Judgement Calls

by Alafair Burke

  ever engaged in any other sexual activity?"

  She blushed and looked down at the floor. "Just kissing and stuff with

  a couple boys at school."

  "No older boys?"

  "Unh-unh."

  "Not Joe?"

  "I said no."

  "None of your mother's other boyfriends ever tried to touch you in a

  bad way?"

  "No. I'd tell you. How come you're so sure someone tried to get over

  on me?"

  I knew I had strayed from the open-ended style of questioning used with

  child sex abuse victims, but it seemed unlikely that Kendra hadn't been

  victimized before she began selling herself for drugs. It was

  possible, but the vast majority of women who become prostitutes were

  molested as children.

  If she wasn't molested, my guess is that watching her mother's own

  relationships with men had left her vulnerable to abuse before this Joe

  person ever came into the house and began grooming her. Pedophiles

  often take their time developing a relationship of trust with the

  child, sharing secrets and breaking barriers. Once the abuse begins,

  the child chooses to permit its continuance rather than lose the

  abuser's affection. After spending two months using heroin with her

  mother's boyfriend, Kendra's next step was almost guaranteed.

  "I'm not sure about anything, Kendra. I just wanted to make sure you

  weren't keeping anything from me, to protect them or maybe your

  mother."

  "Well, I'm not. If it's like you're thinking someone must've done

  something to me for me to be this way, you're wrong. I guess I'm just

  screwed up."

  "You're not screwed up, and it's not your fault. Do you know that?

  What happened to you is not your fault."

  "That's what the advocate person said, too. Mom thinks it's my

  fault."

  "I bet she doesn't." I wasn't so sure about what Andrea Martin

  thought, but I knew what Kendra needed to hear.

  "She keeps saying I shouldn't have been out there."

  "Well, she's right. It's good that you're acknowledging that you made

  a mistake to put yourself in a risky situation. But that doesn't make

  this thing your fault. You see the difference?"

  "I guess so."

  "Say it's not your fault."

  She looked at Chuck, then me, then down at her feet. "That's kind of

  dumb."

  "It's not dumb," Chuck said. I was glad he jumped in. I was used to

  working with women who couldn't listen to anyone but a man, and

  thirteen wasn't too young for it to start. I needed some help.

  She sighed. "It's not my fault," she said quietly.

  "Now, look me in the eye," I said, "and say it louder."

  She looked at me this time, only at me. "It's not my fault."

  This time, she sounded like maybe she meant it.

  "Good girl. You're going to think this is silly, but whenever you

  start to doubt that, I want you to look in the mirror and see how

  pretty and smart you are. Then I want you to say that out loud to

  yourself and see how confident and strong you look, OK?"

  She rolled her eyes, but she smiled. "Man, every time one of you guys

  comes over, I get some new thing I'm supposed to remember to do. Look

  out the window, talk to myself in the mirror. Next time, you're gonna

  have me standing on my head and singing the Backstreet Boys."

  I smiled back at her and then asked why she worked out of the Hamilton,

  the motel at Third and Alder. She explained that she met a group of

  teenage girls at Harry's Place, a shelter for street kids. When it

  became clear that Kendra was picking up spare money the same way the

  others were, they told her she should work out of the Hamilton.

  Apparently, the management there didn't care about what went on, and

  enough girls were turning tricks out of the motel that it provided

  something of a support network. The girls would watch out for each

  other and pass along tips they'd pick up on the street.

  Kendra explained that she worked sporadically enough that she'd managed

  to avoid hooking up with a pimp. "They're definitely out there,

  though. Haley, this girl I know the best out of that group she's older

  than me anyway, Haley said she did what I did for about a year before

  she couldn't get away with it anymore. The other girls were telling

  her she wasn't safe out there by herself, and she got beat up a couple

  times pretty bad. So she was giving half of her money to some man, but

  he was supposed to watch her back and make sure she stayed safe."

  I'm sure this guardian was a real gentleman.

  Kendra's face lit up as she told me about the girls she'd met on the

  street, at Harry's Place, and at the Hamilton. I could tell she missed

  them, even if she wasn't missing the lifestyle yet.

  "Do you want to see pictures of them?" She hopped up from the sofa and

  disappeared into the back of the house. She returned with a miniature

  backpack in the shape of a panda bear and fished out two envelopes.

  "I love taking pictures. I don't have a camera, but we used to, like,

  pitch in our money to get a disposable one sometimes. We'd take turns

  carrying it around until the film was gone. It would take awhile for

  them to actually get developed, since no one ever had enough money. But

  I took these in last week."

