The Trapped Girl (Tracy Crosswhite #4)(109)

“Yeah. Can you hear me?”

“You’re still breaking up.”

“We got . . . back.”

“Say that again,” she said.

“We got the computer . . . back.”

“You got the computer forensics back? Faz? What did it say?”

“Professor?”

“Faz, can you hear me?”

“You’re really hard to . . . trace the guerilla e-mail account and . . . Wi-Fi address. The e-mail . . . generated from a public address . . . a restaurant . . .”

“I missed it, Faz. Say it again.”

“A public address . . . Tacoma . . . Viola.”

The car drifted to the right, onto the dirt shoulder. Tracy hit the brakes, spraying dust and gravel, corrected, crossed the centerline, corrected a second time, and pulled to the shoulder and stopped. She sat stunned.

Fields.

Fields had been looking for Devin Chambers. My God.

“Professor?”

The phone. “Faz? Faz?”

He didn’t answer. “Faz? Faz, I don’t know if you can hear me. I’m in a small town in the Sierra Nevada Mountains called Seven Pines. Seven Pines. The closest town is Independence. Faz? Shit. Faz, call the sheriff. Tell him I’m in need of immediate assistance. Faz?” She had no way of knowing if the call was still transmitting, but at least it had not yet died. “Tell him it’s the green cabin with the red door. First right turn off the paved road. Tell him to . . .”

The line went dead.





CHAPTER 34


Tracy debated driving down the hill, into Independence, where there was reception, but that would take time and she’d left Fields alone with Strickland and Orr. Her stomach churning, she turned the car around and headed back up the mountain. It made sense now, at least some of it. Fields had presumed Andrea Strickland was dead. He would have known about the money from his investigation and believed Graham Strickland killed his wife for that money. When the money disappeared, Fields would have gone looking for Strickland and for Andrea Strickland’s only friend and learned that Devin Chambers had left Portland the same time Strickland disappeared, along with the money. Maybe Fields had withheld other evidence, evidence that convinced him Devin Chambers had taken the money, that she and Graham Strickland had had an affair. Tracy didn’t know for sure. What she did know was that to a bad cop, this was like the drug money Fields had spent a decade chasing in Arizona. It was free money. Strickland was presumed dead. Her husband was going to jail. If he could find Devin Chambers, he could find the money, half a million in cash for the taking.

Fields couldn’t use police resources to find Chambers, but he didn’t have to. He’d spent a decade pursuing drug dealers, living off the grid in the Arizona desert, and finding their well-hidden money. He knew how they laundered money and he knew how to get it. The money was right there. All he had to do was kill Devin Chambers and tell everyone she had absconded with it, and disappeared to points unknown. That’s why he’d stuffed her body in a crab pot, seemingly never to be found. Tracy thought again of her conversation with Kins while sitting in the processing room at the Medical Examiner’s office waiting for the autopsy. Kins had said a body in a crab pot was a first for King County, but it wasn’t a first. Pierce County had prosecuted a prior crab pot case, just two years earlier.

Fields.

If she was right, he was more than just a bad cop. He was a killer. He’d killed Chambers, and he would have gotten away with it, a seemingly perfect plan, until Kurt Schill’s one-in-a-million snag pulled up the wrong pot. That brought in another police agency, an agency that was going to dig into the matter. That’s why Fields had fought so hard to keep jurisdiction. He didn’t want anyone else poking around in his weeds. Once Schill found the pot, Fields needed to make Graham Strickland look like a cold-blooded killer, or at least direct the attention back to him. As the investigating detective into Andrea Strickland’s disappearance, Fields had been to the Pearl Street loft, even searched it. He would have known the details on the security at the building, including the keypad in the elevator and on the front door.

It also explained Penny Orr’s reluctance to provide her DNA. She didn’t want Tracy to find out it was not Andrea Strickland in the pot. It was easier for Orr and for Andrea if Andrea was presumed dead.

Tracy slowed at the turn for the dirt road. Fields had likely gone looking for Graham Strickland at his apartment and instead found Megan Chen asleep in Strickland’s bed. He’d killed her too. Tracy had no doubt he’d kill Andrea Strickland and Penny Orr, and she’d just given him that chance. Then he’d kill her. Except right now he didn’t know Tracy knew he’d been the one to hire the PI to find Devin Chambers. For the moment, at least, Tracy had the element of surprise.

She hoped that was all she needed.

She drove slowly back to the small parking area, killing the engine the final few feet. She checked her Glock, chambering a round, and quietly exited the car. Slowly, she made her way up the path, gun held low and at her side. She stopped behind a pine tree at the wooden bridge, watching the cabin, hearing the trickle of the creek and the buzz of insects but not seeing anyone. She crossed the bridge to the two wooden steps leading to the porch, eyes scanning the area. Glock in hand, she leaned to look in the leaded windows. Strickland and Orr remained seated on the couch. She did not see Fields.