From what Rosie had told me and from my own research, I knew the average age was twelve to fourteen for girls entering the sex trade. Most were runaways and throwaways. More than 70 percent of them had been sexually abused and certainly neglected and unprotected at home.
Once a child had run away or been thrown out, she could be approached by a trafficker within forty-eight hours of leaving home because they could spot her easily—a girl with low self-esteem who just wanted a loving relationship she couldn’t find at home.
Joe was in the kitchen preparing our dinner. The photo of Rosie’s cousin Cathy was still in my pocket. I’d kept looking at the child’s pale delicate features all through the afternoon and never put it in my briefcase. I pulled it out one more time.
“Shrimp marinara tonight. What’s that?” said Joe, glancing up from his skillet. The smell of browning butter filled the air. I showed him the photo. “Hmm. Looks a lot like Rosie Jenkins,” he said, stirring the golden froth then spooning in some diced onion. Since he moved in with his special skillets and sharp knives, Joe did all the cooking in my house. It was his particular pleasure to make what all who knew him considered the best fish and pasta dishes in the state. I considered myself blessed.
Charlie, my Golden Retriever, groaned and lifted up from his dog bed as if it was an incredible effort to greet me. His golden eyes fixed me with a bored stare, but then he made it over for a scratch behind the ears. After all, I was still the one who fed him even if his heart belonged to the alpha male now scraping the skillet and adding tomatoes.
“Rosie gave me this picture of her cousin, Cathy. She encountered her with her pimp last week in Reno. Cathy’s the one she told us about who ran away from the same home that drove Rosie into the streets of Los Angeles.”
“And probably the same mother’s disgusting husband. I’ll bet that bastard still hasn’t done time for raping kids. I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on that son of a bitch.” Joe’s contempt was visible in his face.
“If only you could have, or some cop in LA could have. Remember how she told us that after she fought him off, her stepfather dragged her out of her mother’s house and threw her in the back of his car? He drove downtown and sold Rosie to a trafficker for a hundred and fifty dollars.”
Joe turned back to concentrate on the sauce in his frying pan, but I could see his shoulders tighten with anger. “I remember Rosie telling us the trafficker was kind to her at first so she didn’t run away. He promised to get her an apartment and a job in a supermarket. Not that she had any reason to go back home.”
“And if it hadn’t been for a good cop in LA, Rosie might still be with him and still be ‘in the life,’ as she calls it.”
“Or still on the internet. That’s where most of the sex-for-money deals are made now.” Joe lowered the heat under his sauce and poured us each a glass of wine. His face was flushed. “It makes me want to throw up. A guy comes to Vegas or Reno for business, or an event like a rodeo or a show. He has a good time, a few drinks, then goes up to his hotel room, brings up a site on his laptop and orders a girl brought to his room. If he likes them young, he orders a kid.”
“Is it always visitors?”
“Christ, no. Sometimes it’s a Nevada resident who just likes sex with underage girls.” Joe’s face grew redder with his anger. “And the public tolerates this because they think all the young girls are over eighteen or prostitutes imported from poor countries.”
“Haven’t some of those girls been kidnapped?”
“Some. But a lot of the young girls being trafficked in the west are runaways from Nevada and California. A Reno cop I know told me 50 percent of the girls are from this area. This is a transportation hub as well as a major tourist area. The girls were more likely lured away, or found as runaways, but not abducted. Rosie was dragged away from home and sold, but she stayed with her pimp. Many of these children stay with their pimps even when they might escape.”
“It amazes me how few people care about this crime.”
Joe swallowed a large mouthful of wine. Both of us had talked about this before. We knew sex trafficking was the second-largest growing crime in the country. In many places, it had replaced drug trafficking. Unlike cocaine or heroin, sex was a renewable commodity. A pimp could sell the same girl over and over again. And the sentences were much lighter if he got caught.
Joe’s anger transferred to me. I could feel my blood heat up. I drained half the wineglass. “You know, if some man we knew as a neighbor or a colleague at work went to a hotel and had sex with a twelve-year-old, we’d label him a pedophile and have him arrested.”
Joe’s groan was deep and fierce. He walked to the kitchen window. “I guess ordering online and paying the kid who shows up gives a man who thinks of himself as respectable permission to do the unthinkable.”
For a minute or so the only sound in the room was the light bubbling of tomato sauce.
“Rosie says the Reno PD hasn’t found her cousin yet and wonders if you could help.”
Joe turned back from the window. “Reno PD has some good men and women specializing in sex trafficking. If they haven’t been able to find the girl, it’s possible her pimp moved her to another city. Maybe the encounter with Rosie scared him off.”
I walked over to Joe and put my hand on his arm as he stirred the sauce. “Would you mind looking into it?”
Joe kissed my forehead.
I knew he’d do what I asked. He never turned me down.
After dinner, I called Rosie, and she showed up with her cheeks flushed pink as if she’d run all the way from her apartment to my house. Her words were rushed. “Thanks so much, Detective Morgan. This really means a lot to me.”
