Erin
My alarm went off at two a.m. I turned over, peeking at the alarm with one eye, and pressed the snooze button. Then my eyes closed again and I drifted away.
In my dream I was walking on a dark street late at night. Moonlight reflected off puddles, and shadowy figures seemed to hover just out of sight, obscured by swirling black smoke or fog. Across the street stood a huge pile of stones, a church, with peaked towers and a high doorway with a pointed arch. The doorway was sealed shut; a double wooden door with planks nailed into it to hold it closed. The paint peeled, red and green flecks scattered on the steps in front of the door.
Tendrils of fear twisted around my spine and nerves all the way down to my feet. I approached the church and walked around the side of it, my feet knocking aside beer bottles and wrappers and paper. In the parking lot I saw a used condom. In the darkness, almost out of sight, a huge black SUV.
No sooner did I see it than I was standing at the fogged window, looking in. I couldn’t see anything at first, but then I saw the glowing green lamps of the dashboard softly illuminating the interior. Nothing … then I felt, more than heard, a thump.
My daughter appeared, hands pressed against the glass, her face in the window. She looked twelve, her hair still cut with bangs and long over her shoulders. She wore blue overalls, blue overalls that made me want to cry out and scream, because I remembered the overalls, with their High School Musical logo. She’d refused to change out of them, sometimes for days at a time.
I grabbed at the car door, trying to yank it open, but it was locked. I screamed and pounded on the glass.
A dark figure appeared from behind her. Huge, imposing, but ill-defined, more of a cloud than a man, it grabbed her around her waist and pulled her away from the glass with the ease of plucking a dandelion.
Brenna screamed and struggled, her arms and legs flailing ineffectually, and the faceless man looked out at me with nothing but a grin. The SUV pulled away slowly as I screamed, scrabbling against the metal and glass trying to tear it open with my bare fingers.
She was gone.
I woke up with a scream, suddenly sitting up, my hair gripped in my fingers. I struggled to take a breath, my hand pressed against my pounding chest, and I suppressed the whine that wanted to force its way out of my throat. My face and hair were damp with sweat.
I looked at the clock. Shit. It was 2:25. I’d planned on being on my way by now. I got out of bed and threw on clothes. I’d get a shower later. I grabbed a stack of flyers, my phone and car keys, and stepped outside. It was chilly, but not cold, and the rain had stopped. The ground was still wet, puddles in the parking lot reflecting the streetlights.
Before I let the hotel room door close behind me, I scanned the area. At the end of the row of hotel room doors, two men sat in plastic lawn chairs smoking and talking quietly. Both of them wore jeans and T-shirts, and the larger of the two had a round belly that he rested his hands on. He chuckled at something the other man said. Neither of them took any notice of me. No one else was in sight.
I gripped my car key in my hand. I’d already established yesterday that the remote didn’t work. In four quick steps, I walked to the car, my eyes scanning everywhere, especially the two men, as I unlocked the door of the car, threw my things inside, and got in. I didn’t breathe again until the doors were locked.
Neither of the men had looked up or paid any attention as far as I could tell.
My hope was tenuous. The night before I had searched through the regional discussion board on the UtopiaGuide, one of the many discussion boards where so-called mongers compared notes on sexual services, strippers, and prostitution.
Sometimes the self-righteousness and ignorance of the men on those boards filled me with rage. They called themselves hobbyists and mongers and expressed no concern at all for the welfare of the women they exploited. They shared photos of the women and stories of their exploits, all of it completely in the open on the Internet.
I had, however, gained important knowledge from the board. Several posters on the Portland discussion board had commented that recent law enforcement activity had driven the appearance of street prostitutes into later and later hours, between two and five in the morning.
I had mapped out my routes after struggling to decode the half-disguised stories of the men on the board. They were trying to tell each other where and how to find sex. I was hoping to use their information to find my daughter.
