What She Found (Tracy Crosswhite #9)(47)

Maybe that’s the word.”

“Uncomfortable?”

“Yeah. I guess you could say that.”

“Socially awkward?”

“I wouldn’t go that far. That’s kind of cruel.”

“Do you happen to have the number of that accountant?”

“Let me look.”

A few moments later the woman returned with the telephone number. “No idea if it is still any good.”

Tracy thanked her and hung up. The chances of Lisa Childress being the bookkeeper seemed remote, but the name certainly raised flags. Melissa Childs sounded a lot like Lisa Childress, as did the woman’s description of Melissa Childs.

Tracy called the number. It was still in service. She introduced herself and the reason for her call and asked, “Who am I speaking with?”

“Chris. Chris Taylor.”

“Chris, how long has the company been in business?”

“I bought it from my father in 2004. He started the branch in about 1975, I believe.”

“Is your father still around?”

“No. Dad passed in 2010.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thanks, but he was eighty-four and lived a good life. What can I help you with?”

Tracy explained she was looking for someone and asked if he had records that would show the company employed a Melissa Childs.

“She a fugitive?” Taylor asked.

“No, nothing like that.”

“If she worked here, it would have been before my time. Is it important?”

Tracy rolled her eyes. No. I just like calling up random tax companies and shooting the crap. “It is, Chris. Very important.”

“It’s just that we’re in the middle of tax season, and I’m up to my eyeballs with the April fifteenth deadline looming.”

Tracy hadn’t considered that. Mentally, she chastised herself. “I have a young woman who hasn’t seen her mother for twenty-four years. I have my doubts your Melissa Childs is the same woman I’m looking for, but I’m obligated to pursue this.” Tracy wasn’t, of course, but she thought it sounded good.

“Okay. Let me get a pen and you can tell me what you need.”

Tracy asked for a driver’s license or a Social Security number, and a last known address and telephone number. She also asked for a middle name or middle initial, and any photographs, if they had any, which she doubted.

“Photographs aren’t likely, unless it’s a driver’s license. I’ll put somebody on this and call you back as soon as I know something.

Detective?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m going to call back this number and make sure you are who you say you are.”

“I think that’s an intelligent thing to do.”

“Hate to give out the information to some crazy . . . You get my drift. If this is the woman, she has a right to some privacy. Am I right?”

“You’re right. Call back to the main line and ask your questions.”

“All right. I’ll be talking to you.”

“Hopefully soon, Chris.”

“Quick as I can.”

Tracy hung up the phone and killed time going through Nunzio’s cheat sheet. She focused on three cold cases that had solid DNA evidence. As technology progressed, scientists could now create DNA “fingerprints” from much smaller DNA samples, just a drop of blood. And next-generation sequencing allowed scientists to analyze and differentiate between mixtures of DNA samples, as might occur when DNA is collected from a rape victim. Detectives could get results much more quickly and at a lower cost, which definitely helped the department’s bottom line and allowed the lab to whittle down its significant backlog of cases. The use of familial DNA had also greatly expanded the pool of potential perpetrators to be analyzed, though some ancestry sites did not allow access to their DNA databases, believing the use of their sites to locate a criminal to be an invasion of privacy.

Tracy asked that the three most promising cases be pulled from storage. She’d review them and have them sent to Oz, Mike Melton, the wizard over at the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab. She might be able to keep Chief Weber at bay long enough to find new evidence in the Lisa Childress investigation to justify going forward. If Anita Childress didn’t back out.

While she waited for the files to be pulled, Tracy searched the Internet for articles on drug busts in the 1990s, the Last Line, and police corruption in Seattle. She found several articles covering press conferences at which Sergeant Rick Tombs stood at the podium in the PSB, or Public Safety Building. In one photograph, Mayor Michael Edwards stood beside him to announce the arrest of twenty-two suspected drug dealers across the city. Tombs was thick limbed, with a crew cut and intense eyes. He stood and gazed at the camera. A silver badge rested prominently on his thick chest.

“We did our jobs,” Tombs was quoted as saying. “And we will continue to do our jobs for the people of Seattle and this state. I hope this sends a message to the drug dealers out there that they do not want to do business in Seattle. We will find you and we will arrest you.”

Tracy sifted through more articles detailing the arrests and pleas of all but one of the dealers. Henderson Jones, one of the twenty-two arrested in the sting, had been exonerated when the district attorney dropped the charges on the eve of trial. Jones, twenty-nine, had refused to plead or to take a plea, claiming he was innocent, that the charge had been fabricated, and he had been out of state visiting a brother at the time of the alleged drug deal that implicated him. Jones had documentation to confirm he had not been present—receipts from gas purchases and restaurants near his brother’s home hundreds of miles away. Police claimed he had fabricated the receipts, that someone other than Jones had obtained them for Jones to use as an alibi.