It took her eyes several minutes to adjust to the darkness of the place, and the same foul smell was inside as well. Damien grabbed her hand, pulling her through crowds of people blocking the back hallway—men in T-shirts and tattoos, women wearing what looked like bathing suits, all of them drunk, some of them staggering, cackling. Everyone knew Damien.
“Hey, man! How’s it going?” the question came from everywhere and everyone they passed. “Damien—been trying to get in touch with you this week. Got a little something for you. Damien! I need to talk to you. Damien! Damien!”
What if someone checked her bed and found her gone? What if something went really wrong and they ended up in a car wreck or something? It was obvious Damien would be drinking. As soon as they walked into the room with the dance floor—its dark floors, walls and ceilings lit only by the strobes and colored stars projected onto the floor—Damien pulled her along. He parted the crowds as they moved until he finally positioned them in front of the bar.
“Whiskey for me.” Damien ordered his drink from a stern-looking, black-haired girl wearing very red lipstick. “What’ll you have?”
Kaki’s mind froze. She didn’t know anything about drinks. She’d never had anything other than a sip of beer, which had tasted terrible. “Um…” She stalled. “I—I don’t know. A Coke?”
He nodded to the girl. “Yeah, and spruce that up with a little rum, OK?”
The bartender nodded and went off to fill their orders.
“Really?” Kaki’s hand flew to her mouth. “Won’t we get in trouble?”
“Nope.” Damien looked at her, laughed, and shook his head. “You come into a bar and order a Coke?”
“I don’t drink. I don’t know what to order.”
Damien turned toward her, his dark eyes flashing a strange mixture of sexy and sinister. She was beginning to understand the appeal of the bad boy as her skin ignited with attraction for him. At the same time, she was scared, too. This was not the sort of guy who would take her to prom.
“You really do need me,” Damien said. “Did you grow up Mormon or something?”
“No.” A wave of embarrassment swept over her. She must seem really inexperienced and ignorant to him—a mature, sophisticated guy.
A sea of bodies on the dance floor moved like soulless robots, their faces blank and expressionless as they gyrated and jerked and salivated all over each other. Dark. This is a dark place and not just because it’s not well-lit. And no one knows I’m here. That thought sent a strange shiver up her spine, and she couldn’t tell if it was excitement or fear.
Once their drinks arrived, Damien took her hand again and led her down a hallway, into a room just across from the bathrooms. The room was cold, probably because it was positioned so close to the doors, but there were a couple of tables in the room littered with empty Chinese take-out containers and ashtrays full of cigarette butts. Damien motioned her toward a couch on the far side of the room, flanked on either side by posters of bands and scantily clad women. She sat down on the couch. The other end of the room was papered in advertisements for strip joints and several more posters of naked women.
“It’s a little quieter in here.” Damien fell onto the cushion beside her and nearly spilled his drink. “I thought this would be a good place to talk, get to know one another.”
He had to take her all the way into DC to a noisy, crowded bar to talk in a quiet place? He probably had his reasons.
“What is this place?” She finally took a sip from her drink. It was sweet and pretty much tasted just like Coke. “Do you come here a lot or something?”
Damien laughed. “Yeah, I guess you could say that. Me and a buddy own this place.”
“You own it?” She was impressed.
“Yeah. For a couple of years now.”
“So it’s just like…a dance club? You make a lot of money from owning it?”
“Yeah, I make a lot of money. Plenty of money to take care of the both of us.”
Kaki’s heart rate sped a little, thrilled at his words. Did he want to take care of her? They hadn’t known each other all that long, but her mind started to churn with ideas and dreams and plans.
Damien pulled her close to him, leaning down and kissing her. She tried to respond as best she could with her limited experience. She felt awkward and stupid. Was her mouth doing the right things? And what was she supposed to do with her hands?
As much as Kaki enjoyed the kissing, she involuntarily shrank away when Damien’s hands began to move toward the front of her shirt. She gasped. “I’m sorry.”