First I drove down the broad boulevard past the diner, the strip club, and the police station. Dark houses, some of them with boarded up windows, were interspersed on both sides with used car dealerships, pawn shops, dry cleaners. In the darkness on the right, overlooking a dirty parking lot, was a billboard with the words, Jesus: Your Only Way To God. Three blocks further on the left was the church where Brenna had been arrested.
Half a block before the church, across the street from me, I spied a woman walking in the darkness. From behind, all I could see was her dark shoulder-length hair. She wore jeans and a sweatshirt, and other than the fact that it was a time of night when you rarely saw women walking alone in the darkness, there was no indication of what she was doing.
But then it was clear enough. A car rolled slowly past her and she turned and waved. I slowed almost to a crawl as I saw the woman approach the car. Now I could see her face. She looked as if she were in her thirties or forties, with deep furrows on both sides of her mouth. Her expression was devoid of any emotion. The car slowed long enough for the driver to get a good look at her, then it sped up and drove away. The woman screamed and cursed at the driver.
There was the church. It wasn’t the huge stone edifice I had seen in my dream; instead, it was a simple brick structure. I turned left, pulling into the driveway and sweeping my headlights across the parking lot where Brenna had been arrested.
No one was there. I sighed. It’s not that I had any expectation I would find her here, but maybe deep inside I had hoped it would be that simple. That I could drive here, pick her up. and take her home.
I turned around, pulling to the end of the driveway. I put on my blinker but didn’t pull out, because the woman was approaching rapidly.
As she approached, I rolled down the passenger side window.
“Hey, baby,” she slurred. “You looking for a date?” Then she got a good look at my face, and said, “Sorry…”
She must not have realized I was a woman.
“Wait.” I scrabbled for one of the flyers. “Hey, wait … have you seen this girl?”
The woman looked terrified. She started to back away, and I called out, “Wait … please! I’m not a cop. I won’t hurt you. I’m just looking for my daughter.”
She looked around. Looking for her pimp? Who knew. She approached the car and leaned close. I held the flyer out to her.
As the woman studied the picture, I looked at her. She was younger than I had initially thought. It was hard to tell. She was missing some teeth and had a nasty scar on one side of her face. A tattoo on her forearm, in stylized lettering, read Property of Poppa Jake. I shuddered. Was that her boyfriend? A pimp? Was it like a cattle brand?
“I ain’t seen her. She don’t work this area.”
I sighed. “She was arrested next to the church three weeks ago. In the parking lot.”
The woman’s eyes darted up from the flyer to me. “I’m out here most days, but not all. If she’s been working the block, she’s either new or part-time. Or an indoor ho, out here to make her quota.”
Indoor ho. That meant a girl who worked out of hotels or the Internet, not the street.
I winced at her words. “You’re sure?” I said.
“Told ya, didn’t I? Why you wasting my time?”
My heart was breaking. This woman might be twenty-five or might be forty-five. But she was somebody’s daughter. She might have been just like Brenna years ago. I said, “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Or … anything?”
“Crazy bitch,” the woman muttered. She stalked away into the darkness.
I took a breath, trying to get ahold of myself. The blinking clock on the dashboard said it was five minutes after three. I took a right turn out of the church and drove exactly the speed limit. A hundred yards ahead of me, a BMW changed lanes suddenly, pulling up to the curb in front of a white-haired woman. This woman wasn’t wearing a sweatshirt and jeans … she wore a tight mini-skirt and a crop top that exposed her belly, with a bra that pushed her breasts high. She tottered toward the BMW on her six-inch heels and leaned close, speaking rapidly with whoever was in the car. Then she got in. The brake lights went off and the car took off in a hurry.
Another woman, just past there. I was almost at the police station. This woman was African American, also dressed in revealing clothes, her bronzed hair trailing all the way down to her butt. I pulled up beside her.
“Hey…” As soon as she saw me inside the car, she started to walk briskly down the sidewalk away from me.
