What She Found (Tracy Crosswhite #9)(39)

years in a Canadian prison but only serves five.

Tracy picked up the phone and called Tyner Gillies, the Canadian staff sergeant she’d spoken with earlier in the day. “Don’t have anything for you yet, Detective,” Gillies said.

“Was hoping to ask another favor?”

“Shoot.”

“I’d like to know the name of the attorney who defended Jack Flynt in the drug-smuggling actions and whether he might also still be around.”

“I’ll call you back as soon as I have anything for you,” Gillies said.





C H A P T E R 1 6

Tracy spent the next few days speaking with forensic anthropologist Kelly Rosa and contacting and speaking with the families of the final victims found in Curry Canyon. At Chief Weber’s request, she had asked several families if they would attend a news conference to bring closure to the matter. All agreed. Then she tried to think of what she might say at that conference.

In between, she ran down leads that the detective screening the Lisa Childress tip line deemed worthy of pursuit. The leads, unfortunately, had led to either dead ends or cases of mistaken identity, neither of which came as a surprise. After reading the evidence log identifying the can of bear spray along the Duwamish Waterway where David Slocum had supposedly shot himself, Tracy was even more convinced Lisa Childress was dead.

Tracy had called Larry Childress—who did not sound happy to hear from her—then sent him a picture of the can, and asked if it was the bear spray he’d put in his wife’s bag. He couldn’t say for certain, not definitively, but he said it looked to be about the size of the can he recalled. “It wasn’t small, and that was on purpose.”

He asked Tracy where she had found it. She told him she could not yet say but hoped to provide him and Anita with an update soon.

“It would at least confirm I was concerned about my wife’s well-being, wouldn’t it?” Larry Childress had asked.

It could, but that might have been deliberate, to make the detectives believe Larry loved and cared for his wife. The latter, she didn’t say. What was more important was why Moss Gunderson and Keith Ellis had not tied the can to Lisa Childress’s disappearance. If, in fact, Slocum had witnessed a raid that had never been investigated, it further thickened the plot. Tracy’s father had liked to say, a lug nut has more sense, and she thought the phrase equally appropriate here with respect to Moss Gunderson certainly, and maybe Keith Ellis. So much so that she no longer believed she had an advantage because she was looking at both cases with hindsight and had Anita Childress’s investigative files. Tracy was operating under the assumption that Moss and Ellis had covered up a piece of evidence that tied both cases together—and that the unreported raid on the Egregious might be the knot in that rope.

Late in the afternoon, Tyner Gillies, the RCMP staff sergeant in Surrey, called Tracy back.

“I’ve located the attorney who defended Jack Flynt when his boat was seized seven months ago. The same attorney who got him the plea deal when he got busted in 2002 negotiated the terms of his most recent plea. That’s not unusual. Drug dealers tend to have money to afford a good lawyer, and when they find one, they keep him or her on speed dial. I’ve arranged a gate pass from the warden for you to speak to them at the same time. When would you like to come up?”

“Why am I speaking to Flynt and his attorney at the same time?”

“Flynt wouldn’t speak to you without his attorney present.”

“Did he say why not?”

“No. Just said no lawyer, no conversation.”

“Does that strike you as odd?”

“How so?”

“Flynt pled and served his time for the 2002 bust, and the statute of limitations here in the United States would prevent us from bringing any other charges. I also imagine his attorney doesn’t perform pro bono work.”

“He doesn’t.”

“You know him?”

“We’ve dealt with Kell J. Gordon over the years. He does a lot of criminal defense, a lot of drug cases. He likes to get cases thrown out on technicalities, which doesn’t endear him. My best guess is Flynt talked to Gordon, and Gordon saw a chance to make a buck.

What do you want me to tell him?”

“Tell him I’ll be there.”



Gillies finalized arrangements for Thursday at the Mission Institution, and they agreed to meet at RCMP headquarters in Surrey. He reminded her to leave her gun at the Blaine, Washington, police department before crossing the border.

The drive north Thursday morning took just over two hours through Skagit Valley farmland rimmed to the east by low, rolling hills and, in the distance, the nearly eleven-thousand-foot, snow-covered Mount Baker peak and the North Cascades. A low mist hung over fallow fields, so thick it almost obscured the intermittent barns and farmhouses. Tracy had always enjoyed driving. It gave her time to think, time she didn’t get in her office or at home. She went over the timeline she had created and wondered if David Slocum had gone to Lisa Childress, an investigative reporter, and told her about the raid on the Egregious. But even as she considered this possibility, it didn’t make sense, not if Slocum was growing and selling weed on his houseboat. That would have been like a gnat asking that the bug zapper be turned on.

She also wondered why Jack Flynt would not speak to her without his attorney present. Flynt might be concerned about getting pinched for other drug smuggling, as Gillies had suggested, but Tracy didn’t think so. She thought it had something to do with the raid that had never been reported, and the reduction of Flynt’s twelve-year prison sentence to just five years. That significant a reduction was not likely due to good behavior; Flynt would have needed to either have been a saint who performed bona fide miracles or received a presidential pardon. Tracy suspected Flynt’s reduced sentence had been part of his plea deal, that the US