What She Found, page 9
Tracy reevaluated her pricing estimate. The property was likely to fetch $7 to $8 million.
“Are you the gardener?” Tracy asked.
Childress glanced at the backyard as if seeing it for the first time. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“No, thank you.”
He gestured to one of two red leather chairs and took a seat on a white couch across a glass coffee table. “I’m answering your questions because my daughter asked me to,” he said, voice deep and guttural.
“I imagine you answered a lot of questions over the years.”
“Too many,” he said. “And I’m well aware that the husband is always the primary suspect in the case of a missing spouse.”
“Where did you learn that?” Tracy asked.
“The investigating detectives made that quite clear.”
“Keith Ellis?”
“No. Moss Gunderson. That’s a name you don’t easily forget.”
“I would think not,” Tracy said. “I told your daughter I’m looking at your wife’s case in three ways, and yes, one way is that you had something to do with her disappearance.”
“And the other two ways?”
“That her disappearance was caused by something she learned from one of the investigative stories she pursued, or she simply walked away.”
“That’s two more possibilities than the first detectives entertained. Thank you.” His sarcasm was not well hidden.
“Why do you say that? Was it something in particular?”
“They didn’t do much to get Lisa’s files. I told them she was an investigative reporter and that she’d had a meeting very early that morning with a confidential source. At least that’s what she told me. I could tell they didn’t believe me. Even when they found the receipt and confirmed she had gone into a convenience store at two in the morning to purchase a liter of Coke, they never seemed to consider that she was killed by someone she met that evening.”
“Did you push them?”
Childress smirked. “I encouraged the newspaper to cooperate with the detectives. I made several calls to Lisa’s desk editor, but he claimed she told him little about the stories she pursued and even less about her sources. I think Anita has gotten further than anyone.”
“Who was the editor you spoke with?”
“Bill Jorgensen.”
Tracy changed subjects. “Did you know or suspect any of her sources?”
“No.”
“Did Lisa get calls at home that concerned you?”
“She never talked to me about the calls so, no.”
“Do you think your wife could have walked away?”
Childress took a moment and Tracy watched his chest rise and fall. “I’d like to think not, for Anita’s sake.”
“But?”
“But Lisa was different,” Childress said. “I don’t know how much Anita told you.”
“I’d like to hear what you thought.”
For the next several minutes, Childress largely repeated what Anita had told Tracy about her mother. “She could also retain incredible amounts of information—almost ninety percent of what she’d read, sometimes verbatim. But that ability came at an expense. She filtered out information like having a daughter she needed to care for.”
“Anita said you stayed at home to care for her.”
“That’s right.”
“What about work?”
“What about it?”
“How did you work while staying home to care for a toddler?”
Childress paused. He’d been down this line of questioning before. “I wasn’t working at the time. I was between jobs.”
“What did you do, before you stayed at home?”
Childress told her of his dot-com business that went bankrupt.
“You had debt?”
“Are you asking or telling me?”
“I read in the file that $150,000 was not dischargeable in bankruptcy.”
“Then you know. Some debt I also chose to honor—investments from family and friends.”
“Did you pay off that debt?”
“Eventually.”
“How?”
“I sold real estate, but back then I couldn’t very well get a real estate business off the ground and care for a baby girl. I was also worried about Anita—if anything happened to me, that Lisa wouldn’t be able to handle things on her own. So I took out an insurance policy.”
“Not long before your wife disappeared.”
Childress glared at her. “Are we back to option one, Detective?”
“It’s a fact I have to consider.”
“I thought it prudent given how unreliable Lisa was turning out to be. I worried about who would care for Anita if something happened to me. I wanted my wife and my in-laws to know I’d planned for Anita’s care.”
“But the insurance company didn’t immediately pay. How did you take care of Anita?”
“The best I could. I had my in-laws care for Anita when necessary, or I took Anita to day care when I had to show a home.”
“You didn’t want the detectives to go to the media with the story of your wife being missing. Why not?”
“Anita,” Childress said.
“Can you explain?”
Childress dropped his head, showing his frustration. When he spoke, his voice had a bite to it. “She was a little girl who lost her mother and lived under the stigma that her father was somehow responsible. Yes, she was a child, but she would grow up and realize we were not wanted in many social circles. I should say, I wasn’t. I didn’t want it broadcast to the world any more than the media already had. I thought it would only make Anita’s life more difficult.”
