In Her Tracks, page 32
“I’m sorry,” Gloria said.
“My counselor thinks I have an obsession to save young women.” Tracy shrugged, smiling. “I guess she’s right. There could be worse obsessions. When I figured out what happened to Elle, where she was, I guess I just needed to know she was safe.”
Gloria waited. Then she asked, “And what have you found?”
“I think Elle is going to help me understand that I can’t save every young woman, and in some cases, that I don’t need to. Her aunt and her uncle have already saved Elle.”
Tears rolled down Gloria’s cheeks. “Will you tell Jewel?”
“No. I think to do so, without Jewel having any recourse, would only be cruel to her and to Elle. And a part of me thinks Jewel already knows but isn’t saying because to admit it would be to admit that Bobby won. This way, neither of them won.” Tracy thought of her conversation with Jewel Chin, and of the investigative reports in the file that each said Jewel had moved from the house to a hotel and refused to cooperate in the investigation to find her daughter. Tracy had no doubt that if she told Jewel about Elle, Jewel would then be forced to use Elle to reopen old wounds. She’d once again blame Bobby, say that he had orchestrated the taking, and maybe make Elle the center of an international tug-of-war that could threaten to tear her apart, maybe this time irreparably. “Do you know the story of King Solomon?”
Gloria shook her head. “I do not.”
“It’s in the Bible. Two women claimed to be the mother of a child. To determine the true mother, Solomon suggests cutting the baby in half. One woman agrees, but the true mother begs that he give the child, unharmed, to the other woman.”
Gloria nodded her understanding.
“I think you and your husband are handling this situation correctly,” Tracy said. “I think the person with the right to decide what is best for Elle is Elle, when that day comes. Until then, the file will remain open, and unsolved.”
Gloria again dabbed her eyes with the tissue. “It’s admirable,” she said. “That you would come all this way just to find out that Elle is all right.”
“My husband wasn’t so diplomatic when I told him I needed to take a trip to Chengdu.”
“Is he here with you?”
“He’s at home, with our daughter.”
Gloria smiled. “So, you know why I did what I did.”
“I know.”
“How old is your daughter?”
“About a year. I’ve only been here a day and I already miss her.”
“Then I’d say your daughter is very lucky to have a mother who loves her so much. She will grow up to be a wonderful woman.”
Tracy smiled. “And I would say that Elle is lucky to have an aunt and an uncle who love her so much, and that she, too, now has the chance to grow up to be a wonderful woman. I hope everything works out for the best, for all of you.”
Tracy grabbed her purse and prepared to leave.
“Can you stay for dinner?” Gloria asked. “My husband will be home soon, and my parents. And I’m sure Elle would love to speak English with someone.”
Tracy smiled. “I’d like that,” she said. “Very much. Let me tell Bruce Wayne I’m going to be a couple more hours.”
“Bruce Wayne? You mean like the Batman?”
Tracy smiled. “He seems to think so. And it really isn’t my place to say he’s not.”
She left the table and walked outside, feeling as though a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She couldn’t save them all.
Maybe she didn’t have to.
But there was nothing wrong with trying.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wrote much of this novel while sheltering in place amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Every morning I would go online and check the numbers of infected and dying here in my home state of Washington. The first few weeks were especially scary as my son was traveling in Southeast Asia, and the in-state outbreak occurred in a nursing home just a few miles from my house. Like many, I initially compared the pandemic to the flu. I was wrong. We got my son home through Australia, my daughter came home from school, the world shut down, and we hunkered down for the long months. I learned to do Zoom book clubs, Zoom workout classes, and to make other video appearances. With time to reflect, I realized I had been born of a generation that had never suffered through the difficult times many Americans experienced during the First and Second World Wars and the Depression, and I am too young to have fully understood and appreciated the impact of the Korean and Vietnam wars on the young in our society.
I spoke to an older friend one afternoon, checking in to make sure he was okay, and I told him I felt bad for the young, to have had their lives disrupted. I told him of my nieces and nephews who would not get to celebrate their college and high school graduations. I told my friend about my nephew who was valedictorian of his high school class and would not get to give his speech or go to his senior prom, or finish out the school year with the classmates he started high school with four years ago. I told him of my son, living at home, rather than with friends as he embarked on a new career.
My friend said to me, “This has been a couple of months. Think of the people who went to Vietnam for an entire year, or who lived in Europe during World War II and suffered for a decade.”
He was right, of course. Perspective, however, often only comes with age.
I bring this up because many authors I spoke to during these difficult months have asked whether I will include COVID-19 in my novels. I have chosen not to. During the shelter-in-place months, I received numerous emails from readers thanking me for the chance to escape their homes and the difficulties and loneliness they were enduring. This, I believe, is the primary purpose of a novel, to entertain a reader in the comfort of his or her home. To spur his or her imagination, make him or her tense or cry tears of joy or sadness. The really good novels can make us all reflect on our own lives, and all we have experienced, the good times and the not-so-good times.
So you will not find a reference to COVID-19 in In Her Tracks. Whether I put it in future novels will depend on the subject matter. As with the pandemic, time will tell. In the interim, I hope you are all surviving, and that this pandemic has not been too painful for you or those you love. I hope that life will return to normal, and we can all see and be with one another again at writers’ and readers’ conferences and at bookstores.
