Isabel's run dl-3

by M. D. Grayson

  Once we were in position, we started watching the house. Donnie Martin’s white BMW was parked in the driveway, alongside a red late-model Honda Accord. I called Kenny and read him the Honda’s license plate number. Ten minutes later, he called back with the owner: Patricia Denise Wallace with a Kirkland address. Was this Crystal?

  The house was a neat, little two story with well-kept landscaping. It appeared quiet. I fired up the high-powered video camera mounted to the roof of the motor home. The camera is hidden inside a smoked plastic dome on the roof that looks a little like a satellite dish. When I pointed the camera at the front door, I was able to nearly fill the screen with a pretty sharp image-good enough for our purposes.

  We opened the main door on the “away” side to let some air in. I extended the awning, rolled out the carpet, and set up a couple of chairs. We wouldn’t be spending any time sitting outside, but it made the cover story all the more convincing.

  Being that it was June 9-an odd-numbered date, it was my day to pick the tunes. I couldn’t get too wild and crazy, though. After all, we were scheduled for the next day as well. Best not to annoy Toni if she and I were going to be spending the better part of the next two days elbow to elbow.

  “Movement!” Toni whispered, excitedly. It was her turn at the console, monitoring the front door of the residence. I’d been leaning back, completely relaxed, in the motor home’s lounge chair, listening to “Uncaged” by the Zac Brown Band. I snapped out of it quickly, though, and looked at the clock on the wall. It was 12:10 p.m. I looked at the console. A tall, thin, well-dressed black man and a white female with medium-length dark hair were coming out of the house.

  “Tighten up,” I said. Toni twisted the control, and the camera zoomed in closer on the two.

  “Donnie Martin?” I asked.

  “Watch,” Toni said.

  The two walked over to the white beemer and got in. A second later, the car fired up. A few seconds after that, it backed out of the driveway and headed south on Fortieth.

  “It’s him,” Toni said.

  “How do you know?”

  “He got in the car. It’s his car.”

  Duh. “Good point. You’re probably right,” I said. “You think that was Crystal?”

  “Could be. The age fits. That woman didn’t look like a teenager to me.”

  “True,” I said. “But in the photos, Isabel didn’t look like she was just sixteen, and Paola didn’t look like she was fifteen, either. It looks like I’m no judge.”

  “It’s hard. Especially since the young girls are trying to look older and the older girls are trying to look younger.”

  “Geez,” I said. “No wonder I can’t figure it out. Roll back, will you. Let’s have another look at these two.”

  Toni went back to the two of them coming out of the house. “Can you capture that? Let’s see if we can clean it up with Photoshop and print.”

  We kept an eye on the house for the next hour and a half while we worked on enhancing the photos. In the end, we were able to isolate each person, compensate for grain and shadows, and end up with a pretty decent ID shot. “That oughta work,” I said.

  “Cool,” she agreed.

  My phone rang-caller ID: Doc.

  “What’s up, Doc?” I said. I know. It’s corny.

  “We’re two minutes out. Clear to relieve?” Doc was asking if there was any reason why he shouldn’t pull in next to us now-like, for example, if the subjects were out in their front yard or something like that.

  “Stand by,” I said.

  I panned the camera as far down Fortieth Avenue as I could. There were no cars visible and, more important, no potential bad guys standing around who might get suspicious of us being there.

  “Come on in,” I said. “You’ll see Toni parked east of the rig. The spot on the east side of her is open. Go ahead and park there.”

  “Roger,” Doc said.

  A minute later, they pulled in. Kenny was driving. He shut his car off and hopped out. “Hey, this is nice,” he said as he checked out the awning and the chairs. “I haven’t seen it since you added the awning. All we need’s a barbecue.”

  I laughed. “I should bring my Weber grill,” I said. “That would make for a pretty sneaky surveillance setup, you think?”

  “No shit,” he said. “We’d be sitting right in front of them barbecuing Kobe burgers, completely invisible.”

  “Best way,” I said.

  Doc walked up. “I don’t see a beemer,” he said.

