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.
“That’s fine,” Nancy said. “You don’t have to.”
“Sorry, Paola,” Toni said. “I didn’t mean to ask you a question that made you uncomfortable. Let me move past that. When you say that Isabel had to ‘go to work,’ you mean someone put an ad in Backpage.com and Isabel was supposed to start going out on dates?”
“Yeah. They probably took her picture that day,” Paola said. “They have us dress up all sexy, and they take pictures all the time.”
“But up until then, Isabel didn’t have to go on dates?”
“No, she was new. She didn’t live with us. The new girls aren’t ready for dates at first.”
“But a week ago, you’re saying Isabel’s time was up. They told her she had to move into the girls’ house and go to work?”
Paola nodded. “Yeah.”
“What happened when they told her that?” Toni said.
Paola shrugged. “They brought her over to show her around. We met her and stuff. We talked a little by ourselves. She told me she wasn’t going to go out on any dates.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“A couple days later, they moved her over to our house. It was the end of last week, I think.”
“Were you able to talk to her again?”
“Yeah. She was there a couple days. I worked at night, but I talked to her in the daytime. I thought she was cool. She loaned me the coat I was wearing last night.”
“And did she start going out on dates?” Toni asked.
“No. They had dates all set up for her, but right after she moved in, she came right out and told them she wouldn’t go on any dates. She told them she was going to leave.”
“What happened then?”
“They all got really mad. Isabel got punishment.”
“What’s that mean-punishment?”
“They beat her with the belt. Right in front of us. Then they threatened her family. They said they were going to kill her mom.”
“What did Isabel do?”
“She got mad. She told them to go ahead, she didn’t care. Then she told them to fuck off-those were her exact words. She said she was leaving.” She looked down for a moment before continuing. “So then they took her to a party.”
“A party?” I asked. “What’s that mean? What’s a party?”
She looked down and shifted her feet. She was clearly getting nervous.
Nancy noticed, too. “Paola, you don’t have to answer if you don’t like.”
She looked up and then said, “It’s alright.” She turned back to me. “A party is when they take you over to the boys’ house, and everybody gets high, and then you have to have sex with all of them at the same time.”
I could feel my skin start to tingle-a clear sign that I was on my way to getting good and pissed. Whenever I think I’m past the point where I can be surprised by the pure depths of depravity some scumbags seem able to reach, something new like this comes along. The drugging and gang rape of a child by a group of men as a means of forcing the girl into prostitution-this was a new low in my experience. I shuddered. Poor Isabel ran away from home to escape an abusive prick of a stepfather-an animal who liked to rape her just for fun and where’d she end up? With a bunch of the worst kind of thugs I’d ever heard of. Wonderful. I noticed I was staring at the ceiling, holding my breath, so I slowly let it out and looked at the others. They were all looking at me.
“Sorry,” I said. I shook my head slowly. “Paola, it makes me very sad to hear about the kind of life you’ve had to live. I’m so happy for you that Nancy found you and wants to help you. Really. No one deserves to go through this.”
She looked at me for a second and then shrugged. “There’s worse,” she said.
How? Tough little girl.
Toni continued. “So Paola, after the beating and the party, then what happened to Isabel? Did she start going out on dates then?”
“I don’t think so. They probably wouldn’t send her out all beat-up. But I haven’t seen Isabel for about a week-since the night they took her to the party.”
“Do you know what happened to her?”