What She Found, page 22
Jorgensen looked to Childress. “It would make a hell of a story, Anita. You could write it first person. Open with an embedded narrative. Maybe start with when you started your search.”
“I can’t make that decision right now,” Childress said. “I’m too overwhelmed.”
“It’s news.” Jorgensen gave a small shrug. He looked to Tracy. “It’s news, Detective. Big news. Even if she doesn’t want to talk, you can’t hide something like this. People are going to want to know how this happened.”
“I don’t disagree with you, but it’s not my story to tell, and I won’t confirm or deny anything until Lisa and Anita have a chance to decide what they want to do.”
“How did it happen?”
“The doctors don’t know.”
“She was hospitalized, then?”
Again, Tracy could see the wheels turning in Jorgensen’s mind. He’d have someone calling every hospital in Southern California.
“Does she know who she is?” he asked. “Did she recall her name?”
“No,” Tracy said, not elaborating any further. She turned to Anita Childress. “I’m going to go. You have my phone number. Let’s talk later.” Tracy turned to leave.
“Detective,” Childress said. Tracy turned back as the young woman approached. Childress paused, then she reached out and hugged Tracy, and Tracy wondered if the young woman had ever experienced that kind of hug, certainly not from her mother.
Tracy returned home to Dan and Daniella. Outside the picture windows a light rain fell, and Dan had lit a fire in the fireplace insert. Tracy told Dan and Therese all about her meetings.
“An Irish accent,” Therese said. “Do you know where from?”
Tracy didn’t. “I’m not sure it matters.”
“You Americans think we all sound the same, but the accent varies from place to place.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Tracy said. “I meant she’s definitely not Irish.” She explained what the doctors had hypothesized.
“When’s the reunion?”
“Thursday. I’m hoping Jorgensen will at least hold off until then.”
“He’s waited twenty-five years,” Therese said. “He can’t wait a few more days?”
“He was definitely more interested in the story.”
“Well, she was one of their own,” Dan said.
“It made me realize the family’s not going to be able to keep this quiet, no matter how they handle it. The story is going to get out, and I’m not sure how Melissa Childs will handle it. She’s lived an isolated life until now, and suddenly she’s going to be front-page news and on every television in America.”
“Eventually it will die down,” Dan said. “The news always moves on to the next story.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about. I’m worried that whoever did this, whoever killed David Slocum and possibly injured Lisa Childress, will react the way Jorgensen first reacted. They won’t believe she has amnesia.”
“You think she could be in some danger?”
“I think it’s a possibility, unless I get ahead of this. I need to go out again tonight,” she said to Dan. “I need to talk to someone, and I can’t do it at the office.”
CHAPTER 28
Tracy,” Vera Fazzio said when she pulled open the door to their two-story Craftsman home in Green Lake. “Vic didn’t tell me you were coming over.”
“I didn’t get the chance to tell him,” Tracy said. “This is sort of spontaneous.”
“Well, come on in out of the rain,” Vera said, smiling. “Vic’s in the back watching television.”
Tracy walked to the tiled fireplace and considered the pictures on the mantel of Faz and Vera and their son, Antonio, at various points in their lives. It made her think again of all that Anita and Lisa Childress had missed out on.
“Tracy?” Faz entered the room looking confused and concerned. “What’s wrong? What’s going on? You all right?”
Tracy smiled so he wouldn’t worry. “Yes, Faz, I’m fine. I’m sorry to show up unannounced.”
“Don’t be silly,” he and Vera said at the same time.
“You’re family, Tracy. You’re always welcome here. You know that.” Faz and Vera were Daniella’s godparents. During her years working Homicide, Tracy had leaned on Faz too many times to count, but the self-proclaimed big goombah was always there for her no matter the time of day or night.
“Can we talk for a minute?” she said to Faz.
