Judgment Calls (8 page)

“What do you remember telling them?”

“Well, I said I was on Burnside to go to Powell’s. You know the real reason I was there. I just didn’t want to tell them, is all. It’s embarrassing, and I could get in trouble for it.”

“Do you remember telling them you didn’t know how heroin got in your system?”

“Not really, but then later on, when they came back with that lawyer guy, he told me he knew I’d lied about it. So I figured I must’ve said it. I didn’t want to get in trouble, is all.”

“Is that the only reason you lied?”

“I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. It’s like, I guess I was pretty sure they wouldn’t arrest me or anything since I was in the hospital and all. But I thought if they knew what I’d been doing, they wouldn’t believe me about what happened. Or maybe they’d believe me but not really care, since I, like, you know, kind of got myself in that situation. And I wanted them to believe me and go out and find who did it. So I told the truth about what they did to me, but I didn’t tell them the parts I figured didn’t matter as much. Does that make any sense?”

“It makes a lot of sense. Are you still doing that? Are you still leaving things out that you think aren’t important?”

“No. Detective Walker said he’d work on my case even if it turned out that I had been doing something bad before it happened.”

“Good, because he meant it. I think you’re a very smart young woman and you’ve been brave to tell the truth.”

She stuck her chin out, rolled her eyes, and tried hard to hide a smile. “Thanks.” She probably wasn’t used to compliments.

“I know you don’t know us very well, but can you tell us why you don’t like living here?” I asked.

“It’s actually OK right now.”

I’d forgotten how frustrating it is to try to talk to a kid. “Why do you run away?”

“Last time I left was because I was going crazy here. I felt really sick and wanted to get some horse. The doctor says I’ve gotten to where my body wants it, even if I don’t think I do.”

“Is that why you started in prostitution?”

“I wouldn’t really call it prostitution. I mean, I guess it’s gotten to that, but that’s not how it started. It was just like I’d hear about somebody who was, like, holding and then I’d find them and try to get some. But most of the time I didn’t have any money. At first, I’d offer to go to the Kmart and, like, shoplift something in return. That was working OK, but then all the stores around here started telling me not to come in anymore.

“So then, last summer, some guy told me he’d give me the stuff if I’d you know, if I’d, like, let him put it in my mouth. And that seemed like a way for me to get what I wanted without getting caught stealing or anything. Once I started getting it that way, I started to, like, use even more of it.”

“When did you start using heroin?”

“The middle of seventh grade, so like maybe a year ago?”

“Do kids at your school do that already?”

“No. Some of the kids smoke pot and stuff.”

This was like pulling teeth. “So how did you wind up using heroin in the seventh grade?”

“If I say, are you gonna tell my mom?”

“Not if we don’t have to.”

For a second, I thought that wasn’t going to be good enough for her. Kendra looked down at Eminem on her sweatshirt and started rubbing out a blob of ketchup that had fallen out of her hamburger onto his pecs. It was like she forgot we were there. Without raising her head, she said, “Mom already feels real bad that I’m, like, the way I am. She thinks it’s her fault or something for not being with me more. If she knew how it started, she’d, like, really freak out and blame herself and stuff.”

“You’re very considerate to be concerned about your mom. I know she works hard to keep everything going around here, and I won’t tell her things that you tell me unless the law requires me to.”

She thought about that for a moment. “It started a while ago. My dad doesn’t live with us. I don’t know him, actually. Mom works all the time, so I’m usually here alone. I don’t really mind. But every once in a while, she has a boyfriend start living here. I don’t know why she dates these loser guys who don’t even have jobs and stuff when she works so hard.

“Anyway, last year this guy named Joe was staying here with us. He said he was a contractor, but he like never left the house or anything. I guess one day while I was at school, he went nosing through my stuff in my room. I had a little bag of pot hidden in my dresser. I’d only smoked it once. Me and my friend got it from this guy at school, just to try it.

