What She Found, page 24
Childs looked terrified. “I thought this was going to be a private meeting.”
“So did I,” Tracy said. “I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what happened. What do you want to do?” Tracy had the feeling Childs was going to tell her to take her back to the airport. “I can call Anita and arrange a different meeting place.”
Childs took a deep breath. After several long seconds she said, “No. They’d likely find us. My mother and daughter have waited long enough. Let’s get through it.”
“Let me make a call,” Tracy said. “I can at least get police out there to push the reporters back.”
Twenty minutes later, Tracy took the Forty-Fifth Street exit and continued through the University District, then wound her way through Laurelhurst, one of the most expensive Seattle neighborhoods. The homes on the water now cost in the multimillions, and those around them not much less. Beverly Siegler lived on a horseshoe-shaped street a block above the water. Tracy watched Childs for any reaction, any sense that she recalled her childhood. Childs looked impassive, as if seeing the area for the first time and not understanding its significance.
Tracy made a turn, proceeded down a narrow street, came around a bend in the road, and saw multiple news vans, antennae extended from the roofs. A crowd of reporters stood behind several uniformed officers. The officers had put sawhorses across the road fifty feet from Dr. Beverly Siegler’s driveway.
Tracy lowered her window, showed the officer her badge, and explained who she had in the car. The officer stepped back and motioned to another officer at the driveway to move cones so Tracy could park. She pulled the car behind an eight-foot laurel bush privacy hedge. She removed Childs’s luggage from the back seat as Childs exited. Anita opened the front door, and she and a woman Tracy assumed to be Beverly Siegler stepped out, both crying. Siegler was a distinguished-looking woman with snow-white hair cut short and deep-blue eyes. Larry Childress, who appeared more curious than emotional, came out the door behind them.
At the front porch, Tracy remained back, giving the family space. The three women stared at one another, each uncertain what to do or to say. Anita spoke first.
“Mom. I’m your daughter, Anita.” She gestured. “This is your mother, Beverly.”
Childs showed no defining emotion. She looked like a robot trying to process the information. Anita stepped to the side and gestured behind her. “This is Larry. My father. Your husband.”
Again, Childs did not react. She directed her gaze back to Anita. “I dreamed of you,” she said. “I dreamed of a little girl. I didn’t know who she was. I didn’t know your name.” She looked to Beverly. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You must have been so worried. All of you.”
“Come in,” Beverly said, fighting back more tears. “We have a lot of catching up to do.”
After the family went inside, Tracy walked to the street and spoke to the uniformed officers. Reporters shouted questions from behind the barrier. She ignored them. “This was supposed to be done quietly,” she said. “Do you have any sense what happened?”
The officers shook their heads.
Tracy looked down the block at the distinctive logo for Channel 8 on the side of a van. Maria Vanpelt stood beside it, no doubt shooting a segment to air on the six o’clock news. Vanpelt’s van had prime real estate up front, and Tracy wondered if that was because the meeting had been leaked to her, and by whom?
She went back to her car and called Del. She asked him to check around and try to determine how the leak had happened. While they talked, her phone buzzed. Caller ID indicated it was Bennett Lee from the Public Affairs Office. She told Del she’d call him back and took Lee’s call.
“Tracy, I’m getting calls from reporters asking for you and asking if it’s true that you located a Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter who went missing twenty-four years ago.”
“I just reunited the family, Bennett. It was supposed to be a private reunion. Do you know what happened, how the information leaked?”
“I don’t, but we need to make a statement to the press. This is taking on a life of its own.”
“Tell them the family has asked for privacy, and you don’t know if they’re going to make a public statement or not.”
“Chief Weber wants you to make a statement.”
“I’m not going to do that without the family’s permission. They’re entitled to their privacy. If the family wants to make a statement, that’s up to them.”
“When will you know?”
“I can’t say.”
“Help me out here, Tracy.”
Tracy liked Lee. He was often walking a tightrope trying to disseminate information and maintain the confidentiality of investigations. “Let me talk to the family.” Tracy disconnected and walked back to the front door. She knocked gently. Larry Childress answered. “I need to speak to Anita.”
“She’s with her mother,” Childress said. “It’s going to have to wait.”
“I need to know if she wants to make a statement to the media or wants me to make one for her?”
Childress paused for a moment and Tracy sensed a strange vibe. Who would have incentive to tell the media? Certainly not Anita Childress or her grandmother. Larry Childress had been vilified in the press twenty-four years ago, and more recently when the news first went public. He had told Tracy the looming uncertainty had been the reason he and his high school sweetheart had never wed, that her father had opposed their union. He had an incentive to make the story public, to exonerate himself.
“Did you notify the press, Mr. Childress? Was this your doing?”
Childress’s face colored red. He stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind him. “Do you blame me?”
Tracy shook her head. “You couldn’t have waited?”
“How dare you. How dare you judge me after everything I’ve been through, the accusations and insinuations. You all started this when you blamed me.”
