Bones of the Lost(85)

“Human trafficking. Think about it.”

We stood outside the homicide unit squad room. Behind us, through a doorway, stretched a labyrinth of dividers, file cabinets, and desks. A few were occupied.

“Creach says the Bronco Club features special dancers every month. Very young girls. You think they’re all hitching rides from Iowa and Nebraska?”

“They’re strippers. They make a few bucks, they move on.”

“And enroll in PhD programs at Yale,” I snapped.

“That ain’t what I meant.”

“Consider this. Who would be well positioned to meet the demand for a constant supply of young women?”

Slidell gave me a skeptical look.

“Dom Rockett,” I said.

“Just ’cause the guy smuggles dead dogs don’t mean he’d smuggle live people.”

I listed the points that had just toggled in my brain. Candy. The Passion Fruit. Spanish. Frequent buying trips to South America.

“And Rockett had cash to invest in S&S Enterprises. Where’d he get it?”

“You’re saying he greases his pockets trafficking child sex slaves?”

Easy, Brennan.

“I’m saying we need to consider the possibility that girls are being brought here illegally then forced to work in the sex trade.”

“And that Rockett’s the doer.”

“A number of factors point to him.”

“Smuggling dead dogs is one thing. Smuggling kids is a mighty big leap.”

“I understand that.”

Slidell looked down at the file in his hand. Shifted his feet.

“Majerick I could see, but that kind of operation is above his skill set. Rockett, eh?” He scrunched one side of his face and shook his head.

I had to agree. My impression of Dom Rockett was conflicted. A scarred war hero. A man with no interest in helping ID a hit-and-run victim. I felt pity. I felt revulsion.

“Rockett has the skill set, as you put it. And the infrastructure. The trucks, the supply routes,” I said. “Does he have the coldhearted ruthlessness to traffic helpless kids? I don’t know.”

The callousness to kill if they rebelled? That thought was too terrible to voice.

Two more neurons reached out.

A plastic vial. An antique tusk.

“Holy crap, Slidell. I just thought of something else. Larabee found a sliver of ivory in Candy’s scalp.”

“What’s ivory doing in a hooker’s hair?”

“Will you let me finish?”

Slidell looked at his watch.

“When we were in Rockett’s house I saw a carved tusk in his living room. The thing looked old.”

“And?”

“What do you mean, and?” Sharp. “The worldwide ban on ivory has been in effect for over twenty years. Who has the stuff just lying around?”

“I got an ivory marble my granddaddy give me.”

“Are you listening to me?”

“Calm down, doc.”

“I am calm. Did you know that, other than drugs and guns, human beings are the most smuggled commodity on earth?”

Slidell rubbed his chin.

A phone rang in the squad room behind us.

“I’ll write up a warrant. Not saying I’ll get one, but we’ve got Creach’s admission the Passion Fruit is a rub and tug. I’ll go with that. Once inside, we see what we see.”

• • •

While Slidell tried to convince a judge to issue a search warrant, I headed back to the MCME to do some research. I learned the following.

A United Nations study put the estimated annual global profit from human trafficking at $31.6 billion. And that figure was a few years out of date. Given the industry’s steep growth curve, some were placing the total closer to forty billion.

At any given time, 2.5 million people worldwide are in forced labor as a result of trafficking. One hundred and sixty-one countries are affected, 127 as exporters, 137 as importers. Asian and pan-Pacific countries are the most common source, followed by African, Middle Eastern, and Eastern Bloc nations.

The majority of victims are between eighteen and twenty-four years of age, but roughly 1.2 million children are also trafficked annually.

Trafficked individuals end up in bonded or forced labor, or in sexual servitude. Bonded laborers work to pay off a loan or service, often for years. Forced laborers work against their will, usually in domestic, farm, or sweatshop settings.

Forty-three percent of all trafficking victims end up in involuntary commercial sexual exploitation. Ninety-eight percent are women and girls.

After an hour I sat back, sickened.

Runaways hoping for better lives as nannies, models, or maids. Teens meeting an exciting new date, an exotic stranger, an older man. Kids playing or walking to school, grabbed and thrown into the back of a van. All ending up in an inescapable hell of strip clubs, brothels, and pornographic films.