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 o
f 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.”
Chapter 9
“We were thinking we should just call the ad and set up a date with her,” I said.
Nancy nodded. “A sting. That’s usually the way we do it. We run through the ads all the time. We make dates just like this.” She stopped and studied me for a second. “Just to be clear, though, when you say ‘we’ should just call the ad, I assume you’re meaning SPD, right? We’ll need to run the show.”
I nodded. “Understood. That’s the way we’d prefer it.”
“Good,” she said, apparently relieved to find that Logan PI wasn’t in the process of planning any sort of independent action. “The way it usually works is that we’ll pick a business hotel inside the Track. Are you familiar with the Track?”
I nodded. “I scouted out the area last night.”
“Good. We like to pick a hotel that has adjoining rooms so that we can stage from right next door until the signal. We’ll hide a couple of cameras in the target room beforehand. We’ll have four officers on-site. One will pose as the john, the other three will be waiting for his signal in the adjoining room. You two,” she looked at Toni and me, “can hang out with us there. We’ll position four or five plainclothes officers outside to control the parking lot.”
“I saw a place last night called the Snuggle Inn,” I said. I described what I’d seen with the girl knocking on the door and then exiting thirty minutes later.
“That’s the way it happens,” Nancy said.
“So we make a date and once she comes inside, do you have to wait for her to solicit?” I asked.
“Depends,” Nancy said. “If we think the girl is a minor, then the officer who’s playing the john will give us a signal, and we can go ahead and take the child into custody immediately-as soon as the door shuts. If there’s a missing person report on a minor-which, by the way, there is now in Isabel’s case-then it’s not a prostitution bust-it’s a runaway case. On the other hand, if we think that we’re dealing with an adult and not a minor, then we wait for the pitch.”
“May as well get a bust out of it for all your hard work,” I said.
“Exactly. But if she’s a minor, by us not arresting her for prostitution, eventually the child’s a little more willing to work with us-provide information, participate in counseling-that sort of thing,” Tyrone said. “Once they understand they’re not being busted.”
“That said,” Nancy added, “the operative word is ‘eventually.’ Please understand that at first, Isabel might not be very happy to see us.”
“Isabel actually might not be so bad because she’s new,” Tyrone said. “But Nancy’s right-if a girl’s been working for any length of time-say at least a year-then most of the time they’re going to be pretty belligerent at first. They are so totally brainwashed by their pimps, that even while they’re basically being held as sex slaves, they don’t look at themselves that way. Until they get a little older, anyway, they see themselves as survivors. They think that what they’re doing is working for them, and they don’t want to rock their own boat. It usually takes them a while before they loosen up.”
“When could we do this?” Toni asked Tyrone. “Tonight?”
He nodded. “Why not. None of us have anything better to do on a Friday night, right?”
“Works for me,” Nancy said. She turned back to Toni and me. “Most of the time, these ‘dates’ are pretty spur-of-the-moment kind of things-not a lot of advance planning by the johns. They come into town and make the call in the afternoon when they get here-usually want someone either right away or maybe later the same night.”
“So you’re saying the best time for the date is-?” I said, letting it trail off into a question.
Tyrone shrugged. “We usually shoot for something between seven and ten.”
“Where do we make the call from?”
“You’ll notice that most of the ads say something about ‘No Blocked Lines,’” Tyrone said.
I nodded. I’d seen that.
“The pimps won’t answer calls from lines with blocked caller IDs,” he continued. “So we just have a bunch of bogus IDs on secure lines set up with the phone company that we use for this sort of thing.”
I nodded. “Who makes the call?” I asked.
“We have f
our or five guys on our staff we use, including yours truly,” Tyrone said. “We rotate-depends on whose turn it is to be the john.”
“The best thing would be if you guys just followed us down to our office now,” Nancy said. “Assuming you want to be in on the call in the first place.”
I thought for a second. “I’d like to,” I said, “but I don’t think our listening in on you guys while you set up the date is going to add much. I mean, neither of us has ever even heard Isabel speak. It’s not as if we’d recognize her voice or anything like that.”
Nancy nodded. “Understood.”
“Besides,” Toni said. “I think Danny and I need to call Isabel’s mother and let her know what’s happening-that we have a lead. She’s basically a good woman, but she needs help in her own way. She’s going to have to figure out how to stand up to her husband. It’s possible that knowing we’re getting close to pulling Isabel out of trouble will help strengthen her resolve.”
“Well, you should go ahead and talk to her, then,” Nancy said. “I’d be a little vague on the details. But, after all, she is Isabel’s mom. She has a right to know, and we’ll certainly have to involve her once we’ve pulled Isabel out of there.”
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