Joe settled Rosie on the living room couch and took the chair opposite her. He leaned forward, notebook in hand, green eyes focused, voice professionally gentle. I loved the way Joe responded to people who needed help.
“Rosie, I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to do, but I will call the chief in Reno first thing tomorrow and find out what they ran into.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. The Reno cops are very thorough and experienced, so it’s quite likely your cousin has just been transferred to another location. There’s major trafficking in several western cities, especially those that draw a tourist crowd.”
Rosie’s shoulders slumped. “I know. The creep who pimped me out took me to Dallas and Vegas. Fortunately, he always brought me back to LA, where I was rescued.” She looked intently from Joe to me and back to Joe. Her small frame twitched. “What I hope for Cathy is a good cop like the one who found me and took me away to a rehab center in Colorado.” A small smile accompanied a tilt of her head. “I’m told you’re a good cop, Detective Morgan.”
Joe returned the smile. “You don’t have to flatter me, Rosie. I’m going to do what I can tomorrow. Now, tell me what I need to know about your cousin.”
“Want some coffee to go with this?” I asked.
Joe nodded and Rosie looked up at me. “Thanks, Red. That would be great.” As I left for the kitchen I observed that their heads were close together, totally absorbed in Rosie’s account.
Rosie described Cathy as about five foot three, thin frame, pale skin, small breasts, and short spiky very light blond hair. When Rosie had last seen her in the mall, Cathy wore thick black eyeliner under and over her blue eyes, plus silver shadow and thick mascara. She was dressed in a tight t-shirt and shorts, a denim jacket and high-top sneakers. “The point is to make sure she looked like a kid, but a sexy, available kid.”
Joe’s notes were detailed. Rosie’s memory for the ways of teen trafficking victims was sharp and educated. “The idea is to get the john to think that she’s a dumb kid who really likes sex and who really wants him bad. She’d almost do it for free, he’s so attractive and she’s so hot for him. Of course, she knows the pimp is watching her fr
om a few feet away and she’s scared to death of failing to make the deal. At the same time, she’s sick to her stomach because the john is a bald, overweight forty-year-old.”
“Can you describe Cathy’s pimp?”
“Husky, round-faced, white, maybe Hispanic. Dark brown hair. Average height. I didn’t talk to him long, but I suspect he came on to her as a huggy bear, recruited her with affection and then turned her out.”
Joe had interrupted Rosie at that point. “Tell me about Cathy as a child.”
Cathy had come to live with Rosie’s mother and Rosie when she was three. Her parents were gone, a mother who had died of an overdose and a father, Rosie’s uncle, who had been sentenced to twenty years for dealing. It was the imprisoned father who had requested his sister become Cathy’s guardian.
Rosie was seven when Cathy arrived and the two had become sisters almost immediately. Cathy was charming and bubbly, loved games, dolls and ice cream.
“What flavor?” asked Joe, without looking up from his notes.
Rosie thought for a moment. “Strawberry with sprinkles. Does it matter?”
“Everything matters.”
An hour and a half later, Rosie said goodnight and Joe put his notebook back in his jacket pocket.
“Do you think you can help her?”
Joe leaned his tall body against the frame of the kitchen door, his hand going up, fingers idly playing along the top of the doorframe. “Hard to say. But I think, instead of calling Reno PD, I’m going to drive to Reno tomorrow and sit down with some of their task force people. See what they know and don’t know.”
As I said before, Joe never turned me down. Never let me down either. His particular soft spot for children was made more intense by his memory of a dead boy in Chicago years ago. The boy had been dressed in a puffy coat and a ski mask to make him look older while he tried to rob a delicatessen. The gun he had aimed at Joe was defective, but Joe hadn’t known that and fired.
Long after he had left Chicago PD and moved back to Landry, Joe had still not forgiven himself. So whenever a crime involved a child, Joe Morgan made sure he was in on the investigation. Day and night if necessary.
Chapter 4
The next morning, five minutes after I entered my office, I received a surprise visit from the provost. I learned some time ago that the slender chairs in front of my desk were no good for men as sizeable as Manny Lorenzo, so I steered him to one of my large upholstered armchairs and sat facing him on the couch. Nell brought us coffee, placed the mugs quietly on the coffee table and then left, closing the door behind her.
Manny stirred milk and too much sugar into his coffee. His massive chest rose as he took a deep breath. “Danica Boerum,” he said. “I know what I think. What do you think?”
“I think you need to talk it through.”
“Because…”
“Because you walked clear across campus to get to my office when all you had to do was pick up the phone.”
“I miss being in a journalism school.” He winked. “Everything is always so black and white.”
“We’re in color now. Even shades of gray.”
Manny put down his mug and laced his fingers behind his head. Still youthful-looking, the lines in his tan face had deepened and gray streaks had shown up in his thick dark hair since he took on the management of all the academic matters at Mountain West. A dean’s job is tough enough, a provost’s even more demanding. I was flattered that Manny considered me his friend when he had a problem to work out. “Oh, Red, I despise everything that Danica Boerum stands for, but I cannot, absolutely cannot, bring myself to ban her from this campus.”
