NYPD Station
1st August 2004
2.37pm
"Cap, we just got a call from police upstate," Cragen was told by a junior officer entering the office, "an Officer Becker from Pound Ridge."
Cragen thanked them and took the call. "Captain Donald Cragen speaking."
"Yes, Officer Becker here. We have suspicions that a murderer may be heading your way."
"Well," Cragen started, "how is this a Special Victims case?"
The officer breathed outward. "The killers, Otis Chapman and Penny Wechsler, are a couple who foster children. And we have reason to believe that they have one of the children with them. I'll fax over the information immediately."
"OK," Cragen turned around to face the fax machine, which was already printing pictures of the house, a car and a middle-aged man and woman, "what are they suspected of doing and where is their intended destination?"
"A social worker went to visit the children today and people heard a woman screaming from the house. One of our officers went over and found the car gone, with the two suspects. The body of the social worker was found on the floor. All children are present and accounted for, except for one girl. She's called Shelly, Shelby, something like that. Ten years old, blonde wavy hair, four foot ten, don't know what clothes she was wearing. We'll give the licence plate. This was at 2.30pm and we're trying to set up an AMBER Alert."
Cragen thanked them, before going into the squad room and putting everybody on the case that was available.
New York Docks
1st August 2004
2.57pm
Later, Olivia and Stabler were inside the suspected destination; New York's dockyards. Sitting down on a bench by the signing-in desk, overlooking the boats, dressed in dock workers' uniforms, they had their eyes peeled for a blue Toyota Previa.
"Why do you think they'd bring a child here? Or try and hide here?" Olivia asked Stabler.
He shrugged. "Might work here. Doubt it, basically. What did Cragen give us about the two?"
Olivia read her information. "Otis Chapman, Penny Wechsler. Forty and thirty-eight. Foster parents for seventy children since 1985. All-round good citizens. She home-schools them and he works in interior decorating. Churchgoers, or in Penny's case, synagogue-goer, not married but live together, help the community. The kid they vanished with is called Shelby Willis, who has been living with them for sixteen months."
"Why would they suddenly snap?" Stabler asked.
But before Olivia could answer, she saw a car matching the description come up, only fifty yards from them. The people in the front definitely matched the photos she had. There was no sign of a child.
The woman wound the window down and asked Olivia, "I'm Penny Wechsler. Is there a Kittichat here? He said he'd be here to receive a delivery for Thailand? The boat leaves soon and he'd promise me that he'd get it on immediately."
Olivia smiled and told her, "I'll see what I can do."
Stabler peered inside the back of the car, trying to make sure that the suspects didn't notice him. He couldn't see a child inside. But he had to be sure.
"Freeze! Police! Put your hands up!" Stabler shouted, as Olivia also drew her gun out, pulling the two out of the car.
"Where's the kid?" Olivia demanded.
Penny just sneered, "What kid?"
Stabler grabbed the keys from Otis as some watching officers came out from various hiding places. He unlocked the trunk of the car and hauled the lid off. The only things inside were a cardboard box of canned goods and a red sleeping bag.
He stared for a moment, before he chose to look inside the sleeping bag. Unzipping it, he soon saw two feet in pink sandals, silver tape wound around them, before he called back to Olivia, "We got a kid here!"
The feet suddenly began to move about as Olivia ran around. Soon Stabler had unzipped the entire sleeping bag and the two of them looked at a very scared, teary-eyed girl. Shelby Willis had her arms folded behind her and secured with tape, with tape slapped over her mouth.
Olivia pulled the tape away, as well as the dishcloth that had been stuffed inside, before asking, "Shelby Willis?"
"Yeah," the girl sniffled.
"You're fine, Shelby," Olivia told her as the two of them freed her, "you're with police."
As she helped Shelby down from the trunk of the car, she calmly started talking to her. "My name's Olivia, Shelby. Do you think you could tell me why your foster parents did this?"
Shelby looked a little afraid, but Olivia coaxed her by telling her, "If you feel uncomfortable, then we could talk back at the station."
"OK." Shelby mumbled, sucking on her lip. She looked much younger than ten right now, Olivia thought to herself.
NYPD Police Station
1st August 2004
3.16pm
"Right, Shelby, do you think you could talk to me about what happened?" Dr. Huang asked her in the station's children's room. Shelby was sitting on a chair and gripping tightly onto a cushion.
She had already been examined by doctors and showed no sign of sexual abuse, although she had been terrified. Olivia and Cragen watched from the other side of the one-way glass in earnest.
Shelby mumbled, "Otis and Penny took me from my bed."
"And when was this?" Huang asked her.
"I'm not sure," she replied, "it was very late. Maybe early morning. Otis carried me out of my bed. I felt very heavy – like I had something that made me sleepy. Then he carried me downstairs into the basement. We're not allowed down there."
Huang nodded, slowly. "And then what happened?"
