I remember watching TV . . . something stupid on Netflix. I remember having a burrito for dinner and making a salad. I remember wondering where the hell am I? What am I doing here? I remember getting high and then I didn’t care so much about anything anymore. I think it was eleven o’clock. Ricardo had been out for most of the day and I had been cooped up inside. I didn’t go out because he told me not to leave the studio on my own. He said it wasn’t safe and I’ve been out on the streets with him enough times to know he’s telling the truth. I was still upset about Mandy. I asked what he saw in Mandy that he didn’t see in me. He said plenty, but I was all right. I asked if he slept with her. He told me it wasn’t any of my business. I told him I’m not a dumb little girl from Potomac anymore. He laughed. I told him I wanted to quit. I told him I couldn’t do it anymore. He said, “Jessie, you walk away from me now and I’ll kill you.” He said it joking like, ya know? But I dunno. Something about it didn’t sound like a joke to me.
I was thinking about Mandy a lot. She was eating me up like acid. Was she that much prettier than me? Did she have a better body? Was she better in bed? My emotions count, too! I have feelings, but Ricardo doesn’t seem to care. I cried about it, but he told me to control myself. He wanted sex, but I didn’t want to do it. I wanted him to leave my room. My pictures aren’t any good anyway. I’m no good at this. I’m not a model. I’m not beautiful like Mandy. I just want to go home. Now I miss home. I told Ricardo no to sex. And he grabbed my hair and yanked my head back hard. I cried out because it hurt. He said don’t ever say no.
I’m stuck. Now I get it. I’m isolated from my friends. I have no phone. No money. I don’t even know where the hell I am. All I have is my journal. I keep it hidden inside a slit I made in the mattress. As long as I keep a sheet over the mattress Ricardo can’t see the cut I made. It’s safe to put my secrets here. And my secret is this. I’m going to leave. I’ve decided. Even if I’m broke, I’ll figure it out. I’ll walk away if I have to. Nobody owns me. I’m my own person. He can have Mandy all to himself! Asshole! This whole modeling thing is BS, too. A big heap of BS. Jessica Barlow! Ha. What a joke. Baby, I’m gone. Ricardo just doesn’t know it yet.
Holding off a bit. Ricardo was just so sweet to me. He made me dinner and he gave me a back rub. He told me he was sorry about Mandy. He said she’s nothing compared to me. He was being stupid. He swears to me he didn’t sleep with her. All they did was kiss and he said she was a terrible kisser. Nothing like me. Those were his words not mine. I didn’t tell him I was planning to leave because I didn’t want him to be mad at me. Guess I’ll stay for a bit longer. We’re going to do another photo shoot in the morning. Maybe those will be better. I think Stephen Macan knows we’re living together, but I guess he didn’t care. He just wants good pictures. Who knows? Maybe I killed Jessica Barlow prematurely! LOL!!!
Buggy came over after the photo shoot. He had on that stupid hat of his. Stupid jeans. Stupid bowling shirt. He had that cruel look in his eyes and reeked of cigarette smoke and marijuana. Booze, too. It was dark out when he showed up. I don’t know what time exactly. He and Ricardo smoked a blunt in the kitchen. Ricardo showed him the pictures and Buggy wasn’t impressed. He said I looked like a high school kid. Ricardo said for a high school girl I was broken in good and he laughed. Buggy said he’d break me in even more and then they both laughed. They talked about me like I wasn’t there. Ricardo said to Buggy that he should kiss me because I was a really good kisser. Buggy came over like it was going to happen and I pushed him away. He looked at Ricardo like something was wrong. Ricardo told me not to embarrass him. Buggy went to grab me and I pushed him away even harder this time. I saw fire in Ricardo’s eyes. He said, puta, you better use that tongue of yours and treat my buddy Buggy right. I ran into my room and closed the door. Buggy said something I won’t even write here. I heard Ricardo and Buggy talking about me, Ricardo apologizing to Buggy for my behavior. I looked out the window. The apartment wasn’t that high up. I tried to open the window and that’s the first time I realized it was nailed shut.
