What She Found, page 1
PRAISE FOR ROBERT DUGONI’S TRACY CROSSWHITE SERIES
Praise for In Her Tracks
“Gripping . . . Fans of police procedurals will hope Tracy has a long career.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A warmhearted procedural about some ice-cold crimes.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Dugoni has produced one of his most shocking twists yet and Tracy, expertly developed over seven previous novels, is almost pared down here, in a refreshing, perspective-changing way.”
—Bookreporter
Praise for A Cold Trail
“Tracy Crosswhite is one of the best protagonists in the realm of crime fiction today, and there is nothing cold about A Cold Trail.”
—Associated Press
“Impressive . . . Dugoni weaves a compulsively readable tale of love, loss, and greed. Readers will look forward to the further exploits of his sharp-witted detective.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Crime writing of the absolute highest order, illustrating that Dugoni is every bit the equal of Lisa Gardner and Harlan Coben when it comes to psychological suspense. Call A Cold Trail an angst-riddled, contemplative tale, or just call it flat-out great.”
—Providence Journal
Praise for A Steep Price
“A beautiful narrative. What makes A Steep Price stand out is the authentic feel of how it feels to work as a police officer in a major city . . . another outstanding novel from one of the best crime writers in the business.”
—Associated Press
“A riveting suspense novel . . . A gripping story.”
—Crimespree Magazine
“Packed with suspense, drama, and raw emotion . . . A fine entry in a solid series.”
—Booklist
Praise for Close To Home
“An immensely—almost compulsively—readable tale . . . A crackerjack mystery.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“Dugoni’s twisted tale is one of conspiracy and culpability . . . richly nuanced and entirely compelling.”
—Criminal Element
Praise for The Trapped Girl
“Dugoni drills so deep into the troubled relationships among his characters that each new revelation shows them in a disturbing new light . . . an unholy tangle of crimes makes this his best book to date.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“All of Robert Dugoni’s talents are once again firmly on display in The Trapped Girl, a blisteringly effective crime thriller . . . structured along classical lines drawn years ago by the likes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. A fiendishly clever tale that colors its pages with crisp shades of postmodern noir.”
—Providence Journal
“Robert Dugoni, yet again, delivers an excellent read . . . With many twists, turns, and jumps in the road traveled by the detective and her cohorts, this absolutely superb plot becomes more than just a little entertaining. The problem remains the same: Readers must now once again wait impatiently for the next book by Robert Dugoni to arrive.”
—Suspense Magazine
Praise for In the Clearing
“Dugoni’s third ‘Tracy Crosswhite’ novel (after Her Final Breath) continues his series’s standard of excellence with superb plotting and skillful balancing of the two story lines.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“Dugoni has become one of the best crime novelists in the business, and his latest featuring Seattle homicide detective Tracy Crosswhite will only draw more accolades.”
—Romantic Times, Top Pick
Praise for Her Final Breath
“A stunningly suspenseful exercise in terror that hits every note at the perfect pitch.”
—Providence Journal
“Absorbing . . . Dugoni expertly ratchets up the suspense as Crosswhite becomes a target herself.”
—Seattle Times
“Another stellar story featuring homicide detective Tracy Crosswhite . . . Crosswhite is a sympathetic, well-drawn protagonist, and her next adventure can’t come fast enough.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
Praise for My Sister’s Grave
“One of the best books I’ll read this year.”
—Lisa Gardner, bestselling author of Touch & Go
“Dugoni does a superior job of positioning [the plot elements] for maximum impact, especially in a climactic scene set in an abandoned mine during a blizzard.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Combines the best of a police procedural with a legal thriller, and the end result is outstanding . . . Dugoni continues to deliver emotional and gut-wrenching, character-driven suspense stories that will resonate with any fan of the thriller genre.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“What starts out as a sturdy police procedural morphs into a gripping legal thriller . . . Dugoni is a superb storyteller, and his courtroom drama shines . . . This ‘Grave’ is one to get lost in.”