  She handed the pictures to me one by one, flipping through most of them

  quickly, explaining that she hadn't taken them and didn't know most of

  the people in them. I tried not to reveal my shock. One group of

  pictures showed girls in their bras and panties frolicking on the lap

  of a hard-bodied shirtless man with a tattoo of the Tasmanian Devil on

  his right pec. The photographs didn't reveal his face, but he was

  obviously an adult, and, from the looks of things, he was about as

  carnivorous as the notoriously frenzied cartoon character emblazoned on

  his chest.

  "Those were taken when someone else had the camera," Kendra said, by

  way of explanation.

  Kendra seemed to have an eye for photography. When she finally got to

  the three pictures she had taken, I could see that she'd managed to

  capture a youthful, playful side of these girls that was nowhere to be

  seen in the other photos. Three of them were sitting outside in

  Pioneer Square, making funny faces and forming peace signs with their

  fingers over each other's heads.

  "That's my friend Haley," Kendra said, pointing to an attractive

  teenage girl who was crossing her eyes and sticking out her tongue at

  the camera. Of Kendra's friends, she looked the most like a

  prostitute. I recognized her from the Tasmanian Devil pictures.

  "Kendra, would you mind if I borrowed these pictures?" I sensed that

  she wanted an explanation. "Chuck and I work with a man named Tommy

  Garcia. He's been trying to figure out who's been making girls like

  Haley and your other friends give them a portion of their money."

  After some negotiation, we decided that she'd hang on to the three

  pictures of her friends and I'd take the rest to Garcia.

  When Kendra went to the kitchen to throw out the empty Happy Meal box,

  Chuck pulled me aside.

  "I was thinkin
g about the investigation while you two were talking.

  Kendra told Ray and Jack she'd know the place those guys drove her to

  if she saw it, but they never took her out. Probably thought it was

  too much of a long shot. But I want to drive her around a little over

  there and see if she recognizes anything. We can canvass for

  witnesses. Maybe someone called in a suspicious car or something. You

  never know."

  "Sure, sounds good." I was surprised that he wanted my input. "You

  don't need my permission to do stuff like that."

  He squinted in mock disbelief. "Don't flatter yourself, Kincaid. I

  need you to drive us."

  It was my turn to feign misgivings. "Something wrong with that ride of

  yours? Since when do you need me to schlep you around?"

  "Why do you always have to bag on my car? You have to admit, it's

  pretty sweet."

  Chuck loved cars. As long as I'd known him, he had always driven some

  old car that he had poured his heart, soul, and wallet into to fix. For

  the last few years, it had been a magnificent ruby-red 1967 Jaguar

  convertible.

  "You know I love that car. I just think it would look a lot better

  around someone else. Me, for example."

  "In your dreams, Kincaid."

  "So if I can't have your car, what do you need me and my little Jetta

  for?"

  "Department GO says we don't put civilians in our personal vehicles

  while we're on the job. I don't want to go all the way downtown for a

  duty car. Let's just take yours."

  I looked at my watch. It was a quarter after eight. "And what makes

  you think the DA's office doesn't have a general order saying the same

  thing?"

  "Because you guys don't need GO's. Only reason cops have them is to

  cover our asses now that police are getting sued left and right after

  Rodney King and Abner Louima. You lawyers are so fucking political,

  you can CYA without any stupid policies."

  "Nice language. You kiss your mother with that mouth?"

  "No, but I don't remember you having any problems with it."

  "Knock it off, or you and that little smirk can drive to Texas alone

  for all I care."

  "Leave the tough act for the courthouse. You forget how well I know

  you. We both know you care, so fish out the keys to that tin can of

  yours so we can go to work."

  Once again, I was left yearning for the perfect zinger. I settled for

  my keys.

  Four.

  It took some doing to convince Kendra to come with us, but when I

  explained how helpful she could be, she relented. She paused on the

  porch as she was pulling the front door shut behind her. "Oh, hold on

  a sec. I don't have any house keys. Mom's supposed to get a new set

  made at the store tomorrow."

  I'd forgotten about that. "Can we go by your mom's work and pick up

  her keys on the way home?"

  "Um, her boss gets real mad if she does personal stuff at work. I'm

  not supposed to bug her or anything when she's there. The store's a

  lot nicer."