“So anyway, when I got home, he’s sitting on the couch holding this bag. He said he was gonna tell Mom unless I could keep a secret about him. And then he goes into Mom’s room and brings out his gym bag. He had a bunch of pot in there, but he had heroin too. He told me he didn’t tell my mom or anything ‘cause of how she feels about drugs, but he’d let me use some. I didn’t want to, ‘cause that seemed like way more major than pot. But Joe said popping wasn’t really like shooting up or anything and wasn’t as big of a deal. And he said if I didn’t try it, then I wouldn’t be in on his secret, and he’d tell Mom mine. So I tried it.”

“Is that the only time you used heroin with him?”

“Yeah, right. He wanted me to do it with him again like a week later, then it was more and more, until he was waiting for me almost every day after school.”

“Kendra, did Joe ever touch you or do anything sexual to you?”

“Not really. He’d like touch my hair and stuff when we were high. Gave me the heebie-jeebies. He was totally gross. After a couple months, I guess Mom found his stash and kicked him out. I was happy he was gone, but then I didn’t have any way to get the heroin.”

I didn’t know what to say. This poor girl had destroyed herself out of fear that she would create one more source of stress in her overworked mother’s life. Now, even after all she’d been through, she still worried more for her mother’s well-being than her own. I hoped Andrea Martin deserved the concern.

“Before you started being with men in order to get the heroin, had you ever engaged in any other sexual activity?”

She blushed and looked down at the floor. “Just kissing and stuff with a couple boys at school.”

“No older boys?”

“Unh-unh.”

“Not Joe?”

“I said no.”

“None of your mother’s other boyfriends ever tried to touch you in a bad way?”

“No. I’d tell you. How come you’re so sure someone tried to get over on me?”

I knew I had strayed from the open-ended style of questioning used with child sex abuse victims, but it seemed unlikely that Kendra hadn’t been victimized before she began selling herself for drugs. It was possible, but the vast majority of women who become prostitutes were molested as children.

If she wasn’t molested, my guess is that watching her mother’s own relationships with men had left her vulnerable to abuse before this Joe person ever came into the house and began grooming her. Pedophiles often take their time developing a relationship of trust with the child, sharing secrets and breaking barriers. Once the abuse begins, the child chooses to permit its continuance rather than lose the abuser’s affection. After spending two months using heroin with her mother’s boyfriend, Kendra’s next step was almost guaranteed.

“I’m not sure about anything, Kendra. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t keeping anything from me, to protect them or maybe your mother.”

“Well, I’m not. If it’s like you’re thinking someone must’ve done something to me for me to be this way, you’re wrong. I guess I’m just screwed up.”

“You’re not screwed up, and it’s not your fault. Do you know that? What happened to you is not your fault.”

“That’s what the advocate person said, too. Mom thinks it’s my fault.”

“I bet she doesn’t.” I wasn’t so sure about what Andrea Martin thought, but I knew what Kendra needed to hear.

“She keeps saying I shouldn’t have been out there.”

“Well, she’s right. It’s good that you’re acknowledging that you made a mistake to put yourself in a risky situation. But that doesn’t make this thing your fault. You see the difference?”

“I guess so.”

“Say it’s not your fault.”

She looked at Chuck, then me, then down at her feet. “That’s kind of dumb.”

“It’s not dumb,” Chuck said. I was glad he jumped in. I was used to working with women who couldn’t listen to anyone but a man, and thirteen wasn’t too young for it to start. I needed some help.

She sighed. “It’s not my fault,” she said quietly.

“Now, look me in the eye,” I said, “and say it louder.”

She looked at me this time, only at me. “It’s not my fault.”

This time, she sounded like maybe she meant it.

“Good girl. You’re going to think this is silly, but whenever you start to doubt that, I want you to look in the mirror and see how pretty and smart you are. Then I want you to say that out loud to yourself and see how confident and strong you look, OK?”

She rolled her eyes, but she smiled. “Man, every time one of you guys comes over, I get some new thing I’m supposed to remember to do. Look out the window, talk to myself in the mirror. Next time, you’re gonna have me standing on my head and singing the Backstreet Boys.”