Damien sat back on the couch, fumbling in his pocket for something. He produced a small, clear, plastic bag filled with blue pills. He held them up in front of her face. “Ever tried these?” Before she could shake her head in response, Damien answered his own question. “What am I talking about? Of course you haven’t.” He opened the bag and pulled out two pills, quickly downing one of them and holding the other out to her. “For you.”
“What is it?”
“Oh, come on, baby. Don’t ask a bunch of questions. Just try it. You’ll like it. I promise.”
But Kaki really didn’t want to swallow something that she didn’t know about. Once a pill was down the hatch there was no getting it back. “What will it do?”
“It’ll just relax you. That’s all. It’ll make you feel a little like you’re floating on a cloud.”
She didn’t want to do it. But she also didn’t want to disappoint him. She took the pill from his fingers and popped it into her mouth, washing it down with a generous gulp of her drink.
She didn’t feel anything for a long time. Not until they were on the dance floor jumping up and down and the strobe lights looked like crystals flashing all around her. As she turned, the lights wrapped around her like the fluorescent, lighted necklaces she and her brother used to get as children during festivals. Kaki and Brandon twirled them around under blackened summer skies, attempting to smack one another with them and laughing when one of them cracked the rubber tubing against the other one’s arm or leg hard enough that it actually hurt and left little red welts.
Kaki wasn’t sure if Damien was anywhere on the dance floor, but other men were dancing with her, putting their hot and sweaty hands on her hips, panting against her shoulders with their whiskey breath.
She didn’t know how long she danced, or when Damien finally pulled her away.
She awoke. They were driving on I-66 West. Damien’s music thumped away in the cloudy recesses of her head.
An exit. He pulled off. They were on a familiar road. Her vision cleared enough to see the sign that read Welcome to Herndon. They turned down one street, then another, then her street.
“Hey.” He pushed at her shoulder to wake her. “You’re home. Can you make it inside by yourself?”
“Yeah…yeah…” In a near catatonic state, she rolled out of the car. Somehow, she made it into her house and into her bed. She only slept a few hours, waking to dreams of demons chasing her, pawing at her, trying to get her to follow them into hell.
4
Tyler
Monday, October 10
Tyler locked the front door and stepped off the front stoop into the unseasonably cool fall morning. Swiping the newspaper covered in a damp, plastic bag from the driveway, he carried it to his car where a frost covered the windshield. He sat inside with the defrost on high and waited for his car to warm up. Removing the paper from the newspaper’s plastic sleeve and unrolling it, he glanced over the headlines. One on the front page caught his attention. Local High Schools Battle Sex Trafficking Within Their Own Walls.
He backed out of the driveway. His morning routine consisted of a twenty-minute coffee stop, and sometimes a chocolate croissant, at Sam’s Café—a corner mom-and-pop place where he could read his paper before heading into work. After ordering his dark roast coffee and doctoring it with three packets of sugar, Tyler settled into a table by the door—his usual booth was occupied. He smoothed the paper a
nd began to read.
An investigation is underway to discover the whereabouts of two young females last seen entering their high school two weeks ago. On Friday, September 30th, Ariana Martinez and Marie Fuentes-Santiago were counted present in their first period classes, but disappeared shortly thereafter—seemingly into thin air.
Principal Shep Miller declined to talk to reporters, but Security Resource Officer Brad Franklin reported the girls had been recorded on security camera leaving the building from a back exit at 9:38 AM. A classmate of the girls claimed to have seen them climb into the back of a silver car parked on the curb at the side of the building. It sped away soon after. No one has seen or heard from them since, despite repeated attempts to ping their cell phones and track them through GPS devices.
This incident has prompted an investigation unearthing a widespread sex-trafficking problem spanning over a large cluster of middle, secondary, and high schools in the Northern Virginia area in which a combination of gang-related sex crimes, underage prostitution, and wide-spread drug usage intersect.
