The First Victim

CHAPTER 10

An all-consuming darkness spread before Melissa so that she moved forward with the caution of the blind. This had developed into a mission, no longer a job, so that as she moved through this darkness quietly and slowly, a knot gripping the center of her chest, drenched in sweat driven to the surface by taut nerves, she also experienced a sense of righteousness.

A gray mouth of a windowlike opening appeared ahead of her, and she approached it cautiously, inching forward in tiny, thoughtful steps, the strap of the camera case slung over her neck and shoulder. This opening accessed a descending conveyor belt of cracked black rubber that smelled horribly sour and hadn’t run in a decade or more. She tucked her five feet two, 103-pound frame into a ball and slipped through the opening and down the conveyor, the unnerving sound of machinery growing ever louder, ever closer, her fear manifested as a sharp pain at her temples, and pricking her searching eyes. The fear resulted not only from awareness of her predicament but also from the knowledge that she had directly ignored Stevie’s instructions, had failed to call, and despite Melissa’s seeming impatience with Stevie at the time, she trusted her older ‘‘sister’s’’ instincts and experience. Somewhere not too far down inside her, she felt like a child disobeying her parent. She now knew she should have at least left Stevie a voice mail message to apprise her of her whereabouts and plans, this annoying sense of having done wrong continuing to plague her as the sounds of machinery grew ever louder, the area inside the conveyor more constricted, and the air more foul.

She attempted to stave off total panic through a series of deep breaths while she pulled out her cellphone, only to reconfirm that the signal had dropped off. She couldn’t call out.

The far end of the conveyor offered her an elevated view of an enormous room where that roar of machinery became painful. Laid out below her, dozens of women-perhaps a hundred or more-toiled at huge industrial sewing machines. She prepared the camera, the poor lighting now her biggest concern. She recorded some images from that vantage point and was about to move on when it occurred to her to find a place to hide this tape for retrieval on her way out. If at any point she was forced to run, to abandon the camera and case, she would still have one of the two tapes to later collect as proof of the sweatshop’s existence. Even as she worked to capture the story below, she couldn’t entirely dismiss the thought that she could be caught. She had amplified that risk substantially by simply coming inside.

With the camera’s viewfinder indicating too little light, Melissa nonetheless recorded the oppressive conditions below-emaciated women, their heads shaved bare, towering bales of fabric enclosing them like walls, the air clouded with a hazy dust, the room’s only light coming from small, dim bulbs fixed to the sewing machines. The Asian women worked furiously, some sewing, others at cutting tables, still others gathering the finished product into bundles. Two Chinese males patrolled the floor carrying what looked like nightsticks-gang members probably. Another wave of fear overcame her: The Chinese gangs were notoriously ruthless.

She zoomed in, hoping that she could capture the feeling of the place. Exhausted faces drenched in sweat; the frantic pace; the tension of the guards’ presence.

Through the lens she followed a leg chain from where it was bolted to a sewing machine which was in turn bolted to a blood-raw ankle. She moved station-to-station, woman-to-woman; not all were chained, but enough to know the lengths to which the guards went to prevent escapes or ensure discipline. Like slaves, she thought.

If they shackled their own seamstresses, what would they do to an uninvited nosy journalist? Perhaps she should turn back now. She already had some incredible images.

But she did not yet have the story. She wanted on-camera interviews with the illegals, pictures of the deplorable living conditions she felt certain she would find with a little more digging. She was a journalist not a cameraperson. And this was a career-defining moment.

She went ahead as planned and removed the camera’s tape in order to hide it well enough so that no one would find it before she could come back and get it. She then worked her way farther along the catwalk that hung over the huge room, finally entering a long passageway that descended by steep metal stairs toward the sound of running water.

She felt her way to a steel door, its handle removed to prevent its use, to trap the inhabitants on the other side. But as she put her eye to the hole left behind by this missing hardware, she understood its other purpose as well-it offered the guards a peephole into a shower room.

She counted five women in all, naked and shaved of all body hair. The room might have once been used for storage-no drains or faucets, just garden hose and plastic showerheads secured to, and hanging from, the overhead pipes. The women-girls, really-stood clustered together, shivering under the limp stream of water, their faint whispers in the foreign tongue barely audible. Melissa craned to one side and spotted a sixth woman who stood sentry. Melissa’s side of the metal door was fastened shut with two oversized dead bolts. One eye to the hole in the door, Melissa waited for her chance to enter. She could interview these women, thanks to her Chinese. And then a more devious thought occurred: What if she were to become one of them? Live with them? Work with them? What if she could spend a whole day and a night here? Who would notice one more Chinese woman among the hundreds? She grinned a grin of satisfaction, her attention no longer on the women showering but on a bar of soap and the pink plastic razor teetering on the ledge directly across from her, and the knowledge of what had to be done.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 181 DAY MISSING