“I despise her ideas too, but I think you’re right.”
Manny’s features sagged with despair. His usually bright brown eyes looked confused and sad. “My parents would have given me hell if they knew what I felt bound to do here. My mother and father lived with anti-Mexican prejudice all their lives even though they came to America legally, became citizens, owned a business and put three kids through college.”
“That must have been very hard for you to deal with.”
“It was. My father was so resentful of what he had to endure, he told me that when he died, I was to take his body back to Guadalajara so he could be buried in friendly soil. My mother asked the same thing.” He rubbed his hands together. “And now here’s their well-heeled, well-educated son about to let a bigot speak on this very campus.”
My heart ached for my good friend. I tried to think of some way to comfort him. “Maybe the way to think about it is to accept that Boerum was invited by a student organization for a theoretically private event. She’s not speaking at an official university event. She’s not even appearing in one of our classrooms. She’s not coming as a commencement speaker to address an entire graduating class and their families.” I paused. “I mean, we’re not in the same position as those schools who felt they had to disinvite Condoleezza Rice and Christine Lagarde from their commencement speeches just because some students and university staff didn’t like their policies.”
“I hated that,” said Manny.
“So did I. I was embarrassed for them.”
“Rice and Lagarde weren’t racists or even radicals. They were just distinguished women with different opinions. But I agree with you. I couldn’t understand why the students at those universities couldn’t bear to listen to someone with whom they disagreed for twenty minutes. There was always the slim chance they could have learned something.” Manny’s face had relaxed a bit as he reminded himself that he was probably making a reasonable decision.
“Students are increasingly touchy these days. I have a complaint on my desk about one of my professors showing photographs of soldiers discovering the piles of dead bodies in Auschwitz,” I said.
“Good Lord, why?”
“Some of the more sensitive think they should have been excused from class before the photos were shown so their sensibilities could have been spared.”
Manny rolled his eyes. “And these students want to go into journalism?”
“Yep. I have a few who think today’s journalism is all just Comedy Central and Entertainment Tonight.”
“Oh, I remember those. The same ones who don’t understand why they have to take geography—or, for God’s sake, American History—when all they plan to do is cover plane crashes and human interest stories.”
“I know. I’m not very sympathetic to them. If they want to work for any important media outlet, they’ll have to be able to report on some dreadful events. That means having to cope with terrifying sights and sounds without losing their equilibrium.”
“Psychologists and nurses have to be prepared for the same world. And all of them have to be prepared to work in a difficult world. Yet I have faculty in my office every day trying to educate their students on how to deal with trauma, and at the same time trying to figure out how to avoid discussions that trigger memories of negative experiences.”
We both paused and reached again for our coffee mugs, eager to avoid the direction we both knew our conversation would take.
“Any chance you could get the student Purists to hold their Danica Boerum event off campus?”
Manny frowned. “They bought that old fraternity house on campus so they could have a place to live and hold meetings. To feel safe, as they told me. They know they’re unpopular. They plan to hold a private dinner inside followed by a speech under a big tent covering their front lawn and parking lot. They believe they have a right to have this meeting on campus.”
“And what does Provost Lorenzo believe?”
“I grew up in journalism just like you. But even if I hadn’t, I believe in the Constitution and in their First Amendment rights.”
“But you’re worried about violence.”
“Yes. Not so much from Boerum or her staff, but from the audience. The same limit
ed thinking that produced your student complaint often characterizes those people who will think it’s all right to raise hell when you hate what someone else believes.”
“Yet even with that worry, you’re not going to ban Danica Boerum’s appearance?” I said.
“Nope. Much as I’d like to, I’m not. Neither will President Stoddard. He won’t attend her speech, but agrees with me that Boerum has a right to her dreadful opinions and the Purists have a right to listen to it.”
“So, if you’ve already decided it’s okay to let her speak, what did you need to see me for?”
Manny took a final swig of coffee, rose from his chair and headed for the door. “I was hoping you could somehow talk me out of it.”
“Sorry, pal.”
After Manny left, Nell came in to pick up the coffee mugs. “Provost looked unhappy.”
“He’s worried, and he should be.” A wave of nausea hit me. Maybe I was under more tension than I realized, or heading toward a bout of flu. I steadied myself on the edge of my desk.
“You okay?”
“Do I have any appointments this morning? I think I may go home for the rest of the day. I seem to be coming down with something.”
“A student wants to file a grade appeal and said he needed your advice and Rosie Jenkins called. Wanted to see you this afternoon after her last class.”
“Tell the student to speak to Edwin Cartwell about the grade appeal. Edwin gives good advice. Unless, of course, the appeal is against one of his grades, in which case, you talk to the student. You know more about academic procedures than anyone around here.”
Nell’s chin went up a notch. “Thank you. What about Rosie?”
“Tell her to call me at home later this afternoon. Maybe I’ll be up to a meeting by then.”
The nausea stayed with me on the drive home. I called my doctor when I got into the house.
Red Solaris Mystery Series Boxed Set: Books 1-3 Page 49