The First Victim lbadm-6

by Ridley Pearson

  She attempted to stave off total panic through a series of deep breaths while she pulled out her cellphone, only to reconfirm that the signal had dropped off. She couldn’t call out.

  The far end of the conveyor offered her an elevated view of an enormous room where that roar of machinery became painful. Laid out below her, dozens of women-perhaps a hundred or more-toiled at huge industrial sewing machines. She prepared the camera, the poor lighting now her biggest concern. She recorded some images from that vantage point and was about to move on when it occurred to her to find a place to hide this tape for retrieval on her way out. If at any point she was forced to run, to abandon the camera and case, she would still have one of the two tapes to later collect as proof of the sweatshop’s existence. Even as she worked to capture the story below, she couldn’t entirely dismiss the thought that she could be caught. She had amplified that risk substantially by simply coming inside.

  With the camera’s viewfinder indicating too little light, Melissa nonetheless recorded the oppressive conditions below-emaciated women, their heads shaved bare, towering bales of fabric enclosing them like walls, the air clouded with a hazy dust, the room’s only light coming from small, dim bulbs fixed to the sewing machines. The Asian women worked furiously, some sewing, others at cutting tables, still others gathering the finished product into bundles. Two Chinese males patrolled the floor carrying what looked like nightsticks-gang members probably. Another wave of fear overcame her: The Chinese gangs were notoriously ruthless.

  She zoomed in, hoping that she could capture the feeling of the place. Exhausted faces drenched in sweat; the frantic pace; the tension of the guards’ presence.

  Through the lens she followed a leg chain from where it was bolted to a sewing machine which was in turn bolted to a blood-raw ankle. She moved station-to-station, woman-to-woman; not all were chained, but enough to know the lengths to which the guards went to prevent escapes or ensure discipline. Like slaves, she thought.

  If they shackled their own seamstresses, what would they do to an uninvited nosy journalist? Perhaps she should turn back now. She already had some incredible images.

  But she did not yet have the story. She wanted on-camera interviews with the illegals, pictures of the deplorable living conditions she felt certain she would find with a little more digging. She was a journalist not a cameraperson. And this was a career-defining moment.

  She went ahead as planned and removed the camera’s tape in order to hide it well enough so that no one would find it before she could come back and get it. She then worked her way farther along the catwalk that hung over the huge room, finally entering a long passageway that descended by steep metal stairs toward the sound of running water.

  She felt her way to a steel door, its handle removed to prevent its use, to trap the inhabitants on the other side. But as she put her eye to the hole left behind by this missing hardware, she understood its other purpose as well-it offered the guards a peephole into a shower room.

  She counted five women in all, naked and shaved of all body hair. The room might have once been used for storage-no drains or faucets, just garden hose and plastic showerheads secured to, and hanging from, the overhead pipes. The women-girls, really-stood clustered together, shivering under the limp stream of water, their faint whispers in the foreign tongue barely audible. Melissa craned to one side and spotted a sixth woman who stood sentry. Melissa’s side of the metal door was fastened shut with two oversized dead bolts. One eye to the hole in the door, Melissa waited for her chance to enter. She could interview these women, thanks to her Chinese. And then a more devious thought occurred: What if she were to become one of them? Live with them? Work with them? What if she could spend a whole day and a night here? Who would notice one more Chinese woman among the hundreds? She grinned a grin of satisfaction, her attention no longer on the women showering but on a bar of soap and the pink plastic razor teetering on the ledge directly across from her, and the knowledge of what had to be done.

  TUESDAY, AUGUST 181 DAY MISSING

  CHAPTER 11

  By midnight that Tuesday night Stevie McNeal began to worry. A late-night person, she often didn’t go to bed until after the start of the new day, giving up the reruns and reading herself to sleep. Melissa, by contrast, was a morning person and, as such, went to bed early on all but the rarest occasions. Melissa had not called the night before as promised. She wasn’t answering at the apartment, nor on her cellphone, which led Stevie to believe she was out conducting the surveillance, just the idea of which made Stevie anxious and worried.

