Isabel's Run (19 page)

Tyrone and the Bobby led Jasmine out of the room to the waiting squad car.

* * * *

“That went pretty well,” Nancy said. “At least she didn’t scream at me. That happens sometimes.” She looked up suddenly. “I hope you don’t mind my not asking about Isabel just now.”

“I understand,” I said. “It’s too early. This girl’s still in a state of shock over everything else that’s happened. Maybe she’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Nancy said. “I’ll give you guys a call in the morning and let you know how it’s looking.” She looked at Kelli. “What do you think about what you saw?” she asked.

Kelli shook her head. She had a tear in her eye. “It’s sad,” she said. “She’s just a kid. All dressed up but still, just a kid.”

Nancy nodded. “You’re right,” she said. “It’s very sad. But maybe tonight, we saved a little girl. And if it has to be one at a time, then that’s fine with me.”

* * * *

It was quiet in the Jeep on the way back to the office. We didn’t talk much about Isabel or anything else, for that matter. I guess everyone was still trying to recover from the disappointment of Isabel not being the girl who showed up, combined with the reality of seeing a girl like Jasmine up close—a girl who, except for her rather desperate circumstances, seemed like she wasn’t much different than the girl next door.

“We have to call Marisol,” Toni said, breaking the silence.

“Right. I’ll do it as soon as I get home. I don’t feel like making that call while I’m driving.”

“You okay, Kell?” Toni asked, looking in the backseat where Kelli was seated.

“Yeah,” she said. “It sucks that it wasn’t Izzy.”

I nodded. Too true. “Nancy said that when she talks to Jasmine in the morning, she’s going to ask her if she’ll talk to us about Isabel. Maybe we’ll find out something then.”

“What happens if she doesn’t want to talk?” Kelli said.

“Then we’ll just go back to canvasing the neighborhood,” Toni said. “If we do that and if we have Kenny monitor her cell phone, eventually we’ll find her.”

“That’s right,” I said. Of course, I was thinking it could be a whole lot faster if Jasmine knew Isabel and agreed to talk to us about her. I crossed my fingers.

AT 9:45 A.M. the next day, I was sitting at my desk staring at the calendar when my cell phone rang. Caller ID: Nancy Stewart.

“Good morning,” I said.

“Hey. Can you and Toni shoot on down here to the Juvenile Detention Center?” Nancy skipped the small talk. “I’ve been talking to Paola—her name’s not Jasmine Jones by the way, and she’s not eighteen. She’s fifteen, and her name is Paola Morales. I’ve been talking to her for about an hour now. She’s starting to come around. Anyway, she knows Isabel, and she’s willing to talk to us about her. She’s not ready to give up her pimp—she won’t go that far. But she is willing to help find Isabel. We’re taking a break now while we wait for you.”

“Fantastic,” I said. “We’re on the way.”

Toni had overheard me talking, and she walked into my office as I was hanging up.

“She’s cooperating?” Toni asked.

“A little, anyway. Nancy said that she knows Isabel, and she’ll talk about her. She doesn’t want to talk about her pimp, though.”

“That’s okay. It’s better if she can give us some good information on Isabel,” she said as we hustled down the hall and out the door.

“Agreed,” I said. “Hopefully, she knows where we can find her.”

“Maybe she could lead us right to her,” Toni said.

“Wouldn’t that be nice.”

* * * *

The King County Juvenile Detention Center sits on Alder just east of Twelfth Avenue. The building consists of two distinctly different sections. The back section is the residential area. It looks like a typical, four-story apartment building except that the doors and the exterior stairwell are painted bright orange. Someone probably thought it looked artistic when they selected the colors. I think it looks pretty odd. The front section consists of offices and classrooms. This section is a single story and made of brick. We parked in the visitors’ parking lot on the north side of the building and hopped out. Then we walked past the American flag and into the lobby of the front section.