"Otis tied me up and left me on a mattress without a blanket. I was cold and scared. When the sun came up, Otis came back. He was talking on a phone in a different language."
"Do you know which language?" Huang asked.
Shelby shook her head. "No. It wasn't French, because we learn that at school. And it wasn't Spanish, because I've heard Spanish. Maria from the foster home watches Spanish TV. But I heard the voice on the other end. It was a man."
"OK, Shelby, you're doing very well. Now, when did they lock you in the car?"
Shelby thought. "Penny hid me inside the sleeping bag after lunchtime. I heard the other children upstairs and they asked where I was. I heard Penny tell them that I had gone back to New York. When I was being locked in the car, I heard Ava arriving."
"Ava?"
"The social worker," Shelby explained, pulling a strand of hair behind her ear, "she sounded angry. Penny took her inside and I heard Otis say bad words to Penny, telling her to hurry up."
"Did you ever leave the car at any time after that?" Huang asked her. Shelby shook her head. "Well, you've been a very brave girl, Shelby. One of our officers will come along in a minute to bring your lunch."
Once he had exited the room, Huang addressed the other two. "She seems relatively fine, aside from being through a traumatic experience. Given that she was found at a dockyard and from what you've told me, Detective Benson, they were expecting to give her to someone going to Thailand. I'd normally disbelieve it, but I think we're looking at a child trafficking ring."
"Trafficking white, American kids?" Olivia couldn't take in what she had just heard. "Don't they normally sell kids from Third World countries?"
"They do," Huang frowned, "which is why this is so strange."
"They were definitely endangering a child," Cragen added, "but the stuff found at the house seems to confirm Dr. Huang's theory." He sighed, before he shared his information with them. "Otis Chapman and Penny Wechsler had a cupboard hidden in the basement. The Pound Ridge police found twelve tins stuffed with dollar bills. They think there could be up to a million in there. They found phrase books in Spanish, Arabic, Chinese and Thai, boxes of children's belongings, photos of over two dozen children and a list of contacts, some of whom are being tracked by the FBI. This is much more than child endangerment."
"Two dozen children?" Olivia asked, a chill running down her spine.
Cragen nodded, answering, "As far back as 1988."
Olivia was stunned. "These guys have been selling their own foster children for sixteen years and nobody noticed? How did the social workers not work out that so many children were missing?"
Back in the squad room, the telephones were ringing constantly. Munch was halfway through a list of addresses given by the docks. As Cragen and Olivia came up, he stood. "Captain, the Pound Ridge police say that six children were reported missing by the couple since 1998. Most recent was in June. The couple said they ran away."
Olivia looked at the names. Reading aloud, she asked herself if they too had been sold abroad.
"Courtney Meyer, Zachary Graham, Aaron Patterson, Madison Welch, Alexis May, Jason George – Otis and Penny know their stuff. Aside from Madison and Alexis, these kids are in their teens. Three of them were in the last six months."
Munch continued, "Children present at the home were questioned over whether they remember anyone else leaving unexpectedly. Children who've grown up are being contacted. Our best guess is that the children sold correspond with the photos in the basement."
Olivia was shown pictures of the basement, with the contents of cardboard boxes being children's toys, games and clothes. She recognized some of the outfits being popular ten years ago. It was like looking inside a serial killer's hoard.
"How many children were taken out of the home?" she asked.
Munch answered, "Six. Aged between eight and fifteen. None of them were aware. But they did say that the couple used to make them hand over all their money from paper rounds and washing cars."
"The couple are complete cheapskates," Olivia grimaced, "and I bet they kept all the money from welfare checks for kids they sold."
Stabler came out from the interrogation room. "Otis won't crack," he told Cragen, "sits there like a lemon. Penny's crying too much to say anything comprehensible."
NYPD Station
4th August 2004
5.30pm
Three days of research had brought quite a lot of information for the detectives. Twenty-six children had been sold between 1988 and July, with the couple selling them to shady people they had been told of from people in people trafficking from Latin America, North Africa and Asia.
Cragen had a timeline up on the board in the squad room and the entire department was focused on it.
"Now," he started, "the couple sold the first child, a Joshua Peterson, then aged fifteen, sometime in November 1988. We say 'sold' because we can't seem to find him despite the nationwide search and the fact that none of the children currently living there at the time remember saying goodbye. They say he left one morning around Thanksgiving.
"They sold children at a rate of about one per year until 1994, when a social worker, a Nina Sullivan, came regularly. Why there seem to be few visits before then, I am unaware. The children start disappearing again in June 1996, with Megan Prescott, aged ten. Then there is another lull after 9/11, when security became a lot tighter. The couple began selling children yet again in December.
"The people traffickers that they sold the children to mainly deal with smuggling young women from Third World countries, but were eager to sell white American children to rich people back in their home countries. So far, we have managed to work out that these twenty-six children have been sold, as we are lucky that Otis and Penny kept fairly good records."