  She blamed the woman’s silence on her own bossy attitude during the meeting with the state auditor, and the fact that with the two women knowing each other as well as they did, Melissa could easily have interpreted Stevie’s attitude as a signal for her to deliver. For the past three years she had pushed her ‘‘little sister’’ to take the job offer she had arranged with the station, to take a regular paycheck rather than wallowing in misplaced pride and the unpaid bills of a freelancer. But Melissa declined the offered hand, in part because it came from Stevie and in part because of a refusal to compromise her work with a lot of worthless puff pieces ordered by an editor desperate to fill the time between ads. Stevie secretly admired the woman’s nobility-in retrospect she had compromised her own career far too quickly by always taking the first job offered-but it did little to appease her present anxieties.

  At one in the morning she called both numbers again, now taking to pacing while she thought this all out. Another aspect of Melissa’s native pride was her professional secrecy; she had once worked on an independent environmental piece for three weeks before finally letting Stevie in on its subject matter-salmon poaching by Native Americans-as if by being let in on it Stevie would have sent a camera crew out on the story. In the week since the auditor had leaked the LSO information, Stevie’s only real knowledge of what Melissa was up to involved the surveillance of Gwen Klein. Beyond that and the financial information they had collected on the couple, she had few other leads to follow if needed.

  Stevie finally fell asleep out of the exhaustion of being consumed in worry. When she awakened, she immediately called Melissa’s numbers from bed, but only to hear that awful sound of endless ringing. She skipped the Nordic Trak, skipped the lazy morning routine of four newspaper subscriptions and the audio wallpaper of continuous CNN that typically occupied the first few hours of any day, and headed directly to Melissa’s apartment in Pioneer Square, an apartment for which she had co-signed the lease, an apartment for which she held a spare set of keys warm in her hand.

  The apartment offered nothing. She rang the buzzer on the ground floor, then let herself into the building, then knocked on the door to 5B and opened it when Melissa failed to answer. A modest one bedroom with a small living/dining area, it offered a poor view of a side alley and no cross-ventilation had the windows been open, which they weren’t. It was, in fact, the slightly stale scent of the place that told Stevie Melissa hadn’t been there recently. Melissa lived for fresh air; this contradiction spoke volumes. She found fresh food in the refrigerator and a garbage can filled to overflowing.

  It felt dangerous all of a sudden, like realizing the noise downstairs is not the dog at all because the dog is lying by the bed. This was not merely an empty apartment, it was an apartment that had not been visited in recent hours. The bed was unmade-Melissa in her usual hurry. A toothbrush stood in the drinking glass on the sink and alarmed Stevie almost more than anything else about the empty apartment. Melissa was obsessed with clean teeth. The discovery of the toothbrush meant she had not taken a planned trip.

  Her stomach clenched painfully in a combination of remorse and guilt, she left the apartment in something of a daze, her imagination running wild with possibility. At what point did she react publicly to the woman’s silence? At what point did she go to the police or Brian Coughlie at the INS and seek help? At what point did she simply relax and take a deep breath, trusting that Melissa wa
s on to a hot story and didn’t have the opportunity to call? She left with that sickening feeling still plaguing her.

  Stevie climbed back into the saddle, the anchor desk chair bouncing slightly as she sat. She scanned the pink pages of script for the N4@5 news hour, but somehow she couldn’t focus and she kept losing her place.

  ‘‘Thirty seconds!’’ the floor director called out.

  The daily ritual had grown so familiar to her as to be second nature, but on that day it felt entirely unnatural, all because of Melissa’s ensuing silence. She felt simultaneously angry and worried. That call had never come. As independently as they both lived their lives, neither ever broke the promise of such a call. Not ever. Either Melissa was making a statement about her chosen lifestyle-or she was in trouble.