Inside, the building was quiet and smelled of floor wax. In fact, the guy doing the waxing was still running a floor machine maybe forty feet down a long hallway. The tiles glistened. The receptionist sat behind what appeared to be a bulletproof glass partition—the kind like at movie box offices with the little chrome intercom speaker grill in the middle of the glass. I find it odd that someone would go through the trouble of installing an expensive piece of bulletproof glass for protection and then go and drill a three-inch hole in the glass for the intercom, right about at head level for the unlucky soul sitting behind the counter. I guess the intercom is supposed to be bullet-resistant, but I’m pretty sure my .45 would have no trouble shooting right through that hole—even with the intercom in place. I wouldn’t want to trust my life to it. But I digress.

We gave the receptionist the information that Nancy had given me and were issued visitor passes and told to have a seat in a long row of blue-and-orange seats—the kind that are attached together like those in a train station. Five minutes later, Nancy popped out through a set of double doors marked Authorized Entrance Only.

“Come on back, you guys,” she said.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“Pretty much like I said on the phone,” she said. “Paola is a stubborn young lady. She’s only going to come along just so fast—we can’t push her. But if we can gain her trust by following through and making good on our promises, then she’ll probably open up more and more. For now, though, here’s where we stand. She seems to like Isabel. She actually seems like she’s worried about her. She wants to help.”

“Wonder why she’s worried,” I said. I was worried about Isabel when we started this case. Then, yesterday, I’d gotten hopeful. Then last night, worried again. Now—based on what I’d just heard—even more so.

“Don’t know,” Nancy said. “As soon as she agreed to talk to the two of you, I stopped our discussion and came and phoned you. We’ve just been waiting for you to arrive to pick up where we left off.”

“Did you find her parents?” I asked.

“Paola is from Las Vegas,” Nancy said. “She doesn’t know her father, but apparently her mother is still there. They don’t speak.”

“That would explain things a little, anyway,” I said.

Nancy stopped in the middle of the hallway and turned to face us. “It gets worse. This morning, Paola told me she was introduced into prostitution when she was eleven years old. She’s fifteen now.”

“Oh my God,” Toni said quietly.

“Exactly,” Nancy said. “This little girl has been living with one pimp or another, turning tricks as a way of life—a way to survive—for more than four years. Last year, apparently, she made her Las Vegas pimp mad, so he sold her to a pimp up here who she won’t name.”

“Donnie Martin,” I said.

“Perhaps. I don’t know if she has any sort of alcohol or drug dependency—that’s something we’ll find out in the next few days. But even if she doesn’t, Paola’s going to need treatment and counseling and schooling for several years in order to get her life back together.”

“That poor girl,” Toni said.

“This is so typical of what happens to these girls. Paola’s a lucky one—last night really was her lucky night. For her, there might be a happy ending. At least, there’s the possibility. We’ll move to have the court appointed as her guardian. I talked to Annie Hooper—she’s putting Paola on the list and thinks she might be able to squeeze her into one of the Angel Houses in the next day or so.”

“That would be fantastic,” I said.

“Frankly, it’s her only hope,” Nancy answered.

* * * *

Nancy led us into a room that served as a sort of small classroom. There was a table for the teacher at the front of the room in addition to four round tables, each with four chairs, spread through the remainder of the room. The entire front of the room was covered with a large chalkboard.

Paola sat by herself in one of the chairs, reading a pamphlet that read “Angel House” in bright, cheery letters. The difference in her appearance between now and last night was striking. Last night, she’d been heavily made up—apparently to look like someone’s idea of a dream date. The makeup had been overdone to the extreme. This morning, she wore no makeup at all. Someone had given her a dark blue T-shirt and a pair of matching dark blue sweatpants. She looked freshly scrubbed. In fact, now she looked like a teenaged girl.

We walked over to her table. “Good morning,” I said.

“Good morning,” she answered. Her voice was soft and demure. We took the other seats at her table.

