Isabel's Run (15 page)

“Makeup, for sure. She was dressed pretty plainly, but she was heavily made up. But that wasn’t it. You want to know what the big tip-off was for me?”

“What?”

“When she was walking past, she walked right in front of the Jeep. When she got there, she slowed down—almost stopped. Then, just for a second, she looked right at me, and our eyes locked. The thing that got me—it was her eyes. She had the same eyes as I remember from Fort Benning. The same sad eyes.”

THE NEXT MORNING, Thursday, June 7, I called Nancy and passed on the information Reverend Art had provided, particularly the names Donnie Martin and DeMichael Hollins, along with details about the North Side Street Boyz. She said she’d spoken to the gang-unit commander and that he was in the process of talking to the two detectives in charge of the north area. She agreed to have them call me directly.

After the call, the Logan PI team held a short meeting in the office before breaking up for the day. Reverend Art had said that NSSB was active in the area north of the U-District. Our plan was for Doc and Toni and me to leave the office at nine thirty or so and drive over to the Ravenna area, which abutted the U-District on the north. Kenny’d done a little research, and in addition to the 8 x 10 photos of Isabel he’d printed for us from the mall photo-strip photos, he gave each of us a list of half a dozen shopping centers to canvas. We decided to pay particular attention to drugstores, coffee shops, beauty supply stores, hair salons, and clothing boutiques—the kinds of places we figured Isabel, Crystal, and the other girls would visit and be remembered.

Walking the street, talking to shopkeepers, showing pictures around—this is about as low-tech old school as it gets for detective work. It’s pretty much the way it’s been done for a hundred years or so. Granted, it’s a little crude, and it’s not terribly efficient. But when you’re looking for a low-profile missing person who either by choice or by coercion is off the grid, it’s still the best way to develop leads and get the ball rolling.

Ironically, even though she was just sixteen, Isabel wasn’t completely off the grid. For starters, she’d left home with a cell phone. Kenny’d had some luck in the past using a cell phone to locate a missing person. The easy way to do this requires the missing cell phone to be equipped with GPS (most new phones are) and its owner to either have installed an appropriate app or subscribed to an appropriate service. If one of these things has happened—and if the owner of the phone gives his consent—then the cell phone can be remotely commanded to “ping” its exact GPS coordinates. This can be very useful in many situations—parents keeping track of their kids, for example. The drawback—at least from our perspective—is that absent the owner’s advance consent—something that’s basically impossible to obtain if someone’s gone missing—the phone won’t respond to a ping request.

Of course, law enforcement agencies have the ability to get around the consent requirement. And, thanks to Kenny Hale, so do we. Not legally, but from time to time I’ll make the judgment call that the ends justify the means. I won’t use it to track down someone running from a creditor. And I won’t use it to track down someone I think is just trying to get away from someone else—most often a wife trying to ditch a husband. But in the case of a sixteen-year-old girl who’s potentially being brutalized by gangbanger pimps, then the decision’s a no-brainer. I’m all over it.

I walked into Kenny’s office. “I’ve got some things I need you to check out while we’re out walking,” I said.

Doc was there, too. “No walking for him?” he said.

I shook my head. “He gets out of it.”

Kenny smiled. “Oh, darn,” he said. He turned to Doc. “You should have paid more attention in math class, dude.”

Doc gave him a little stink eye, and then he got up and left.

“Here’s the deal,” I said. I gave Kenny Isabel’s cell phone information and told him to pull the billing records and start working on trying to ping the phone while we were gone. Hopefully, she still had her phone, and it was turned on.

“Next thing, the police said another way Isabel might pop up on the grid was when her pimps decided it was time to try to put her to work. They would need to advertise, and now that Craigslist has stopped accepting these kinds of ads, there’s pretty much one game in town—”

“Backpage.com,” he said.

I looked at him. “You’re familiar with it.” It was more of a statement than a question.

He shrugged. “Isn’t everybody?” he asked. He noticed the look I was giving him. “I don’t look at the personal ads,” he protested. He paused, then he added, “Well, okay, maybe I look, but I never call them.” This I could believe.

“Just shut up while you’re still ahead,” I said. “Listen. If Isabel said things were too good to be true because the pimps had suddenly tried to put her to work, then it’s very possible that the pimps had already started to run ads. So, while we’re gone, I want you to start combing through all the ads. Take a look at the photos, and see if you can find one that matches the picture we have of Isabel. Look all the way back through mid-May if you can.”

“Got it,” he said.

“And while you’re at it, take a look at the DMV records to see if Donnie Martin or DeMichael Hollins pops up.”

He nodded.

With all the instructions given and everyone prepared, we hit the road at exactly nine thirty.

* * * *

If you divide Seattle up into quadrants using I-5 as the east-west divider and the Lake Union/ship canal waterway as the north-south divider, then you’d find the University of Washington nestled toward the center of the city in the upper-right, northeast quadrant, right along the waterway. The entire area surrounding the university—from Lake Union on the south to Ravenna Boulevard on the north and from I-5 on the west all the way to Lake Washington on the east is called the U-District. The area immediately north of the university is dominated by dense student housing and commercial shops, most of which exist to support the students or the thousands of workers who are employed in and around the university.