  Of immediate concern to Stevie was Melissa’s occasionally impatient ambition. She was competitive with Stevie’s success, always hoping to ignite the spark that would accelerate her own career from occasionally employed to in demand. Stevie blamed herself for both encouraging Melissa to dig for the story, and for handing her that digital camera without a better understanding of what kind of undercover work she had planned. If Melissa was in fact on to the illegals story, Stevie didn’t necessarily want to raise a red flag with authorities after just one undelivered phone call. She attempted to practice her own advice to exercise patience, but it didn’t come naturally to her. She wanted control, and Melissa had taken that away from her.

  ‘‘Fifteen seconds everyone! Ms. McNeal, you with us?’’

  Stevie twisted a professional smile across her face and once again studied the script.

  ‘‘Ten.. nine.. ’’

  Stevie would give Melissa one more night. After that, story or no story, the police had to be told.

  ‘‘Four.. three..two. .’’

  A red light illuminated on top of the camera directly in front of her. Stevie heard herself speak as she read the lines, but she had no idea what she said.

  CHAPTER 12

  For the man in the back row of the smut film house, time seemed to slow down as the big Mexican next to him loudly blew his nose into a napkin and then threw the napkin onto the floor. Just being here with this man was a risk, and he’d come only because it had seemed unavoidable.

  ‘‘So what’s so important?’’ he asked Rodriguez.

  ‘‘The count is off.’’

  ‘‘An escape?’’ It wouldn’t be the first.

  ‘‘We’re long by one.’’

  ‘‘Long?’’

  ‘‘That’s what I’m saying,’’ said Rodriguez. ‘‘An escape I can handle, you know that. But this?’’

  ‘‘You counted wrong.’’

  ‘‘I done this count six times. We’re long.’’ Rodriguez’s voice was rough and scratchy. He kept sniffing back snot into his throat in a vulgar disgusting sound.

  ‘‘Well it’s off.’’

  ‘‘It’s not off,’’ Rodriguez objected.

  ‘‘You know what you’re saying? Are they all Chinese?’’

  ‘‘Yes.’’

  ‘‘Did you strip them?’’

  ‘‘Of course.’’

  ‘‘And they’re shaved.’’

  ‘‘Every last snatch.’’

  ‘‘So the count is off. It’s the only explanation.’’

  ‘‘It wasn’t off last week. I done the count six times.’’

  ‘‘So you said.’’

  ‘‘Just so you know.’’

  ‘‘Now I know.’’ The idea disturbed him, but he didn’t let Rodriguez know this. It was his job to worry-most of the time Rodriguez simply did as he was told. Inventory was off; it was as simple as that. ‘‘Maybe one of the ones in quarantine. . maybe that threw the numbers off,’’ he suggested.

  ‘‘I got them into the count. I’m telling you-last week we done the count and the numbers was right.’’

  ‘‘Use your squirrels, your snitches. See what you can find out.’’

  ‘‘Got it.’’

  ‘‘Tell your boys to keep their eyes open.’’

  ‘‘Done already.’’

  ‘‘Well, do it again,’’ he snapped, regretting the tone. It wouldn’t help matters to piss off Rodriguez.

  The big man sneezed again. This time he forgot the napkin entirely.

  THURSDAY, AUGUST 203 DAYS MISSING

  CHAPTER 13

  Boldt gripped the white rubber lip of the Boston Whaler, a flat-bottomed fiberglass skiff used as a Port Authority launch, as it tossed in the substantial wake of an arriving passenger ferry. LaMoia didn’t react to the movement whatsoever, having grown up on the waters of Narragansett Bay.

  Seagulls followed high above the ferry’s foaming stern, diving into the prop wash after the pretzels and popcorn tossed there by unthinking tourists who were doing the shorebirds more harm than good. The captain of the Visage had refused to come ashore to be interviewed. His ship had been called back to port, and he was furious with authorities. With the political and legal Ping-Pong match continuing at a fevered pitch, Boldt instructed Port Authority to inform Visage that a pair of Seattle policemen were coming aboard to interview crew members.