An officer asked Cragen, "Who exactly were the children sold to?"
"Well, we believe that they were taken to people working with the people traffickers who resided in these countries, but originally come from the West. That way they could have a slave, but said slave spoke English. The children were sold off as numerous types of slaves, but we believe that a few of them, aged under seven years old, were sold to childless couples."
"Which countries were they taken to?" another officer asked.
"Many different countries. They were mainly sold in China, Spain, Morocco and Thailand, but the dealers sold at least one child each in Honduras, Tunisia, Algeria, Western Sahara, Peru, Colombia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Vietnam and Costa Rica."
"Why have white kids?" a third officer asked. "They have thousands to pick from in those countries."
A slight murmur went around the crowd. Cragen raised his voice.
"Because the rich Westerners living in those countries – or at least people with Western contacts – want 'something exotic'. A street kid in Casablanca or Bangkok is fine for them, but a child from America is something to show off. Hopefully, some of these people will have gotten greedy. Otis and Penny marked the destinations of the children on the backs of photos and at present there are FBI agents tracing leads from all over the world. As the docks used were here in New York, we are tracking down any criminals who may have given the information to them."
When Olivia had crossed off another name on her list, she slammed the receiver down.
"How can we find all these children? Even one is looking for a needle in a haystack." She groaned.
Munch placed his receiver down too. He looked at Olivia and began talking.
"This isn't the first time that white slaves were sold in these parts of the world. The Barbary pirates from the Ottoman Empire kidnapped people as far afield as Iceland in the Middle Ages. It got so bad that almost no-one lived by the coast in Southern Europe. The Ottomans did it for odd reasons. Something to do with not selling their own people. And the slaves that came from Africa were often criminals sold by their own people to the traders. I say 'criminals', but it was mostly stuff like a woman having twins. The wife of the most famous sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, was a kidnapped Polish woman named Roxelana. 1.25 million Europeans over a 300 year period, as well as millions of Africans and some Indians."
As Munch finished his tangent, Fin walked by. "Yeah, but these are white kids from a First World country."
Well, Olivia decided, the publicity might be a way of finding the children.
Pound Ridge, NY
6th August 2004
1.50pm
Olivia and Stabler had arrived at Pound Ridge to speak to the local police over what had been found.
"Right," an officer sitting at a desk in a private room said to them, "according to the town census, Otis Chapman and Penny Wechsler moved from West Haven, Connecticut in 1985. They started their foster home up shortly after and have been good citizens since. Not even a parking ticket."
Stabler asked him, "What made them decide to sell the kids?"
The Pound Ridge officer shrugged before he answered, "Greed seems the most likely solution. The children all went to the local school until the fall semester of 1988. Wechsler homeschooled them after that date."
"So nobody would notice if the kids went missing," Stabler grimaced, "did anyone see the children at all about the village?"
"In 1994, the children started knocking on people's doors to ask if they could wash their cars. Even offered to clean the cars at the police station. We also saw the kids in clothes with stains down the front."
"But nobody asked if anything was wrong?" Olivia questioned.
The officer shook his head. "Sorry, Detective Benson. There's nothing to indicate they were anything but good foster parents. As I said, the record was squeaky-clean until Ava Hawkins came by and they murdered her."
Olivia nodded, deep in thought. It had still been hard trying to find the buyers to whom the children had been sold to. The red tape getting the children back from Third World countries was a nightmare. Trying to find the people traffickers was just as hard. The FBI was on the trail and had sent photos of the children to police forces in foreign countries, complete with digitally-aged pictures made by the NCMEC.
But it still seemed inconceivable that so many children had vanished right under everybody's noses.
If any good had come from this, Olivia supposed, it was that it made people more aware of child slavery. True, these victims of child slavery were often from Third World countries, but it seemed to make the public focus on whether children in America had come here illegally.
NYPD Station
6th August 2004
5.30pm
A young woman named Juanita Fernandez was in the station, being interviewed by Olivia.
Fernandez had heard about the fact that some of the missing children could be in Latin America and had thought about her pimp.
"I think he knows," she told Olivia, as she twisted her fingers together, "I am from Nicaragua – oh God, you won't send me back, will you?"
"That's not what we do," Olivia informed her, "and if you provide information concerning him then we will send you into protective custody. You don't need to worry about deportation."
"Well," Fernandez murmured, "I work for him, Senor Pedro Consuelo, since I was – fourteen. I am – I think I am twenty-seven now. The year after I come to New York, Pedro was talking to a man. I could work out if the name was Otis or Otto, but I had to give the man and his lady wife a drink. The picture that was on a newspaper that a john brought looks like this man. I heard the couple talking to Pedro about a child and a buyer in Honduras. I assumed they were bringing another kid over. I remember because I thought his name sounded American."