I smiled back at her and then asked why she worked out of the Hamilton, the motel at Third and Alder. She explained that she met a group of teenage girls at Harry’s Place, a shelter for street kids. When it became clear that Kendra was picking up spare money the same way the others were, they told her she should work out of the Hamilton. Apparently, the management there didn’t care about what went on, and enough girls were turning tricks out of the motel that it provided something of a support network. The girls would watch out for each other and pass along tips they’d pick up on the street.

Kendra explained that she worked sporadically enough that she’d managed to avoid hooking up with a pimp. “They’re definitely out there, though. Haley, this girl I know the best out of that group she’s older than me anyway, Haley said she did what I did for about a year before she couldn’t get away with it anymore. The other girls were telling her she wasn’t safe out there by herself, and she got beat up a couple times pretty bad. So she was giving half of her money to some man, but he was supposed to watch her back and make sure she stayed safe.”

I’m sure this guardian was a real gentleman.

Kendra’s face lit up as she told me about the girls she’d met on the street, at Harry’s Place, and at the Hamilton. I could tell she missed them, even if she wasn’t missing the lifestyle yet.

“Do you want to see pictures of them?” She hopped up from the sofa and disappeared into the back of the house. She returned with a miniature backpack in the shape of a panda bear and fished out two envelopes.

“I love taking pictures. I don’t have a camera, but we used to, like, pitch in our money to get a disposable one sometimes. We’d take turns carrying it around until the film was gone. It would take awhile for them to actually get developed, since no one ever had enough money. But I took these in last week.”

She handed the pictures to me one by one, flipping through most of them quickly, explaining that she hadn’t taken them and didn’t know most of the people in them. I tried not to reveal my shock. One group of pictures showed girls in their bras and panties frolicking on the lap of a hard-bodied shirtless man with a tattoo of the Tasmanian Devil on his right pec. The photographs didn’t reveal his face, but he was obviously an adult, and, from the looks of things, he was about as carnivorous as the notoriously frenzied cartoon character emblazoned on his chest.

“Those were taken when someone else had the camera,” Kendra said, by way of explanation.

Kendra seemed to have an eye for photography. When she finally got to the three pictures she had taken, I could see that she’d managed to capture a youthful, playful side of these girls that was nowhere to be seen in the other photos. Three of them were sitting outside in Pioneer Square, making funny faces and forming peace signs with their fingers over each other’s heads.

“That’s my friend Haley,” Kendra said, pointing to an attractive teenage girl who was crossing her eyes and sticking out her tongue at the camera. Of Kendra’s friends, she looked the most like a prostitute. I recognized her from the Tasmanian Devil pictures.

“Kendra, would you mind if I borrowed these pictures?” I sensed that she wanted an explanation. “Chuck and I work with a man named Tommy Garcia. He’s been trying to figure out who’s been making girls like Haley and your other friends give them a portion of their money.”

After some negotiation, we decided that she’d hang on to the three pictures of her friends and I’d take the rest to Garcia.

When Kendra went to the kitchen to throw out the empty Happy Meal box, Chuck pulled me aside.

“I was thinking about the investigation while you two were talking. Kendra told Ray and Jack she’d know the place those guys drove her to if she saw it, but they never took her out. Probably thought it was too much of a long shot. But I want to drive her around a little over there and see if she recognizes anything. We can canvass for witnesses. Maybe someone called in a suspicious car or something. You never know.”

“Sure, sounds good.” I was surprised that he wanted my input. “You don’t need my permission to do stuff like that.”

He squinted in mock disbelief. “Don’t flatter yourself, Kincaid. I need you to drive us.”

It was my turn to feign misgivings. “Something wrong with that ride of yours? Since when do you need me to schlep you around?”

“Why do you always have to bag on my car? You have to admit, it’s pretty sweet.”

Chuck loved cars. As long as I’d known him, he had always driven some old car that he had poured his heart, soul, and wallet into to fix. For the last few years, it had been a magnificent ruby-red 1967 Jaguar convertible.

“You know I love that car. I just think it would look a lot better around someone else. Me, for example.”

“In your dreams, Kincaid.”

“So if I can’t have your car, what do you need me and my little Jetta for?”

“Department GO says we don’t put civilians in our personal vehicles while we’re on the job. I don’t want to go all the way downtown for a duty car. Let’s just take yours.”