Winter Flower

by Charles Sheehan-Miles

  I sat down and waited, while scanning the people.

  The taller counter, to my right and facing the grill, was occupied by two men who sat a fair distance away from each other. One of them was in his twenties, with a crew cut and a bitter expression. He sat there staring at the wall in front of them, not even making a pretense of drinking the cup of coffee in front of him. The man a few seats down from him was easily twenty years older, and obviously drunk. He was saying something to the younger man, his words so slurred I couldn’t understand him from where I sat.

  Not far away from them, facing each other in a booth, were three young women. They were chatting with each other and laughing. They wore revealing clothing, but none of them so much that I would guess they were prostitutes. Or if they were, they certainly didn’t work the streets. The sad thing was, they might just be teenagers or college girls out with friends for the night. But with this location, I could only assume the worst.

  Maybe they worked at the strip club down the block. They didn’t look run-down like the women I’d seen on the street.

  There was little question, however, about the next table over in the corner. A mean-looking dark-haired man with a thick five o’clock shadow leaned back in the corner of the booth. He wore a sleeveless white T-shirt that revealed powerful shoulders and a series of tattoos, some of which looked as if they’d been done at home or in jail. He wore a gold chain studded with what appeared to be diamonds. Two women sat in the booth with him, both of them scantily dressed. Both of the women were young … one of them might have been eighteen. Or possibly less. How could you tell? They were heavily made up and had dull eyes which made it difficult to guess their age.

  The younger of the two girls threw her hands up in the air and said, “Fine!”

  With no change of expression, the man leaned toward her and grabbed her chin between his finger and thumb and squeezed. He said something, but it wasn’t loud enough to hear clearly.

  She looked terrified.

  After a few seconds, he released her.

  He shook his head, his face still set in anger. The girls slipped out of the booth and he followed, throwing a twenty on the table.

  A waitress approached—the same one I’d had the day before. I hadn’t noticed then, but her name-tag read “Kristi.” She approached me, putting a napkin and some silverware on the counter in front of me.

  “Hey, you’re back. Can I get you something? Coffee?”

  “Coffee, please,” I said. I slid one of the flyers across the table at her and continued in a much lower voice. “And maybe you can take a look at another picture?”

  She looked down at the picture then at me. She nodded.

  I leaned closer. She rotated the flyer to get a better angle. “That’s her for sure. I recognize the neck tattoo. She was here with another girl, and some guy. At least twice.”

  I began to shake. “You’re sure? When was it?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. I remember the guy. He was an asshole. He got into it with one of the other pimps. I almost had to call the cops. I’m thinking it was about two weeks ago, but I’m not sure. I can talk to my manager, we could maybe check the security tapes. But he won’t be in until tomorrow.”

  She leaned close. “Give me your number, and I’ll call you right away if they come back in.”

  “It’s right here,” I said, pointing to the number on the flyer. “That’s my cell phone.”

  In an unexpected moment of kindness, she put her hand on mine. “If I see her, I’ll call you immediately.”

  My throat felt raw. I croaked the words, “Thank you.”

  I still had three hours before I’d be meeting Detective Michelson. I finished my coffee and paid, and on my way out the door I put two copies of the flyer on the bulletin board near the front door. I decided that later that day I would stop at a hardware store and pick up a staple gun so I could attach it to the telephone poles in the area. In the meantime, it was time to get out there.

  I’d given a lot of thought to the flyers. What happened if her trafficker saw them? Would it be putting Brenna in more danger? Would they leave town? There was no way to know. I couldn’t quantify how serious the danger was—but I knew that without the flyers, she’d been tortured and burned at least. If there was a chance of getting her home, I was taking it.

  For the next several hours I drove the length of the track. All in all, it was about ten blocks in a rough square. I wasn’t the only car circling those blocks, not even close—at any given time I could see four or five cars circling along, either in front or behind me. They would slow down anytime they approached one of the prostitutes, brake lights flashing as the men inside examined the women. If the drivers came to a stop, the woman would lean in the passenger window, a few words would be exchanged, and either she would get in and the couple would drive off together, or the car would move on.

  The women I saw and spoke to over those hours ranged in age from their teens to their forties. They were every race. Some of them looked young and beautiful, and some looked like they might have been grandmothers. Everywhere I looked, hovering in the darkness or some circling in cars, were men. Pimps. Johns. Even police, who were patrolling the area regularly. Some of them talked with me willingly. Some shied away, backing up and refusing to talk. One pimp threatened me. If you don’t get off the damn track, I’ll turn you out myself, bitch.

  I was still shaking from that encounter at seven a.m. when it was time to meet Detective Michelson. It bothered me that I didn’t know her first name. I’d remedy that as soon as we met. But I pulled to a stop when my phone rang a moment later—the name on my phone sent immediate tension through me.

  “Mrs. Roberts? It’s Stan Wilcox.”

  “Agent Wilcox. Thank you for calling. Do you have news?”

  “Actually, I’m wondering if you decided to fly to Portland after all.”

  “I’m here now.”

  After an almost imperceptible pause, he said, “In that case we should meet. I arrived late last night.”

