around like nothing I’ve ever seen. Just like a daylily that opens up in the morning when the sun hits it.”
“She has that effect,” I said.
The Vice and High Risk Victims Unit is located on the tenth floor of the SPD building. Dwayne announced us to the receptionist, who made a phone call. A couple of minutes later, a short, middle-aged woman with shoulder- length blond hair came out to greet us. The woman wore a beige tweed dress suit over a black blouse. Her police badge was clipped to the pocket of her jacket.
“Hi, Nancy,” Dwayne said, smiling broadly. He stepped toward the woman and gave her a warm hug.
“Hello, Dwayne,” she said, also smiling. “It’s so good to see you. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised to hear from you yesterday.”
“It’s been a while,” he said. “Here we are, just four floors apart, and it’s like we’re in two different cities.”
“So true,” she said.
“You know Gus, right?” Dwayne said.
“I do,” she said. “Gus-good to see you.” She smiled and shook his hand.
Dwayne turned to us.
“Lieutenant Nancy Stewart, I’d like you to meet Danny Logan and Toni Blair. They’re with Logan Private Investigations.”
“Danny Logan,” Nancy said, stepping toward me and offering her hand. “I’ve heard of your company. I know you by reputation.”
“Uh-oh,” I said, shaking her hand.
She laughed. “All good,” she said. “Nothing bad. You guys are held in high esteem in this building. All the old guys around here know Richard Taylor, of course. And now, you guys are making quite your own name for yourselves. You seem to be very professional-very effective.”
“Thanks,” I said. “We work hard at it.”
She turned to Toni. “Hello, Toni,” Nancy said. “It’s very nice to meet you.”
“Nancy and I used to work in the same unit,” Dwayne said. “That would have been in. .” he looked at the ceiling, thinking.
“That was some time ago,” Nancy said, interrupting him. “Let’s just leave it at that, okay, Dwayne? No sense dating ourselves.”
Dwayne laughed. “Okay,” he said, holding up his hands in surrender. “That works for me.”
“Are you guys going to be joining us this morning?” Nancy asked Dwayne.
Dwayne shook his head. “No, I wish we could, but we can’t,” he said. “We’ve got a meeting with the DA at eleven.”
“Good luck,” Nancy said.
“Thanks,” he said. “But I do want to get together and do lunch. We can talk about the good old days. I’ll bet we’ve got a lot of catching up to do-a lot of secrets to share.”
“Shhh!” Nancy said, smiling. “It’s a date.”
Dwayne and Gus left, and Nancy escorted us back to her office.
“That Dwayne is a fine man,” she said, as she took a seat at a small table in her office.
“He’s great,” I agreed. “He and Gus both.”
“Dwayne saved my life once,” Nancy said. “Knowing Dwayne, I’ll bet he didn’t tell you.”
I shook my head.
She thought for a couple of seconds. “Bad situation. Very bad-April 7, 1997. I’ll never forget.” She looked at us. “You should get him to tell you about it one day.”
“Dwayne’s a pretty modest guy,” I said. “He doesn’t blow his own horn much.”
“Well one day, you ask him about Raymond Allan Johnson. Mr. Johnson-may he rot in hell-nearly had my number. Dwayne fixed it for me. I’ll owe him forever.” She thought for a few more seconds, and then she focused on us and smiled. “But you’re not here to hear about my old war stories. Dwayne tells me you guys have a problem that falls into our purview.”
I nodded. “I’m afraid we do.”
I was just about to launch into the story when a handsome black man in his mid-thirties entered the office. He wore a badge clipped to his belt, alongside a holstered Glock. “Sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t get off the phone.”
“Danny and Toni, this good-looking young guy is my assistant, Detective Tyrone Allison.” We shook hands and Tyrone pulled a chair up to the table.
“Ty, your timing’s good. Danny was just about to start explaining what’s happened.” She turned to me. “You ready?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks. Yesterday, Toni’s little sister, Kelli Blair, approached Toni and me. Kelli said she was worried about her friend, Isabel Delgado.” I went on to explain Isabel’s story to Nancy and Tyrone, all the way up through the details of our visit to Isabel’s house. When I was done, I showed them copies of Isabel’s text messages to Kelli. After they’d read the messages, they looked at each other for a second, and then Nancy looked at me.
“What’s your initial impression?” Nancy asked. “What do you think happened?” If I was reading her correctly, she was probing, trying to figure out how to deliver bad news, wondering how to break it to us.
I nodded. “Let me start by saying you should know you can speak plainly to us-you don’t have to worry about saying anything that will shock or offend us.”
She nodded, and I continued. “That said, we’re starting to think that it’s possible-maybe even probable-that Isabel’s gotten herself caught up in some sort of underage prostitution racket, perhaps with a gang.” I looked at her. “We believe that Isabel probably felt like she needed to run away to escape her stepfather. She hooked up with some people and at first, her text messages seem to indicate that she was happy. Then, at some point, Isabel apparently came to some sort of realization that things weren’t as rosy as she’d been led to believe. No word since then.”
Nancy seemed to relax, knowing that she wasn’t going to have to deliver unexpected news. “I’d say there’s almost no doubt that that’s exactly what’s happened,” she said. “As a matter of fact, this seems like a classic case of a runaway being scooped up. Let’s start at the beginning. We usually figure that a runaway girl has less than forty-eight hours before a pimp approaches her. Of course, the pimp won’t actually say he’s a pimp-he’ll just offer shelter, clothes, food-stuff like that. A huge number of these girls don’t have any alternatives. The pimp’s initial offer is like a life ring to a drowning person. The next thing she knows, the girl’s completely caught up in the life.”
I leaned back in my chair. “Until yesterday,” I said. “I hardly knew anything at all about this. I had no idea the problem was so big.”
She nodded. “It’s very sad. We probably have somewhere around one thousand minor-aged girls actively being prostituted in Seattle right now. Basically, they’re sex slaves. And it’s growing faster than we can stop it.”
I shook my head. “It makes me wish there were more we could do. But at least with regards to Isabel Delgado, maybe we can help out.”
“We’ll take one-at-a-time victories,” Nancy said. “Sometimes, we’ll arrange stings where we can get five- maybe ten girls even. But one-at-a-time works well, too. Everyone we can pull out is one young life potentially saved.”
“Speaking of that,” Toni said, “what happens to these kids after you arrest them? We were wondering what would happen to Isabel when we find her.”
“We don’t actually arrest all that many kids anymore,” Nancy said. “Not unless it’s the only way to help them. A few years ago, the law enforcement community finally came to the realization that thirteen- or fourteen-year-old girls being coerced and manipulated by an older man into prostitution aren’t really the criminals in the equation. They’re actually the biggest victims of all-even if they are doing something illegal. That’s when we changed the name of our unit from just plain ‘Vice Squad’ to ‘Vice and High Risk Victims Unit.’ It turns out that the