  Chuck did a quick overview of the house and came up with a solution. We

  placed a full cup of water on the floor a few inches in front of the

  back door, and stuck several pieces of masking tape from the door to

  the doorframe. We left the door unlocked and walked out of the front

  door, locking it and pulling it shut behind us on the way out.

  Kendra looked puzzled until Chuck explained that any unusual event at

  the beginning of a break-in usually spooks the burglar enough that he

  leaves. In a worst-case scenario, we'd at least know someone had been

  there when we got back if the water was spilled and the tape

  unsealed.

  As responsible adults, we should have consulted Kendra's mother before

  taking her daughter and leaving her home unlocked. But by now Chuck

  and I had surmised that this was no typical mother-daughter

  relationship. If it was OK by Kendra, Andrea Martin would assume it

  was for the best.

  When she saw the cars parked in front of her house, Kendra had a clear

  preference. "Cool car! Are we taking it?"

  Her eager look up at me spoke volumes. I turned my head to smile back

  at Chuck. "I told you it was a chick car."

  "It's not a chick car. You know how much power that thing has? She

  was complimenting you. Probably figured a highbrow lawyer like you

  would drive something with a little more style."

  Kendra tried to hide her disappointment. "Your car's nice too, Miss

  Kincaid."

  "Thanks. And you call me Samantha, or I'm going to start calling you

  Miss Martin."

  She laughed. "OK, Samantha."

  Chuck hopped in the backseat so Kendra could ride up front. I headed

  south and then west on Division, toward southeast Portland. Rockwood

  was on the outskirts of Portland, straddling the east border of the

  city and the west border of suburban Gresham. It marked the end of

  approximately 140 consecutive blocks of east Portland, inhabited by

  white welfare families who were seldom acknowledged by either the

  liberal elite who occupy the central core of the city or the more

  conservative soccer-mom families who make up the suburbs.

  The only landmark Kendra could give me was Reed College. She

  remembered seeing it while they were driving. The school was located

  just a few miles southeast of downtown, on Woodstock Boulevard. It was

  a fitting name for the location. The college was a bastion of leftist

  politics and had proudly carried the motto atheism, communism, and free

  love since the 1950s. Some student in the eighties had made a mint

  selling parody T-shirts saying new reed: the moral

  MAJORITY, CAPITALISM, AND SAFE SEX.

  Students arrived on campus looking like regular kids who just got out

  of high school, but by Thanksgiving they'd all stopped bathing and had

  torn holes in the L. L. Bean and J. Crew clothing their parents had

  shipped them off to Oregon with. When I was in high school, the slur

  "You smell like a Reedie" was used whenever someone got a little ripe

  in gym class.

  Although the school was recognized nationally for its stringent

  academic requirements, Kendra, like most Oregonians had described it to

  me as "that hippie school."

  Chuck was trying to help her narrow our search. "Would you say you

  stopped pretty soon after you saw the college, or did you see the

  college closer to the beginning of the drive?"

  "It was maybe a little bit after halfway."

  "Did they get on a freeway after you saw the college, or did they drive

  on residential streets?"

  "Well, after, they took the freeway out to where they left me, I guess.

  But I think they were just driving on regular streets before that."

  Old Town to Reed College was about a ten-minute drive.

  If they didn't get on a freeway or a major arterial, then they hadn't

  driven all the way out to the far end of the city. Still, what seemed

  like a long shot when Chuck thought of it in Rockwood seemed even more

  ridiculous now that we were in the car.

  We needed more. "Do you remember anything else? Any stores? Gas

  stations? Strip
malls?"

  "I'm sorry. I wasn't looking at stuff like that. I just remember

  driving in front of the college. I looked to see if maybe there were

  some people walking around who might see me if I tried to get out, but

  it was really dark."

  "So if you had passed an open store, do you think you would've

  remembered it?"

  "Um, yeah, I guess. Because I was looking for a place with a bunch of

  people."

  "When they stopped, were you near houses? Or was it more industrial?"

  The police report said that Kendra had described being in a parking

  lot, but I hadn't formed an impression of what type of lot.

  "It was a big parking lot, but there weren't, like, any other cars or

  anything. And there was, like, one real big building but then nothing

  else, just like a park or something. But it wasn't a park I'd ever

  seen or anything."

  I was at a loss. I headed toward Reed College until I could think of a

  better plan.

  "Oh, wait, I remember something. After they stopped, before I tried to

  run away, I remember I couldn't hear what they were saying to each

  other. They were, like, having to yell to talk because a train was

  going by."

  Now we were getting somewhere. Portland doesn't have much in the way