“Sure. Sure. Come sit down.” Faz offered her one of two comfortable chairs near the fireplace. “Let me take your jacket.” Tracy handed it to him. Faz hung it on an unused brass hook with other coats just inside the front door. Tracy had eaten some of the best dinners of her life at Faz and Vera’s. They’d celebrated various occasions and holidays together, and she’d always found the small Craftsman to be homey, something out of a Norman Rockwell painting with crown molding, multipaned windows and doors, dark hardwood floors with throw rugs, heavy red curtains, and the old-style easy chairs.
“Can I get you anything, Tracy?” Vera said. “A cup of coffee or tea?”
“No, I’m fine, Vera. Really, I don’t want either of you to worry. Dan and Daniella are fine. This is work related, and I promise I’ll try not to take up too much of your family time.”
“I’ll be in the back,” Vera said. “Stay as long as you like.”
Faz sat in the red leather chair across from Tracy and leaned forward, forearms on his knees. He looked concerned despite her assurances. “What’s going on? What did you want to talk about?”
“I think you know, Faz.”
“What’s that?” His neck and cheeks splotched red.
“I think you know why I’m here.”
“Tracy, I don’t know . . .”
“You’re the guerilla emailer.”
Faz eyed her, but he didn’t deny it.
“I had the tech department trace the IP address to Fremont. I don’t know anyone who lives in Fremont. I’ve been racking my brain. Then I remembered the night we all went to Antonio’s new restaurant to try out his menu items before the grand opening. Me and Dan. You and Vera and Del and Celia. Fazzio’s. In Fremont.”
Faz sighed. “I’m just trying to help out a friend, Tracy.”
“What did Del get himself into, Faz?”
“It wasn’t his fault, what happened.”
“Tell me.”
“As a detective or as a friend?”
“That’s not fair, Faz.”
“I know. But sometimes we got to choose.”
“Is that what you did?”
“Del and I were both relatively new on the homicide team. I’d come up through the different divisions in Seattle so I’d kicked the tires for a few years, but Del transferred in from Wisconsin. He was fresh off the boat.”
“And he got assigned to Moss Gunderson to show him the ropes.”
“That’s right. It was just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“The two crewmen whose bodies floated up at the marina?”
Faz nodded, then said, “But listen, Tracy, I’m not going to shoot off my mouth. If Del wants to talk about this, that’s up to him.”
“I’m hoping that I can help him, Faz.”
“How? This is deep.”
“Lisa Childress is alive.”
“What?” Faz said. “The newspaper reporter? Has to be twenty-five years since she went missing.”
“It has been.”
“What’s she got to say?”
“Not much. She can’t remember a damn thing that happened to her, but she’s alive. And I got a hunch when that news breaks it’s going to make a lot of people uncomfortable. I need help.”
“She’s alive,” Faz said, not sounding convinced. “Sweet Jesus.”
Tracy told him the story of how she’d found Lisa Childress. “Why’d you email me, Faz?”
“Del’s been carrying this burden on his shoulders for twenty-five years, Tracy. He feels responsible for what happened to David Slocum, and what he thought happened to Lisa Childress. He’s not.”
“Then why does he feel responsible?”
Faz made a face like it hurt each time he spoke. He shook his head and put up his hands. “I don’t think this is my place to tell you this, Tracy. I think it should be Del.”
“Will he talk to me?”
“I don’t know. But if I was him, I’d want to get this off my chest. He just hasn’t had the right opportunity.”
“Can you call him? Talk to him?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll help you both. But let’s not talk here. I don’t want Vera to hear and think any less of Del. What happened wasn’t his fault, and he could not have prevented it.”
“Where do you want to talk?”
Faz checked his watch. “I know a quiet place. A restaurant doing a killer take-out business and all the privacy we could ever want.”
Maybe, Tracy thought, but it didn’t quell the butterflies congregating in her stomach. She thought of Del as an uncle and a colleague who had guided her career and stood up for her when she was the only female homicide detective in the Violent Crimes Section. She hoped she didn’t have to do anything that could jeopardize his career—and their friendship.