As with all the novels in the Tracy Crosswhite series, I simply could not write this one without the help of Jennifer Southworth, Seattle Police Department, Violent Crimes Section. Jennifer has been invaluable helping me to formulate interesting ideas and with the daily police routine, as well as the specific tasks undertaken in the pursuit of a perpetrator of a crime.
My thanks also to Kathy Decker, former search-and-rescue coordinator of the King County Sheriff’s Office and a well-known sign-cutter and man-tracker. Kathy has assisted me with multiple novels, and I’m fortunate to have access to her wealth of knowledge. She kindly took the time to review and help me with the tracking in this book.
To the extent there are any mistakes with respect to police procedure in this novel, those mistakes are mine and mine alone. In the interests of telling a story, and keeping it entertaining, I have condensed certain timelines, such as the time it takes to have DNA analyzed.
Thanks to Meg Ruley, Rebecca Scherer, and the team at the Jane Rotrosen Agency. They are literary agents extraordinaire. They have supported my work all over the world, and we’ve had fun together in New York, Seattle, Paris, and Oslo. I’m thinking an Italian book festival should be next on the list, once this pandemic has left the country of my heritage. Thanks for all your hard work negotiating all the contracts, providing me with advice on my career, guiding me through Hollywood, watching over my backlist, and being such kind human beings.
Thank you to Thomas & Mercer, Amazon Publishing. This is the twelfth book I’ve written for them, and they have made each one better with their edits and suggestions. They have sold and promoted me and my novels all over the world, and I have had the pleasure of meeting the Amazon Publishing teams from the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. These are hardworking people who somehow make hard work a lot of fun. What they do best is promote and sell my novels, and for that I am so very grateful. During this time of sheltering in place and social distancing, they have come up with creative new ways to keep me in contact with readers through fun videos my family and I have enjoyed making.
Thanks to Sarah Shaw, author relations, who does such a terrific job celebrating my milestones. Thanks to Sean Baker, head of production; Laura Barrett, production manager; and Oisin O’Malley, art director. It’s getting redundant, I know, but I love the covers and the titles of each of my novels. I am always amazed at the ways you take care of me. Thanks to Dennelle Catlett, Amazon Publishing PR, for all the work promoting me and my novels. Dennelle is always there, always available when I call or send an email with a need or a request. She actively promotes me, helps me to help charitable organizations, and makes my travel easy. Thanks to the marketing team, Lindsey Bragg, Kyla Pigoni, and Erin Calligan Mooney, for all their dedicated work and new ideas to help me build my author platform. I hope they never stop asking, because they make each new idea a great experience. Thanks to publisher Mikyla Bruder, associate publisher Hai-Yen Mura, and Jeff Belle, vice president of Amazon Publishing, for creating a team dedicated to their jobs and allowing me to be a part of it.
This past year, when sales of my Amazon novels surpassed five million, they threw a party for me, and I had the chance to tell them in person how much I appreciated all they have done for me. I am sincerely grateful, and even more amazed by the additional million readers we have now reached.
I am especially grateful to Thomas & Mercer’s editorial director, Gracie Doyle. Gracie helps me find new ideas and new ways of telling stories. She pushes me to take stories to a depth I hadn’t initially considered. We’ve had a lot of fun at author events, and I hope we will do so again in the near future.
Thank you to Charlotte Herscher, developmental editor. All of my books with Amazon Publishing have been edited by Charlotte—from police procedurals to legal thrillers, espionage thrillers, and literary novels, and she never ceases to amaze me with how quickly she picks up the story line and works to make it as good as it can possibly be. Thanks to Scott Calamar, copyeditor, whom I desperately need. Grammar has never been my strength, so there is usually a lot to do.
Thanks to Tami Taylor, who runs my website, creates my newsletters, and creates some of my foreign-language book covers. Thanks to Pam Binder and the Pacific Northwest Writers Association for their support.
Thanks to all of you tireless readers, for finding my novels and for your incredible support of my work all over the world. Hearing from readers is a blessing, and I enjoy each email.
Thanks to my mother and father for a wonderful childhood and for teaching me to reach for the stars, then to work my butt off to touch them. I couldn’t think of two better role models.
Thank you to my wife, Cristina, for all her love and support, and thanks to my two children, Joe and Catherine, who have started to read my novels, which makes me so very proud.
I couldn’t do this without all of you, nor would I want to.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2018 Douglas Sonders
Robert Dugoni is the critically acclaimed New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Amazon bestselling author of the Tracy Crosswhite series, which has sold more than six million books worldwide; the David Sloane series; the Charles Jenkins series; the stand-alone novels The 7th Canon, Damage Control, and The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell, for which he won an AudioFile Earphones Award for narration; and the nonfiction exposé The Cyanide Canary, a Washington Post best book of the year. He is the recipient of the Nancy Pearl Book Award for fiction and has twice won the Friends of Mystery Spotted Owl Award for best novel. He is a two-time finalist for the International Thriller Awards and a finalist for the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction, the Silver Falchion Award for mystery, and the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Awards. His books are sold in more than twenty-five countries and have been translated into more than two dozen languages. Visit his website at www.robertdugonibooks.com.
Dugoni, Robert, In Her Tracks