“I was thirteen when my mother sold me the first time,” says one sixteen-year-old girl now in safe housing and under custody of the state. “She said we needed the money, and so I did it.”
This unimaginable trend is not an anomaly. At least half a dozen minors from three different schools claimed their parents sold them to fellow gang members or strange men for money, food, or housing arrangements. And these are only the ones who have come forward.
“You get good at hiding it. You wear clothes that cover the brands, the tattoos, the needle marks, the bruises. And what’s going to happen anyway? So what if the school calls your parents? They’re the ones who sold you.”
Tyler took a bite of his chocolate croissant. Wow. It was almost too horrible to read. He was just glad this wasn’t his kids’ school.
“Hey there!”
Tyler looked up and into a familiar face. Mid-thirties, African American with the face of a model and the voice of a commanding officer. “Remember me? We’ve met a few times at the Wolfs’ Christmas parties? I’m Josh’s former colleague, Abbie Jackson.”
Oh, yes. Now he remembered. She had been at their summer cookout. Detective Abbie Jackson. “Yes, of course. I’m sorry it didn’t register at first.”
“No problem. I just recognized you and thought I’d say hello.”
“How are you doing? You still working with the Herndon Police Department?” Tyler remembered that she used to be Josh’s partner when they were both on patrol.
“Yes. I’m wearing quite a few hats at the moment. I’m on a gang-related task force now. How are you doing? And your wife—what’s her name again? Lara?”
“Lana. We’re doing fine. Hey, you want to join me?”
“Well…” She glanced back up at the busy counter where the baristas called out orders and slammed down silver pitchers with clanging stirs. “Maybe just for a second. I’m waiting for my double, extra-hot, soy, skinny caramel latte. They got the order wrong the first time.”
“I wonder why.” Tyler laughed. “They’re probably so relieved when I come in and order a black coffee.”
Abbie slid into the chair opposite him. “How’s Josh doing? I haven’t talked to him in a while.”
“I think he’s doing fine. He and Molly had dinner with us a few weeks ago.”
“Great guy, I think the world of him. I missed him so much when he left patrol to become SRO at Runnymede Secondary. But I still see him sometimes when he calls me in to check on a case up there.”
Tyler smiled. “Yeah, he’s a great guy. And a good friend. Let me ask you something, Detective Jackson. Have you heard about this case?” Tyler slid the newspaper around so that Abbie could read the headline.
She scanned the words, nodding her head grimly. “Recently I’ve worked on these types of cases. I sometimes join forces work with the county’s human trafficking task force.”
“Is this really going on?” Tyler asked. “Parents selling their children here in this area? That’s some sick stuff.”
“Afraid so. And more often than you’d think. Wherever you have drugs and gangs, you’ve got all kinds of stuff going on.”
Tyler shook his head. “I didn’t finish reading the whole article, but my understanding is that there’s a much larger sphere than just this one incident of the two missing girls.”
“It’s so hot in here.” Abbie stood and removed her coat, revealing the sidearm that hung on her hip. She draped her coat on the back of her chair before resuming her seat. “It’s a highly complicated situation with lots of operators. As I said before, we’re dealing with gangs here. We’ve got more than five thousand gang members in this area, and they’ve discovered sex trafficking in a big way. It makes sense, you know? People are a much more powerful commodity than drugs. Drugs—you use ’em once—they’re gone. You gotta get more. People? Well, you can use them over and over again. There’s a lot more mileage to be had in trafficking a person. Plus, these guys have such power over the women, you know? They get them so messed up in the head the girls don’t know what’s true and what’s not. And they’re completely committed to their pimps—or their boyfriends—as they call them.” Abbie’s tone of voice was both commanding and smart. She was very confident…and very attractive.