  “Yeah, they left a half hour ago,” I said. “A guy we think must be Donnie Martin and a white girl-might be Crystal.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Nope. Four hours. That was it.”

  “Show me,” he said. As usual, Doc was all business.

  We went inside. “Here’s a couple of photos we took. We think this is Donnie Martin-at least he was driving Donnie Martin’s car. And this is the girl who could be Crystal.”

  Doc and Kenny peered in. “She looks a little older,” Kenny said.

  “Exactly,” Toni said. “If she’s the bottom girl, that would make sense.”

  Doc nodded.

  “That your log?”

  “Yep. That’s it. They left at 12:12 p.m.”

  Doc nodded. “Okay then,” he said. “You guys are relieved. We got it.”

  “You boys play nice,” Toni said, smiling.

  Chapter 14

  At 8:15 A.M. on Monday, we were back in the conference room. We’d decided to end the surveillance of the house on Fortieth Avenue last night at midnight-the Winnebago was already back at the storage lot.

  “Scroll through them, slowly,” I said to Kenny. He was running through our combined logs for both days. We’d already been through them once; now we were tabulating visits.

  “So it looks to me like Martin makes a total of seven trips. Four of those times, he’s with Crystal. Twice, he brings back this guy here-,” I pulled another photo out, “-who we think is DeMichael Hollins.”

  “And Crystal makes four trips by herself in the red Honda,” Doc said. “Owned by Patricia Denise Wallace, aka: Crystal.”

  I nodded.

  “No other girls,” Toni said. “No Isabel.”

  “Nope.”

  “And I noticed something else,” Doc said. “These guys don’t seem to be too worked up about anything. If Isabel’s gone, they don’t seem too concerned, at least not outwardly. They seemed in a pretty good mood both times I saw them.”

  “I think you’re right,” I said.

  “Where are they coming from and going to?” Toni asked. “The other houses?”

  “Could be,” I said. “They’d have to visit them sometime.”

  “So, like Paola said, the girls are at one of the other houses,” Kenny said. “Maybe Isabel’s with them.”

  “Perhaps. It would be really nice to know how they’ve got their operation set up-where everybody stays, what everyone does.”

  “I know a way we can start filling in the blanks,” Doc said. “At least find out where the other houses are located.”

  “Vehicle surveillance,” I said.

  “Right. It will help us find out what they’ve got. We start following this guy Martin. See where he takes us.”

  I usually don’t like to do vehicle surveillance because there are only four of us, and it’s really hard to do a proper job of following someone in a vehicle with only four cars. It’s too easy for a wary subject to ID the tail. Then, once you’re made, you’re worse off than when you started. “I normally try to avoid vehicle surveillance,” I said, “for reasons known to all of you. On the other hand-though I don’t want to underestimate the NSSB guys-they sure don’t look like they’re playing defense out there. If they are, they’re really good at hiding it.”

  “What do you mean?” Toni asked.

  “What I mean is that these guys don’t seem to have a care in the world. They walk outside from the house to the car, and they don’t even look around, for Chr
ist’s sake. There could be a whole SWAT battalion parked at the house next door, and I’m not sure these clowns would even notice.”

  “Your point?” Toni said.

  “My point is it might be okay for us to follow them with just four vehicles. They probably aren’t even looking for tails.”

  “Floating box?” Doc said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Let’s assume the other houses are nearby. Did you notice the streets in that area?”

  “Yeah,” Doc said. “They’re friggin’ skinny.”

  “That’s right. A floating box might not work because you’d be stuck behind a slow-moving subject. Even a dimwit might get suspicious.”

  “So we use cheaters,” Toni said. “Cheaters” are cars that are parked ahead of the subject’s route of travel. They relieve the previous vehicle by falling in ahead of or behind the subject as it reaches their position.

  “I think that’s the best,” I said. “Kenny-pop open a map of the area.”

  Kenny selected the proper file and zoomed to a map of our four-quadrant area.

  “Go ahead and put a mark by the Fortieth Avenue house,” I said.