Concern for his daughter, a good answer, but Tracy wasn’t convinced, given that Anita had been too young to perceive being a social outcast. Then again, Tracy knew it would break her heart if Daniella were ever viewed that way. She decided to push Childress. “What did you use the insurance money for?”
Childress shifted his eyes before reengaging Tracy. “To care for my daughter.”
“And to purchase a home.”
“In West Seattle,” he quickly added. “To get a change of scenery and a fresh start. I wanted to get Anita into a more stable environment. I wanted to give her a home with a yard. A new school. We got a dog.”
“You didn’t remarry.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Anita had lost her mother. I didn’t want her to feel like she was losing her father as well. I wanted to give her a good home. I didn’t want to introduce a stepmother into the picture until Anita was old enough to understand. I waited until after Anita graduated high school and went to the U.”
“Your current partner was your high school sweetheart?”
“That’s right.”
“May I ask why you’ve never married?”
“Annabelle comes from old Seattle money. Her father made his fortune owning real estate—residential and commercial—and he invested wisely.”
“The old-fashioned way.” Tracy smiled. Childress did not.
“He watched his daughter lose half of everything he gave her when she divorced. He didn’t want to watch it happen a second time.”
“Her father opposes your marriage.”
“Yes.”
“Does his opposition have anything to do with Lisa going missing?”
“I’m sure it does.”
“And as the years have passed, has his attitude toward you changed?”
“He and his wife don’t think I’m going to murder their daughter and try to take her money . . . if that’s what you’re getting at.” He paused. “You’d have to ask him.”
“Do you still sell real estate?”
“No.”
“When did you stop?”
“When I moved here.”
“That doesn’t exactly seem prudent, given your partner’s parents’ concerns and suspicions.”
“Actually, they were thrilled. You know . . . the less I was out there in the public eye, the better.” More sarcasm.
“I see.”
“No. You don’t see.” A small fire stoked in Childress’s eyes, and the tone of his voice changed again, harsher, challenging. This was the person Tracy had been trying to provoke—to determine if Childress was capable of losing his temper and killing his wife.
“The two other detectives didn’t see either. You say you see. You pretend to sympathize, but until you’ve been through what I’ve been through . . . Until you catch people staring at you in the grocery store, when you’re out to dinner, when parents walk away from you at soccer games, when your daughter is not invited to classmates’ birthdays and homes, you don’t see, and you never will.”
“It must have been painful.”
“Because I knew it hurt my daughter. Do you have children, Detective?”
It sounded like a challenge. Tracy met it. “A daughter, sixteen months.”
Tracy’s answer surprised Childress. Had he been standing, she would have said her answer rocked him onto his heels.
“Then maybe you do know. I’m sorry.”
“No apology necessary,” she said.
As if reading her mind, Childress said, “I did not kill my wife, Detective. I don’t know how I can say it more plainly. I loved her. I worried about her.”
“Tell me about the night she disappeared.”
Childress sighed as if the memory required great effort, but Tracy had seen the response enough to know it was born from frustration and aggravation at having to answer the same questions too many times.
“She didn’t ever reveal the names of her sources to me, which, when she left late at night, could be infuriating.”
“You thought she could be having an affair?”
“Lisa?” he said, nearly chuckling. “No. But I didn’t especially like the idea of my wife being out at two a.m., alone, meeting people who had sensitive information that could embarrass or wreck careers. I worried about her safety.”
“Did Lisa ever express concern for her safety?”
“Never. My wife wasn’t afraid of anything. It was the reason she never bought pepper spray, though I repeatedly asked her to do so. Her safety didn’t even enter her thinking. I finally got to the point where I would put a canister of bear spray in her bag before she went out. Something big enough that she couldn’t miss—big enough for her to find easily and use if she needed it.”
“You have no idea who she met that night?”
“None.”
“No idea where she went?”
“No.”
“Does either the name Dwight McDonnel or Levi Bishop mean anything to you?”
“Not to me. Are they somehow involved in this?”
“What about Rick Tombs?” Tracy asked, referring to the sergeant of the Last Line drug task force.
Childress shook his head.
“Delmo Castigliano?”
Another headshake.
“A police unit called ‘the Last Line.’”
