What She Found, page 8
CHAPTER 9
Tracy left the High Bar thinking of all the embers burning around Moss Gunderson and wondering how they had not individually or collectively conflagrated. Moss had been the investigating detective on the Lisa Childress case, which was never resolved; a member of the Route 99 serial killer task force, never solved; and Del’s partner on the investigation into two drownings at the Diamond Marina, which seemed perfunctorily solved. Why? Why was Childress investigating drownings? The logical conclusion was the drownings had something to do with drugs and the Last Line.
But how, exactly?
Tracy arrived home to the pungent smell of garlic, onions, spicy Italian sausage, and tomatoes. Dan’s pasta sauce simmered on the stove top, and the recipe called for enough garlic to ward off at least three vampires. Daniella sat in her high chair, struggling to pick up an assortment of Cheerios and peas and guide them into her mouth. Judging by the number she had discarded on the floor, two things were apparent. She was failing more than succeeding, and Rex and Sherlock were locked in the backyard. The pediatrician told Tracy that letting Daniella feed herself was good for developing her dexterity.
Daniella smiled and kicked her legs and arms when Tracy entered the kitchen. “Mama.” She held out her hands, peas squashed between her chubby fingers.
“How’s my little angel?” Tracy said.
“Your little angel was tossing food over the side of her chair to Rex and Sherlock,” Dan said. “And getting a big kick out of herself doing it.”
Tracy kissed Daniella’s cheeks, and her baby smiled and kicked harder. “Figured that was why the two hounds weren’t in here.”
“Rex and Sherlock acted like they hit the jackpot on the dollar slot machines in Vegas,” Dan said. “She laughed uproariously, as Therese likes to say.”
Tracy grabbed paper towels and ran them under the faucet, then cleaned up Daniella. “You’re home early,” she said.
“I didn’t really work today. Just a few hours in the home office.”
She threw the paper towels into the garbage, lifted Daniella from the chair, then kissed Dan. “Everything okay?”
“Still feeling numb from Ted Simmons’s suicide,” he said.
“You all right?”
Dan sighed. “I will be. Just . . .”
He shook his head. Tracy waited. Daniella pressed her hands to Tracy’s cheeks, and Tracy pretended to eat her fingers.
“I just wonder if I could have handled things differently,” Dan said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have pushed him to go forward. Maybe if I had spent more time listening to his concerns . . .” Dan shook his head. “I got wrapped up in beating that little shit at the city attorney’s office, and I can’t help but think I missed signs that might have saved Ted.”
Tracy knew regret was much harder to live with than failure. Regret caused you to second-guess what you hadn’t done. “That’s an awful burden to put on your shoulders, Dan.”
“I know.”
“Take it from someone who spent years wondering if she could have saved her father. People who commit suicide, especially men, have their minds made up, and there’s little anyone can say or do to dissuade them.”
Dan looked to the pot of boiling water and changed the subject. “I thought we could have my famous pasta—”
“Infamous,” Tracy said, trying to get him to smile.
“Open a good bottle of wine to go with it, get Daniella down early, and watch a movie.”
“Whew,” she whispered and ran a hand dramatically across her forehead. “For a minute I thought you were going to end that sentence with and make love.”
“That’s not a bad option either.”
“Unfortunately, Little Miss Dog Feeder needs her bath, and after we both eat your infamous sauce, we won’t be able to stand being in the same room together.”
“Garlic’s a little overpowering?”
“Like a stake through the heart of Count Dracula.”
“Well, we still have option A.”
“I’ll get Daniella a bath and open the door for the hounds to clean up her mess,” Tracy said. She got a whiff of Daniella and lifted her up to smell her diaper. “Speaking of odors . . .”
Forty minutes later, Daniella was in her crib, and Tracy cleaned up what remained of the sauce on her plate with a piece of garlic bread. “Nothing like garlic and garlic,” she said.
Dan refilled her wineglass. “How was your day?”
“You want to get more depressed?” Tracy asked.
Dan smiled. “Helps me to change the subject.”
“Okay.” Tracy set her plate aside, picked up her glass, and sipped her wine, a Barolo from the Piedmont region of Italy and generally considered the finest of Italian reds. Dan had talked of putting a wine cellar in the basement, and he had been trying different wines to stock. She told him about Anita Childress and about what Tracy had learned about Anita’s missing mother. “It was originally considered a missing person case, not a homicide.”
“And how are you considering it?”
“Homicide. I don’t have any doubt she’s dead.”
“Has anyone considered otherwise?”
“It’s statistics, Dan. Unless a missing woman is found within forty-eight hours, the odds of her being alive are greatly diminished. After twenty-five years . . .”
“What if it was neither of those?”
“Neither of what was neither of those?”
“That was a mouthful. Maybe we should cut off the wine.” He moved the bottle to the side. “I meant, what if Childress wasn’t abducted. Then maybe she isn’t dead.”
“The odds strongly favor that she is dead.”
“But odds are only created if a probability exists that there is an alternative.”
“Speaking of cutting someone off . . . Did you open a bottle of wine before I got home, Dan O’Leary? The probability she is alive is extremely low.”