  After he did, I asked, “Now-when Donnie leaves his house here,” I pointed to the red square Kenny had placed on the Fortieth Avenue address, “in which direction is he ultimately going to be headed?”

  “West,” Doc said.

  “West or south,” Toni said.

  “I think west, too,” Kenny said. “Maybe south.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” he said, “that’s what he did every single time on Saturday and Sunday. He never went north or east that we can tell. Besides, if he does go north or east, the area tends to change to bigger, more expensive houses. If he goes west or south, it gets to be more and more apartments and college-type housing. My guess is, he’d probably not have the girls-or anyone else-living in a nicer house than he does.”

  I smiled. “Well said. I hadn’t looked at that angle. But it makes sense. And it reinforces my strategy. Since we’re short on manpower, we’re going to have to take a few chances and be willing to swing again if we miss. Here’s the deal.”

  I detailed a plan that took advantage of the fact that there was about a 99 percent chance that Martin would leave the area either westbound or southbound, as seemed to be his pattern. We’d all be wearing our VHF radios with hands-free headsets. This way, as long as Donnie did more or less what we expected, we should be able to follow him without being detected-at least for a while. I figured we’d roll into position by 11:45 a.m. since on both days, Donnie and Crystal had left the house between noon and twelve thirty. Apparently, they went to lunch. If this was a habit of theirs, we’d be able to capitalize on it.

  The office phone rang. Kenny was nearest, so he answered. He turned to me. “It’s Lieutenant Stewart,” he said.

  “Good. I needed to bring her up to date. Put her on speaker, will you?

  “Good morning, Nancy,” I said. “We were just about to call you and fill you in on what we found over the weekend.”

  “Good morning,” she said. “Before you get started, you might be interested to hear that Annie Hooper was able to find a spot for Paola. They’ve just opened up a new house, and they were able to get her in. Annie made it a priority given the background of Paola’s case.”

  “That’s great news,” I said. “That girl’s been through a lot. Maybe now she can start to get her life turned around.”

  “We can only hope,” Nancy said. “At least she seems like she’s willing to take the step. I think it’s possible that she will continue to open up over time-although that might not happen fast enough to be of much value to you in your case. Anyway,” she added, “what’s going on? How’s the case progressing?”

  “You remember I told you we were going to hunt for Donnie Martin’s house-the one Paola mentioned was across from the park?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Well, we found it. I don’t know if it was extraordinary detective skills, or complete dumb luck, but we matched up the name on a power bill to an address that matched the description that Reverend Jenkins provided. We checked it out and lo and behold, Donnie Martin’s BMW was parked right out front. The house is located across the street from a park up on Fortieth Avenue North.”

  “Just above the U-District,” she said. “Just like Paola said it was.”

  “Right. And just like Reverend Jenkins said. Anyway, we staked out the house over the weekend.”

  “And?”

  “We saw Martin, or at least a guy we think was Martin-he was driving Martin’s car anyway-and a girl-older girl-we presume it’s his bottom girl, Crystal. By the way, we think her real name is Patricia Denise Wallace. I’ll send you her info. Anyway, we saw them come and go together maybe half a dozen times. Also saw a guy we presume to be DeMichael Hollins. He drives a maroon Expedition. We were able to trace the registration back to Hollins. We’ll send you that, too.”

  “Power bills and DMV info?” Nancy said, a touch of suspicion in her voice. “I don’t even want to know how you guys are getting this stuff.”

  “Better that way,” I said. “But my real point is, we never saw any other girls at the house. And since we were stationary, we don’t know where these guys were going or where they were coming from. Based on that, we’ve decided to do a vehicle surveillance this afternoon. We want to tail him and see if he’ll lead us to the other houses-including, we hope, the one where the girls live.”

  “That sounds logical,” she said. “ I know you guys know what you’re doing, but I have to say this-be careful.”

  “Definitely,” I said.

  “Oh, by the way, I got a message from our gang unit-they’ve assigned us the guy they say is most plugged into the north side. They asked me to set something up with you guys. He’s free to meet with you tomorrow.”