“No.”
Tracy switched subjects. She didn’t need Larry Childress’s permission to run social media, not with Anita’s permission, but again, she wanted to gauge his reaction. “I’d like to use social media to see if it generates any leads about what happened to your wife, where she might be, if she’s still alive.”
“Are you asking my permission or telling me you’re going to do it?”
Childress was smart. “Anita is an adult,” Tracy said.
“Then you have your answer. Anita is old enough to know the consequences of her actions . . . whatever those consequences might be.”
“And you?”
Another smirk. “I understand very well what those consequences might be, Detective, and have for many years.”
CHAPTER 12
Tracy left the Medina home thinking about what Larry Childress had said, how he understood well the consequences of his daughter pushing the investigation into her mother’s disappearance. Did he mean he had already lived those consequences? Or did he mean he knew what might be revealed and the consequences of that revelation?
Since it was afternoon, and Tracy was already on the east side of Lake Washington, she saw no reason to drive downtown only to then drive home. She had Childress’s investigative files in her car and could work a few hours at home.
When she arrived, Therese’s car was not in the circular drive. Therese often took Daniella out. Tracy and Dan had purchased passes to the zoo, the Pacific Science Center, the aquarium, and just about everything else. Therese also took Tracy’s place in the Redmond Library reading circle for moms and a PEPS group for parents and their young children. But on beautiful days like today, Therese yearned for the outdoors and often took Daniella in her stroller on walks or to the playground, or on hikes in a backpack. Rex and Sherlock had gone with Dan that morning into the office, which was dog friendly.
“Looks like it’s just you and me, Roger,” she said when the cat jumped onto the pony wall’s marble top and purred needfully, then jumped down and rubbed up against her legs. It might have been affection, but it was also a desire to be fed at any time after two in the afternoon.
“Dinner isn’t for a couple of hours, Roger, though you’re welcome to join me in the office.”
He mewed and did not sound happy.
When Dan and Tracy remodeled their Redmond bungalow, they had put in an airy office with large picture windows, a sliding glass door, and skylights. Dan used the office more than Tracy did, but she loved to slip in to read or catnap in the cushy, brown leather chair beneath a Pendleton blanket. Not this day.
She grabbed a cup of chamomile tea, asked Alexa to play a Jack Johnson set, then settled in at the desk. She pulled up her desktop computer at Police Headquarters using an encrypted remote connection and checked her emails. Not seeing what she searched for, she emailed Katie Pryor, asking if the forensic artist had completed the age-progression photographs of Lisa Childress. While waiting for Pryor’s reply, Tracy pulled up an email from Billy Williams, who confirmed that a dedicated tip line had been established, and he had assigned a detective to monitor incoming calls. Tracy would call the detective after she got off the phone.
Pryor replied by email and attached two pictures of an aging Lisa Childress. Tracy considered the pictures, which were skillfully drawn, and looked remarkably similar to Childress’s mother. She then opened and reviewed Anita Childress’s suggested edits to the Facebook material Tracy had prepared, made the indicated changes, and called SPD’s Public Affairs Office, which told Tracy she had a green light, and that a dedicated tip line would be attached to the social media page the minute it went live, probably early the following morning.
That task completed, Tracy pulled out the fourth of Lisa Childress’s investigative files, this one on Mayor Michael Edwards’s business dealings. Edwards had been incredibly popular, especially with business owners. Those businesses provided jobs, salaries, and other capital that translated into residential and retail growth in downtown Seattle and the Puget Sound.
To get it done, however, Edwards had what became known as his “juice clientele”—lawyers, lobbyists, campaign donors, and political players who had influence with the mayor and his political team that doled out hundreds of millions of dollars in building contracts, land deals, and favorable regulatory rulings. Bribes and payouts were suspected, never directly tied to the mayor. A former lawyer, Edwards understood the rules of evidence and the term “chain of custody.” He rarely used the phone, never used email, and had so many intermediaries that no link in the chain could be tied back to him.
The dynamic had sparked several public corruption investigations by the FBI and US Attorney’s Office but no convictions.
Tracy flipped the page and found articles and handwritten notes on an airport expansion project undertaken by Greenhold Construction the year Lisa Childress disappeared. Bingo. Beneath the articles she found three xeroxed contracts, bids by different building contractors, each worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Of the three contracts, Greenhold was not the lowest bidder, but Greenhold was the chosen bidder.
