By the time I made it to Portland’s “Avenue of the Roses,” I was seeing ghosts of my own. All the working women I’ve turned a blind eye to, even those lanky young things I was watching at the titty bars the night I met Athena. Who loved those women? Who looked after those women? Who cared when they were dead next to a truck stop Dumpster?
It’s been weeks since I made it to Portland’s east side, a neighborhood in which one avenue alone offers twenty blocks of strip clubs, massage parlors, porn shops, shower shows, and even one joint advertising live lingerie modeling—for men only, of course. Average folk in SUVs and hybrid cars whiz by this “Avenue of the Roses” as barely dressed women flit in and out of these T&A joints. Some clubs only offer pulchritudinous broads dancing in the nude, but at many a pocketful of cash will get you an around-the-world with the dame of your choice. Women whose youth is long gone, thanks to hard work or the quick ravages of meth, can’t get into spots with overhead, so you’ll see them trolling around the bus stops and lone fast food joint. The cops here are friendly but overwhelmed.
“I’m not sure I can help you, but I’ll check our case files to see if anything matches the Phoenix case,” a short, portly uniformed gent told me. After sitting in the station lobby for thirty minutes, a fatter, older man, a captain, ushered me back to a private conference room. Or maybe it was an interrogation room, I wasn’t sure.
“Tell me what you’re doing in my town, Ms…” He left it to me to fill in my name.
“It’s Parker. I was on the job ten years in Baltimore, so I know the drill. Can we just skip to the punch?”
He shrugged. “Our CI is from Baltimore, Carol Wakefield—maybe you knew her.” He was testing me.
“You mean Karen Wakefield? Yeah, good broad, knew her well.” That was an understatement, but I didn’t want to give this jackass my history of one-night stands just to pass his test.
“Listen, here’s the drill. I’m a private investigator.” I paused to show him my license and concealed weapons permits before I continued. “I’m working a missing persons case. The trail led me here to Portland. Along the way, I’ve also discovered that there seems to be some connection between my missing person and two homicide cases—one out of Phoenix, Arizona, and one in Fort Worth, Texas. I don’t know what the connection is, and I’ve already shared what I know with law enforcement of those municipalities. The trail has gotten me here, but now I’m stumped.”
He laughed. “Well, that’s fitting, seeing how Portland’s nicknamed Stump Town.” He chewed on the inside of his cheek. “What’s your relationship to this missing person?”
Pissed that he’d joke around when two women were dead and I was afraid the love of my life might be next, I retorted quickly, “It’s a case I’m working.” He didn’t need to know I was in love with Athena. As far as he needed to know, I got a client looking for her missing kid.
He pulled out two photos, both of stunning young women, long dark hair, each beautiful except for her milky white eyes, translucent skin, and faint garrote marks. “You recognize these women?”
I shook my head, confused. Two more dead women? What did they have to do with Athena?
“Listen Ms…Parker, this doesn’t leave this room, got it?” I nodded. “We’ve got two homicides here in Portland that match the DBs in Arizona and Texas. You’re telling me you know a potential witness. The thing is, you’re the only one who seems to have seen her, you’re the only person who the cops know had any knowledge of these women. You seem to be the only link between these four murdered women. See where I’m going here?”
“No. Wait. You thinking I’m a suspect? That I’m driving across the fucking country killing hookers?” I chortled as loud as I could. “I’m pretty sure I don’t fit your profile, Captain.” Aside from a few notable exceptions, women weren’t serial killers. With that explosion of anger I turned and walked away, my hands still balled in fists of rage. Damn him. Damn Athena. Damn this city.
“Wait!” It was Karen Wakefield. Great. A reunion. “Parker, wait.”
“Hey, doll. I just heard you were here.” My rage was subsiding, but I still wasn’t feeling like playing reunion with Karen.
“Look, Parker, I heard what’s going on. I don’t know about this woman you’re looking for, and I know you aren’t a killer. Please, you couldn’t even spank me.” She winked at me.