Fazzio’s was located at a busy intersection on Fremont Avenue in the heart of the Fremont neighborhood. Antonio had worked hard to give the restaurant an old-world feel. A black awning extended over the door and sidewalk, the word “Fazzio’s” facing the street. Menus adorned a lighted stand beside an ornate, cast-iron bench. Inside, the maître d’ greeted Faz warmly. Soft lighting descended from the copper-tiled ceiling and subtly lit the hardwood floors and brick walls. Copper pots and pans hung on hooks from the wall. The windows were curtained. To Tracy it felt like eating in Vera’s dining room, which was how Antonio had been raised. The tables were full, and waiters in formal white dress shirts and black slacks covered by long black aprons tied at the waist scurried from one table to the next, delivering baskets of bread and olive oil and plates of hot food and refreshing wineglasses.
Antonio met his father just inside the door and they exchanged kisses on each cheek. The young man Tracy had first met as a boy was as tall as his father and looked the way Tracy imagined Faz had looked playing power forward on his high school basketball team, tall and lean. “I got the room set up for you in back, Pop,” Antonio said.
“You don’t worry about us,” Faz said. “You take care of your customers.”
“It’s no worry, Pop.”
“Del here?” Faz asked.
“Just arrived. I put three glasses back there with a nice Syrah, and I have some calamari and bruschetta on the way.”
“You didn’t have to do that, Antonio,” Tracy said.
“You come to my restaurant and not eat? My mother would disown me.” He smiled. “Okay, Pop, I got to get back to it. You need anything you just ask, okay?”
“You’re doing good, huh?” Faz asked.
“We’re killing it, Pop. Serving Mom’s gnocchi and sausage with peppers tonight. I’ll put some aside for you to take home.” Antonio winked. “I’ll check in with you later.”
Faz led Tracy down a narrow brick hall past the kitchen. The aromas of pasta sauce, garlic and capers, and fish flooded her senses. The hallway ended at a curtained room at the back of the restaurant, a heavy red drape pulled across the entrance. Tracy and Dan had celebrated with Faz and Del in this room, but this would not be a celebration.
Faz pulled back the curtain, and he and Tracy stepped in. A dark oak table and eight chairs, three per side and one at each end, dominated the room. Del stood at the head of the table dressed in slacks and a collared shirt, his sleeves rolled up. On the wall hung his black leather car coat and porkpie hat. Del sipped a glass of wine. He looked nervous. Tracy had never seen Del nervous in all her years working Violent Crimes. She had always thought him unflappable.
They exchanged greetings in soft voices. Del took Faz’s and Tracy’s coats and hung them on hooks. Light Italian opera music filtered into the room from ceiling speakers.
“Thanks for seeing us,” Tracy said.
“Hey, let’s not be formal like that, okay?” Del said. “We’ve known each other, what? Ten or twelve years?”
“Sure, no problem,” Faz said. “Right, Tracy? No problem.”
“No problem,” Tracy said.
“And don’t do that either,” Del said.
“What?” Faz said.
“Don’t intercede, okay? I’m a big boy. I can handle myself.”
Faz raised both hands in surrender. “The floor is yours, my friend.” He poured Tracy a glass of Syrah, then filled his own glass and acted like a disinterested consigliere.
“I knew when you came to me asking about Lisa Childress that it was just a matter of time before we had this conversation. Anyone else . . .” He waved with one hand. “I would have said no way. But you . . . You’re like a dog with a bone, Tracy. You don’t give up. Where’d they find her body?”
“She’s alive, Del,” Tracy said.
Del looked from Tracy to Faz. Faz raised a hand. “Don’t look at me. You told me to keep quiet.”
“She’s alive?” Del asked Tracy. “Lisa Childress is alive?”
Tracy told him everything she’d told Faz—the tip that came from the tip line on Facebook and her trip to Escondido.
“Amnesia?” Del said. “Do you believe her?”
“I had my doubts,” Tracy said. “Until I heard her speak. She speaks with an Irish accent. Has since the day they found her. No way somebody can pull that off for twenty-five years. I figure if she wasn’t faking the accent, seemed unlikely she faked the amnesia.”
“She doesn’t remember anything?” Del said, more of a statement than a question.
Tracy shook her head. “Not a thing. Tell me what happened, Del. Tell me about the marina and Moss Gunderson.”