“Paola,” Nancy said, “you remember Danny Logan and Toni Blair from last night, right?”

Paola nodded. “Yeah.”

“Okay, good. Now, before I begin,” Nancy said, “I’m going to turn the tape recorder on. Okay, Paola?”

She nodded.

Nancy said, “We’re here on Friday, June 8th, 2012, at 10:25 in the morning. I’m Lieutenant Nancy Stewart. I’m the commander of the Seattle Police Department Vice and High Risk Victims Unit. I’m here today talking to Paola Morales. Paola is a fifteen-year-old girl we detained last night pending identification of her legal guardian. That work continues. To be clear, Paola is not under arrest. With us this morning are Danny Logan and Toni Blair, both licensed private investigators with the Logan Private Investigations firm.”

Nancy turned to us. “May Paola call you by your first names—Danny and Toni?”

“Absolutely,” I nodded. Toni indicated her agreement as well.

“Good.” She turned back to Paola. “Like I said, Danny and Toni are private investigators. They’re not police officers. Do you understand the difference?”

She nodded. “Yeah.”

“In this case, they’re working to find Isabel Delgado. You told me earlier that you know her, right?”

She nodded.

Nancy said, “Okay. Just to remind you of the ground rules, Paola—you’re under no obligation to answer any questions at all. You’re not under arrest here. You’ve got all the control. You’re helping us—kind of like doing us a favor. This is not like TV where ‘anything you say can and will be used against you.’ In fact, it’s the opposite. Nothing you say here will be used against you for any reason. Like I told you earlier—I’m not interested in seeing you go to jail. I think you and I are past that now, right?”

Paola smiled and nodded.

“As a matter of fact,” Nancy continued, “I want to see you go to college and then come and work for me. Do you understand?”

Paola laughed. She had a little-girl giggle.

“And if you change your mind and don’t want to talk about anything anymore, you can stop anytime you’re uncomfortable, or you can simply say, ‘I don’t want to answer that question.’ Anything like that will work, okay?”

“Okay,” Paola said, nodding again. “I get it.”

“Good,” Nancy said. “So with that understanding, do you still want to talk to us about Isabel Delgado?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Good. Then why don’t I just let Danny and Toni ask you the questions, alright?”

She nodded.

“Thanks, Nancy,” Toni said. She turned to Paola. “I’m Toni. It’s good to meet you, Paola. Do you mind if we call you Paola?” she asked.

Paola shook her head.

“It’s a beautiful name,” Toni said. “I love it.”

Paola smiled. “Thanks.”

Toni looked to me. Guess it was my turn. I put on my best smile. “And I’m Danny,” I said. “Thanks for agreeing to talk to us about what you know about Isabel.”

She smiled again.

“Like Nancy said, we’re looking for Isabel,” Toni said. “My sister—she was also in the room last night—I don’t know if you noticed her—anyway, she’s a good friend of Isabel’s. They go to school together. When Isabel went missing, my sister asked us to help find her. That’s how we’re involved.”

Paola nodded. “And you guys thought it was Isabel who was supposed to be there last night?” she asked.

I nodded. “We did. We found an advertisement on Backpage.com with Isabel’s picture in it. We answered that ad, thinking Isabel would show up. You showed up instead.”

“They just told me to be at the Snuggle Inn at eight thirty,” Paola said. “Nobody told me anything else.”

I wanted to ask who told her this, but I figured she might not be willing to give that information just yet, and I didn’t want to start off the conversation with her having to say no.

“Must have come as quite a surprise to you,” Toni said.

Paola nodded. “Yeah.”

“Tell me,” Toni continued. “Why were you there instead of Isabel?”

“I’m not sure,” Paola said. “Last week, I know they told Isabel that it was time for her to move over to the girls’ house and go to work.”

“Where’d she live until then?” I asked.

“She was at the big house across the street from the park, by the—,” she stopped suddenly. “I don’t want to say,” she said.