The obvious inappropriateness of her comment, smack in the middle of the police station, made me laugh unexpectedly.
She smiled. “It’s good to see you again, Parker. But you got to know, this is a different city, about as different from Baltimore as you can get.” Karen rushed alongside me as I kept walking. “Portland is a dichotomy. Everyone’s progressive. Damn sure they’ll go to bat over an endangered bird or a stolen compost bin. But nobody thinks twice about having to step over these homeless street urchins sleeping on the sidewalk downtown.”
“Yeah, I noticed a lot of kids on the streets here.” I encouraged her to continue.
“Folks here brag about a public policy that allows so many strip clubs to flourish, but do nothing about being one of the sex trafficking capitals of the country. It’s not just the runaways getting sold off as sex slaves anymore, it’s ordinary kids from the suburbs. Underage sex trafficking is happening here right down on Stark Street.”
I was curious. “How do they get these girls into the game? They drugging or abducting them or what?”
“Some are abducted, some are runaways. They just did a study that found it took only fifteen minutes from the time a runaway arrives in Portland to the first time they are approached by someone who plans to victimize them. A lot of times the first contact is by someone who seems trustworthy, a person who just wants to help. Or sometimes it’ll even be a pimp who will ‘date’ a girl—sometimes we’re talking ten-year-olds—and then start telling her if she loved him she’d have sex with his friends. By that point she’s hooked, usually within the first month the pimp is moving her up Interstate 5 to Seattle or down to Los Angeles.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“A lot of times they use older women to bring in the girls, show ’em the ropes. She’s usually a pro, has been through it herself, still works but curries some favor—or avoids some beatings—by bringing in new girls, too. Maybe your missing person is a recruiter?”
I must have looked as clueless as I felt because Karen leaned closer and continued.
“Recruiters help bring girls into the life. I thought your person might be involved because they’ve linked our homicides with those other two homicides in Phoenix and Fort Worth, and we can confirm at least three of the women were forced into sexual servitude for a group of Ukrainian pimps. All had nicknames, they’d all been branded—well, tattooed by a group called the Stolichnaya Boys. Do you know about them?”
“Yes, the girls are called the Stoli stable. I read that article in the Times. They turn out the women along trade routes, sending them out at truck stops and porn stores mostly along I-5 on the West Coast and I-10 across the South, right?”
She nodded. She continued while I digested way too much information about sex trafficking on the West Coast, the victims whose birth names have been discovered (one from Portland and the woman in Fort Worth), the Eastern European prostitution trade, and so much more. She swore me to secrecy, then divulged what linked the dead women besides me (and the fact that they all look similar and were offed in the same way). Each woman had a tattoo on her neck, a gold star with a spike. Just like Athena.
By the time she was done, I was filled with many more questions. But the portly cop came running over.
“Karen, we’ve got a possible dead body in a Dumpster out on Eighty-second.” Ah, there’s that “Avenue of Roses” again.
Our conversation abruptly ended. Karen put her business card in my hands and darted out the door. Remembering that I’m a detective by trade, not just some fool being led around by her crotch, I followed their squad car from Stark to Eighty-second, jumping out
without closing the door as we stopped at the Pussy Palladium. I ran to the Dumpster behind the joint that had already attracted a tiny crowd of scantily clad women and nervous, half-erect but fully clothed men. Karen and Mr. Portly were on my heels yelling at the crowd—me included—to back the fuck up from the dimly lit metal can, but not before I had a chance to see her.
She was all curves and angles, and even in death, she was gorgeous. It was Athena. My chase was over. I had finally found her. And I was too late. She was gone. My legs went weak. I felt like all my structure had disappeared, my bones melting away until I nothing but a paper doll blowing in the wind.
I reached out to brush the chestnut hair from her angelic face.
