture was taken.”
“But I don’t understand,” Doc said. “That last text message said it was ‘too good to be true.’ If that was how she felt, I would have thought that she’d somehow try to leave or at least not go along with these guys. But that doesn’t make sense when you see they’re still running the ad.”
“I guess she just ended up doing what they told her to do,” Toni said. “Carla said the pimps have ways of dealing with girls who resist.”
The room grew silent as we stared at the ad and considered its implications. “Any thoughts? Any ideas? Any directions?” I had a pretty good idea, but I wanted to see if someone else would come up with it.
“It’s time for a little sting,” Toni said. I should have known Toni would reach the same conclusion. We tend to think a lot alike.
“Exactly,” I agreed. “We need to run it through Nancy, but I think we just call the ad and pretend like we’re a tourist in from Podunk and we’re looking for a little companionship while we’re here. We make a date. When Isabel shows up-we do a little intervention. Nancy grabs her-problem solved.”
“Well,” Toni said, “first step, anyway. There are still the long-term problems that need to be resolved.”
I looked up at the ad photo-at Isabel looking off into the distance over my head, smiling suggestively, trying hard to look like her idea of a sex symbol.
I turned to Toni. “One step at a time, right?”
She nodded.
After the meeting, I went to my office and put a phone call in to Nancy Stewart. They patched me through to her cell phone-she and Tyrone were away from her office. I explained to her what we’d found and that we had a plan we wanted to run by her. To my surprise, she offered to stop by our office. She and Tyrone were on their way to a meeting in Ballard at the moment, but Nancy thought that they’d be done by three o’clock and could probably make it to our office by 3:15 or 3:30 p.m. I was pleasantly surprised. The police coming to our office instead of the other way around is like the mountain jumping up and coming to Mohammed-it’s happened maybe three times in the past four years.
And they were right on time-they walked into the office at 3:15 sharp. Toni and I greeted them and walked them back to the conference room.
“You have a beautiful view from here,” Nancy said, looking out the window to the southeast. Our office is on the south end of the second floor of an old building, situated right on Lake Union. In fact, the building is built on pilings, and it actually sticks out over the water. A large balcony wraps around the southeast corner of the building. The conference room faces south; my office is on the end facing east. The balcony services both spaces. Today, as most days, a number of small boats moved quietly across the water. Some of the boats were sailboats, some were powerboats, some were even rowboats.
“Thanks,” I said, stepping out with her onto the balcony. “We leased the space four years ago. First thing we did was basically gut it and redo it. But the view was already here, of course. In fact, that’s why we picked this place.”
A Kenmore Air seaplane taxied away from the dock just a hundred yards or so south of our office. The little plane maneuvered into the middle of the channel, where the pilot pointed the plane into the wind and gunned it. The engine roared, drowning out any thoughts of further conversation for a few seconds.
After it had taken off, Nancy said, “Boy, I tell you, I’d be out here every chance I could get.”
“Are you a boater?” I asked.
“My husband and I live for it,” she said.
“I think I could be a boater,” I said, “It looks really peaceful. But it’s not something I have much experience with. I do like watching, though. Matter of fact, in the summer-probably starting next month-I like to bring my laptop outside my office right around the corner there.” I pointed to where the balcony wrapped around the side of the building. “Then I just do my work from outside.”
She shook her head. “You’re lucky.”
Kenny poked his head outside and waved.
“No doubt,” I agreed. “It looks like we’re set up for you now. If I can tear you away from the view, let’s head on inside.”
“Back to the salt mines, right?” she said, laughing.
“You got it. This shouldn’t take too long.”
Inside, everyone took a seat. I made the introductions, and then I got started.
“We had a busy day yesterday,” I said. “After meeting with you guys in the morning and then with Annie Hooper, and then with Reverend Jenkins in the afternoon, we decided it’d be best to split our efforts this morning. So Toni, Doc, and I took the reference picture we have of Isabel, and we hit the streets. Or, more accurately, we hit the shopping centers up in the north part of the U-District. We were looking for anyone who might have recognized Isabel. Unfortunately, we struck out in spectacular fashion. Between the three of us, we talked to seventy-five stores and none-not a single one-had seen Isabel. It was a complete bust. The good news is that while we were out getting our exercise, Kenny here was actually hitting pay dirt. Kenny-why don’t you take Nancy and Tyrone through the same presentation you gave to us earlier this afternoon.”
“Okay,” he said. He turned to Nancy. “Like Danny said, before he left this morning, he gave me some direction about how he wanted me to start searching the online advertising spots so that I could compare the pictures in the ads with the reference picture we have of Isabel.”
Kenny walked Nancy and Tyrone through the entire process-how we obtained the original and all subsequent photos, how he’d gone through Backpage.com, and how he’d discovered the ad with Isabel’s photo.
“We actually brought Toni’s sister Kelli in to confirm the ID,” I said. “We didn’t want there to be any confusion as to the identity. We’re now certain the girl in the picture is Isabel Delgado.”
Nancy nodded slowly. “Well, the pattern certainly fits.”
“It would seem to,” I said.
“But wait a second,” Tyrone said. “Don’t I remember you saying there was an e-mail indicating that she wasn’t very happy?”
I nodded. “Good memory. Yes-there was a text message. It was dated May 28.” I went on to explain to them when we thought the ad photos were taken and what we saw were the possible scenarios now.
Nancy nodded. “That makes sense,” she said. “Most likely, they ‘convinced’ her. That means they coerced her, maybe even beat her up until she agreed. These guys are real good at that.” She paused for a moment as she looked at the ad.
“May I?” she said to Kenny, as she reached for the mouse.
“Sure.”
Nancy opened up several pages, then returned to Isabel’s ad. “You know,” she said, “the website’s sole effort at self-policing is to have the person who places an ad check a box saying that they and the person in the ad are both eighteen or over. That girl-” she pointed to the screen, “-that little girl is clearly not eighteen. This so-called system is failing our young people. It’s turned into the single, primary vehicle that allows them to be exploited by these predators.” She was visibly angry. “But at least Backpage.com and its owners are making a nice, fat profit. Whenever the legislators in Olympia or at other statehouses across the country try to enact laws to hold them responsible for what they print, they immediately scream bloody murder and start invoking the First Amendment.”
“Somehow, I don’t think this is what Jefferson had in mind,” I said.
“I don’t either,” she said with disgust. A second later, she regained her composure. She turned to me. “So you said you had a plan. Let’s hear it.”