What She Found (Tracy Crosswhite #9)(43)
“I guess he did,” Flynt said. “Wish I could have saved his. Wish I knew who killed him. There’s no statute of limitations on murder, is there?”
“No. There isn’t.”
Flynt’s face shifted again to that faint smile, like he knew something no one else did. “You strike me as the kind of officer not about to let this go, confidentiality agreements be damned.”
“I am,” Tracy said.
“Then maybe God exists.”
Tracy made a face, not following. “I’m sorry?”
“‘When justice is done, it brings joy to the righteous but terror to the evildoers.’ Proverbs 21:15.”
Tracy and Gillies retrieved their possessions and left the prison. On the walk to their vehicle, Gillies said, “That was one hell of a performance.”
“I got lucky,” Tracy said.
“Bullshit. You knew exactly what you were doing. Just took you a little time to determine which button to push. Who knew a drug dealer was a man with a conscience?”
Tracy smiled. “Not to mention an unquenched thirst for justice.”
“Not to mention.”
“Problem is, he won’t say a word on the record about it. He doesn’t want to spend another seven years in prison for breaching his agreement. I have a dead man, a prisoner who won’t talk on the record, and a hippie who only heard after the fact.”
“I was about to say, from where I sit, you know what happened, but you don’t have any credible evidence to prove it.”
“I don’t, but that’s never stopped me before.”
Gillies pulled open his door and slid behind the wheel. “I’d sure like to stay involved in this one, Detective. This has got all the earmarks of a brouhaha, as my father liked to say. And I’ve been in one or two in my day. Keeps this job interesting.”
“You look like you’ve finished a few brouhahas.”
Gillies smiled but didn’t respond. He didn’t have to.
“Make sure Flynt stays safe,” Tracy said. “No one knows I came up here. I’m a unit of one. And I’ve been playing this one close to the vest.”
“What do you usually do in a situation like this?”
“I usually charge forward, like a bull in a china shop, until one of my horns sticks in something solid.”
Gillies grinned. “Sounds like you’re partial to brouhahas also.”
“I’ve been in my share,” Tracy said.
C H A P T E R 1 7
Tracy used the drive home that afternoon to go through what she now knew and what it might mean. Dennis Hopper’s memory had not been muddled by too much pot. The Egregious had moored at the Diamond Marina November 18, 1995. Unfortunately, no written record would confirm it. Captain Jack Flynt had indeed paid cash. Hopper’s recollection that David Slocum had told him of a raid on the Egregious occurring two nights prior to the men floating up to the dock was also accurate, but not admissible evidence.
Hopper hadn’t been there the night of the raid. And anything Slocum told him was hearsay. The fact that Slocum was dead and could not testify might constitute an exception under the law, but how far would Tracy get with the word of a marijuana chain-smoker without documentary evidence or testimony to support him? Jack Flynt would not talk on the record, and Tracy couldn’t blame him. Flynt’s testimony might not do much good anyway; a good attorney would also decimate a twice-convicted drug smuggler.
The next question to explore was, Who raided the boat?
The Last Line, the task force Lisa Childress had been investigating, was the most likely. Flynt said one of the men who had come that night slipped and used the term “sergeant” to address the person who appeared in charge. The articles in the files Anita Childress had put together mentioned a Sergeant Rick Tombs. And Tombs had said in the article that the members of the task force covered their faces to protect their identities—ostensibly from the drug rings they busted, but more likely to protect their illegal activities. The Last Line was disbanded April 2002, shortly after Flynt’s arrest and plea deal. If Flynt initiated that deal, the timing made sense. Authorities, unaware of Slocum’s death or the deaths
of the two crewmen, might have decided to cut Flynt a deal for his silence since they couldn’t get him or the Last Line on a drug charge for 1995 anyway. Instead, they disbanded the Last Line rather than highlight what would have been an embarrassment of the highest order without any recourse to prosecute the drug charges, since the six-year state and federal statutes of limitation would have also run out.
Deals like that only got made with the blessing of high-level authority.
Beyond all that was the seeming connection between David Slocum’s death and Lisa Childress’s disappearance. What Tracy couldn’t rationalize was why Slocum would have turned to Childress.
According to Dennis Hopper, Slocum had his own secrets to hide.
Why get involved? Why reach out to Childress?
Maybe Slocum hadn’t reached out to Childress. Maybe Childress had reached out to Slocum, not realizing the extent of the danger to which she had exposed them both.
Friday morning, Tracy arrived early to Police Headquarters, grabbed a cup of coffee, turned on her computer, and waited for her messages to load. Like all the detectives, she kept two email accounts, a personal account and her police account. Similarly, she used two cell phones. Her work computer loaded only work-related emails. She expected to spend at least part of her day following up on leads that had come in over the dedicated tip line. After her emails had loaded, Tracy scrolled through the various senders. Most were internal emails from names she recognized. She found an email from the tip line detective, who advised that she’d culled the phone calls and passed on half a dozen for Tracy to further consider.