Karen grabbed my hand and pulled me back. Her fingers on my skin were like a slap across the face. But I couldn’t help but look back at Athena’s dead eyes. And then I gasped. It wasn’t her. It wasn’t really Athena after all. The differences were slight, but they were there. The two weren’t close enough to be identical twins, but definitely sisters, the way genes could recycle the same looks even years apart. Upon second glance, the dead girl was younger, much younger than the woman I spent four passion-filled days with.
I was so overwhelmed with relief until guilt rushed in afterward. How could I be glad it was this girl whose life was snuffed out instead of Athena’s? But in that instant I’d gone from seeing a beloved woman to just another murder victim. Still, I wanted Karen to roll her over so I could see if she had a spiked star, too, so I could see if she was part of the pattern. Maybe there would be something about this new corpse that would finally reveal the complete puzzle and how these dead girls were connected to my missing lover.
I didn’t get the chance to see what Karen might discover, because Mr. Portly had moved me and the others too far back to see.
Athena was my only anchor to this town, but she’d become a ghost. Any time I thought I was getting close, something else threw me off her trail. I wondered if she was running from me, if I was the thing pushing her to move from one town to another, until she’d ended up here in Portland. Maybe I was just inept as a detective. Either way, this was the closest I’d been. With a dead girl who looked like Athena’s younger clone.
It had to mean something. It had to be more than just an empty lead. While a growing number of cops worked the corpse and the scene, I slipped inside the Pussy Palladium. A blonde with an artificial tan and a big rack was writhing on stage to an old Whitesnake song, so I pushed the photo of Athena and me at Pat O’s in front of the few remaining patrons. Anxious stares turned to pure avoidance, but more than a couple men pointed out toward the Dumpster. No shit, Sherlock. You’d think these guys would notice a ten-year age difference, but hell, I probably hadn’t paid that much attention to the faces of strippers before either. Until I started hunting one.
“Who’s the girl in the Dumpster?” I overheard one of the uniforms questioning a bartender.
“Aphrodite. Swore that was her real name. She only worked here a couple a days. I don’t know nothing else.” He sounded earnest. “She was just up on stage like an hour ago, I swear. I didn’t even see her leave. She’s still, I mean, she was still supposed to be in here doing private dances.”
“You got paperwork on her? I-9 form? Social security number?”
“Sorry, but we’re cash only until the girls work a few weeks. We legally don’t have to. And most newbies don’t stick it out past the first week.”
“You sure she’s even eighteen?” It’s no secret a lot of girls get on stage long before they’re legal. The question caused the bartender to look instantly uncomfortable.
“Shit yeah, man! Our boss runs a legal business here. All the girls have to show their IDs before we hire them. We keep copies on file, and you can check any of them, just ask the girls to show you.” He paused, lowering the register of his voice so heads turning his way would look back at the stage. “I want to help, I do, but I ain’t got much to say. She just showed up two days ago, but she wasn’t half-bad. Boss gave her a couple of shifts this week. She was quiet, kept to herself. Seemed a bit nervous about the crowd today, but that’s normal for newbies. She did two songs, went backstage, and then next thing I know one of the other girls starts screaming outside.”
Since there was no smoking allowed in the club, dancers and patrons both went out behind the Dumpster for a cig. I figure that’s probably where patrons get BJs from the girls willing to do extras—even if the bartender insisted the Palladium wasn’t “that kind of place.” Anyway, one of the girls on a smoke break took a look inside the Dumpster, saw Aphrodite, and screamed.
*
By the time I got back to my hotel parking lot, I’d spent hours with Karen, having coffee and comparing notes. The dead girl in the Dumpster did, indeed, have a gold star with a spike between her shoulders. Some of the clubgoers said she offered them extras, so the cops thought she was a pro. The fact that she looked like Athena—a woman whom only I have seen, though I did at least show Karen the photo so she doesn’t think I’m crazy—didn’t go into the homicide report because Karen said it “wasn’t clearly evidence” of anything.