“If she was abducted. What if she just walked away?”
“And left her child? Her daughter? I’ve considered it, but I’m having a hard time believing it.”
“It would increase her odds of getting away with it, then, wouldn’t it?”
“How?”
“Because people would think just as you’re thinking—that a mother would never leave a daughter.”
Tracy considered Dan’s reasoning—circular, for certain, but tough to refute. “Maybe. But the evidence strongly indicates Larry Childress killed her.”
“Maybe you’re right. I’m just saying her walking away is another possibility to consider. Doesn’t sound like anyone ever looked at it seriously.”
Tracy knew that it was a possibility, particularly if Childress’s autism affected the way she related to being a mother. She didn’t know much about autism, but she wondered if perhaps Lisa Childress thought her daughter would be just fine without her, as Anita had intimated happened when her mother pursued a story. Still, she didn’t think it likely.
“It’s a possibility, but not a probability.”
“So then why are you concerning yourself with her investigative files if you think the husband killed her?”
Tracy knew why. “Honestly, because I don’t want to tell a woman who lost a mother that she’s also going to lose a father. I don’t think she fully understands the ramifications of what that might mean.”
“You’re protecting her.”
“I don’t want to give her the false hope that her mother might be alive. I thought maybe if I could find enough evidence to indicate it could have been someone other than her father, that would at least be something she could take solace in.”
“Everyone who buys a lottery ticket has false hope, Tracy, even the person who actually wins. People figure, What can it hurt to buy the ticket and entertain that false hope?”
“Again, maybe I’ve had a glass too much, but not following . . .”
“What can it hurt Anita Childress if you run it up the flagpole that maybe her mother took off?”
“Once again, Dan O’Leary, you are the eternal optimist, but I get your point.”
“Maybe I am. I’d rather be the guy actually holding that winning lottery ticket, but . . . even I’m not that eternal of an optimist.”
CHAPTER 10
The day had dawned with early-morning sprinkles, and Tracy returned to the Macrina Bakery. Anita Childress came in dressed in jeans, tennis shoes, and a green-and-black Gore-Tex jacket. She looked like a young girl. She wasn’t, of course, but Tracy already felt protective of her, for what Anita had been through. Tracy sat in the same booth at the back, and Childress climbed onto the chair across from her with an expression of concern and curiosity.
“Sorry I’m a few minutes late. Had to take care of something at work,” Childress said.
“No problem.”
“You spoke to Bill Jorgensen,” Childress said.
“I did.”
“Does this mean you’re pursuing my mother’s files?”
Tracy got to the reason for calling and asking for this meeting. “Last night my husband said something that made me realize perhaps I wasn’t pursuing your mother’s case as fully as I should.”
“What did he say?”
“He asked me what if your mother wasn’t abducted. What if she just walked away?” Tracy studied Childress for a reaction. The young woman nodded knowingly and gave a small shrug. “I know you’ve considered that possibility,” Tracy said.
“Many times,” Childress said. “As I said, I even asked my grandmother about it, but she’s defensive.”
“How would you feel if that is what happened?”
“I guess I’d be overjoyed to learn she was alive, but emotionally conflicted because it would mean she left me. I don’t really know how I might react.”
“You’ve been proceeding, then, under the assumption that your mother is not alive.”
“I know the odds are not good, and I’ve reconciled myself to what might await me, but I don’t think it can be worse than living in limbo. It’s like you start out each day in one place, live your day, and think you’re moving forward; then I suddenly think about her and I realize I’m right back at the same spot that I started.”
Groundhog Day. Tracy thought of the Bill Murray movie with Andie MacDowell. Most people considered the movie a comedy—a man reliving Groundhog Day in the same small town over and over. Tracy saw it as a sad commentary on her life for many years. It wasn’t until she determined what had happened to her sister, Sarah, as hard as that had been, that she could move forward with her life.
“I’m tired of it,” Childress said. “I’m tired of the speculation, and I grew tired of the innuendo and the whispers. I’m tired for myself, and I’m tired for my father. As I told you before, I just want to know the truth.”
“I understand,” Tracy said.
“I’d hoped you would,” Childress said.
“Here’s what I’d like to do. I’d like to continue exploring the files you gave me. In that respect, I’d like to speak with your father. I’d also like to use social media and determine if anyone recalls seeing your mom in 1996 or thereafter, maybe even recently. You have pictures of her from that time period, I assume.”
“Yes, but how are you—”
“I’m also going to need pictures of your maternal grandparents when they were between fifty and sixty years old. I have a forensic artist lined up, a woman we use to age abducted children. I’ve asked if she could do a composite sketch of what your mother would most likely look like now.”
“I can get those photographs over to you this afternoon. What else do you need?” Childress said.
“I’d like pictures of you and your parents before your mother disappeared. I was told by the detective who handled your mother’s investigation that your father didn’t want publicity. Putting it out in social media might upset him.”
“What are you going to do, exactly?”
“A number of Facebook pages are devoted to finding missing persons nationwide. I’m going to access those sites and post her pictures there.”
