What She Found (Tracy Crosswhite #9)(6)

“You put these together recently?”

Childress shook her head. “I’ve been looking into my mother’s disappearance for most of my adult life.”

Tracy could relate to that as well. “What I meant is, were they part of the cold case detective’s file, or the investigating detectives’

file?”

“I don’t believe so. Not to this extent, no.”

“What does that mean?”

“Bill Jorgensen said the police sought my mother’s files to determine if my father was lying about my mother leaving to meet a confidential source the night she disappeared.”

“I don’t imagine that went very far.”

Tracy knew the husband was always a suspect in a spouse’s disappearance, but subpoenas to newspapers were usually quashed, especially if the subpoena sought the names of confidential newspaper sources. Courts traditionally protected newspapers from being used as a police resource to solve a crime.

“No. It didn’t. Eventually the police and the paper reached a compromise—or I should say the lawyers reached a compromise.

The paper agreed to provide information about stories my mother was working on, but not give up her notes, if there were any, or her confidential sources. The thing is, the newspaper didn’t know my mother’s confidential sources or the details of the stories she worked on.”

Tracy asked, “Can you get in trouble for turning this information over to me now?”

“I don’t see how,” Childress said. “It’s my investigation. I’m not working it as a reporter for the Times. Besides, my mother disappeared almost twenty-five years ago.”

“But your position as a reporter provided you with access to confidential information.”

Childress shook her head. “Not really. You’ll see almost everything in here has been published, or was information provided to me by other reporters and photographers who worked with my mother. It’s information the detectives could have had if they had asked the right people the right questions. They didn’t. They were fixated on my father. They thought he killed my mother.”

That was often the case, Tracy thought but didn’t verbalize.

“Okay. What do you believe your mother was investigating at that time?”

Childress smiled and put her hand on the top file, which was several inches thick. “First, my mother was pursuing a story involving former mayor Michael Edwards’s business dealings while in office.”

“Along with just about everyone else,” Tracy said. Edwards was notorious for his “pay to play” politics, and a lot of speculation existed that his success in office and his financial wealth stemmed from that philosophy. “But nothing has ever been tied to him,” Tracy said, familiar—to a certain extent—with the FBI’s and the Justice Department’s various efforts to get the former mayor. “Not definitively.”

Childress set the manila folder aside and put her hand on the file cover beneath it. “She was also working on a story involving longtime city council member Peter Rivers.”

Tracy wasn’t familiar with that name. “What about him?”

“Rivers was a staunch proponent of gay rights and backed liberal interests. He had his sights set on the mayor’s office, but he never ran and quickly retired from public service. He said he wanted to devote time to his partner and two children.”

“But that wasn’t true?”

“My mother was working several leads that, while in his twenties, Rivers had picked up and paid young boys to perform sexual acts. There’s an indication in my mother’s files that at least one of those boys attempted to blackmail Rivers.”

Childress set that file aside for the third. “My mother was also investigating a group of police officers, a task force, for allegedly skimming money from drug busts.” Again, Tracy figured that story would have been big news, if true.

Childress touched a fourth file, this one not as thick as the first three. “The fourth story she worked was the Route 99 serial killer.”

Tracy knew this story, as did most young women who grew up in the Pacific Northwest in the nineties. The serial killer had claimed at least thirteen victims, all young women, some prostitutes. He killed them along State Route 99, also known as the Pacific Highway, then suddenly stopped. “Some people thought it was Ridgway.” Childress referred to the notorious Green River Killer. “It wasn’t. Ridgway admitted to a lot of killings but not the Route 99 killings. Rumors existed my mother had gone undercover on the Aurora strip to possibly lure out the killer.”

“Did you find evidence she did?” Tracy asked, thinking it would have been brave but not smart.

“As much as I would like to unequivocally say no, it does appear from the file that my mother had a confidential source, though there’s no indication who that person was.”

Tracy looked to the files. “You realize you could be stirring up a hornet’s nest.”

“It was twenty-five years ago,” Childress said.

“True, but if someone was willing to . . .”

“Kill my mother because she figured out one of these files or was about to? You can say it. I’ve thought the same thing.”

“I just don’t want to see you possibly get hurt,” Tracy said.