Here’s what happened, how it happened, as it happened. Obviously, I’m still alive. I’m still here. But I keep reliving the moment everything changed over and over again in my mind. I have to do something to help me process it all, so I’m recording it here best as I remember, as if I could somehow write it all down while I was fighting for my life.
Ricardo knocks on the door and won’t stop knocking. I won’t open it for him. He bangs on the door with his fists. I’m on my bed hugging myself, scared out of my mind, really freaking out. Ricardo is pounding away, telling me open the door, calling me puta—a whore. He says if I don’t open this door this minute, he’ll kick it in and then he’ll use his belt and whip me like a mule. So I get up from the bed and open the door. My whole body is shaking.
Ricardo doesn’t hit me though. He wants to know why I didn’t kiss Buggy like he asked me too. He reeks of weed and his eyes are red as rubies. He asks me again about Buggy. I say because he’s gross and that it’s gross. He grabs my shoulders and squeezes them hard enough to make it hurt. I ask him why the windows are nailed shut. He says because this is a bad neighborhood. I tell him I want to leave and he says go ahead and leave. He steps away and makes a path for me to the door. I take a few steps. To my back he says out there I’ll be mugged and raped in a matter of minutes. I hear the sirens at night, the occasional gunshots and I don’t think he’s lying, but I still take another step. Then he says if I walk out the door, he’ll make a call that’ll guarantee I’ll get attacked. Guarantee it. I ask what he wants from me. Good pictures, he says. We want to make you a Macan star. Just like Mandy? I ask.
He comes at me fast and slaps me across the face. I drop to the floor. He says I better shut my mouth. He tells me not to talk back to him. He’s older. He has more experience in his little finger than I have in my whole body. I’m too negative, he says. That’s why the pictures aren’t coming out. He’s got these eyes that fire up when he’s angry, redder than the bloodshot eyes of a guy high on weed, and it really scares me. He pulls me up by my shirt and gets right in my face and then without warning he just throws me to the ground. I hit the floor so hard I can’t breathe. I open my mouth, but I can’t get any air down. Then he climbs on top of me and puts his knees on my chest and pins me to the floor under his weight. There’s no rug underneath me and it feels like my ribs are going to snap. I swear they are going to break in half. He puts his hands on my throat and starts to squeeze. I don’t understand what’s happening at first. I can’t even explain it. It’s like my body wouldn’t work. I just went still. He keeps saying, you better be scared of me little girl. I’ll f’ng kill you if you f with me. I’ll rip your f’ing head right off. I’ll go find your mama in her fancy ass house and I’ll rape her and then I’ll stick this knife in her throat and laugh as she bleeds to death. You want that? Do you? You think your wallet is missing? I took it you little bitch. I know where you live girlfriend, he says. I got your home address. He pulls out a knife and he puts it to my throat. It’s a big blade, like you could cut a tree with it. Where did it come from? It’s like he had it with him the whole time and I just didn’t see it. He doesn’t press down with the blade or anything, but he holds the knife to my throat for a long time. I can’t stop shaking, can hardly breathe. You don’t ever talk back to me, he says. You got that? You don’t ask about what I do and who I do it with. I wanna screw Mandy I’m gonna do it. Maybe I’ll do it and make you watch. He says that and laughs. You got that little girl? Of course I do, I finally say. At this point, I’m almost hyperventilating, but I’m thinking about my mom. I swear he’s not lying about my wallet or what he’d do to her if I walked out. I have to keep it together. Ricardo gets off me and puts the knife away.
He leaves for a while. I’m broken, I’m weeping, I’m so alone, so lost, so confused, in my room (this room, not my room, this room) thinking about what I’m going to write in my journal. Ricardo comes back and sits down on the futo
n. He apologizes. He tells me he hates when people tell him no. He can’t handle it. He blames it all on the weed. He was high out of his mind when he told Buggy to kiss me, when he attacked me. He says he lied about taking my wallet, but he doesn’t take back what he said he would do to my mom. I’m so confused because he says he loves me. Why would he want to hurt me? He pulls me in close and hugs me. At first I resist, but he’s so upset with himself that I let him hold me. He strokes my hair and whispers in my ear that he’s so sorry for everything. He didn’t want to lose it on me like that. It just happens to him. Sometimes he can’t control himself. He loves me so much he says. I’m his perfect girl. But warns me not to ever make him lose control again. I ask him how do I do that? He says it’s simple, do everything I say, anytime I say it.