“I’m not judging—”
“I’ve waited twenty-four years for this moment, Detective,” he said, his tone angry.
“For Lisa to come home, or for you to be vindicated?” Tracy had the distinct impression it was the latter.
“I’ve lived under a cloud of suspicion every day for decades. Do you have any idea what that is like? My daughter and I suffered immensely because of what the police put me through. You have no idea. None. You have no right to judge me.”
He was right. Tracy did not know what he had been through, not in detail, and she had no basis to judge him. But he also had no idea what he might have unleashed by going public with the information. Tracy had no idea what Childress had told the newspapers. If he’d told them where Lisa had lived for the past twenty-four years or her new name. He might very well have put his former wife’s life in danger.
“We need to make a statement that your wife has amnesia and doesn’t remember anything about what happened.”
“We’ll make a statement when we are ready, and we will say what we choose to say. You’re free to say whatever you want.” With that, Childress stepped back inside the house and shut the door.
CHAPTER 30
Tracy returned to Police Headquarters around 6:00 p.m. and was summoned to Chief Weber’s office. Weber had a flat-screen television tuned to a news station, and she stood watching live coverage of the story of Lisa Childress’s return to Seattle, and the circumstances surrounding it. The story had already gone viral.
Since the staff had left for the day, Tracy knocked on Weber’s door and stepped in. Weber did not look happy to see her.
“What I want to know is how this reunion happened. The news stations indicate you were involved in making it happen.”
“I told you that I was asked by Anita Childress—” Tracy started before Weber interrupted her.
“And I thought I told you to focus your attention on cases that had the potential to be resolved.”
“This case was resolved,” Tracy said. “Childress was considered a missing person presumed deceased. Now she isn’t.”
“This was not a case with DNA evidence nor was it a case likely to be resolved when you chose to pursue it against my specific directive.”
“You said to pursue cases that had a likelihood of being resolved. I received a tip after we spoke that Lisa Childress was alive, and I pursued that tip. Not every cold case has DNA evidence that we can follow, Chief. Some are going to require police effort, talking to witnesses—and I did that.”
“What I need are numbers to justify our budget.”
“And I gave you one. A case that is getting positive feedback.”
“We have a city council that would like nothing better than to defund this department.”
Tracy couldn’t rationalize Chief Weber’s reaction. “This is a positive case, Chief. It’s a win. It’s receiving more local and national attention than the bodies discovered in Curry Canyon. I don’t understand what the problem is.”
“What the problem is?” Chief Weber pointed a remote at the television in her office and hit “Fast Forward.” Until that moment, Tracy didn’t know she had been watching a recording.
Weber stopped the recording when Larry Childress appeared on the screen, alone, facing a dozen reporters in the driveway of Beverly Siegler’s home. Tracy had a bad feeling about what was to come.
Chief Weber hit “Play” and Tracy listened to Childress speaking to reporters from notecards. He told them his ex-wife was alive and had been living in Escondido, California, for the past twenty-four years. He then chastised the media and said he’d been vindicated after being vilified. He cast blame on the Seattle Police Department, who he said had rushed to judgment and failed to follow other leads that might have resolved this case much earlier. He said police incompetence had led to the loss of his wife and his daughter’s mother, and they had both paid for it with a quarter century of their lives.
“It didn’t have to be this way,” Childress said, looking very much like the grieving husband. “We all suffered because the police department refused to consider any other possibilities, even when I called those possibilities to their attention. They were lazy,” he added, a bite in his tone. “And their laziness cost all of us dearly. So do not paint this as positive police work. This case, the disappearance of my wife, is an illustration of what happens when police officers don’t do their jobs. When they pick the low-hanging fruit and hang on to it even without evidence to justify doing so.”
Tracy felt sick to her stomach.
When asked about his wife’s claim of amnesia, Childress’s answer was vague, intimating that he didn’t understand the circumstances well enough to comment.
Weber hit “Pause.” “The other stations are broadcasting the same message.”
“He’s wrong, Chief. Larry Childress refused to let the department send out a news release to other police stations and the media. He handcuffed their efforts to protect himself. He’s protecting himself now.”
“And do you want to get up in front of cameras and say that?”
Tracy knew the question to be rhetorical and bit her tongue.
“His statements will be national news. You still think pursuing this case helped us?”
“It isn’t about helping us,” Tracy said. “It was about helping a daughter and a mother find some closure. When I took cold cases I was told that I would have latitude which cases I pursued.”
“Not by me,” Weber said. “I understand you called in sick on Monday.”
The statement caught Tracy out of the blue. “That’s right.”
“Tell me you did not fly to Escondido and speak to the chief of police with Lisa Childress or Melissa Childs, or whatever her name is?”
Again, the question sounded rhetorical. “I took a sick day. I didn’t use police resources.”
“You deliberately went behind my back.”
