Chicago PD season 7, episode 13 recap: I Was Here

Getting answers

Vanessa Rojas (Lisseth Chavez) and Ruzek went to talk to Chicago PD’s tech expert about the burner phone, and identified where its last known call had come from. Ruzek, Rojas, Halstead, and Upton then reviewed security footage from underneath the bridge, and got a hit from their facial recognition software. Their suspect was Daniel Lopez, who was wanted for trafficking all over the Midwest.

The FBI soon showed up at Intelligence’s front door, and told them that Lopez was a hardcore offender who used his own girls to recruit other women into the ring. However, there was one possible lead: Intelligence identified a woman named Mira who had managed to get out of the ring, and hoped that speaking with her could provide valuable information. But Mira was in no mood to cooperate; she took attitude to a new level.

Mira told Kim that she couldn’t save any of Lopez’s current victims, stating that “They’re already gone.” But despite her total lack of initial cooperation, Burgess pushed back against the FBI’s decision to charge Mira full force. She wanted to use a possible deal as leverage, hoping to get the other woman to talk by offering her everything she could possibly want.

At first, Mira didn’t buy Kim’s “do-gooder” act, as she thought she knew all the police tactics that Burgess would use to get her to talk. The interview turned into her trying to read Burgess and Kim pointing out she had her completely wrong. “I wanted to be something different than what I was,” she said when Mira questioned her motives for becoming a cop. Kim kept pushing until Mira finally cracked, and started giving up plenty of information.

Mira identified Daniel Lopez as their pimp, and told Kim her heartbreaking story. The ring had a house. A highway was nearby, but the girls never went outside. They were always transported in a black Mercedes van. Half the time they were sent on private calls; the other half was spent at a brothel. There was a park nearby, and signs in Spanish, as well as one in neon.

Kevin Atwater (LaRoyce Hawkins), Rojas, Halstead and Upton worked the neighborhoods, trying to find the location based on the details that Mira had provided Burgess. The latter duo lucked into a corner store worker who said she saw the black van in the area, so they decided to sit and wait to see if it returned.

Chicago PD then gave Intelligence a break when the van did indeed surface. Voight sent Atwater out to put a tracker on the van, wanting to follow it to the aforementioned house rather than jump on it right away. Meanwhile, Kim was back at the district, listening in on Intelligence’s radio transmissions and clearly struggling with not being able to help more.

Once they found the house, Voight set up a plan to take it that evening. Intelligence raided the house and shot multiple offenders, but what they discovered was trulky heartbreaking. More than a dozen girls were there, all looking absolutely terrible—but none of them were the faux-Anne Weller that Burgess was looking for. So where was Kim’s mystery victim?