—Boston Globe
ALSO BY ROBERT DUGONI
The Last Line (a short story)
The World Played Chess
The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell
The 7th Canon
Damage Control
The Tracy Crosswhite Series
My Sister’s Grave
Her Final Breath
In the Clearing
The Trapped Girl
Close to Home
A Steep Price
A Cold Trail
In Her Tracks
The Academy (a short story)
Third Watch (a short story)
The Charles Jenkins Series
The Eighth Sister
The Last Agent
The Silent Sisters
The David Sloane Series
The Jury Master
Wrongful Death
Bodily Harm
Murder One
The Conviction
Nonfiction with Joseph Hilldorfer
The Cyanide Canary
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2022 by LaMesa Fiction LLC
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542008327
ISBN-10: 1542008328
Cover design by Damon Freeman
For Cristina, Joe, and Catherine. Shining lights during a dark couple of years.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PROLOGUE
February 27, 1996
The Industrial District
Seattle, Washington
Working nights in forbidding areas never bothered Lisa Childress. A reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Lisa met sources for her investigative articles at all hours of the day and night, and at some questionable locations. The dark didn’t frighten her. Nor did haunted houses or horror movies. As a child, she had looked forward to Halloween, with all its creepy costumes and the different ways people tried to spook, surprise, and scare her. They never did. In her teens, she had laughed watching horror movies that caused her friends to run screaming from the room. Being frightened, she concluded early on, was simply a state of mind, just like being cold or being happy. She could control it.
So, it didn’t bother her when a source asked to meet at 2:00 a.m. in downtown Seattle’s Industrial District. He explained, during their brief telephone conversation, that he had read her most recent news article and had information she might find interesting. Lisa understood why the man would be cautious. The story she pursued, if properly sourced, would blow the top off much of Seattle, and the fallout would be widespread.
She drove south on East Marginal Way, past a cement plant, a glass-recycling center, trucking companies, and businesses that produced raw materials housed in a complex of concrete buildings inter
Lisa looked through the windshield at clouds crossing a starlit night sky, pushed by a strong, cold breeze. She couldn’t help but think the area would make a great location for one of those horror films she’d seen as a teen.
At a stoplight, she unscrewed the cap of her liter of Coca-Cola. The carbonation fizzed. She took a swig that made her sinuses buzz and her throat tingle. Drinking Coke was a habit she’d picked up in college that had followed her to journalism school, and to her job. Coffee upset her stomach, but she needed the caffeine to get through these late-night and early-morning meetings. The Coke helped her to focus—she wasn’t sure why—and kept her from crashing. She often worked in rushed spurts, largely because she procrastinated too much. Figured she always would—that thing about zebras not changing their stripes. If she didn’t have a deadline hanging over her head like a guillotine blade, she couldn’t focus worth a damn. Not that she met them or even tried. She despised deadlines, which was one reason she never told her editors the details of the stories she pursued. If she did, they’d slot her article for a certain run date. She believed investigations had lives of their own, just like stories—a beginning, a middle, and an end. If she rushed the ending, she could miss the real substance. Her editors had given up trying to corral her, so long as she delivered the powerful, hard-hitting news articles that drew local and national attention.
Her husband, Larry, wasn’t so understanding, especially now with Anita, their two-year-old, at home. But Larry had known what he was getting into; they’d lived together for almost a year before getting married. Lisa would have been fine without the wedding ring, but they had a little slipup that she discovered when she peed on the stick. Larry said a baby needed a mother and father and one last name. Lisa figured he had a point.
Larry also knew Lisa hadn’t been raised in a traditional Leave It to Beaver home, where the husband went to work, and the wife primped and had dinner ready. Lisa’s mother, Beverly Siegler, was one of Seattle’s first female cardiothoracic surgeons—“Don’t call me a cardiologist. I work for a living,” she used to say. Her father, Archibald Siegler, struggled as a novelist—which he used as an excuse to stay at home and drink like Hemingway.
Larry also knew about Lisa’s clutter and lack of organizational skills. He knew her mind shifted from one topic to the next, often without pause and seemingly without reason. Her mother’d had Lisa tested as a child, and the doctors concluded she had autism, which according to her mother meant she was just a shade below brilliant.
The light changed. Lisa turned right on South Fidalgo Street—that was a name she wasn’t about to forget. Fidalgo. Had to be a person’s name. She visualized the Thomas Guide street map.
Continue to the end of the road. Just past a single-story, rectangular, concrete building. Drive through the gap between the corner of the building and the Duwamish Waterway.
The area behind the building was shaped like an isosceles triangle with the Duwamish running along the hypotenuse. Across the water, industrial lights illuminated flat-bottomed cargo ships stacked with colorful containers anchored in the middle of the waterway. Along the shortest side, semitruck cabs had backed up against closed loading bays, their grills smiling at her. Nearby, a car had parked in the shadows cast by the tall grass growing along the waterway. Her source. Lisa shut off her car’s headlights. Her source had said he would flash his high beams if it was safe to meet. Again, a bit melodramatic, but when in Rome . . .