Taken in context with the threat supposedly made by Greenhold against Lisa Childress, the pricing certainly could not be ignored. Tracy made a note to determine if Greenhold remained alive and, if so, to speak to him.
She now had a number of different directions she could go, which generally boded well for an investigation, but she didn’t feel buoyed. She felt the way Moss Gunderson and Keith Ellis must have felt, like she was reaching dead ends. Certain things were out of her control—whether someone recognized the photographs she had posted, or some new piece of information proved Larry Childress killed his wife.
And Tracy didn’t like not being in control.
CHAPTER 13
The following morning, Tracy left her house and drove west across the lake, but rather than drive into downtown Seattle, she proceeded north on I-5 and drove around Lake Union, crossing the Fremont Bridge above the Fremont Cut to Westlake Avenue. She followed her GPS to a Shell gas station from which, in 1996, a call had been placed to Lisa Childress’s home phone. The gas station remained, but the pay phone was no longer present. Of more interest was the phone’s former location, less than two-tenths of a mile from the Diamond Marina, where the bodies of the two crewmen had been found three months before Childress disappeared.
From the gas station, Tracy drove to the marina, a complex of three two-story, brown stucco buildings. Wrought-iron gates spanned the gaps between the buildings, and posted signs attached to the bars indicated passage to the marina was limited to boat owners and guests. Marina signage appeared above the entrance to the building in the center and the building on the left, advertising moorage rate specials. Tracy would start there. She climbed the building’s wooden stairs and pulled open a red door. At the front counter she flashed her police credentials and told a young man she’d like to speak to the owner, manager, or whoever was in charge. The young man left the counter and moments later returned with another man, who identified himself as the marina manager.
Tracy asked for a moment of the man’s time. He looked apprehensive but led Tracy to his office on the second floor. Windows provided Tracy with an eastern view of Lake Union beneath an overcast morning sky that turned the water slate gray. Boats of all types, shapes, and sizes were moored at slips and beneath a wooden, barn-style boathouse. Across the lake were still more boats, along with industrial-style buildings, and Gas Works Park’s green lawn.
“Are you the gardener?” Tracy asked.
Childress glanced at the backyard as if seeing it for the first time. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“No, thank you.”
He gestured to one of two red leather chairs and took a seat on a white couch across a glass coffee table. “I’m answering your questions because my daughter asked me to,” he said, voice deep and guttural.
“I imagine you answered a lot of questions over the years.”
“Too many,” he said. “And I’m well aware that the husband is always the primary suspect in the case of a missing spouse.”
“Where did you learn that?” Tracy asked.
“The investigating detectives made that quite clear.”
“Keith Ellis?”
“No. Moss Gunderson. That’s a name you don’t easily forget.”
“I would think not,” Tracy said. “I told your daughter I’m looking at your wife’s case in three ways, and yes, one way is that you had something to do with her disappearance.”
“And the other two ways?”
“That her disappearance was caused by something she learned from one of the investigative stories she pursued, or she simply walked away.”
“That’s two more possibilities than the first detectives entertained. Thank you.” His sarcasm was not well hidden.
“Why do you say that? Was it something in particular?”
“They didn’t do much to get Lisa’s files. I told them she was an investigative reporter and that she’d had a meeting very early that morning with a confidential source. At least that’s what she told me. I could tell they didn’t believe me. Even when they found the receipt and confirmed she had gone into a convenience store at two in the morning to purchase a liter of Coke, they never seemed to consider that she was killed by someone she met that evening.”
“Did you push them?”
Childress smirked. “I encouraged the newspaper to cooperate with the detectives. I made several calls to Lisa’s desk editor, but he claimed she told him little about the stories she pursued and even less about her sources. I think Anita has gotten further than anyone.”
“Who was the editor you spoke with?”
“Bill Jorgensen.”
Tracy changed subjects. “Did you know or suspect any of her sources?”
“No.”
“Did Lisa get calls at home that concerned you?”
“She never talked to me about the calls so, no.”
“Do you think your wife could have walked away?”
Childress took a moment and Tracy watched his chest rise and fall. “I’d like to think not, for Anita’s sake.”
“But?”