  “Great,” I said. “We can make any time tomorrow work. Just let us know.”

  “I’ll send you a text,” she said.

  “Good. Thanks for setting things up for us.”

  By 11:45 a.m., all four vehicles were in position. I was parked in the Bryant Playground parking lot-the same lot where the Winnebago had been parked over the weekend. Only I wasn’t driving the Winnebago. I wasn’t driving my red Jeep, either-the consensus of the Logan PI staff being that it stood out too much (an opinion that was hard to dispute). I didn’t set out to make the Jeep conspicuous-I just wanted it to be a pretty decent off-road vehicle, but by the time I’d lifted the body a couple of inches to accommodate the tall wheels and thirty-one-inch tires, well, I have to admit, it wasn’t easy to hide anymore. So I drove the dark green van with Lake Union Appliance Repair vinyl stickers slapped on the side.

  When properly executed, the rolling box method of vehicle surveillance doesn’t give the subject an opportunity to ID a tail, because the tail is constantly changing. One of the vehicles-usually the closest, is the “prime” vehicle and has command. That vehicle directs all the others. The prime vehicle might not be behind the subject, it might actually be in front with additional vehicles staged on parallel side roads in case the subject turns off. The command changes constantly as the team members take turns rotating into the prime position, never staying long enough to arouse suspicion. Good communication between all vehicles is essential, as is proper staging and placement of vehicles around the subject.

  We started by staging Toni across the street in a supermarket parking lot. If Martin turned to go south on Sixty-Fifth, I’d follow him as command vehicle, and Toni would follow me as backup. Doc was further west on Sixty-Fifth. He’d take off as I approached. When we got in range, I’d pull off and allow him to become the command vehicle while he was still in front of Martin. Toni would continue to stay well behind as backup. Meanwhile, Kenny was about a half mile south on Fortieth in case Martin decided to head off in that direction.

  At 12:15 p.m., pretty much right on schedule, I saw the door to the house open, and Crystal stepped out
, followed a moment later by Martin.

  “Showtime, guys,” I said into the headset. I watched as they got into the car and pulled north. As soon as he put his left turn blinker on, indicating he was turning west on Sixty-Fifth, I was immediately relieved-Martin was following his pattern. I said, “He’s turning westbound on Sixty-Fifth. Kenny-start making your way westbound.”

  I followed him westbound on Sixty-Fifth for a mile, with Toni behind me by about one hundred yards. Kenny was about five blocks south of us, paralleling our direction of travel. When we approached Doc, I pulled off, and Doc became the command vehicle. Toni continued to trail.

  Martin continued westbound for another mile, and then Doc said, “He’s turning south. Looks like he’s turning on Brooklyn. I’m already past.”

  I was just about to reach Brooklyn.

  “Kenny,” Doc called. “Are you at Brooklyn yet?”

  “Negative.”

  “Then just pull up on Fifty-Fifth and stop short of Brooklyn,” Doc said. “Don’t cross. Cover us in case he keeps heading south.”

  “Roger,” Kenny said.

  “Toni, are you going to follow him down Brooklyn?”

  “Yeah. It’s a tight street, though-I’m going to hang back a bit.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Toni, you’ve got command.” I was looking at the portable Garmin GPS suction-cupped to the dash.

  A few seconds later, Toni said, “He’s slowing down. He’s parking along the curb at a house across from the park. I’m going to slow down and then turn east here on Sixty-Second before I get there.”

  “Okay, they’re getting out,” she said a second later.

  “Kenny,” she called out. “Turn north on Brooklyn. Come up slow and do a drive-by and grab the address. The beemer is parked right in front of the house they went in.”

  “Roger,” Kenny said.

  “I’m making my turn onto Sixty-Second eastbound,” Toni said. “Kenny, you have the command.”

  “Roger.” Kenny loves the military lingo.

  “Do it slow but not stupid,” I said.

  “Got it,” he said. “I’m just going to call it out. One of you guys can write it down.”