"What name was that?" Olivia asked gently.
"I believe it was Scott. I had heard of American boys being called Scott, but I do not remember any from Honduras or Nicaragua. Anyway, five years later, Mr Otis and his lady wife come again and they talk about another boy. Mr Otis complimented me on my makeup that night. I never get that sort of compliment, so I was happy. That is why I remember him.
"They talk about a boy named Jonathan. I remember that name because one of my regulars was named Jonathan and I remember how it sounds like john, so I thought it was funny. This was – oh, I think, maybe 1997?"
"You're doing very well," Olivia reassured her, "can you remember anything else?"
"I remember them talking about Nicaragua. They said the name of my hometown, as well as the port I was brought from. It is called El Bluff."
"OK," Olivia wrote this down, "do you remember any other times that these two came by?"
Fernandez frowned in concentration. "Three more times, I am certain. Five years ago, Mr Otis came by and said something about a boy named Zachary and the country of Venezuela. I like the name Zachary because it was a 'z' next to an 'a' and there is a 'y' at the end.
"I also recall them mentioning a Jasmine, but I am unsure of when this was. I believe it was earlier this year, but I do not know. And they came by in June and talked about a Jason or a James, I do not know."
Olivia thanked Fernandez for her help and went to see Cragen.
"According to the records the couple kept, a Scott Myers was sold to someone in Honduras sometime in the summer of 1992. None of the other orphans remember seeing him after a Fourth of July celebration. He was seven years old," she explained, "and there is a chance that he might not know he came from America. It's also possible that he only speaks Spanish now. The good news is that Scott was blonde, so he would be rather easy to spot."
"And the other cases?" Cragen asked her, seemingly overjoyed at the prospect of finding some of the children but keeping his feelings to himself.
Olivia opened the bulging folder.
"Jonathan Olson was twelve when he went to somebody in Nicaragua in January 1997. Fernandez says that Otis mentioned El Bluff, as well as her hometown, which means he may be somewhere within the vicinity.
"Zachary Graham was thirteen when he disappeared in either May or June 1999. Fernandez said that Otis talked about Venezuela, which ties in with the country written on the back of the picture. Jasmine Riley, the two's youngest victim, was five years old when the other orphans last saw her in February this year. Fernandez said that Otis mentioned her name, along with Costa Rica. And Jason George was thirteen when he disappeared on June the twelfth. The writing back of his photo indicates he was sold to somebody in Honduras."
Cragen thanked Olivia for her time and picked up the phone to contact the FBI.
Only four hours later, in the interrogation room, Pedro Consuelo was sitting down and being shouted at by Stabler.
"Juanita Fernandez says you brought her over when she was fourteen!" Stabler walked about the room like a cat encircling their prey. "And she says that Otis Chapman and Penny Wechsler came by to sell you their kids. Jasmine was five! Remember her? She disappeared in February."
Pedro only raised one eyebrow, as if amused by what was going on. He then replied, "I run a steady business. If it wasn't for me, the whores would have no home."
"You beat them! You scare them!" Stabler shouted, furiously. "You agreed to sell children!" He picked up a picture of Jasmine, taken from a group photo back at Christmas. "Jasmine Riley was five years old. Five years old, what kind of pervert did you sell her to?"
Pedro sighed. He knew that he wasn't going to get out of this, so he played his trump card. "Jasmine Riley was sold to shareholders in Managua who are unable to have children."
"You expect me to believe they only wanted a daughter?" Stabler asked, pushing his palms onto the table.
Pedro snarled back. "This is true! They – own some shares of imports to America. Not much, but enough to buy a kid. They didn't want a local kid from the streets. They wanted someone clean, they wanted a trophy kid. Jasmine's hair is dark enough to pass for a local if she got a tan."
He sighed. "The boys – I think that Scott was sold for the same purpose. The other three were older, so I think they were used –"
Stabler had had enough. Standing up, he mused this over in this head. If she was sold to be a daughter, then Jasmine might still be alive. It was the same with Scott. But Scott was a lot older and Honduras would be all he remembered. There was also the issue of bringing the both of them back. It was, Olivia mused, very similar to when a parent took a child abroad during a custody battle.
NYPD Station
7th August 2004
7.45am
Olivia ran a hand through her hair as she examined the sheet.
The FBI had managed to connect a name in the North African circuit. The suspect, Hammou Al-Mufti, was a rich Moroccan who had been suspected in the past of trafficking illegal goods from as far away as Sudan. But he had also been suspected of selling young girls and women to America and Europe.
It was tragic how easy it was for a woman to end up in this situation, Olivia thought to herself as she looked out from the one-way window into the interrogation room. In the Third World, all a guy had to do to get a woman to come with him was say that he could get her a job as a maid in a richer country. They'd disappear into the abyss, never seen again. Some might end up as maids or domestic servants, some might become prostitutes.