“But Lisa was different,” Childress said. “I don’t know how much Anita told you.”
“I’d like to hear what you thought.”
For the next several minutes, Childress largely repeated what Anita had told Tracy about her mother. “She could also retain incredible amounts of information—almost ninety percent of what she’d read, sometimes verbatim. But that ability came at an expense. She filtered out information like having a daughter she needed to care for.”
“Anita said you stayed at home to care for her.”
“That’s right.”
“What about work?”
“What about it?”
“How did you work while staying home to care for a toddler?”
Childress paused. He’d been down this line of questioning before. “I wasn’t working at the time. I was between jobs.”
“What did you do, before you stayed at home?”
Childress told her of his dot-com business that went bankrupt.
“You had debt?”
“Are you asking or telling me?”
“I read in the file that $150,000 was not dischargeable in bankruptcy.”
“Then you know. Some debt I also chose to honor—investments from family and friends.”
“Did you pay off that debt?”
“Eventually.”
“How?”
“I sold real estate, but back then I couldn’t very well get a real estate business off the ground and care for a baby girl. I was also worried about Anita—if anything happened to me, that Lisa wouldn’t be able to handle things on her own. So I took out an insurance policy.”
“Not long before your wife disappeared.”
Childress glared at her. “Are we back to option one, Detective?”
“It’s a fact I have to consider.”
“I thought it prudent given how unreliable Lisa was turning out to be. I worried about who would care for Anita if something happened to me. I wanted my wife and my in-laws to know I’d planned for Anita’s care.”
“But the insurance company didn’t immediately pay. How did you take care of Anita?”
“The best I could. I had my in-laws care for Anita when necessary, or I took Anita to day care when I had to show a home.”
“You didn’t want the detectives to go to the media with the story of your wife being missing. Why not?”
“Anita,” Childress said.
“Can you explain?”
Childress dropped his head, showing his frustration. When he spoke, his voice had a bite to it. “She was a little girl who lost her mother and lived under the stigma that her father was somehow responsible. Yes, she was a child, but she would grow up and realize we were not wanted in many social circles. I should say, I wasn’t. I didn’t want it broadcast to the world any more than the media already had. I thought it would only make Anita’s life more difficult.”
Concern for his daughter, a good answer, but Tracy wasn’t convinced, given that Anita had been too young to perceive being a social outcast. Then again, Tracy knew it would break her heart if Daniella were ever viewed that way. She decided to push Childress. “What did you use the insurance money for?”
Childress shifted his eyes before reengaging Tracy. “To care for my daughter.”
“And to purchase a home.”
“In West Seattle,” he quickly added. “To get a change of scenery and a fresh start. I wanted to get Anita into a more stable environment. I wanted to give her a home with a yard. A new school. We got a dog.”
“You didn’t remarry.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Anita had lost her mother. I didn’t want her to feel like she was losing her father as well. I wanted to give her a good home. I didn’t want to introduce a stepmother into the picture until Anita was old enough to understand. I waited until after Anita graduated high school and went to the U.”
“Your current partner was your high school sweetheart?”
“That’s right.”
“May I ask why you’ve never married?”
“Annabelle comes from old Seattle money. Her father made his fortune owning real estate—residential and commercial—and he invested wisely.”
“The old-fashioned way.” Tracy smiled. Childress did not.
“He watched his daughter lose half of everything he gave her when she divorced. He didn’t want to watch it happen a second time.”
“Her father opposes your marriage.”
“Yes.”
“Does his opposition have anything to do with Lisa going missing?”
“I’m sure it does.”
“And as the years have passed, has his attitude toward you changed?”
“He and his wife don’t think I’m going to murder their daughter and try to take her money . . . if that’s what you’re getting at.” He paused. “You’d have to ask him.”
“Do you still sell real estate?”
“No.”
“When did you stop?”
“When I moved here.”
“That doesn’t exactly seem prudent, given your partner’s parents’ concerns and suspicions.”
“Actually, they were thrilled. You know . . . the less I was out there in the public eye, the better.” More sarcasm.
“I see.”
“No. You don’t see.” A small fire stoked in Childress’s eyes, and the tone of his voice changed again, harsher, challenging. This was the person Tracy had been trying to provoke—to determine if Childress was capable of losing his temper and killing his wife.