“Wait!” I called out. “I’m not a cop. I’m looking for someone. Maybe you’ve seen her?”
“Ain’t seen nobody,” the woman said. I had to take my foot off the brakes and let the car drift forward to keep up.
“Please just take a look? It’s my daughter. Please?”
The woman stopped. She swung toward the car and held out a hand. I passed her the flyer through the passenger side window. She stared at it, a frown on her face. Finally she said, “Might have seen her. Once or twice in the last month. Never before.”
My heart started to thump. “Where—where did you see her?”
“Walking the track. She got a mean-looking pimp. White guy with lots of tattoos. I don’t know her name though.”
I took a deep breath. “Walking the track. Here?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Late night. First I thought she was a renegade, but when Mack K went to bump her, this guy come out of nowhere waving around a gun. Her pimp. Mack say she was reckless eyeballing, but her pimp don’t give a shit. I ain’t seen her since.”
Jesus Christ. I didn’t understand half of what the woman had said. Except the key point: Brenna had been here.
“Listen,” I said. “If you see her, can you give her a message?”
The girl looked annoyed. “Do I look like a messenger service to you?”
“PLEASE! Just … tell her I’m here, looking for her. I’m her mother. Tell her I’m not leaving until I find her.”
A bitter look passed across the woman’s face. “I’ll tell her. Wish my mama had come after me.” She took the flyer and folded it up, then stuffed it in her back pocket.
Then she cursed and began walking away fast. I took my foot off the gas and started to drive, but blue lights suddenly flashed in my rearview mirror.
Damn it.
I sat there with my hands on the wheel, and I wanted to curl up in exhaustion. I’d only talked to two women, and I was exhausted and didn’t see how I could continue.
I heard her say the words again: Wish my mama had come after me.
I was dispirited, and I wanted a drink. The police car behind me hadn’t moved, and the lights were still flashing. I leaned my head against the steering wheel and closed my eyes.
Almost a full minute later I heard a knock on the window. I looked up. An officer stood outside, shining his flashlight in. He motioned for me to roll down the window. I hit the button and the window slid down.
“License and registration, please.”
I reached over to the passenger seat, where the folder containing the car’s paperwork was still located. Of course I didn’t have registration, but I did have the bill of sale. I passed that over, along with my driver’s license.
The officer was standing just slightly back from my seat and still shining the flashlight in the car, making it impossible for me to see him. I knew another officer was out there, because another flashlight was roving over the interior of the car. It came to rest on the stack of flyers.
“You just purchased this car yesterday?”
“Yes, Officer.”
“Did you just move to Portland?”
“No. I don’t think I’ll be in town very long. But I needed wheels while I was here.”
“What brings you to Portland? And … what brings you out here on this street at three o’clock in the morning? If you don’t mind my asking.”
I didn’t see any point in circumlocution. I said, “I’m looking for my daughter.” I passed a flyer to the officer. He shone the flashlight on the flyer for a moment, then the light dropped down. For the first time I was able to clearly see his face. He was young … very young, maybe twenty-two or twenty-three years old. He looked over at his partner on the other side of the car.
“You recognize this girl, Bill? I don’t think I’ve seen her.”
The other officer, apparently deciding that I didn’t represent a threat, walked around to my side of the car.
The other officer, considerably older than the first, took the flyer and studied for a minute. Then he looked at me. “The picture on the left is a mug shot?”
I nodded. In a quiet voice, I said, “She was arrested on this street three weeks ago.”
The younger cop’s face went through a series of expressions that were difficult to interpret. He shook his head and said, “Oh man, I’m sorry.”
The older cop looked at me with a grim gaze. “You related to her?”
“My daughter. She was abducted two years ago. We didn’t have any signs or clues until she was arrested. As soon as I heard, I flew out here.”
The officer looked around the street. Then he said, “The odds of you finding her like this are pretty slim.”
I shrugged. “I don’t care what the odds are. Would you if it was your kid?”