In a way, Tracy had, and she could understand why Chief Weber was not happy about it, but she wished Weber could see the flip side, that despite Larry Childress’s negativity and hostility, this was a rare success, a woman missing twenty-four years found alive. This was a moment to be celebrated, if she spun it correctly. “I have three active files with DNA that Mike Melton is processing. Just as you asked,” Tracy said. “And this . . . this is a positive outcome. We can get a statement to Bennett Lee highlighting how rare these circumstances are.”
“Is that how you see it?”
“I had an open file. I had a lead. I pursued that lead, and I achieved a positive result for the family and for this department.”
“The husband—”
“Is a bitter, angry, little man,” Tracy said, feeling herself getting defensive. “Are we going to let him and people like him dictate how we do our jobs?”
Weber paused. “No. I will dictate how you do your job.” She moved back to her desk. “Why did you take a sick day?”
“To not use police resources.”
“Don’t bullshit me. You took a sick day to do an end run around a direct order I gave you to set this case aside and pursue cases with DNA evidence that had a reasonable chance of success.”
“I did pursue cases with DNA evidence, and Mike Melton told me he will have DNA available in all three cases shortly. I had a strong lead after you and I spoke that Lisa Childress was alive, and I pursued that lead.”
“Bennett Lee says the phones are ringing off the hook. The media would like a statement about this case.”
“I spoke to Bennett and told him the family has asked for privacy, and I’m going to honor that request.”
“Apparently not.” Weber gestured to the television. Then she picked up a sheet of paper from her desk and handed it to Tracy. “I asked Lee to put together a statement that will cast you and this department in the best light possible given the circumstances.”
Tracy read the statement, which gave details on Melissa Childs’s life in Escondido and her allegation that she had suffered from amnesia. The intimation was that Lisa Childress had simply walked away from her responsibilities to start a new life, thereby absolving the police department.
“You want me to sign this?”
“No. I want you to make a statement to the media in time for the ten o’clock news.”
“I told Lisa Childress and her daughter that I would respect their privacy. I also told them that I would not reveal her life in Escondido. And this statement is not accurate. She did not walk away.”
“That cat has been let out of the bag.”
“Not by me.”
“But because of your actions.”
That was no doubt true. But Tracy would not go back on her word. Honoring her word was more important than pleasing her chief, though it certainly would not be without consequences. It might not be the smartest decision Tracy ever made, but it was the honorable one. “I won’t read this statement without the family’s permission. It’s a violation of the promise I made to them, and it gives in to the husband. Why draw more attention to him and the situation? Why not just let this be for a bit?”
“I’m giving you a direct order, Detective Crosswhite.”
Tracy held her breath. She knew where this was headed. “Then I’m going to have to respectfully refuse that order.”
“Then you’re suspended pending an internal investigation by a unit sergeant. I’d suggest you get in contact with the union. You’ll need legal defense.”
As Tracy started for the office door, Chief Weber said, “I’m disappointed, Detective Crosswhite.”
Tracy stopped and turned back. “Not nearly as disappointed as I am.”
CHAPTER 31
Tracy cleared her desk of her personal effects, and though she believed she had done the right thing, it had not been without some regret and some anger. When she arrived at home, Dan was in the backyard sitting beneath the pergola. He had put up a flat-screen television and heaters, a suggestion by Tim, who helped him run electrical wiring and installed the outlets. It was pleasant beneath the shade.
“Hey,” Dan said. “I wanted to surprise you. Comcast just extended the cables out here and apparently just in time. Your name is all over the local and national media with the story of Lisa Childress’s return to Seattle.”
“It’s big news. Just not for the police department.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Chief Weber just suspended me.”
“What? Why?”
“I refused a direct order to read a prepared statement.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It does, actually. She gave me an order to not pursue the case and to focus on cases with DNA evidence. I didn’t advise her of the lead I received about Lisa Childress maybe being alive in Escondido.”
“So what? This is positive publicity.”
“You haven’t seen the news.”
“I’ve seen some of it.”
“Then you haven’t seen the part where the husband rips the Seattle Police Department for rushing to judgment twenty-five years ago, thereby causing him and his child to be scorned and ostracized for decades.”
“He didn’t. Why would he do that?”
“Because it’s true, and he’s bitter and angry. That’s exactly what Moss Gunderson and Keith Ellis did. They made him the only suspect to divert any investigation into Lisa Childress pursuing a story on the Last Line and going that morning to meet with her source, the harbormaster, David Slocum. But I don’t have solid evidence to prove that, and I don’t want anyone outside of Del and Faz, whom I trust, to know.”
“Why exactly were you suspended?” Dan said, quickly shifting into his lawyer tone.
“She believes I went around her direct order not to pursue the case and because I refused to break my word to Anita Childress and Melissa Childs that I wouldn’t make a statement or respond to media questions without their blessing. The latter is true. The former I can dispute. She told me to pursue cases with evidence that might lead to a resolution. I received a solid tip. It wasn’t DNA, but it was solid and it led to a resolution.”