As I drove through the tight, crowded streets on my way up to my first shopping center on Ravenna Boulevard, I immediately saw what a smart idea it had been for Donnie Martin to base his operations around here. What better place to hide a group of teenaged girls but right smack-dab in the middle of thousands of other young people. The University District is a teeming cauldron containing an eclectic, funky mix of people. Eccentric dress, eccentric behavior, eccentric hours—hell, eccentricities are the norm for people around here. In fact, around here, it’s the normal people that stand out. Donnie’s girls could basically come and go as they pleased, with no one even noticing them. For that matter, the gang members themselves would also become effectively invisible in this area. In some areas of the Puget Sound, three or four young black men living in a house frequented by young pretty white girls would definitely
not
go unnoticed. But here—here in an area surrounded by an eclectic mix of young people, they would blend in.

I parked at my first designated shopping center and started talking to people and showing them Isabel’s photo. For the next two hours, I went door-to-door, showing the picture and asking if anybody recognized her. I visited four shopping centers. I got the same answer over and over. People were polite—some even seemed concerned. But no one could remember ever seeing Isabel. Doc and Toni had the same experience.

“It’s not surprising,” I said, as we gathered over lunch. We’d selected a Mexican restaurant on Ravenna Boulevard just after noon. “Did you notice how many shopping centers there are around here?”

Toni nodded. “A lot. There’s a lot that can go wrong—get in the way of us finding Isabel,” she said. “We could be hitting the wrong stores, for starters. Or Donnie Martin might not be letting Isabel out.”

“Or the store people might not be telling us the truth,” Doc said.

I nodded. “Most of the people I talked to sounded pretty sympathetic,” I said. “After I told them that Isabel was just sixteen.”

“I got the same thing,” Toni said. “Still, we’re only just a little better off than if we were looking for a needle in a haystack.”

“You’re a city girl,” I said. “You’ve never even seen a haystack.”

“I most certainly—,” She was interrupted by my cell phone. Caller ID: Kenny.

“Hold that thought,” I said to her. I tapped the talk button on the phone. “What’s up?” I said.

“Hey boss,” he said. “I got nowhere on the cell phone so far, but right away I think I’ve got a match on the personal ads.”

“No shit?”

“Yeah. I mean, I can’t be certain, but I’ve found an ad on Backpage, and the girl on the ad sure looks like the picture of Isabel we have. Looks older—sexier to be sure. But it still looks to me like it could be her.”

“Excellent. Good work, dude.”

“Thanks. You guys get any hits?”

“Not a one. Hold on for a second.” I turned to Toni. “Kenny thinks he has a match.”

“Cell phone or Backpage ad?” Toni said.

I nodded. “Backpage. He says the girl in the ad looks older and sexier than the picture we have of Isabel, but he thinks it’s her.”

“I’ll call Kelli and have her come in,” Toni said. “She’s the one who really knows what Isabel looks like.”

“She can come in now? No school?”

“I think she’s done,” Toni said. “But even if she’s not, she had a short schedule this last semester. Mornings only.”

“Good. Go ahead and do it,” I said. I brought the phone back up. “Kenny? You still there?”

“Yeah.”

“We’re going to finish up with lunch, then we’ll be back in the office. Probably just a little after one or so. Toni’s calling Kelli so she can come in and confirm the ID.”

“Cool. I’ll be ready.”

“Well done, dude,” I said, before hanging up.

Toni made her call and said that Kelli was “very anxious” to come in.

* * * *

We all walked into Logan PI together at 1:15 p.m. Kelli was already there, talking with Kenny in the lobby. We said hello to Kelli, and then I turned to Kenny. “You ready?”

“Yeah. I’m all set up on the big screen in the conference room.”

I nodded. “Good.” I led everyone back. It was nice outside, so while the others took their seats, I closed all the blinds to darken the room, but I propped the outside door open a little to let in some fresh air.

I sat down and said, “Okay, Kenny. It’s all yours. Show us what you found.”

“First,” he said, as a picture flashed on the screen, “here’s the picture of Isabel that her mom provided for us.” The blowup was from the picture strip, and it showed Kelli and Isabel together. “I scanned it and then used Photoshop to clean it up a little. Lightened this area, darkened that one. Basically sharpened up the focus and enhanced the contrast. It’s how I normally treat ID photos.”

The image changed. “Next, I cropped this enhanced image into a headshot of Isabel. This is the picture you guys have been carrying around all morning.” The picture was hardly recognizable as being from the snapshot. Kelli was gone, cropped away. Isabel’s image was much clearer and had much better contrast. Kenny continued. “When I crop it and then enlarge it like this, the resolution starts to work against us, and you see the start of a little pixilation, but I smoothed it up a little, so it’s still pretty decent. Better than a newspaper, for example. So hold that image. Now, let me switch and go to the Internet.” He closed the photo and opened up the Internet. “Here’s Backpage.com. Backpage is a nationwide site. You tell it what metro area you’re in, and it feeds you ads just for your area. You can see here that I’ve picked Seattle.” He waited for the site to catch up. When it did, he said, “Now you see these categories? Most of their categories are legit, but you see way over here on the right is a section called ‘Adult.’ We’ll pick the Escorts category from the Adult section.”

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.”