He shook his head slowly. “No, ma’am. So here’s what I can advise you … first, be really careful. It’s dangerous out here, and if one of the pimps thinks you’re messing with one of their girls, they won’t hesitate to hurt you. Stay on well-lit streets. And while I can’t advise you to arm yourself, since it’s highly doubtful you’ve got a permit, at the very least get some Mace or pepper spray.”
I took a deep shuddering breath. I don’t know what response I’d been expecting, but that hadn’t been it.
“Can we take some of the flyers?” the younger officer asked. “I know some places where we can hand them out and put them up.”
A rush of gratitude flooded through me. I nodded and passed him a stack of the flyers. As he took them, the older officer took a card out of his pocket and passed it to me. “If you’re going to be out along the stretch early in the morning, you’ll probably get pulled over again. Here’s my card if you run into trouble.”
I glanced down at the card. Sergeant Bill Clayton. The younger officer—his name tag read Reynolds—passed me my driver’s license and the bill of sale for the car. “Good luck.”
They walked away from my car. Almost immediately, I began to get a bad case of the shakes. The police car backed up and then did a U-turn. As I watched the taillights recede in my rearview mirror, I put my own car in gear and began to drive. Two minutes later, I approached the diner on the left. It looked far busier than it had yesterday morning … at least a dozen cars filled the parking lot. There were a few spots left; I pulled in and took one of them.
I grabbed a small stack of flyers and went into the diner.
The diner seemed almost bright after coming in from the inky black night. But my eyes quickly adjusted to the surroundings, and restored the place to its original grubby look. I scanned the room, noting that all of the corner booths were taken. I decided to sit in the same spot as the woman I’d spoken to yesterday, because it had the clearest view of the entire restaurant. I wondered if that’s why she’d been sitting there. I made my way to that side of the diner, carefully maneuvering my way around the men and women who crowded the place.
I sat down and waited, while scanning the people.
The taller counter, to my right and facing the grill, was occupied by two men who sat a fair distance away from each other. One of them was in his twenties, with a crew cut and a bitter expression. He sat there staring at the wall in front of them, not even making a pretense of drinking the cup of coffee in front of him. The man a few seats down from him was easily twenty years older, and obviously drunk. He was saying something to the younger man, his words so slurred I couldn’t understand him from where I sat.
Not far away from them, facing each other in a booth, were three young women. They were chatting with each other and laughing. They wore revealing clothing, but none of them so much that I would guess they were prostitutes. Or if they were, they certainly didn’t work the streets. The sad thing was, they might just be teenagers or college girls out with friends for the night. But with this location, I could only assume the worst.
Maybe they worked at the strip club down the block. They didn’t look run-down like the women I’d seen on the street.
There was little question, however, about the next table over in the corner. A mean-looking dark-haired man with a thick five o’clock shadow leaned back in the corner of the booth. He wore a sleeveless white T-shirt that revealed powerful shoulders and a series of tattoos, some of which looked as if they’d been done at home or in jail. He wore a gold chain studded with what appeared to be diamonds. Two women sat in the booth with him, both of them scantily dressed. Both of the women were young … one of them might have been eighteen. Or possibly less. How could you tell? They were heavily made up and had dull eyes which made it difficult to guess their age.
The younger of the two girls threw her hands up in the air and said, “Fine!”
With no change of expression, the man leaned toward her and grabbed her chin between his finger and thumb and squeezed. He said something, but it wasn’t loud enough to hear clearly.
She looked terrified.
After a few seconds, he released her.
He shook his head, his face still set in anger. The girls slipped out of the booth and he followed, throwing a twenty on the table.
A waitress approached—the same one I’d had the day before. I hadn’t noticed then, but her name-tag read “Kristi.” She approached me, putting a napkin and some silverware on the counter in front of me.
“Hey, you’re back. Can I get you something? Coffee?”
“Coffee, please,” I said. I slid one of the flyers across the table at her and continued in a much lower voice. “And maybe you can take a look at another picture?”
