Isabel's Run

by M. D. Grayson

  “One other thing,” Toni said. “You’d better not try to get in touch with Crystal and warn her about us. We’ll be pulling all her phone records—cell phone and home phone. We’ll trace down every caller, and we’ll know if you called after today. There’d better not be any calls from you. Got it?”

  She nodded.

  “You do your part,” I said, “Just go home. Stay home. We’ll not turn you over to the Lynnwood police. You go on living your life. That’s a hell of a lot better deal than these other girls have.”

  She nodded.

  “Now get out of here.”

  She hopped up and double-timed it for the parking lot.

  Chapter 23

  AS SOON AS we got into the Jeep for the trip back to Seattle, I called Doc and asked him to run over to the Bryant Neighborhood Park parking lot and keep an eye on the house on Fortieth.

  “Call me if you see these guys—whether or not you see them with Kelli.”

  “Got it, dude,” he said.

  Next, I dialed Annie Hooper’s number. She answered on the third ring. I explained to her about Kelli deciding to go undercover and how she’d apparently hooked up with Crystal at the mall.

  “You need to get her out, fast,” Annie said. Her voice left no room for uncertainty. “You have a very short period—maybe forty-eight hours or so, during which they’ll try to wine and dine her—try to impress her and get her comfortable. Most likely, they won’t touch her in this period. But after that, they’ll start in on her. She’ll be given drugs. She’ll be pressured—heavily—to have sex with one or more of the gang members. Jeez,” she added, “talk about a silly thing to do. She stepped right into the middle of a real shitstorm.”

  Annie was talking to us through the Jeep’s speakerphone. I could see out of the corner of my eye that Toni was tense as she listened. I suppose that’s understandable.

  “That’s the way we see it, too,” I said. “Today’s Thursday. We figure that we need to get her out by Saturday—Sunday at the latest.”

  “Agreed,” Annie said.

  “Along those lines, our goal is pretty simple,” I said. “Rather than go in ourselves guns blazing, we’d prefer to get Nancy Stewart to do it. They don’t have the same kind of issues that civilians do when it comes to going in with guns. But we’re having some problems.”

  “What kind of problems?”

  “Nancy needs solid probable cause before she can get a warrant. The good news is that we think we have the gang’s locations and their vehicles all identified,” I said. “We’ve spent a fair amount of time on surveillance, and we’ve learned quite a bit. When the time comes, it will be a whole lot easier to mobilize and move against them. But the bad news is that this information doesn’t mean much unless we have some proof that these guys are somehow involved with Isabel. We need to be able to link them somehow. Unfortunately, so far we haven’t found Isabel—no sign of her. And because we don’t have any clue as to where she is, or even if the North Side Street Boyz are involved with her disappearance for that matter, Nancy can’t get the warrants that would allow her to arrest them or even to search the houses. The best we have regarding Isabel now is the fact that the person who answered the ad for Isabel was employed by NSSB.”

  “But from what you just said, you know Kelli’s with Crystal,” Annie said. “You have an eyewitness. And to some degree, that corroborates the story you heard about Isabel.”

  “True. But Kelli is over eighteen—she’s an adult. She can go where she wants and hang out with whomever she wants. The fact that she’s going along willingly—at least so far—makes it so that Nancy can’t go after her. No crime’s been committed.”

  She thought about this for a second. “That’s tough, then. What are you going to do?”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” I said. “When you said that we know Kelli’s with Crystal, you’re right. And we know where Crystal is—pretty much, anyway. If it comes down to it, we’re not going to wait for the Seattle Police Department to go in and get her out of there, to hell with the legal concerns. We definitely have the ability to do that on our own. That said, for obvious legal reasons, we’d rather have SPD do it. Which brings me to the real purpose of my call.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I was hoping that we might be able to speak to Paola again. When we talked to her last week, she seemed like she had more information—maybe a lot more—that she was not willing to share. Most of the good information we’ve been able to put together has come from our interview with Paola. We’re wondering if she can help us some more. Has she softened up at all? Do you think she might be able to add anything now?”

  The tires hummed softly on the pavement while Annie thought. “I don’t know,” she said after several seconds had passed. “She’s been making good progress over the past week. I don’t know if that means she’d be willing to talk. And I also don’t know whether she has anything else she can offer, even if she were willing to talk to you guys. That said, my inclination is that she’d probably be a lot more willing to do it now than she was a week ago. Would you like me to ask her if she’d be willing to sit down with you?”