CHAPTER 16
Angie arrived at Mike’s apartment in Falls Church at quarter to eight in the evening. She pulled up in her seven-year-old Ford Taurus, which was kind of like a cop car and a good-sized vehicle for doing those dicey transport jobs. It was also affordable. Like Mike Webb, Angie cobbled together her income. If she graphed her earnings over the years, it would look a lot like the S&P 500—plenty of peaks and valleys, but a positive trajectory over the long haul. She added to her 401k diligently, but was still a few twigs shy of having something that resembled a nest egg. Everything had a cost, and she refused to think of her father as a safety net.
She skimped on life insurance and long-term disability, figuring she had no dependents to look after. The idea of having a kid or two continued to tug at her, and driving a car with so much back seat room felt a little lonely at times. On occasion, she would glance in the rearview mirror and imagine car seats, with scattered Cheerios mixed in with plastic toys.
Having a kid didn’t require a man, just his sperm. A few years back, she had contemplated artificial insemination then her business had picked up, and she had something other than learning how to cook clean eats to add to the list of aspirations she wasn’t fully equipped to tackle.
The only constant in Angie’s life was getting older. In a spare moment, she had researched freezing her eggs—just out of curiosity, just to know. The price tag was a real eye opener. It was ten grand to harvest them, five hundred a year for storage, and another five grand for IVF. Wasn’t going to happen. It wasn’t all about the money, but that was a big factor. The back seat of her Taurus would transport sullen, rage-filled teens instead of toddlers for the foreseeable future, maybe forever.
Five minutes after Angie had texted him that she had arrived, Mike Webb, wearing a light jacket, tan Dockers, and a patterned Oxford shirt, came strolling out of his apartment wheeling his carry-on luggage behind him. He went to the back of her car and tapped on the trunk to get her to pop it open. He stashed the luggage, settled into the front seat, and buckled in.
“Mike, we’re only going to be gone twenty-four hours. What’s up with the suitcase?”
“You always keep a suitcase of clothes in the back of the car.”
“Yeah, but that’s because I may need to tail somebody for a few days and I’d look conspicuous in the same outfit. This trip is just a drive, a meeting. It’s probably nothing.”
Mike laughed. “Ange, I’ve worked for you long enough to know that it’s never just nothing.”
Angie told Mike about the photograph and what Bao had found out. She showed him the picture and made sure he looked at the message and the strange code written on the back. “Any thoughts on what it could mean?”
“I’m not really into cryptography. That’s more a Bao thing. I could get this aged for you at NCMEC.”
“Yeah, I was going to do that.”
“I’ll take care of it for you. Send me a copy. What’s up with that ear of hers? It looks like a birth defect to me.”
“Maybe she was injured.”
Mike turned the picture sideways to study the part of the girl’s anatomy more closely. “It’s kinda freaky.”
“Tell me about it,” Angie said.”
“What about you? Is there anybody you’d want to ask for forgiveness?”
“Yeah, Carolyn Jessup if we can’t find her daughter.”
Thanks to the light traffic and the late hour, they made the drive from Falls Church to DC in just under thirty minutes. Potomac, Maryland to DC wasn’t too far a ride. Just under fourteen miles; thirty to forty minutes via the Clara Barton Parkway if the traffic cooperated. A bus line ran from the suburb to the metro area, and chances were that’s how Nadine left. She hadn’t traveled far from home—not so unusual. Didn’t make it any less dangerous. Predators could be found in any city.
She could have picked up a Metro bus at the Montgomery Mall. It was about a four-mile walk from Potomac to the mall, a doable distance even if someone wasn’t determined.
“Can you contact Metro and see about getting surveillance footage?” Angie asked. “I’m sure they still have it archived. Wasn’t that long ago, and we know the date and relative time she would have taken off.”
