Isabel's run

Before I drove into the neighborhood of Paola’s Angel House, I thought the streets near Ravenna Park where the NSSB houses were located were narrow. Fact is, they were boulevards compared to the streets in Paola’s neighborhood. “Streets” is actually kind-goat paths might be more accurate. I resisted the urge to turn myself sideways as I squeezed the Jeep through impossibly narrow spaces on the way to Paola’s house. No way could two cars ever pass side by side there. If I’d encountered a car from the opposite direction, one of us would have had to swerve into a parking space and wait for the other car to pass before proceeding. And if the skinny roadways weren’t bad enough, the streets were lined on both sides with tall trees that canopied completely over the roads. The effect was very much like driving through a narrow tunnel. If a person was prone to claustrophobia, he’d be in trouble. Fortunately, I didn’t see any other traffic once we pulled into the general area-the neighborhood was quiet and peaceful.

I turned onto Paola’s street, and shortly afterward Toni said, “There it is.” She always finds addresses first. She pointed to a house two doors up on the right. “I see the number on the mailbox.” I lucked out and found an empty spot on the curb only two houses away. We hopped out and began walking back to the house. “It looks just like all the other houses,” she said. “You can’t tell from the outside that it’s a home for girls.”

This assessment changed a little as we turned up the walkway to the house and went through the front entry gate. The home’s security features became more apparent. The windows were all covered with decorative wrought-iron bars painted white to match the house’s trim. It looked pretty, but it was secure-no one was getting through a window unless they had a blowtorch or a chain hooked up to a truck. As we drew closer, I noticed small, unobtrusive video cameras mounted up high, under the eaves. I counted five in the front of the house alone. “Smile,” I said.

I pushed the buzzer just outside the wrought-iron work that enclosed the front porch and protected the front door.

“Hello? Can I help you?” A girl’s voice.

“Hi,” I said. “Danny Logan and Toni Blair here to meet with Annie Hooper.”

“Okay. Hold your IDs up to the camera there in front of you,” she said. We each did as she said. Shortly thereafter, the gate made a loud click. “Come on in. Someone will meet you at the door.” We did as she instructed. The gate swung closed behind us and latched shut.

“Great,” I said. “Now we’re in jail.”

The front door opened, and Annie Hooper greeted us.

“Hey, guys,” she said. “Come on in.”

She held the door for us.

“Very impressive, Annie,” I said. “Looks very secure.”

“Thanks,” Annie said. “We take precautions. Occasionally, these girls’ pimps try to get them back. If they come around here, we want to be ready.”

“I’ll bet you have the police on speed dial,” I said.

“Yeah, it usually takes them just a couple of minutes to respond when we make a call.”

“And the fortifications and the cameras buy you that time.”

“That’s right. Come on back. Paola’s in the family room, I think.”

We followed her through the living room, past the kitchen and into a family room located at the rear of the home. Three girls were sitting around a coffee table-Paola was one of them. I hardly recognized her.

Without the layers of makeup and the poofed-up hair, she looked like she was about twelve years old. She wore white gym shorts and a light blue Nickelback T-shirt. Her long, dark hair was back in a ponytail. It had only been a week, but she looked fuller-as if she’d been eating better.

“She looks good,” I said quietly to Annie.

“We were lucky with her,” Annie said. “So many of the girls who we get are addicted to something-usually to meth. It sometimes takes a whole year to get them straightened out. Paola wasn’t addicted.”

“Good news,” I said.

Annie beckoned to Paola, who jumped up and walked over.

“Hi, Paola,” Toni said, reaching to shake her hands. “You look really good.”

“Thank you,” Paola said. I imagine that a compliment coming from someone who looked like Toni probably carried some weight.

“They treating you alright here?” I asked.

Paola smiled. “Yeah,” she said. “It’s really good.” She seemed happy.

“Paola,” Annie said, “Like I mentioned, Danny and Toni would like to ask you a couple more questions. They’re looking for two girls now-one of them’s Toni’s little sister.”

Paola nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll help you if I can.”

Annie led us all over to the dining room, where we took seats around the table.

“Paola,” Toni said, “we’re really happy to see that you’re doing well.”

“Thanks,” Paola said, smiling. “I like it here. Everyone’s nice.”

“Good. Look,” Toni said, “we’re not going to take up too much of your time. You know that we’ve been looking for Isabel Delgado. I think I told you that she’s a good friend of my sister, Kelli.”

Paola nodded.

“We took the information you gave us last week, and we went to work. We found that NSSB seems to have three houses around Ravenna Park. Does that seem right to you?”

Paola nodded. “The house where the girls live and the house where the boys live. Plus Donnie and Crystal’s house,” she said.

“We’ve been able to study the houses, but we still haven’t found anything about Isabel. We heard what you said about Isabel being taken out of the girls’ house and maybe sold to the guy in Las Vegas, but we can’t figure out where Donnie would take her and keep her until then. We don’t think it’s at either Donnie’s own house or at the boys’ house. What do you think?”

“If he still has her,” she said, “she’s at the boys’ house. The basement.”

“The basement?” I asked. “The boys’ house has a basement?”

She nodded. “It’s where they have all their parties,” she said.

Toni looked at me. When I was inside, I hadn’t noticed a doorway to a basement, although admittedly, I hadn’t had much time to look around before the two guys who were returning home early had interrupted me.

“If you’re in the boys’ house,” I said, “where would the entry to the basement be?”

“They have a little office in the back of the house,” Paola said. “There’s a door in there that goes downstairs.”

That’s right. There were two doors in the office. I had thought both were closet doors.

“If someone was down there, could you hear them upstairs?” I asked.

“No. They put this stuff all over down there so they can play their music really loud. You can stand outside or upstairs even, and you can’t hear anything that’s going on in the basement.”

“What’s down there?” I asked.

“There’s like a room with a sofa and a TV. And there’s two other rooms-bedrooms. And a bathroom.”

“How could they keep someone down there? Do the bedrooms lock up?”

She nodded. “Both of them.”

“So if you were locked in a bedroom, there’s no way you could get out or even be heard?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“And you think this is where they’d put Isabel?” Toni asked.

She nodded. “It’s where they put you if you got in trouble,” she said. “They called it the hole.”

Jesus Christ. If Isabel was there, I had to get her out. And I damned sure couldn’t allow Kelli to be sent there. “Let me ask you something else,” I said. “Do they do drugs over at the boys’ house?”

She laughed. “All day,” she said.

“Did you ever notice where they kept their drugs? Say, their marijuana?”

Toni and Annie both looked at me, wondering why I’d ask that.

“Yeah,” Paola said. “They kept weed in the kitchen closet, and they kept blow and crystal in the basement.”

“You saw it?” I asked.