Girls like Juanita Fernandez.
A translator sat in the room with Al-Mufti, who was currently being interrogated by Fin. Stabler had gone off to talk to the FBI about Scott and Jasmine and the others, as well as have a rest.
Fin asked the translator, "How long has Al-Mufti been…" he paused, "a salesman?"
The translator answered what Al-Mufti told him. "Since he was a boy. He sold pottery and camels."
"And when did he go into illegal goods?" Fin asked, "The FBI has a lot of evidence that he's been smuggling young girls into America, France and Italy since '82, so they'd know if he's lying."
Al-Mufti spoke in English. "You cannot prove it!"
Fin held his head to one side. "Oh, so we speak English now, do we?"
Al-Mufti gritted his teeth and pointed at Fin, harshly. "I help give the girls a life! At home, they marry at fourteen, starve, die – of heat, exhaustion, no food. They are happy to come here!"
"They are conned," Fin snapped, "the girls you claim to help, they are forced into sex against their will. They live in terrible, cramped conditions! But we're here to talk about these guys."
Fin pushed the pictures of Otis and Penny over. Al-Mufti picked up Otis' picture and smirked.
"Ah, Mr. Chapman. He has been a good help for thirteen years. He is a very useful man. He sells us orphans. Now, before you disagree with me, the girls I sell are orphans, too. They choose to come. There is no difference."
Fin would have said that there was a lot of difference and Al-Mufti could go and stick his hands in a blender, but his job was to stay calm in an interrogation and to try and make the suspect slip up.
"Have they helped you before, then?" Fin asked.
Al-Mufti didn't say anything.
Fin reminded him, "I bet there are plenty of girls on the street who would happily give you up, Al-Mufti. You're already looking at a harsh punishment for breaking several human rights, so if you help us, we could come to an agreement."
Al-Mufti sighed. "Fine. I am to be in prison in any case, so…five children. Five children in fourteen years. Eric Parker, Gloria Morgan, Megan Prescott, April Sanders – aged eleven, ten, ten and six. And Aaron Patterson, he was fourteen. Gloria – she is now the second wife of my friend. She was a slave for four years and now is his wife."
Fin felt sick. He understood that people had different laws in different countries and that was something that could be a hindrance when it came to suspects who had grown up in another country or were used to other laws, but he needed to know if Gloria had been brought as a wife from the start.
If so, then that caused problems for whomsoever had her now, as Gloria had been taken from a country where that was illegal.
"Did your friend," Fin chose his words carefully, "plan to buy a wife, or did it start off with just having her as a domestic slave?"
Al-Mufti shook his head. "I told Kassim, I prefer girls who are taller, older, slimmer, the colour of tea. But he says that he wants a girl. He wants a fourteen-year-old girl. He asks me to get him one. Offers ten thousand dirham for a wife. I try to give him other girls, Algerians, Tunisians, he says no. He wants – these are his words, officer – an ivory child.
"I go to America soon after and I hear the offer from Otis. I ask if he has a fourteen-year-old. He says 'I have a ten-year-old, will that do?' I tell Kassim that he may have to wait. He says he doesn't care. He is willing to buy a girl and have her taught our ways. To be a housewife."
Olivia excused herself from the other side of the glass. Going into the female bathroom, she dived into a stall and gasped, wondering if she would throw up.
Several hours later, Al-Mufti, no more remorseful than he had been earlier, he given away his friend's address. Gloria Morgan – now Gloria Sultan – had been married for almost a decade and barely spoke any English.
Eric Parker, now a young man of twenty-five, had been sold as a 'personal' slave. Unfortunately, that had included him becoming a eunuch. Stabler had said something about the kid already being unfortunate, but this was the cherry on top.
Megan Prescott, who had been sold in 1996, and April Sanders, who had been sold in 2000, were in Morocco and Algeria, respectively. Megan had been a bit more fortunate than Gloria; rather than marriage, she was used as a respected servant that the owners could show off, due to her blonde hair and pale skin. As had been the case with Jasmine, April had been sold as an adoptive daughter, rather than any kind of slave.
Aaron Patterson, on the other hand, was not so lucky.
Sold to Morocco in February 2001, he had been used as a footman to an American who owned quite a few resorts. Aaron had tried to run away after six months in captivity and had ended up falling from a wall onto a tiled path below. His body would be recovered from a local cemetery and was going to be shipped back to New York.
Olivia put her head in her hands as she imagined that poor, scared boy. The poor boy who would never come home.
The three little girls, sold into a life on the other side of the world, without warning, by people they were supposed to trust.
Then Olivia thought of all the children in the same situation, none of whom had anyone looking for them.
NYPD Station
10th August 2004
1.47pm
Over the course of three days, their luck had definitely improved.
