“Have you turned the video evidence over to us?”
“I believe the security team from Union Station did so, yes. You need to watch it. In the video it looks like Nadine went with Markovich into the parking garage. Obviously, he was taking her to his car. She doesn’t even have her license. Why else would she go there? We need to go at this guy.”
“Where does he live?”
“DC.”
“Then it’s a matter for the DC police, not us. Call them.”
“But I think he may own this building.”
“You have proof of that?”
“No. All we know is that the building is owned by a trust.”
“Then your boy is still DC’s jurisdiction, not ours. Okay?”
“Not okay,” Angie said. “My partner and I are here now, outside the apartment building, documenting a lot of guys going down an alley with grouchy looks on their faces and coming back all smiles.”
“Fine. We’ll send a cruiser over to have a look.”
“You already did that. How about you get inside?” Angie said.
“How about I need a cause for a warrant.”
“I just gave you one.”
“You gave me an ass chewing from a judge. I need better.”
“Okay, how about you get some people down here to help us stake out the place?”
“When East Baltimore decides to take a break from being a war zone, maybe I could spare a crew to run that kind of operation. Until then, feel free to send us what you have.”
If lip biting were an Olympic sport, Angie would have medaled. She forced herself to end the call on friendly terms. She didn’t think the scant police response was proof of a Thin Blue Discount, but it sure it made easy to speculate.
She radioed Mike to vent. Her conversation got cut short when her phone rang.
The call came up with a Maryland area code, but it wasn’t a number Angie recognized, and that included the burner phone number she had committed to memory. She answered the call with a little flitter in her heart.
“This is Angie.”
A whispered voice answered back. “My name is Nadine Jessup. I think you’re looking for me.”
CHAPTER 34
In light traffic, the FBI headquarters on Lord Baltimore Drive was twenty-five minutes from the apartment building where Nadine Jessup was being held. It was a square brick structure indistinct as any office park building. Angie and Mike were given special passes and taken to a conference room on the third floor, where a special planning session was already in progress.
Nadine had told Angie some of the girls were foreigners. “You have to come soon. Tasha might be dead down there for all I know,” she had said, confirming what Angie already suspected. Tasha, the girl down in the hole (Nadine’s label for it) was the same girl who’d taken the phone from Mike.
“You have to help her,” Nadine had pleaded.
Human trafficking was a federal crime. The FBI would act, and Angie couldn’t be confident that the local PD would. Things were moving forward with haste, as they should have been all along.
Normally, the FBI would have thanked Angie for her service and sent her on her way. But Nadine was scared, understandably so, and would only talk to Angie. In turn, Angie requested Mike’s presence and so there they were.
A lot had happened in the four hours since Nadine’s initial phone call. A tactical team had been assembled, various warrants were being expedited, and plans were hatching with urgency. Everything moved quickly—a girl’s life was in danger. Angie had infrequent contact with Nadine since the initial phone call that set all this in motion. Nadine spoke in a whispered voice and often went silent abruptly when it was no longer safe to talk. For this reason, Angie kept her phone in her hand at all times, unsure when Nadine would have the chance to call again. Everyone here was waiting for the phone to ring again.
Every seat around the massive conference table was taken, leaving standing room only for more than twenty people from various agencies who had crammed into the room, including a team from the U.S. Marshals Service who’d arrived about a half hour ago.
Another late arrival was Terrance Hill. An assistant state’s attorney in Baltimore County and the current head of the Maryland Human Trafficking Task Force, he had a kind face for managing such an unkind job and appeared to have the ear of Barbara Curtis, a seasoned FBI agent who headed the FBI’s arm of the task force. In her fifties, Curtis had short hair, a thin build, and could have easily been a friend of Angie’s mother. Instead, she was organizing the entire tactical response.
Introductions were made and various roles explained. Angie and Mike’s stakeout had proved useful, providing images of all four suspects.