She looked down at the picture then at me. She nodded.
I leaned closer. She rotated the flyer to get a better angle. “That’s her for sure. I recognize the neck tattoo. She was here with another girl, and some guy. At least twice.”
I began to shake. “You’re sure? When was it?”
She nodded. “Yeah. I remember the guy. He was an asshole. He got into it with one of the other pimps. I almost had to call the cops. I’m thinking it was about two weeks ago, but I’m not sure. I can talk to my manager, we could maybe check the security tapes. But he won’t be in until tomorrow.”
She leaned close. “Give me your number, and I’ll call you right away if they come back in.”
“It’s right here,” I said, pointing to the number on the flyer. “That’s my cell phone.”
In an unexpected moment of kindness, she put her hand on mine. “If I see her, I’ll call you immediately.”
My throat felt raw. I croaked the words, “Thank you.”
I still had three hours before I’d be meeting Detective Michelson. I finished my coffee and paid, and on my way out the door I put two copies of the flyer on the bulletin board near the front door. I decided that later that day I would stop at a hardware store and pick up a staple gun so I could attach it to the telephone poles in the area. In the meantime, it was time to get out there.
I’d given a lot of thought to the flyers. What happened if her trafficker saw them? Would it be putting Brenna in more danger? Would they leave town? There was no way to know. I couldn’t quantify how serious the danger was—but I knew that without the flyers, she’d been tortured and burned at least. If there was a chance of getting her home, I was taking it.
For the next several hours I drove the length of the track. All in all, it was about ten blocks in a rough square. I wasn’t the only car circling those blocks, not even close—at any given time I could see four or five cars circling along, either in front or behind me. They would slow down anytime they approached one of the prostitutes, brake lights flashing as the men inside examined the women. If the drivers came to a stop, the woman would lean in the passenger window, a few words would be exchanged, and either she would get in and the couple would drive off together, or the car would move on.
The women I saw and spoke to over those hours ranged in age from their teens to their forties. They were every race. Some of them looked young and beautiful, and some looked like they might have been grandmothers. Everywhere I looked, hovering in the darkness or some circling in cars, were men. Pimps. Johns. Even police, who were patrolling the area regularly. Some of them talked with me willingly. Some shied away, backing up and refusing to talk. One pimp threatened me. If you don’t get off the damn track, I’ll turn you out myself, bitch.
I was still shaking from that encounter at seven a.m. when it was time to meet Detective Michelson. It bothered me that I didn’t know her first name. I’d remedy that as soon as we met. But I pulled to a stop when my phone rang a moment later—the name on my phone sent immediate tension through me.
“Mrs. Roberts? It’s Stan Wilcox.”
“Agent Wilcox. Thank you for calling. Do you have news?”
“Actually, I’m wondering if you decided to fly to Portland after all.”
“I’m here now.”
After an almost imperceptible pause, he said, “In that case we should meet. I arrived late last night.”
Stunned, I blurted, “You’re in Portland? I didn’t expect that.”
“It took some convincing the Bureau. But I’m here, and at least for the next little while, I’m exclusively on your daughter’s case.”
I closed my eyes. “You know where Dave’s Diner is on Eighty-second?”
“I’ve heard of the place.”
“I’m meeting Detective Michelson from the Portland Police there for breakfast in a few minutes. Want to join us?”
“Michelson? I know her. It’ll take me a while to get there.”
“That’s fine, I’ll wait.”
We disconnected and I drove on toward the diner. Wilcox being here was a relief, provided he didn’t try to shut me out of looking for Brenna. I was ready to fight. I’d taken too passive a role when she first disappeared, and that wasn’t happening again.
Now, with the sun coming up, the diner was far less crowded. I got out of the car and locked it, carrying a few of the flyers inside with me.
Inside, I scanned the restaurant. She was in the back booth. Kristi, the waitress, waved when I walked in. I smiled at her, then walked to the booth and slid in across from Michelson.
