What She Found (Tracy Crosswhite #9)(26)
C H A P T E R 1 1
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.
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.”