Del sipped his wine and turned sideways to cross his legs. “I’m embarrassed, Tracy.”
“Just start, Del.”
He set the glass on the table. “I was new here in Seattle. Back then they put us with an experienced detective to teach us the ropes. I got Moss, and I got an earful every day, but I learned to cut through his bullshit, and to listen to the important stuff. Moss was old-school. He made it clear from the start that if we were going to be partners, we had to have each other’s backs. He said he’d watch mine as best he could and help me to stay out of trouble. The guy was charismatic,” Del said. “He was straight from central casting. We couldn’t walk into the Public Safety Building without a dozen guys calling out his name and giving him a hard time. Around town he knew everyone, and everyone knew him.”
Having witnessed much the same thing at the country club, Tracy understood what Del had experienced. It had to have been intoxicating for a detective new to Homicide to be the partner of someone seemingly so well respected.
“I’m not on the job more than a week or two and we get called out in the early morning. Two bodies found floating in Lake Union. We get there and meet the harbormaster, David Slocum. Moss starts asking questions about the two men. Slocum said he hadn’t seen them before. Moss, I could tell he wasn’t that interested. It was blistering cold and windy that morning. He wants to get moving. He tells me to go down to the dock and get a look at the bodies, then talk to the guy who found them and anyone else who saw anything. I’m there for, I don’t know, a couple of hours. Nobody knows nothing about these two guys. Moss decides the two guys probably fell off a boat and the current brought them into the marina.”
Del took another sip of his wine. A waiter pulled back the red curtain and stepped into the room carrying the calamari and the bruschetta. The smell of butter, lemon, and garlic filled the room. The waiter set the plates on the table beside small appetizer plates and forks and rolled napkins. “How you doing, Mr. Fazzio?”
“Doing good, Ricky. Doing fine. How’s your old man?”
“Back’s bothering him. Needs to lose weight. Can I get you another bottle of the Syrah?”
“No. Nothing else. We’re good. You go do your job.”
The waiter left. No one touched the food. Del continued. “Moss says he wants me to handle the case, take the lead. I thought, terrific. Give me a chance to show my chops to the captain and others in Homicide. Moss even tells me to run everything through him so he can make sure I don’t make any mistakes. I was grateful to the guy.” Del shook his head. “Moss sends over his report on his conversation with Slocum. Nothing in that report says anything about a raid.
“I started asking around all the other marinas if anybody recognizes the two guys. Nobody does. A couple of weeks pass, and Funk sends over the toxicology report. The two guys had narcotics and alcohol in their systems. Okay, I think, so maybe they were fishing and fell in. The logical starting point is the marina, right? That’s where they found the bodies.”
Faz put a bruschetta and pieces of calamari on a plate and handed it to Del, then handed a second plate to Tracy. “I’m good, Faz. I ate at home.”
“You can’t come to Fazzio’s and not eat. It’s an insult to the chef . . . and his father.”
Tracy took the plate. Del took a bite of the bruschetta and made a face like he’d fallen in love. “This is better than Vera’s, but you tell her I said anything, and I’ll deny it.”
They all laughed. Nerves. Del sipped his wine and leaned forearms on the table. “I finally go back to the marina to see if the harbormaster has a thought or has heard something more, and the guy, David Slocum, he says to me, ‘What did you ever find out about the raid?’
“I must have looked like a deer in headlights because Slocum, he says, ‘I told your partner.’
“‘Told him what?’ I say. He says, ‘I told him about the raid on the fishing boat two nights before the bodies floated up to the dock. Half a dozen guys.’ Well, by now I realize I can either look stupid or try to bluff. So, I bluff. I look stupid enough on my own.” Del gave a half-hearted smile. “I say, ‘Yeah, he wants me to get a little more detail about that,’ and Slocum proceeds to tell me that two nights before the two men floated up to the dock, these guys raided the marina and impounded the boat for running drugs. I just let him talk ’cause this is all new to me. He said they took the boat from the marina and that’s the last he’s ever seen of it.