The contact in South America, a Colombian named Santiago De Leon, who, like Al-Mufti, usually smuggled drugs or imported goods, had been arrested at an address provided by Pedro. The Latin America smuggler had given up his best contact so as to reduce the life sentences.
De Leon had too been as stubborn as a mule. Stabler had interrogated De Leon for twenty-two hours before taking a break, which had been a lot, even for him. De Leon had agreed to give up one child, though.
Hopefully, it would be a domino effect, as Olivia had told Stabler afterward.
The child that De Leon had given up was Dawn Fisher. The freckled fourteen-year-old had last been seen by the children at the orphanage sometime in the summer or fall of 1993, nobody was certain of the date.
It had been a completely dead end for the NYPD, but when De Leon provided the address she had been sold to in Peru, it was checked out.
Sadly, Dawn had been found to be a mess. Forced into marriage two years after arriving, she was only twenty-two when she had suffered from a brain tumour.
At least that part had been unavoidable, Olivia had told herself, but Dawn might have gotten better healthcare if she had stayed in America.
The person that De Leon had given up gave up a source of his own; a pornographer from Colombia. The hairs of the back of Stabler's neck had stood on end when he was told that. But Dustin Schmidt, who had been eleven years old when he was sold just after New Year's Day in 2001, didn't seem to have been purchased for that shady business. Far from that. Instead, Dustin was used to help the models learn English.
To Stabler this sounded like the most ridiculous thing to buy a child for, but he was satisfied that the boy, who was now a gangly fifteen-year-old, hadn't been exposed to these evils.
Concerning the Asian market, on the other hand, people had refused to speak.
"Any success?" Cragen had asked Huang when the doctor came into his office after speaking to a foul-mouthed Chinese dealer.
Huang had smiled for a second, before quickly replying, "That man is one of the rudest people I've ever had in the station. Every sentence contained a swear word. He won't say a word about Otis and Penny. Refuses to acknowledge them. But the way he reacted when he saw their pictures shows that he does know them. We just need to know where exactly."
Thankfully, the fact that drugs had been discovered on the dealer's premises meant that he wasn't going anywhere in a hurry.
It was only a matter of letting him slip.
Olivia was having better luck with a Spanish criminal. Espinosa was as hard as steel, but he was also a coward. Cracking like a yolk once Olivia had said the name 'Chapman', he had poured everything out, presumably to not end up accused of breaching human rights.
Which, of course, he was going to be.
"Chapman offered me a girl in January 1992," he had explained, "Christine Cartwright, he said her name was. Ten years old, with a lazy eye. I came over on the ship, dressed as a worker. We all do when we want to see the kid first-hand. Penny had brought the car over and unzipped the sleeping bag to show me the scared little girl. I locked the girl inside a crate, which went onboard. I visited her twelve hours later. Untied her, she bit me and she tried to run off. But I injected her with some stuff that Otis provided us with. He doesn't want us to use anything shifty and I agree with that. Stops them being addicted. He gave me stuff that companies put in kids' cough medicine."
"Who did you sell her to?" Olivia asked.
Espinosa scoffed.
"You always remember who you sell a special one to," he smiled, "a man from Barcelona. His name's Flores."
"Right," Olivia made a mental note of the name, "and how many children did Otis and Penny sell to you?"
"Only two more, years ago," he continued, "Stephanie Perry in 1997 and Jesse Cameron in 2001. She was eleven, he was nine, ten, something like that. Both to the same sort of person as Christine."
Olivia swallowed. He was speaking about selling these children to sick perverts, but the way he said it was as if he were discussing the weather.
Coming across this sort of person in her line of work was inevitable.
But still, Olivia felt her stomach churn whenever she was near one.
NYPD Station
11th August 2004
10.47am
The apartment in Brooklyn where the Chinese dealer had lived had been emptied of any evidence by the police. The FBI had already taken some of it, mainly names and addresses found in odd places. Names and addresses of buyers and sellers.
But Cragen had been shown one of the pieces before they left. He now spoke to Olivia, Stabler and Huang inside his office, looking at the names that had been provided.
"First ever victim of Otis and Penny," he slapped the photocopied piece of paper in his hand, "Kelly Stewart, sold just after Thanksgiving 1988."
The image of a little girl in a purple sweater came to Olivia's mind. Kelly Stewart had been only nine when she was sold abroad.
"Where?" she asked.
"China, according to a business record from '88," Cragen told them, "The FBI tracked them down and are currently speaking to whom they believe is Kelly."
"My God," Stabler murmured, "she'd be twenty-five now."
"And she spent all that time surrounded by non-English speakers," Cragen pointed out, "Huang, go and see if you can talk to our rude friend. Maybe he'll be more willing to talk if he knows that we've found one of them."
After Huang left, Stabler asked Cragen, "Captain, when this is finished, is it possible for me to go on vacation? With your permission, of course."