“The two other detectives didn’t see either. You say you see. You pretend to sympathize, but until you’ve been through what I’ve been through . . . Until you catch people staring at you in the grocery store, when you’re out to dinner, when parents walk away from you at soccer games, when your daughter is not invited to classmates’ birthdays and homes, you don’t see, and you never will.”
“It must have been painful.”
“Because I knew it hurt my daughter. Do you have children, Detective?”
It sounded like a challenge. Tracy met it. “A daughter, sixteen months.”
Tracy’s answer surprised Childress. Had he been standing, she would have said her answer rocked him onto his heels.
“Then maybe you do know. I’m sorry.”
“No apology necessary,” she said.
As if reading her mind, Childress said, “I did not kill my wife, Detective. I don’t know how I can say it more plainly. I loved her. I worried about her.”
“Tell me about the night she disappeared.”
Childress sighed as if the memory required great effort, but Tracy had seen the response enough to know it was born from frustration and aggravation at having to answer the same questions too many times.
“She didn’t ever reveal the names of her sources to me, which, when she left late at night, could be infuriating.”
“You thought she could be having an affair?”
“Lisa?” he said, nearly chuckling. “No. But I didn’t especially like the idea of my wife being out at two a.m., alone, meeting people who had sensitive information that could embarrass or wreck careers. I worried about her safety.”
“Did Lisa ever express concern for her safety?”
“Never. My wife wasn’t afraid of anything. It was the reason she never bought pepper spray, though I repeatedly asked her to do so. Her safety didn’t even enter her thinking. I finally got to the point where I would put a canister of bear spray in her bag before she went out. Something big enough that she couldn’t miss—big enough for her to find easily and use if she needed it.”
“You have no idea who she met that night?”
“None.”
“No idea where she went?”
“No.”
“Does either the name Dwight McDonnel or Levi Bishop mean anything to you?”
“Not to me. Are they somehow involved in this?”
“What about Rick Tombs?” Tracy asked, referring to the sergeant of the Last Line drug task force.
Childress shook his head.
“Delmo Castigliano?”
Another headshake.
“A police unit called ‘the Last Line.’”
“No.”
Tracy switched subjects. She didn’t need Larry Childress’s permission to run social media, not with Anita’s permission, but again, she wanted to gauge his reaction. “I’d like to use social media to see if it generates any leads about what happened to your wife, where she might be, if she’s still alive.”
“Are you asking my permission or telling me you’re going to do it?”
Childress was smart. “Anita is an adult,” Tracy said.
“Then you have your answer. Anita is old enough to know the consequences of her actions . . . whatever those consequences might be.”
“And you?”
Another smirk. “I understand very well what those consequences might be, Detective, and have for many years.”
CHAPTER 12
Tracy left the Medina home thinking about what Larry Childress had said, how he understood well the consequences of his daughter pushing the investigation into her mother’s disappearance. Did he mean he had already lived those consequences? Or did he mean he knew what might be revealed and the consequences of that revelation?
Since it was afternoon, and Tracy was already on the east side of Lake Washington, she saw no reason to drive downtown only to then drive home. She had Childress’s investigative files in her car and could work a few hours at home.
When she arrived, Therese’s car was not in the circular drive. Therese often took Daniella out. Tracy and Dan had purchased passes to the zoo, the Pacific Science Center, the aquarium, and just about everything else. Therese also took Tracy’s place in the Redmond Library reading circle for moms and a PEPS group for parents and their young children. But on beautiful days like today, Therese yearned for the outdoors and often took Daniella in her stroller on walks or to the playground, or on hikes in a backpack. Rex and Sherlock had gone with Dan that morning into the office, which was dog friendly.
“Looks like it’s just you and me, Roger,” she said when the cat jumped onto the pony wall’s marble top and purred needfully, then jumped down and rubbed up against her legs. It might have been affection, but it was also a desire to be fed at any time after two in the afternoon.
“Dinner isn’t for a couple of hours, Roger, though you’re welcome to join me in the office.”
He mewed and did not sound happy.
When Dan and Tracy remodeled their Redmond bungalow, they had put in an airy office with large picture windows, a sliding glass door, and skylights. Dan used the office more than Tracy did, but she loved to slip in to read or catnap in the cushy, brown leather chair beneath a Pendleton blanket. Not this day.