She waited.
No high beams.
Maybe she was supposed to flash her car’s headlights. She waited just under a minute, then figured it couldn’t hurt. She reached and turned the knob on and off.
No response.
She could see the faint outline of someone seated behind the steering wheel and thought again of those ridiculous horror movies—some helpless woman, with an IQ slightly above roadkill, lured to an isolated spot by a deranged killer in a leather mask carrying a chain saw. She usually said something idiotic like “Did I catch you at a bad time?”
And the chain saw fires up so loud, it’s visceral.
Rumrum . . . RRRRRRRWWWW!
It was too early in the morning to sit and wait. Lisa reached to the cluttered passenger seat and fumbled beneath papers, notepads, a fleece jacket, and expended fast-food wrappers before finding her microcassette tape recorder. She made sure the battery worked and rewound the tape, then pressed “Record” and slipped the machine into the inside pocket of her jacket. A pen and pad of paper could make a source anxious, no matter how many times Lisa assured she would not reveal the person’s identity.
She grabbed her bag, which she used as a briefcase, slipped her car keys inside, and felt a long, cylindrical canister. She knew intuitively what she’d felt, bear spray, and who had put it there, Larry.
Her husband insisted she get pepper spray, but Lisa had not gotten around to it. The bear spray, from their camping supplies, was his not-so-subtle reminder. As her mother would have said, “At least you know he cares.”
She pushed open her car door, the dome light illuminating the mess, and stepped out. The early-morning temperature and stiff breeze chilled her. She estimated upper thirties or low forties. The breeze carried a chemical smell from one of the Duwamish plants, or maybe it was just the polluted waterway. The city wrestled with the business owners to clean it up or pay heavy fines.
As she approached the car, the wind gusted, carrying the electric hum of engines at work. She pulled open the passenger door and detected a rank smell she could only describe as the lingering odors of marijuana and a baby’s diaper.
The man behind the steering wheel wore a ball cap and a puffy jacket. He did not acknowledge her. He stared out the windshield.
“I’m Lisa Childress,” she said.
No response.
“Are you the person who called? Sir?” She reached across the seat and pushed the man’s shoulder. He tilted against the driver’s-side window, then toppled forward. His head hit the steering wheel before his body listed sideways—like a bag of potatoes shifting weight—and he slumped between the two seats. His hat dislodged, revealing damage to his skull. Blood, the color of chocolate syrup, and bits of brain matter splattered the shoulder of his jacket.
The weeds rustled behind her. Lisa turned. A person emerged but with his face covered beneath a black ski mask. She reached for the bear spray, but not quickly enough. The assailant grabbed her by the throat and shoved her hard against the car. Her head impacted, and a burst of stars momentarily blinded her. His hand squeezed her throat; she could not breathe.
He banged her head a second time. Then a third. Her fingers frantically flicked at the canister’s safety cap. The man sensed her movement, but not before Lisa raised the can and depressed the nozzle, spraying him in the eyes. He wailed in pain and released his grip, fingers ripping at the mask. He pulled it free, and for a brief moment Lisa saw him. Then he fled into the darkness.
Dizzy and disoriented, Lisa reached out to brace her arm against the car, missed the frame, and stumbled off-balance. She fell into the weeds, dropping the canister. Dazed, she rose to a knee but, nauseated, she threw up.
Get away.
She struggled to her feet. The building, lights, and night sky weaved and spun.
She stepped, tripped, and felt her body falling forward, weightless, her head striking the pavement.
CHAPTER 1
Present Day
Seattle, Washington
Tracy Crosswhite had no sooner shut her office door than someone knocked. She wanted to tell the person to go away. She wanted a minute to catch her breath. She had just returned to Police Headquarters after notifying another family that their loved one’s body had been found buried in Curry Canyon. The prior winter, Tracy had tracked an abducted woman to a cabin in the canyon and discovered a horror show. The property, along with the basement beneath a home in North Seattle, had for decades been the burial ground for two sadistic serial killers. The news was difficult for Tracy to deliver, and harder for the family to hear. Family members expressed relief to finally have closure, but they also reexperienced the pain that had pierced their hearts those many years ago. Each case took an emotional toll on Tracy, who was all too familiar with both the family’s grief and the painful healing process they would endure.