“Good morning,” she said.
“Morning,” I replied. “Listen, you’ll have to forgive me. But I never learned your first name yesterday.”
She smiled. “It’s Melody.”
“You can call me Erin. I wanted to let you know, I just got a call from Stan Wilcox at the FBI. He was the investigating agent on my daughter’s case.”
“From the child abduction unit? I know him actually, we’ve worked together.”
“He told me that. He got into town last night—he said he’s working her case exclusively at least for the next few days.”
Melody brightened. “That’s good news. He’ll have access to a lot of resources beyond what I can do.”
“What have you found so far?”
Melody shook her head. “Not a lot. I started by getting and reviewing the FBI file. I’ve got some questions I’m going to ask you there, just to clarify some things. We might want to wait until Wilcox gets here though. So we’re not asking you the same things twice.”
I nodded. “What else?”
She sighed. “I want to be realistic with you, Erin. The odds are significant that they’re no longer in Portland. Which is not to discourage you. We’re going to do absolutely everything we can. I just need you to know that it’s a long shot.” Her expression was grim.
“I get it. But this is the best shot we’ve had in two years. I’ll do everything I can.”
“Okay. For what it’s worth … I’ll do everything within my power to find her.”
I studied her. She met none of my stereotypes of what a detective would look like. And I had met my share of detectives, unfortunately. She had a trim athletic figure and wore conservative clothing: a navy suit with wide lapels and a white shirt. She wouldn’t have looked out of place in a corporate office in Silicon Valley or New York City.
“How did you become the resident expert on trafficking?”
Melody winced. “Are you sure you want to hear that story? It’s not pretty.”
I felt my eyebrows drawing together. “There’s nothing pretty about any of this. I would like to know, if you’re willing to talk about it.”
Melody waved at Kristi and pointed at our coffee cups. She did it with a friendly smile. But when she looked back at me, her expression was sober. “I grew up in a family with five kids. My parents took us all with them as missionaries to Central Africa when I was really little. When we came back home, Mom was—what do you call it—a tiger mom? She was always in our business. Getting a B on a test was an occasion for scorn. Anyway we were kind of a stereotype, and all of us went to really good schools.”
I nodded. “I get it. I went to Georgetown.”
Melody said, “Cornell. But after I graduated, I didn’t want to go the same route. Both my brothers are doctors, one of my sisters is a surgeon, and the other works for Google. I came back home and applied for the Police Academy.”
I smiled. “I bet your mother was thrilled.”
Melody laughed. “Not exactly. Not at first anyway. She’s come to accept it, and she knows the work I do is important. When I first joined the force, I took a whole lot of ribbing from the guys. Because I was a woman, because I’m Asian, because I went to Cornell. But I can outshoot two-thirds of these guys. I made detective four years ago. My very first case was a missing child.”
I felt a chill when she said those words. The chill wasn’t for me … it was from her. From her eyes. She continued.
“She was an eleven-year-old girl. Her family lived in a poor neighborhood, not ten blocks from here. Her mom was struggling to make ends meet and had a shit for a boyfriend who I’m pretty sure abused the kids. Anyway, the girl—her name was Grace—they thought she was a runaway. The cops who were initially called didn’t escalate it—they figured she had run away and would turn back up.”
She paused, and I found myself dreading the rest of the story. Melody looked away from me, unable to meet my eyes. She stared out the window. “I couldn’t find her in time. They sold her. I don’t know how many times. But she was trafficked initially in a little house up Eighty-second Avenue, getting raped for twenty or thirty dollars a time by I don’t know how many men. Three weeks after she went missing, a confidential informant told us he’d heard about this girl. She was being trafficked by someone she knew, a friend of the family. But when we raided the place, she was gone.”
Tears were running down her face now, and mine too. I reached out and took one of her hands.
“She finally did turn up. She was dismembered, cut up into little pieces and thrown in a trash bag and dumped in the woods.”