“There’s something like 600,000 people a year who go missing in the United States,” Childress said, sounding skeptical.
Tracy had already considered this and come up with what she hoped would be a likely solution. “I’m also going to prepare a page dedicated only to your mom. I’m not going to make it a police page. I’m going to make it a personal page, written in first person from your mother’s perspective. I’m going to re-create what happened those last few hours as best we know, and I’m going to ask if anyone recalls seeing her then or possibly now. I’ll have a dedicated tip line set up for callers. We’re going to get the cranks, the nuts, and the evil, but we might also get a nugget of useful information.”
Childress wiped tears from the corners of her eyes.
“Here’s the more difficult thing to consider, Anita. I can do this with your permission. You’re an adult.”
“My father won’t stand in my way,” Childress said, anticipating what Tracy was about to say. “My father will talk to you . . . Not for himself, but for me. I’ve already told him I’ve spoken to you and that you might want to speak to him.”
“Okay,” Tracy said. “I’d like to do that as soon as possible.”
Childress pulled out her phone. “No time like the present. I think we both appreciate that more than most.”
CHAPTER 11
Anita Childress emailed Tracy photographs of her mother, father, and herself from the time period just before her mother’s disappearance, as well as photographs of her maternal grandparents at roughly sixty years of age. Tracy got the information over to Katie Pryor in the Missing Persons Unit, who arranged for the forensic sketch artist to draw what Childress most likely looked like at various ages in her life, including at present. Tracy then went to work writing a first-person social media account from Lisa Childress’s point of view. She started with the facts that she knew: Childress’s employment as a reporter, what she had done the day before she disappeared, the time that she left the house early the following morning, her purchasing a liter of Coca-Cola at the all-night convenience store on Capitol Hill, and where the detectives subsequently found her car. She added that Childress might have taken a Greyhound bus.
Tracy wanted the account to have an emotional appeal and added that Childress had a two-year-old daughter whom she hadn’t seen in twenty-four years. She posted a picture of Childress holding Anita. She also mentioned what others who knew Childress described as her quirks—scattered focus, drinking Coke by the liter, social awkwardness, and lack of organization—in case someone knew anyone with those same quirks. She sent the material over to Anita Childress for her approval and professional editing. While she waited, she called Billy Williams in the Violent Crimes Section. Williams had been Tracy’s sergeant and had been promoted to lieutenant. She asked if he could spare someone to set up and track a tip line several times a day and make follow-up calls to weed out the cranks, the people who had also lost a loved one and wanted Tracy’s help, the mistaken, the wannabe detectives, and those poor souls who were lonely and just wanted to talk.
Williams said he’d make it happen.
When completed, Tracy made the more difficult call, to Larry Childress. Childress was cordial but cool on the phone. His daughter had indeed spoken to him, and while he might have told Anita that he approved of what she was doing, his tone with Tracy indicated he was not happy about it. That could be because he had something to hide, or he simply did not want to be dragged through the muddy past again. Tracy said she had no intention of using Larry Childress’s name or of going to the press, but if that appeased him, he gave no such indication. Tracy even offered to meet him at a coffee shop, but he declined and asked that Tracy come to his house in Medina that afternoon, when his partner would be away at a book club.
Tracy jumped in the car and drove east across the 520 bridge. She was familiar with the exclusive and wealthy Medina enclave on the shores of Lake Washington. Of the roughly three thousand residents, several were billionaires or multimillionaires—Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and other industry executives who won the tech lottery. In 2009, the residents had paid to have cameras installed at intersections along roads entering the city. The cameras captured the license plate number of every car that drove the streets, and a security system automatically notified local police if the plate number existed in a database of criminal offenders. Since installation of the cameras, Medina had not had so much as a break-in, car theft, or theft of mail or delivered packages.
Tracy drove up to an intercom in a river-rock stone pillar and identified herself. The wrought-iron gates pulled apart, and she drove her Subaru up to what was, for Medina anyway, a modest home, but with a substantial and well-manicured yard, including fruit trees. She parked beside a new BMW on a cobblestone drive and stepped out, noticing a camera atop the garage peak. She estimated the two-story home to be three to four thousand square feet on maybe half an acre, which meant a price tag of at least $5 million. Location. Location. Location.
The front door was beneath an arbor of sweet-scented flowering silver lace. Larry Childress opened the door before Tracy could knock. He looked like his photographs, thinning gray hair on a narrow face with a prominent nose and thick, black glasses. Childress considered Tracy with an expression she would best describe as reticent. After introductions, Tracy said, “Silver lace. It’s beautiful. Wonderful aroma.”
Childress, maybe an inch taller than Tracy, tilted his head as if just noticing the vine but otherwise didn’t respond. He led Tracy into a home tastefully decorated but certainly not ornate. From the front entrance Tracy looked across a sunken living room to plate-glass panels providing a view of lush, green lawn edged with flower beds that sloped gently to a rock bulkhead. A glistening red-and-white speedboat sat raised on a lift above the water. The pier extended into a Lake Washington cove of blue-green water, choppy from a light wind. She could see the backyards of homes with their private piers and boats on the other side.