Cragen sighed as he looked at the two detectives. "You've been working every available hour for nearly two weeks. It's a miracle we found so many kids already. Yes, if it's possible."
Olivia then turned to Stabler as Cragen sat down. "Though if we ever had time for a vacation, all the perps would have been off the streets," she smiled sweetly, before she looked back at her captain, "and so far we've found fifteen alive and currently abroad, two dead and being shipped back, and a further nine missing, most likely in China and south-east Asia."
"Not to mention the press asking us how many Otis and Penny foster parents are out there." Stabler butted in, "Half the media's talking about bad social workers, half are talking about child abuse; nearly everyone's asking about security, never mind the fact that two-thirds of the children were sold prior to 9/11; and quite a few of the papers are wondering if maybe this is so big – and by 'big', I mean 'made headlines in Zimbabwe' – because the children are white and American rather than Third World. The fact that these kids are orphans and some from broken homes doesn't seem to matter, for once."
"I think, as they were trafficked out of America, instead of into the States, this is what makes it so huge," Olivia suggested, to which Cragen nodded, "do we have addresses for the other children sold by this guy?"
Cragen leafed through the photocopied evidence piling up on his desk, before he pulled out five more pictures.
"Tina Bennett was fifteen, the oldest of the children. She was sold to a man in Thailand on 7th August 1994, literally just over ten years ago. The man she was sold to wanted a new face for Thai photography and Tina was too close to legal age for it to be sketchy. No idea what happened to her when she got too old.
"Crystal Cole went to Thailand four years later. She'd have just turned eighteen. Sold as a domestic slave, another 'exotic pet'. Courtney Meyer was sold only four months later for the same reason, this time in China.
"Lindsay Murray was eight years old when she was last seen in March 2001. Brought by a man in China, somewhere near Ningbo, she was sold for possibly the same reasons as Tina. If this is true, then she'd perhaps be still alive.
"Cody Carpenter was last seen on 15th August 2001, by one of the other orphans. They remember the date as it was her birthday. Cody was twelve years old and was taken to Cambodia. After that, the next child to be sold abroad was in Vietnam, a seven-year-old named Kevin Lynch. Due to his young age, he was sold to a rich, childless couple."
Stabler sighed. Then he said, with disbelief, "I can't comprehend how the social workers missed this. I mean, teenage runaways are one thing, but not checking up on if the children actually were still living at the house? Plus, surely anyone would make a note of the fact that there were so many supposed runaways. I – it just beggars belief."
"They're questioning Miss Sullivan now," Cragen responded, "the original social worker. They're trying to work out if she was in on it."
"And Otis Chapman and Penny Wechsler?" Olivia enquired.
"In Attica. Olivia, go along and see Penny. She might give out to a woman. From what Huang told me after observing the interrogations, she seems a little afraid of Otis. According to Huang, this is common in criminal relationships with a man and a woman. She hasn't spoken to anyone in Attica, so maybe a familiar face might break her."
Attica Prison
11th August 2004
3.48pm
Penny looked worse for wear. Her mousy-brown hair hung limp around her face. She had bags under her eyes – from what Olivia could see of them – and her skin was going grey.
Olivia sat on the other side of the table and looked directly at the woman.
"Why did you sell the children?" Olivia came straight to the point.
Penny snorted.
"Everyone's asked me that." she snapped.
"Well, why don't you tell me about yourself?" Olivia tried.
Penny groaned.
"I wasn't always like this. I was the nice, kind little girl that you want your daughter to be. Otis was the kid next door and was very demanding. He – he used to tell me that I was ugly. But I didn't have any other friends. I was too busy helping my parents instead of playing. Otis trudged around me in his spare time. I guess he wanted somebody to control."
Olivia had seen this situation many times. None of them seemed to involve selling foster children overseas, though.
"Do you ever feel sorry for the children?" Olivia asked her.
Penny shrugged. "I just saw them as goods. Goods that got us money. I had to save every penny I got. Otis told me that even that much meant the difference between life and death."
"Hypothetically," Olivia explained, "the two of you were perfectly able to look after yourselves. You could have provided a wonderful life for those children, Penny."
"Don't call me by my name! You're not my friend!" Penny argued.
Olivia carried on. "These children had no-one – you and Otis could have provided for them."
"Well, they were just a waste of space," Penny remarked, "Otis told me."
"You didn't need to do everything Otis told you," Olivia tried to reason with her, "you could have argued."
"He told me I had nobody else." Penny mumbled.
"You can help us make it up to them," Olivia told her, "give us names."
Penny sighed. "I can't. Otis knew everything. I only knew some things. Besides, you might know things already."
"Try."
Penny thought for a moment, before she replied, "Melissa Bowman, last kid we sold. Eleven years old, sent to Xinghai. A guy who wanted that kind of kid. I had his address written down in a purple folder with red butterflies a kid painted on."