Jesus Christ. I felt a sudden panic attack coming on; my chest tightened, a sharp pain right in the center. I pressed my hand against the center of my chest and tried to breathe.
Melody took a long shuddering breath and said, “I went to the Chief of Detectives after that and we started work on the Trafficking Task Force. My husband’s an assistant district attorney, and we’ve been trying to put together a network of places that can help these girls get off the streets. It’s heartbreaking what happens to them. But then we’ve still got assholes like Sergeant Mackey, who thinks of it only in terms of the girls being whores. They don’t get it. We estimate that there’s anywhere from fifty to a hundred children being trafficked every single night in Portland alone.”
I had become so wrapped up in Melody’s story, I completely forgot that Stan Wilcox was coming. So I was startled when he appeared next to our table. I stood up, hitting my knee on the edge of the booth and wincing.
We shook hands all around, and Melody said to Stan, “It’s nice to see you again.”
Wilcox ordered a cup of coffee and said, “Sorry it took me so long to get here.”
“It’s fine,” Melody said. “We’ve mostly been talking background stuff, getting to know each other.”
“So what do we have?” Wilcox asked.
Melody told the story of Brenna’s arrest. Over the next few minutes we caught up on the details of my own questioning along the track.
“Do you mind if I ask you both some questions about Brenna’s original disappearance?” Melody directed the question at me.
“Whatever you think may help.”
“I understand the original prime suspect was her boyfriend. Why was that?”
Wilcox answered. “He was an adult dating a sixteen-year-old… fifteen at the time they started. But the damning thing was the bracelet.”
“Found in his apartment, right?” Melody asked.
“It was a birthday gift from my sister Lori,” I said. “She had just gotten it that day, which meant that she’d been in Chase’s apartment after the last time we saw her.”
Wilcox said, “In the end, there just wasn’t any evidence he’d been involved in her disappearance. We knew she had been there, but that was consistent with his story. But her car and her cell phone were found almost twenty miles away.”
Melody opened the folder and paged through it. She stopped and looked up. “Was there ever any hint of who this guy Rick was?”
Wilcox shook his head. “The Facebook account was registered to a Gmail address that was opened at a public library. We know that she received a few text messages around one a.m., and she wasn’t at Chase Morton’s apartment—that’s based on the cell phone towers that carried the messages. The messages came from a prepaid burner phone.”
All three of us sat quietly, considering for a few seconds. Then Melody said, “I think we can make some assumptions based on what little we know. She’s not been working the streets except maybe on an occasional basis. We don’t know where she’s been between Virginia and here, but I think it’s safe to guess that she hasn’t been in Portland very long.
“Why is that?” I asked.
“Mainly because of Kristi over there. At the very least, they’ve not been on this stretch before a few weeks ago, and this is the only twenty-four-hour place on Eighty-second or close to it.”
That explained the three a.m. traffic. “So where do we start?”
“I think you start doing what you already are,” Melody said. “Get that flyer up everywhere, concentrating along Eighty-second Avenue and the surrounding neighborhoods. Grocery stores, restaurants, coffee shops, hotels and motels. I’ll be doing the same, but I’ll focus mostly on the business travel hotels all the way around the city. We’ve developed decent partnerships with a lot of them, and that’s where a lot of the Internet-based prostitution takes place these days. We’ll shake down some of our confidential informants, see if anyone has seen or heard of her.”
Wilcox said, “I’m going to meet with the FBI field office this morning. We’ll get a look at the security videos here. And we’ll run this new photo through the NCIS and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The tattoo and—that looks like a cigarette burn scar—are pretty distinctive. Those might help us get a lock on any ads that have been posted of her.”
“What do you think the odds are?” I asked.
“If she’s being trafficked—and we’ve got every reason to believe she is—then I think they’re pretty good.”
I nodded slowly and took a deep breath. “Thank you,” I said.
We had a plan.