What She Found (Tracy Crosswhite #9)(20)
Del stopped and turned back. “Knew of it. One of many task forces set up in the state in the late eighties. Some were multijurisdictional. SPD’s was just narcotics officers. Why?”
“Childress seemed to be looking into it as well. What did you know about them?”
“Not a lot. I think the name was supposed to mean they were the last line of defense between drugs and citizens. But I also heard it had to do with cocaine.”
“Cocaine?”
“Yeah, you know, ‘the last line.’”
Tracy got it. “You ever hear of any controversies?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Seems like Childress thought the marina story and this task force could be related somehow.”
“She was an investigative reporter, Tracy. When’s the last time you read an investigative story on something positive? Controversy sells. But to answer your question, no. I never heard anything about that unit.” Del started from the room, then stopped. After a beat he turned back. “Moss exaggerates,” he said. “For the impact.”
C H A P T E R 7
Back in her office, Tracy thought about what Del had said, but more about the way he had looked at her when she first mentioned the name Lisa Childress. After a decade working together, she had come to know his expressions, or tells. Faz and Kins had them as well, as did she. Faz said Tracy got a struck-by-lightning look when something clicked. Del had looked and sounded like Tracy had brought up a subject he did not want to talk about, but he also didn’t want to tell her that.
Moss exaggerates. For the impact.
She wasn’t exactly sure what Del had meant, though she could definitely see the truth in the statement after meeting Moss that morning. His orange pants certainly were for effect, and his grandiose personality also might have been. Did he tell stories to match his personality and clothing? To be the life of the party? He was the life of the foursome.
At her desk, Tracy thought of the double entendre. The Last Line. A line of defense or a line of cocaine? Like Moss’s colorful outfit, the name could have been camouflage, to hide the truth about the task force.
Tracy opened the file on Councilman Peter Rivers and quickly went through the three statements of the men who alleged Rivers abused them in their teens. As Bill Jorgensen had told her that morning, the stories were remarkably similar, and it would have been difficult to conclude all three men were lying were it not for their arrest records, which cast shadows over their allegations, the kind of shadows a good lawyer could use to make an accuser look like an opportunistic thief.
There was smoke, certainly, and maybe even some burning embers, but had that fire ever flamed? Had Childress found another accuser, someone to throw gasoline on the embers and make it all explode? If so, had Childress pushed too far and forced a man under siege into a corner he had to fight his way out of to protect himself and his family?
She set the Peter Rivers file aside and opened the thinnest of Childress’s four files, a manila folder she expected to be the Route 99 serial killer file, but the tab read “Angel of Death.” The moniker gave her pause because she’d never heard it. Tracy had an intentionally sheltered childhood. Her parents had moved before her birth from Seattle to Cedar Grove, a tiny town in the North Cascades, but Tracy might as well have been raised on the moon. What news reached Cedar Grove arrived slowly and sparingly. Most was irrelevant to the small town. The residents didn’t discuss it. Her parents took her and her sister into Seattle once a year during the Christmas holidays for a fancy dinner and whatever holiday play was being performed at the 5th Avenue Theatre. Cedar Grove residents, however, made sure their young women knew of the Route 99 serial killer and his victims, even before Cedar Grove resident Heather Johansen disappeared in 1993, six months before Tracy’s sister, Sarah, had also disappeared. Paranoia and hysteria set in, but neither disappearance was related to the Route 99 Killer.
Having once been head of the Cowboy serial killer task force, Tracy had a hunch about the name “Angel of Death,” and she opened the file, finding newspaper clippings. Beneath the articles she found notes on the same spiral notebook paper written in what she now recognized to be Lisa Childress’s handwriting. The notes looked to be of media briefings held by the task force charged with finding the killer. The task force lead was none other than her current captain and nemesis: Johnny Nolasco. To protect the public, but also to generate potential leads, the task force provided broad details on the nature of the killings, on the victims, as well as an FBI profiler’s description of what the killer might look like—his race, size, and possible background.
On the final page, Tracy found five names—Childress had drawn a line through three of the five names. Beneath those names, she had drawn what appeared to be two question marks facing one another. Beneath the question marks she had scribbled three more lines.
Angel’s Wings
Carved. Left Shoulder
Angel of Death
The question marks did look like angel’s wings. Tracy flipped again to the beginning of the file and reread the Post-Intelligencer articles, as well as Childress’s notes of press briefings, but none of it mentioned the symbol, nor the moniker “Angel of Death.” She was not sure if the notes represented that the killer had a tattoo or something more nefarious. She looked again at the word “Carved”