“The po-leece? The po-leece, hell! They know all about what go on at them truck stops, Kenny-saw! It cain’t happen wi’out they lettin’ it happen. An’ they all get they cut of it, don’t you think they ain’t. Why, a po-leece car pull up in one a them lots at night, and a girl is sent straight to his car. He put her in the backseat like they goin’ to jail. But he drive to some dirt road where they do they little bid-ness and then come on back. That how it work, Kenny-saw. An’ that why when a girl disappear, ain’t nobody care what happened to her at all.”

Of course, I thought. How could it be otherwise? The real question is just how deeply it goes and how widespread is the extent.

“Tell me about Tonya, Amber. What was she like?”

“She were a sweet girl, Kenny-saw. She weren’t cut out fo’ that kinda life. She tried to run onct, and when they caught her, that Leon, he mess her up bad. The really terrible thing was that her own brother was one of the drivers, and sometimes, he would haul her to the truck stops his’self.” Amber stopped and shook her head at the thought of such depravity.

I was thunderstruck. Junior was on the inside and, for all intents and purposes, was pimping his own sister. No wonder he didn’t want questions into Tonya’s life and disappearance—he was a part of it.

“Amber, who might know about Tonya at the end? Who might be willing to talk to me about her?”

“They’s a girl called Sweet Thang. You get ahold of her, and she’ll talk to you. You just tell her you talked to Amber, and she say it all right. She ain’t afraid of ’em—she make ’em too much money, and she kinda crazy herself. But she loved Tonya. You find Sweet Thang, and she’ll tell you what she know.”

Amber then gave me a list of the truck stops where Sweet Thang worked. Apparently she was quite popular and well-known among the drivers, and only worked a few places. Amber also told me of the other lots that were controlled by the former Wren Gang. From what I could gather there were several other cartels that owned the rights to trafficking in other areas, with each gang jealously guarding its turf.

The effort to talk was wearing on Amber. She had to lie back and rest and breathe deeply before she could speak again. I waited until she nodded that she was okay and asked my last question.

“Amber, what happened to Tonya? Did she try to run again, and if so, did they catch her and kill her? Or do you think she came to the point she could stand it no longer and took her own life?”