“You realize that Nadine could have gone to Union Station to take a train somewhere else. You know—Philly, New York, Boston, the places she searched.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“So tell me again why we’re here twelve hours before Sean Musgrave reports for mall security duty?”
“We’re going to canvas the bus and Metro stations.”
“They don’t open until morning.”
“Then we’re going to check some of the less savory neighborhoods.”
Mike groaned. “Oh great. That’s why you wanted to come so early.”
“She might be here.”
“Or she might be in Philly, like I said.”
Angie ignored him. “We’ll cruise down Fourteenth Street near the old red light district. Not optimistic though.”
“What about the hotels along New York Avenue?” Mike suggested. “Then check out the fringe areas around Catholic and Gallaudet.”
“Good call,” Angie said. “While we’re at it, let’s roll by Adams Morgan, too. Maybe stake out the Cambria Hotel, The Donovan at Thomas Circle, swing by some of the clubs.”
“Oh good. We’ll get our groove on.”
Mike wiggled his upper body in a toned down dance jig that revealed plenty about how he’d cut rug at a club.
“No, we got business to do.”
“What kind of business can we do at a club?”
“Nadine’s been gone for over a month now. She needs a place to sleep, food, a lot of amenities.”
“You think she might be working the street? The girl is only sixteen!”
“Yeah. And a girl’s gotta eat.”
CHAPTER 17
Strikeouts all around. Mike and Angie drove around for hours, stopping only once for a bite to eat at an all-night diner in Adams Morgan aptly named The Diner. There, Mike ordered a stack of pancakes, side of bacon, hash browns, and a black coffee chaser. Angie got an egg white omelet with spinach, tomatoes, no cheese, and a gluten-free vegan muffin.
Mike looked personally offended with her choice. “What are you doing?” he’d asked in a semi-harsh tone after the waitress left. “We’re at a diner. You’re supposed to order fun food.”
“Egg white omelets are fun.”
“For sure they’re the Cher to that vegan muffin’s Sonny. I can’t even believe they have vegan muffins at a place like this.”
“Gluten-free vegan,” Angie had corrected. “And they’re everywhere now.”
“No. No. Not everywhere. I’m from Willowick, Ohio and I guarantee you our local diner has no vegan muffins on the menu. Gluten-free maybe, but definitely not gluten-free and vegan.”
“Well, we have a lot of sitting and driving to do and I don’t want to feel gross. Heavy food makes me feel bloated.”
“How does someone make a gluten-free vegan muffin anyway?”
“Almond meal, oat flour, maybe some agave nectar.”
When Mike’s coffee and Angie’s lemon water arrived, he’d toasted Angie with h
is mug. “I take it back. That muffin sounds like the life of the party.”
For about an hour, they’d gone over the map, reviewing all the places they had visited. They had seen their fair share of young working girls, but nobody who resembled Nadine.
Mike had played the lure. He’d walked the streets while Angie kept a close watch from the car. Girls came to him. “Hey baby, looking for something, baby? Need something, sweetheart?” He was the perfect bait, with his khaki pants and patterned oxford shirt. No undercover cop would look so lame. He’d showed the girls a photograph of Nadine, and gave Angie the thumbs down sign after each encounter.
With luck, the security guard, Sean Musgrave, could give them a lead.
When five AM rolled around, Angie and Mike hit the bus counter at Union Station. She wore comfortable jeans and a loose fitting crew-neck top from Lululemon. Comfortable as she was, she felt as worn as her canvas sneakers. PI work, the real work, was a grind. No other way about it.
Angie tacked flyers on the pillars around the bus bays, knowing they probably wouldn’t stay up. She asked the people at the ticket counter if anyone had seen Nadine or recalled someone purchasing a ticket in her name.
By nine o’clock they were both hungry again.
“How’s that vegan muffin tiding you over?”
“Gluten-free vegan muffin,” Angie said.
They fueled up at the Starbucks inside Union Station and went looking for Musgrave. At noon, they were scheduled to connect with a DC detective who’d been talking to the team at NCMEC. Tracking down a runaway was a battle fought on multiple fronts, and Angie often felt like the general trying to bring disparate armies together.
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