“As far as we know,” Abbie continued, “these two girls were both children of gang members. I don’t know anything for sure, yet—they’re still questioning a lot of people—but my hunch is that they’re probably in some other state right now. There’re a few leads, but to be honest, once they’re across state lines, it’s really hard to track ’em down. We gotta get the feds involved.”
“And it’s not just this one school. It’s happening all over the place, right?”
“Yeah. There’s a long trail of interconnected underage prostitution—and it’s not in an isolated area. There are cases here in Herndon and all over the DC metro area. All over the United States, for that matter. It’s widespread. These guys are highly networked, and they’re experienced at hiding the goods, which…in this case are under-aged girls.”
“I’ve read about sex trafficking going on internationally and even in this country, but…I’ve never heard about it going on in high school. I mean, this just seems like something the parents in this area should know more about.”
“They should. It’ll be more and more commonplace. Mark my words.” Abbie turned her head suddenly as the baristas called out something from the bar. “Oh, that’s me.” She stood, gathered her coat and stepped up to the bar.
Tyler remembered seeing Abbie at the cookout—with her well-toned figure and biceps in a short-sleeved shirt. She was in great shape—short in stature, but she still looked very capable. And she was a vibrant and enthusiastic woman. Smart, too. He had no doubt she had probably worked hard to rise through the ranks so quickly.
She made a pass by his table again. “It was nice talking to you, Tyler.”
He smiled. “It was very nice talking to you, Detective Jackson. Be careful out there.”
“Will do. You’ll tell Josh I said hello, won’t you?”
“I sure will.”
On his way into work, Tyler passed by Runnymede Secondary School where Molly and Josh both worked. It was still early, and the school remained dormant and silent. In another hour, it would be teeming with kids. Parents and adults alike would drive by on their way to work, viewing it as a place of learning and knowledge and never knowing what went on beyond the walls. For that matter, he didn’t really know what went on in there.
~*~
Tyler sat at the desk in his cubicle and stared listlessly at his computer screen. Crushing pain permeated his chest. It was only Monday. He’d somehow make it through today, and then he’d wait as late as possible before heading home to his depressed wife and noisy, needy children, along with a list of chores and expectations. Maybe this was what marriage looked like after ten years, but it hadn’t always been this way.
“Happy Monday. Have a fun weekend?”
Tara Pickard stood in the entrance of his cubicle. Tara had worked for CEF about six months. Fresh out of grad school, she’d assumed the graphic artist vacancy on the web services team left by a woman who went out on maternity leave and never returned. Tara was probably around twenty-four and cute as a button. She was gymnast-muscular and built like a cheerleader, with a personality to match.
Happy for the interruption, Tyler sat back in his chair, cracking his knuckles behind his head before resting them there, enjoying the full-length view of Tara’s feminine floral skirt resting just above her knees. “I don’t know.” He smiled. “Let me think. It was all a blur. Watched some football. Went to the gym—first time in a while.”
“Haven’t seen you on the racquetball court lately.”
“I’ve been pretty busy. Work and home and…you know. That kind of stuff.”
“I get it,” she said, smiling. “Hey, I finished that presentation you asked for—the one for the meeting tomorrow. The one with all the concentric, moving circles. I sent it to you.”
“Oh, right. Great. Thanks. I’ll take a look at it.”
“OK.” She moved as if she was heading back to her desk, but instead she clung to the side of his cubicle, her right leg raised behind her—one shiny pink pump frozen in mid-air. “And just so you know, I’m going by the gym today to play a little racquetball, if you want to join me. Blow off a little steam?”
Maybe after so many years of marriage Tyler was a little slow on the uptake. But that flash in her eyes and the model-like pose she held against the opening of his cubicle? Tara was flirting with him. He fidgeted with a pencil on his desk. “Maybe. Let me see how the day plays out.”
A voice inside his head told him he was stoking a fire he had no business tending. He should go straight home, do not pass Go, do not play racquetball with Tara Pickard. On the other hand, maybe she was right about blowing off a little steam.
Suburban Dangers Page 4