She grabbed a cup of chamomile tea, asked Alexa to play a Jack Johnson set, then settled in at the desk. She pulled up her desktop computer at Police Headquarters using an encrypted remote connection and checked her emails. Not seeing what she searched for, she emailed Katie Pryor, asking if the forensic artist had completed the age-progression photographs of Lisa Childress. While waiting for Pryor’s reply, Tracy pulled up an email from Billy Williams, who confirmed that a dedicated tip line had been established, and he had assigned a detective to monitor incoming calls. Tracy would call the detective after she got off the phone.
Pryor replied by email and attached two pictures of an aging Lisa Childress. Tracy considered the pictures, which were skillfully drawn, and looked remarkably similar to Childress’s mother. She then opened and reviewed Anita Childress’s suggested edits to the Facebook material Tracy had prepared, made the indicated changes, and called SPD’s Public Affairs Office, which told Tracy she had a green light, and that a dedicated tip line would be attached to the social media page the minute it went live, probably early the following morning.
That task completed, Tracy pulled out the fourth of Lisa Childress’s investigative files, this one on Mayor Michael Edwards’s business dealings. Edwards had been incredibly popular, especially with business owners. Those businesses provided jobs, salaries, and other capital that translated into residential and retail growth in downtown Seattle and the Puget Sound.
To get it done, however, Edwards had what became known as his “juice clientele”—lawyers, lobbyists, campaign donors, and political players who had influence with the mayor and his political team that doled out hundreds of millions of dollars in building contracts, land deals, and favorable regulatory rulings. Bribes and payouts were suspected, never directly tied to the mayor. A former lawyer, Edwards understood the rules of evidence and the term “chain of custody.” He rarely used the phone, never used email, and had so many intermediaries that no link in the chain could be tied back to him.
The dynamic had sparked several public corruption investigations by the FBI and US Attorney’s Office but no convictions.
Tracy flipped the page and found articles and handwritten notes on an airport expansion project undertaken by Greenhold Construction the year Lisa Childress disappeared. Bingo. Beneath the articles she found three xeroxed contracts, bids by different building contractors, each worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Of the three contracts, Greenhold was not the lowest bidder, but Greenhold was the chosen bidder.
Taken in context with the threat supposedly made by Greenhold against Lisa Childress, the pricing certainly could not be ignored. Tracy made a note to determine if Greenhold remained alive and, if so, to speak to him.
She now had a number of different directions she could go, which generally boded well for an investigation, but she didn’t feel buoyed. She felt the way Moss Gunderson and Keith Ellis must have felt, like she was reaching dead ends. Certain things were out of her control—whether someone recognized the photographs she had posted, or some new piece of information proved Larry Childress killed his wife.
And Tracy didn’t like not being in control.
CHAPTER 13
The following morning, Tracy left her house and drove west across the lake, but rather than drive into downtown Seattle, she proceeded north on I-5 and drove around Lake Union, crossing the Fremont Bridge above the Fremont Cut to Westlake Avenue. She followed her GPS to a Shell gas station from which, in 1996, a call had been placed to Lisa Childress’s home phone. The gas station remained, but the pay phone was no longer present. Of more interest was the phone’s former location, less than two-tenths of a mile from the Diamond Marina, where the bodies of the two crewmen had been found three months before Childress disappeared.
From the gas station, Tracy drove to the marina, a complex of three two-story, brown stucco buildings. Wrought-iron gates spanned the gaps between the buildings, and posted signs attached to the bars indicated passage to the marina was limited to boat owners and guests. Marina signage appeared above the entrance to the building in the center and the building on the left, advertising moorage rate specials. Tracy would start there. She climbed the building’s wooden stairs and pulled open a red door. At the front counter she flashed her police credentials and told a young man she’d like to speak to the owner, manager, or whoever was in charge. The young man left the counter and moments later returned with another man, who identified himself as the marina manager.
Tracy asked for a moment of the man’s time. He looked apprehensive but led Tracy to his office on the second floor. Windows provided Tracy with an eastern view of Lake Union beneath an overcast morning sky that turned the water slate gray. Boats of all types, shapes, and sizes were moored at slips and beneath a wooden, barn-style boathouse. Across the lake were still more boats, along with industrial-style buildings, and Gas Works Park’s green lawn.