  Stunned, I blurted, “You’re in Portland? I didn’t expect that.”

  “It took some convincing the Bureau. But I’m here, and at least for the next little while, I’m exclusively on your daughter’s case.”

  I closed my eyes. “You know where Dave’s Diner is on Eighty-second?”

  “I’ve heard of the place.”

  “I’m meeting Detective Michelson from the Portland Police there for breakfast in a few minutes. Want to join us?”

  “Michelson? I know her. It’ll take me a while to get there.”

  “That’s fine, I’ll wait.”

  We disconnected and I drove on toward the diner. Wilcox being here was a relief, provided he didn’t try to shut me out of looking for Brenna. I was ready to fight. I’d taken too passive a role when she first disappeared, and that wasn’t happening again.

  Now, with the sun coming up, the diner was far less crowded. I got out of the car and locked it, carrying a few of the flyers inside with me.

  Inside, I scanned the restaurant. She was in the back booth. Kristi, the waitress, waved when I walked in. I smiled at her, then walked to the booth and slid in across from Michelson.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  “Morning,” I replied. “Listen, you’ll have to forgive me. But I never learned your first name yesterday.”

  She smiled. “It’s Melody.”

  “You can call me Erin. I wanted to let you know, I just got a call from Stan Wilcox at the FBI. He was the investigating agent on my daughter’s case.”

  “From the child abduction unit? I know him actually, we’ve worked together.”

  “He told me that. He got into town last night—he said he’s working her case exclusively at least for the next few days.”

  Melody brightened. “That’s good news. He’ll have access to a lot of resources beyond what I can do.”

  “What have you found so far?”

  Melody shook her head. “Not a lot. I sta
rted by getting and reviewing the FBI file. I’ve got some questions I’m going to ask you there, just to clarify some things. We might want to wait until Wilcox gets here though. So we’re not asking you the same things twice.”

  I nodded. “What else?”

  She sighed. “I want to be realistic with you, Erin. The odds are significant that they’re no longer in Portland. Which is not to discourage you. We’re going to do absolutely everything we can. I just need you to know that it’s a long shot.” Her expression was grim.

  “I get it. But this is the best shot we’ve had in two years. I’ll do everything I can.”

  “Okay. For what it’s worth … I’ll do everything within my power to find her.”

  I studied her. She met none of my stereotypes of what a detective would look like. And I had met my share of detectives, unfortunately. She had a trim athletic figure and wore conservative clothing: a navy suit with wide lapels and a white shirt. She wouldn’t have looked out of place in a corporate office in Silicon Valley or New York City.

  “How did you become the resident expert on trafficking?”

  Melody winced. “Are you sure you want to hear that story? It’s not pretty.”

  I felt my eyebrows drawing together. “There’s nothing pretty about any of this. I would like to know, if you’re willing to talk about it.”

  Melody waved at Kristi and pointed at our coffee cups. She did it with a friendly smile. But when she looked back at me, her expression was sober. “I grew up in a family with five kids. My parents took us all with them as missionaries to Central Africa when I was really little. When we came back home, Mom was—what do you call it—a tiger mom? She was always in our business. Getting a B on a test was an occasion for scorn. Anyway we were kind of a stereotype, and all of us went to really good schools.”

  I nodded. “I get it. I went to Georgetown.”

  Melody said, “Cornell. But after I graduated, I didn’t want to go the same route. Both my brothers are doctors, one of my sisters is a surgeon, and the other works for Google. I came back home and applied for the Police Academy.”

  I smiled. “I bet your mother was thrilled.”

  Melody laughed. “Not exactly. Not at first anyway. She’s come to accept it, and she knows the work I do is important. When I first joined the force, I took a whole lot of ribbing from the guys. Because I was a woman, because I’m Asian, because I went to Cornell. But I can outshoot two-thirds of these guys. I made detective four years ago. My very first case was a missing child.”

  I felt a chill when she said those words. The chill wasn’t for me … it was from her. From her eyes. She continued.

  “She was an eleven-year-old girl. Her family lived in a poor neighborhood, not ten blocks from here. Her mom was struggling to make ends meet and had a shit for a boyfriend who I’m pretty sure abused the kids. Anyway, the girl—her name was Grace—they thought she was a runaway. The cops who were initially called didn’t escalate it—they figured she had run away and would turn back up.”

  She paused, and I found myself dreading the rest of the story. Melody looked away from me, unable to meet my eyes. She stared out the window. “I couldn’t find her in time. They sold her. I don’t know how many times. But she was trafficked initially in a little house up Eighty-second Avenue, getting raped for twenty or thirty dollars a time by I don’t know how many men. Three weeks after she went missing, a confidential informant told us he’d heard about this girl. She was being trafficked by someone she knew, a friend of the family. But when we raided the place, she was gone.”

  Tears were running down her face now, and mine too. I reached out and took one of her hands.

  “She finally did turn up. She was dismembered, cut up into little pieces and thrown in a trash bag and dumped in the woods.”

  Jesus Christ. I felt a sudden panic attack coming on; my chest tightened, a sharp pain right in the center. I pressed my hand against the center of my chest and tried to breathe.