As soon as I walked into my slightly musty hotel room, I could tell something was different. It was a smell that I recognized. Then I flipped the light and saw her. In person. The woman I had been chasing for weeks now had come to me.
“Athena?” I don’t know why I stood frozen, questioning. I had seen so many doppelgängers of this broad, I didn’t trust my own gut anymore.
“Hi, baby.” The throaty voice, the lips made for loving, it was her.
She didn’t say anything else, but she moved toward me and I couldn’t help but take her into my arms and kiss her as desperately as I did that first night in New Orleans. At this moment, the stolen wallet, the dead hookers, all the time and money I spent following her just fell to the wayside. I could put that all out of my mind for a few minutes of unbridled passion. Make that more than a few minutes. She pushed me on to my unmade bed, straddling my waist and removing her shirt. I started to lose control, so I flipped her over before my crotch did the thinking.
“Wait, what the fuck, lady? You need to slow down and tell me what the hell is going on.”
“Please, just wait.” She reached for me, kissing my neck, my face. “I need you. I need this.”
I kissed her back, pushing her hands to her sides and moving my face over her breasts.
“No, now,” I said—to myself as much as to her. “You take my wallet, my phone, leave without a word, I chase you across the country and in your wake are four dead broads, two of which I saw you with. Are you a prostitute? Why did you play me? What’s going on?”
“I didn’t play you. You knew what you were getting into.” She was teary but defiant. The woman I loved.
“If that’s what you think, lady, they better check you for a fucking heartbeat. I had a life, I had a job. I dropped everything for you.”
“I didn’t ask you to.” She rolled over, maintaining eye contact but moving away from me, and hugged herself self-consciously.
“I know. We had something, didn’t we? Or was I just a mark?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer.
She shook her head. “You weren’t a mark. You were a surprise. A lovely surprise.”
I grabbed her hand and pulled her closer. I wanted to make love but instead I held her closely and listened as she began to tell me her story. The long, complicated story that I could never have imagined. When Athena was nineteen years old, her car broke down near a shopping center in Seattle. A couple offered her a ride back to her dorm, and since there was a woman there, she thought she was safe. But as soon as she was in the car, she realized something was terribly wrong. They didn’t take her to her home; they blindfolded her, took her purse and phone, and drove her to a house with ten twin beds, eight other girls, two vicious-looking hounds, and three silent but mean-looking men. The first day the man who had driven the car beat her, but on the second day he was nice, c
leaning her wounds and letting her sleep in his bed with the television, instead of the twin beds where all the other girls slept. The woman that had been in the car with her was called his number one bitch, but they were all his girlfriends, it would seem. They all called him Daddy, their boyfriend. Some, like Athena, were lesbian before they got to the house, but after he beat and raped them, he would turn them out to do tricks. There was never talk of being gay after the first week of beatings.
The muscle-bound watchmen guarded them constantly, preventing any escape attempts. If the girls were working a hotel or truck stop, there was always a watcher nearby. They were moved at night from one house to the next, after a while losing touch with where they were or even what day it was. If a woman complained, she was beaten badly and sometimes taken away, never to be seen again by the other girls. The man they called Daddy (the bodyguards called him Dimitri) developed a fondness for Athena, and soon she was appointed his number one bitch. She tried to keep her spirit alive, keep remembering who she was even after she was renamed.
“I just kept trying to find a way to escape, but every time I was caught I was beaten even worse.” Athena was dry-eyed but sympathetic in her accounting. “When Dimitri fixated on me it got easier, sort of.” She still turned tricks and was raped by Dimitri, but she got more perks at home than the other girls, more freedom. Eventually, she was allowed to make a phone call home, but by then her mother and little sister had moved and she didn’t know where to find them. She felt lost and alone and ruined, but still she tried to keep her spirits alive by dreaming of life outside of Stoli stable.
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