‘No, the Dutch were hoping we could help them with that. The condition of the body doesn’t make it easy. They’re assuming she’s American because of the T-shirt and the quality of her dental work, but they don’t really know for sure. They also don’t know how long she was in the Netherlands. The marathon T-shirt was one of last year’s printings.’

Maggie leaned across the desk. ‘Can we get the jpeg?’

‘Of course, Sergeant.’

Stride smiled. Troy was invariably formal around them about official business. Stride was Lieutenant. Maggie was Sergeant. He was the kind of gruff ex-seaman who wore nothing but plaid shirts, jeans, and boots, but he had a serious way about him that Stride respected. He wasn’t tall, but he had the bulky build of a weightlifter. Nobody messed with Troy.

The security manager clicked a few keys on his computer. Stride’s and Maggie’s phones both chirped with an incoming e-mail as he sent them the photograph.

‘Do the Dutch police or Interpol know anything more about the circumstances of this woman’s murder?’ Stride asked.

‘Maybe. They found a tattoo on her wrist associated with an Estonian crime syndicate. Very brutal and very sophisticated. This group began with synthetic drug exports and high-end robberies, but Interpol thinks they’ve branched out into an international smuggling network. Illegal metals. Drugs. Weapons.’

‘And women,’ Maggie guessed.

‘Yeah. Exactly. Their guess is that this woman was kidnapped and dumped into a forced prostitution ring overseas.’

‘They think she was smuggled out through the Duluth Port?’ Stride asked.

‘Well, that was their question to me. I couldn’t rule it out.’ Troy folded his meaty hands together. ‘Look, port security guys talk all around the world. We’ve got tech guys who trawl the Deep Web – you know, the places that Google doesn’t reach. It’s practically a Craigslist for slavery. Women, girls, boys, babies, even pets. If you’ve got the money, you can write up specs for who you want like you were placing an order for custom drapes. And syndicates like this Estonian group will go out and grab someone who fits the profile and smuggle them out. It could be a girl in Sydney. Or Cape Town. Or Cancun.’

‘Or Denver, Colorado,’ Stride said.

‘Yeah. Exactly. They just disappear. Order fulfilled. Huge payday for the smugglers. And once they’ve outlived their usefulness, the girls wind up like this woman in Amsterdam.’

Stride got up and went to the window in Troy’s office. He could see train cars covered with graffiti. Silos. Pyramids of taconite. The sheer volume of everything that passed through the port made a single human being seem like a needle in a haystack. Easy to hide.