Olivia thanked her, but even so, she felt as if Penny had deliberately been as unhelpful as possible.
NYPD Station
12th August 2004
12.55pm
Crystal Cole had been recovered by the FBI. She had managed to give some information away while in a Thai police station. Olivia had the video now and was watching it in Cragen's office.
Instead of the happy, chirpy eleven-year-old from the photo she had seen, this was a thin, worn eighteen-year-old with sunken eyes and cheeks and a long scar along her right hand.
The subtitles underneath did nothing to help Olivia.
"You said that you knew where one of the other children was, is that correct?"
"Yes, sir," Crystal mumbled. Olivia bit the end of her fingernail, a habit she thought she had kicked.
"Which child was this, Crystal?"
"Courtney Meyer. We lived at the orphanage together. I barely did anything with her, though."
"That is very good, Crystal. Now, do you know what happened?"
Crystal held a cushion that she had been holding close to her chest. "When I was – when I was thirteen, Courtney and her new master – he was called Sun Hai – came over from China. Mr. Sun was in a business meeting, bringing their factories together. My master –" Crystal paused, looking a bit scared, " – Mr. Aston, is an American working in Thailand. He was going to expand his business to China. Courtney recognised me and said that she came in the July after I was taken. Sun Hai took her back to China, in the back of a donkey and cart, but he brought her when he talked to Mr. Aston. She – when I was sixteen and she was nineteen, Sun Hai asked her to clean the windows inside and out. She broke her leg when she fell. He did not take her to a doctor and she had an infection. He told Mr. Aston when he next came."
Olivia saw how broken-hearted the girl was. This girl had been through hell and her only connection to home had been lost.
"That's three dead," Cragen sighed as he turned off the video, "just three more to recover. I just hope they're alive."
Neither of them said that maybe being dead was preferable to what the children had suffered.
What all children suffered in this area of work.
Later that day, Cragen had some news, gathering everyone in the station to announce it.
"The last of the children have been found and are now currently being held in the embassies of countries they were found."
Olivia saw him take off the last three photos from the board; Madison Welch, Alexis May and Melissa Bowman. She felt a warm glow inside, a feeling of satisfaction that they had been found, but the detective was still reeling inside from everything that had happened.
Cragen carried on. "The children recovered are being tested for DNA and will be flown back as soon as possible. The ones who are still underage will go into different foster homes, although they will take into fact the certain accommodation. Physically, none of the living children seem unharmed and do not have any sexually-transmitted diseases."
But Olivia still wondered. Uprooting the children back would be a huge battle not just in the courts, but for the individual children themselves. Some of them wouldn't speak English any more. In the cases of Jasmine, Scott, April and Kevin, they were being taken from loving families. They would be taken into a world that had changed so much since they had felt.
And as for the children who had now grown up, that was a whole other kettle of fish. Normally in a custody battle, the child would stay in whichever country they had grown up in. But this wasn't a custody battle. If they stayed, they would have no-one. If they came back to America, it would be almost as if they were a foreigner.
Otis and Penny had kept tens of thousands of dollars beneath their house. Making eighty-two thousand from selling the children, one would have expected their home to be filled with extravagant goods.
But instead seventy-five thousand dollars were found in the tins. Had selling them really been worth it for the two of them, Olivia decided.
She should know by now that nothing had a completely happy ending.
But Olivia still felt terrible.
Author's Note: Quite a lot of this story has been exaggerated, but some of it in part came from two sources, one real, one fictional.
The fictional one was a movie named Tom and Thomas, released in 2002. It's a bit weak at the edges and part of it doesn't make sense (for instance, there is no way on Earth that smuggling works like that on a plane), not to mention that Sean Bean survives, but it's still a rather entertaining story.
The real source was a book named Slave Girl by Sarah Forsyth. Like the children in this story, she was trafficked from a First World country, rather than to one, after being tricked.
By the way, what was said earlier about the Europeans being sold to the Ottoman Empire was true. They also took Africans and Indians. So many Africans, in fact, that this is one - just one, mind - of several reasons why today Saharan Africans are of a different racial background than sub-Saharans.
Back in 2011, when I first started writing fanfiction, I liked to write stories about women being abducted and sold to Southeast Asia or North Africa. This is a guilty pleasure which I see A LOT on fanfiction websites and Deviantart. Almost every fandom that I have read has SOME variation of this plot line. I enjoyed it because - and this is important - I told myself that 'This didn't happen, so it's OK to write this.
But some years after this, I found out about the Barbary Slave Trade (or Ottoman slavery) and I felt physically sick with myself. I felt so horrible for writing fanfiction involving white slavery that I removed all of my stories at once. I certainly would not have used this plotline for a fanfic involving The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air or The Cleveland Show or any other fandom where the majority of the characters are of non-white origin.
If you have been affected by the issues in this story, I implore you to seek help.