  Melody took a long shuddering breath and said, “I went to the Chief of Detectives after that and we started work on the Trafficking Task Force. My husband’s an assistant district attorney, and we’ve been trying to put together a network of places that can help these girls get off the streets. It’s heartbreaking what happens to them. But then we’ve still got assholes like Sergeant Mackey, who thinks of it only in terms of the girls being whores. They don’t get it. We estimate that there’s anywhere from fifty to a hundred children being trafficked every single night in Portland alone.”

  I had become so wrapped up in Melody’s story, I completely forgot that Stan Wilcox was coming. So I was startled when he appeared next to our table. I stood up, hitting my knee on the edge of the booth and wincing.

  We shook hands all around, and Melody said to Stan, “It’s nice to see you again.”

  Wilcox ordered a cup of coffee and said, “Sorry it took me so long to get here.”

  “It’s fine,” Melody said. “We’ve mostly been talking background stuff, getting to know each other.”

  “So what do we have?” Wilcox asked.

  Melody told the story of Brenna’s arrest. Over the next few minutes we caught up on the details of my own questioning along the track.

  “Do you mind if I ask you both some questions about Brenna’s original disappearance?” Melody directed the question at me.

  “Whatever you think may help.”

  “I understand the original prime suspect was her boyfriend. Why was that?”

  Wilcox answered. “He was an adult dating a sixteen-year-old… fifteen at the time they started. But the damning thing was the bracelet.”

  “Found in his apartment, right?” Melody asked.

  “It was a birthday gift from my sister Lori,” I said. “She had just gotten it that day, which meant that she’d been in Chase’s apartment after the last time we saw her.”

  Wilcox said, “In the end, there just wasn’t any evidence he’d been involved in her disappearance. We knew she had been there, but that was consistent with his story. But her car and her cell phone were found almost twenty miles away.”

  Melody opened the folder and paged through it. She stopped and looked up. “Was there ever any hint of who this guy Rick was?”

  Wilcox shook his head. “The Facebook account was registered to a Gmail address that was opened at a public library. We know that she received a few text messages around one a.m., and she wasn’t at Chase Morton’s apartment—that’s based on the cell phone towers that carried the messages. The messages came from a prepaid burner phone.”

  All three of us sat quietly, considering for a few seconds. Then Melody said, “I think we can make some assumptions based on what little we know. She’s not been working the streets except maybe on an occasional basis. We don’t know where she’s been between Virginia and here, but I think it’s safe to guess that she hasn’t been in Portland very long.

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  “Mainly because of Kristi over there. At the very least, they’ve not been on this stretch before a few weeks ago, and this is the only twenty-four-hour place on Eighty-second or close to it.”

  That explained the three a.m. traffic. “So where do we start?”

  “I think you start doing what you already are,” Melody said. “Get that flyer up everywhere, concentrating along Eighty-second Avenue and the surrounding neighborhoods. Grocery stores, restaurants, coffee shops, hotels and motels. I’ll be doing the same, but I’ll focus mostly on the business travel hotels all the way around the city. We’ve developed decent partnerships with a lot of them, and that’s where a lot of the Internet-based prostitution takes place these days. We’ll shake down some of our confidential informants, see if anyone has seen or heard of her.”

  Wilcox said, “I’m going to meet with the FBI field office this morning. We’ll get a look at the security videos here. And we’ll run this new photo through the NCIS and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The tattoo and�
��that looks like a cigarette burn scar—are pretty distinctive. Those might help us get a lock on any ads that have been posted of her.”

  “What do you think the odds are?” I asked.

  “If she’s being trafficked—and we’ve got every reason to believe she is—then I think they’re pretty good.”

  I nodded slowly and took a deep breath. “Thank you,” I said.

  We had a plan.

  Twenty-Three

  Brenna. Two Years Ago

  “What I don’t understand is why you stay with him. He hurts you all the time and waves that gun around. He’s such a fucking asshole.”

  Nialla shrugged, her eyes downcast. We were sitting next to each other on the floor in a sterile two-bedroom corporate apartment in Atlanta. I didn’t know exactly where we were, not that it would have mattered if I had, because I had no access to a phone. We’d been here for four weeks, taking incalls only. Rick had made it clear that soon we would begin doing outcalls, a prospect which frightened me. At least here I had the relative security of Nialla’s presence, and often Rick was in the apartment. During outcalls I’d be on my own, with even more dangerous men.

  This afternoon we had a welcome respite with no appointments lined up. Rick had ordered take-out Chinese then left, leaving the door locked. Neither of us had a key to the deadbolt and the apartment was on the fourth floor, so there was no way out. I sometimes wondered what I would do if there was a fire while he was gone. We’d have to jump forty feet to the ground, a prospect that sometimes seemed pretty appealing.

  We’d watched Pretty Woman with Richard Gere and Julia Roberts. Crazy. Stupid. How that movie could romanticize the life, I didn’t know. At points I found myself getting angry. This was a bunch of fantasy, and it made me ill when I compared it to the violence I’d suffered over the past few weeks.