  “That would be fantastic,” I said.

  “Let me call you right back,” she said.

  Five minutes later the phone rang.

  “She’ll do it. Can you be here at four? She has a meeting with a counselor until then,” Annie said.

  “Great.”

  “We don’t usually give our addresses out, but I don’t think you two are a security risk.”

  “We appreciate that.” She gave us the address—it was in Fremont, right on the way.

  * * * *

  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 wil
l 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.

  She laughed. “Yeah.”

  * * * *

  We stayed and talked for another forty-five minutes. Paola was completely candid, although the remainder of our conversation failed to yield anything else as useful as the revelation that the NSSB had their own private dungeon located beneath the boys’ house. Still, the talk was very helpful. Now that she was starting to see just a glimmer of how her life had been stolen by these thugs, Paola seemed almost eager to turn against them. She agreed that she’d be willing to sign a statement about everything she’d said if needed. We were very grateful. We thanked her and Annie and headed for the Jeep.

  I said good-bye and then tapped in Nancy Stewart’s number. It was 5:15 p.m., but I knew she’d still be working.

  “Vice and High Risk Victims, Lieutenant Stewart,” she said when she answered the phone.

  “Nancy,” I said, “it’s Danny and Toni.”

  “Hey guys,” she said. “Come up with anything interesting?”

  “We did,” I said. “Two things, actually. First, we just came from talking to Annie Hooper and Paola Morales.”

  “How’s she doing?” Nancy asked. “Did she have anything new to add?”

  “She’s doing really great and yes, she helped us out. A lot. We think we may have discovered where Donnie Martin is holding Isabel.”

  “Really?” she said. “Where would that be?”

  “Apparently, he has a secure room in the basement of the house on Brooklyn across from Ravenna Park.”

  “A secure room? Paola told you that?”

  “Yeah. Apparently, she knows it well. She says it’s where the gang has its parties. She says it’s been soundproofed, and from above you can’t hear anything that goes on down there. Basically, unless you know it’s there, you wouldn’t be aware of it.”

  “That’s interesting,” Nancy said.

  “That’s not all. According to Paola, there are two bedrooms down there, both lockable from the outside. Essentially, they’re jail cells.”

  Nancy thought about this for a few seconds. Then she said, “And Paola thinks that that’s where Isabel would be held?”

  “That was her immediate response when we asked,” I said.

  “Interesting,” Nanc
y said again. “What about Kelli?” she asked. “What does this have to do with her?”

  “Nothing—and everything,” I said. “Let me explain. As you and Tyrone explained to us, we figure that Kelli will have a small amount of time in which Crystal and Martin and maybe the others will try to schmooze her. You know—buy her clothes, treat her nice, win over her loyalty. Then they’ll ramp things up and start in with the drugs and forced sex. But with Kelli, there’s a twist. Never mind the fact that she’s older, smarter, and stronger than any of these other girls. The big thing is she already knows what’s up, and at the same time they’re playing a game with her, she’s also playing a game with them. But it’s a dangerous game because when they move into phase two and try to get her to use drugs or have sex with one of the gang members, she’s going to tell them to stick it where the sun don’t shine, and then there’s going to be trouble. And that’s the kind of trouble she’s not prepared for. If we don’t get Kelli out before then, she’s probably going to get beat up and tossed into one of these dungeon bedrooms until she comes around. No telling what type of abuse will be piled on while she’s there. So right now, the dungeon may only be about Isabel. But within a few days, it’ll likely be about both girls.”

  It was quiet for a second, and then Nancy said, “And so your plan is to have us go ahead now and take down the whole operation in hopes that we get both Isabel and Kelli out?”

  “Nancy,” I said, “first off, I think Isabel’s there now. I think she’s being held until she either comes around or literally gets sold to another pimp in Las Vegas. And I think Kelli’s next. We know she’s with Crystal. And with regards to Kelli, I don’t have any choice. She’s basically family. I will not stand by and allow Kelli Blair to be subjected to these guys’ torture. She’s young and dumb, and she got herself in a bad position, but I can’t leave her there. I’d prefer for you guys to go in and bust them, but if you won’t move in, I’ll have to go in and get her myself. There won’t be any other choice for me.”

  “Hmm,” Nancy said. She thought for a second and then said, “Well, give me something. Give me anything I can use as probable cause—something other than you think Isabel is being held there. I need something solid. Give that to me, and I’ll go downstairs right now and set it up. The problem, as I see it, is that we still don’t have anything solid against these guys.”