The Trapped Girl (Tracy Crosswhite #4)(59)



Tracy gave Orr a moment to regain her composure. Then she asked, “I take it she didn’t have any boyfriends?”

“No.”

“And no enemies.”

“Not that she ever spoke of. She just mostly kept to herself.”

“You didn’t know she’d gotten married.”

Orr frowned. “No.”

“You never met her husband?”

“No. But he doesn’t sound like a very good man.”

“Did Andrea ever mention the name Devin Chambers?”

“Devin Chambers? No. Who is he?”

“She, actually. She appears to have been a friend of Andrea’s in Portland.”

Orr smiled but it had a sad quality to it. “I’m glad she had someone. She had so much sadness in her life, so much pain.”

Tracy thought of Sarah often, of her being subjected to the demented mind of a psychopath the last days of her life. The thought still caused a visceral reaction, and brought a dark cloud of bitterness and anger, but she realized something else, something that had never happened before on any of her other cases. She was starting to realize this case wasn’t personal because of the victim’s similarities to Sarah. It was personal because of Andrea Strickland’s similarities to Tracy. Tracy had also had a wonderful life shattered by tragedy. She, too, had been the daughter of a doctor, living in a beautiful house with a mother and sister she loved. Just as suddenly, her sister had been abducted, and her father soon thereafter shot himself. Her husband left, and everything she had thought would be her life changed forever. For years she had medicated her depression by working out and shooting often, but every once in a while she sat in her apartment, depressed, and wondered why the world had crapped on her.

“Did your ex-husband know about Andrea’s trust?”

“Yes,” Orr said, “but he’s dead, Detective. He died three years ago of colon cancer.”

“What about her trustee? What kind of man is he?”

“He’s a wonderful man. If he had wanted to cheat Andrea he could have done it easily.”

“Can you think of anyone else who knew about the trust?”

Orr gave it a moment of thought. “Not unless Andrea told someone about it.”

The comment made Tracy think of Brenda Berg, Devin Chambers, and Andrea’s counselor.

“I’d like to get Andrea’s counseling records,” she said. “I’d need a signed letter authorizing their release. Would you do that?”

“I will,” Orr said, “with one caveat.”

“Sure.”

“I see no reason why any of this has to be made public. Andrea was hurt enough in life. I don’t see any reason to hurt her after death.”

Tracy agreed.

Orr called Alan Townsend’s office, got his call service, and left a message. Toward the end of Tracy and Orr’s conversation, Townsend called back and said he could meet Tracy at his office. They set a time and Orr signed a letter authorizing the release of Andrea’s counseling records.

Tracy thanked Orr for her time, and handed her a business card as she walked Tracy to the door.

“Do you know who I would contact about her body?” Orr said. “I’d like to have Andrea buried alongside her parents.”

Tracy wrote the King County Medical Examiner’s phone number on the back of her business card. “They should be ready to release the body,” she said.



When Tracy opened her car door in the apartment complex parking lot, a blast of searing heat escaped. She waited a moment, then reached in and started the engine but did not get in. She wanted to give the air-conditioning time to do its job. While she waited for the oven to become a car, she thought again of Andrea Strickland, and of her uncle. What kind of a person would take in a young girl whose parents had died in a horrific car accident, and see it as an opportunity for his own sick and twisted sexual desires? It was another reminder that the psychopaths of the world were not always the stereotypical monsters who tortured cats in their youths and lived in solitude.

When the car had cooled, Tracy slid behind the wheel. She left the parking lot and turned on North Waterman Avenue, a four-lane street pocked with palm trees located just around the corner from the St. Bernardine Medical Center. As Tracy had found with most of Southern California, the street consisted of an odd mix of single-family homes, apartment buildings, strip malls, and commercial buildings, as if the city planners had given no consideration to zoning.

She parked on the street and approached a two-story, sand-colored stucco building. Alan Townsend’s counseling practice was located on the second floor off an outdoor staircase. The inside looked like a small two-bedroom apartment converted to an office, with the front room the waiting area. The furnishings were dated—shag carpeting, cloth-and-laminate furniture, and nondescript prints. Behind a vacant reception counter were two closed doors with nameplates. The plate on the right was empty. The plate on the left read “A. Townsend.”

Tracy slapped a bell on the counter, which emitted an obnoxious ting. Seconds later, the door on the left opened and a middle-aged man with a head of silver hair emerged wearing cargo shorts, a T-shirt, and flip-flops. With a skin complexion more orange than bronze, he looked just like the actor George Hamilton. Welcome to LA.

“Dr. Townsend?” Tracy said.

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