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 four 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.”