  Boldt correctly guessed that a shipping captain’s greatest enemy was not the Coast Guard or the Port Authority, or a homicide cop, but time. He would not want to be delayed again from weighing anchor, and he would not want to leave any crew behind. By combining Rutledge’s data with the Port Authority docking schedule and interviews with the Port Authority’s radar station personnel, the Visage appeared to be the vessel in question. It had been well outside the shipping lanes the night of the storm, a night every navigator had been glued to his radar scope hoping to make it into port without incident. The Visage had gone radio dead for more than three hours-inexplicable in such traffic and high seas. The Port Authority radar controller distinctly recalled the ship’s return to the southern shipping lane on scope but off the air, and how, predawn, it had slipped back into the lane, causing all ships behind it to give berth and thereby experience delays, forcing them to endure even more of the storm-something no one forgot.

  Boldt and LaMoia climbed up a noisy steel ladder suspended from heavy chains, a crew member behind them, presumably, as a backstop should they slip. The pungent odors of a ship ripe with a three-week ocean crossing struck them-seaweed, diesel fuel and a tangy metallic rust that formed in the back of Boldt’s mouth like the scent of blood at a crime scene. He gripped the chain, steadied himself and looked back toward shore and the noble city skyline that gave the Emerald City its jewels.

  Nostalgia tightened his chest-he had devoted his life to service of this city, and was now considering plans to abandon it. At forty-four, with over twenty years on the force, the possibility of a job in the private sector insinuated itself. The unspoken evil of Liz’s cancer treatment was the lingering debt, caused not by medical bills-all paid for by the bank’s health care-but by loss of their double income for over a year. The bank had paid her full salary for three weeks of ‘‘vacation’’ and had then reduced her to one-quarter pay for her ‘‘leave of absence.’’ But their lifestyle, which included day care and a house-cleaner, had left more going out than was coming in. Even Boldt’s advancement to lieutenant had not made up the gap. He was seriously considering a private security position that paid nearly double his city salary. He had an interview scheduled, though he had not told Liz.

  With the captain of the Visage on ‘‘shore leave,’’ and therefore unavailable, the crew was all they had. A list of fifteen names was provided by the ship’s first mate, an Asian with few teeth and a leathery face. Boldt and LaMoia divided their energies. Boldt was led below deck through cramped hallways, the gray steel reminding him of prisons, to a game room that contained an oversized projection TV and an enormous video library.

  Thirty minutes of frustration left Boldt’s patience brittle and his nerves raw. The first two crewmen had not spoken a word of English, replying to Boldt in some Balkan-sounding tongue. The third cr
ewman listed as a deckhand, a young man with a stubble head and dark eyes that contained a tinge of fear, marched in wearily and, like his fellow seamen, spoke this same foreign language.

  ‘‘English,’’ Boldt instructed, knowing that at least someone on this ship spoke the language-the international language of the sea and a Coast Guard requirement. The young deckhand shook his head and prattled on in his native tongue again.

  It was then that Boldt’s eye landed on the wall of videos, and the titles there-all in English-included Super Bowls and NBA title games. He said to the deckhand, ‘‘Michael Jordan! Now there was a player!’’ He paused. ‘‘Even so, Sean Kemp is a better shooter.’’

  ‘‘No way!’’ the young man protested.

  Boldt did not so much as flinch. He said, ‘‘Kemp’s jump shot?’’

  ‘‘Jordan was the best play-’’ the boy caught himself as Boldt’s grin surfaced.

  Boldt said, ‘‘Do you know that refusal to cooperate with police is a crime here? I could have you locked up.’’

  The boy’s eyes went wide and he shook his head as if not understanding.

  ‘‘You think I’ll tell the others? Is that it? Do you think I would say anything? How does it benefit me to expose a possible witness?’’

  ‘‘I witness nothing,’’ the man returned.