What She Found (Tracy Crosswhite #9)(63)

“Do you know if Henderson Jones lives here?”

“Depends on who’s asking, and why?” A gold chain with a crucifix dangled around his neck.

“Do you know Mr. Jones?”

“Again, depends on who’s asking and why.”

“Fair enough. I’m a Seattle police detective and would like to ask Mr. Jones about an incident that occurred in the 1990s.”

“The 1990s? Man, why don’t you people leave him alone. That was a long time ago, and he isn’t that guy anymore.”

“That’s what I want to talk to him about. I want to talk about the charges that were dismissed.”

“Why?”

“I’d prefer to tell Mr. Jones.”

“Well, I’m his son, and you’re not going to see him unless you tell me.”

“Okay. I’m working a cold case, and I think Mr. Jones might have information about the narcotics task force that arrested him that could help me.”

The son studied her.

“Can I speak to him? I would have called, but the number on file is disconnected.”

“There is no number anymore, not a landline anyway. Just an unnecessary expense. Everyone has a cell phone now. But that isn’t why you’re here, because the number was disconnected, is it?”

Tracy smiled to defuse the situation. “Easier to disconnect a call than to slam a door in someone’s face.”

The young man smirked. “But not nearly as satisfying.” He stepped past Tracy and mumbled, “Wait here.” He walked up the ramp to the front door and disappeared inside the house. The other men in the yard watched Tracy with defiant expressions. Tracy busied herself reviewing her emails and felt the warmth of the sun on her face despite the chilled reception.

Minutes later, the young man opened the door and gave Tracy a soft whistle to get her attention. He waved her forward. She walked up the ramp and stepped inside.

Henderson Jones sat in a wheelchair on hardwood floors. He looked like an older and heavier version of the man in the newspaper article. Such pictures always made Tracy melancholy because they documented the aging process. Almost everyone’s hair grayed, and they put on weight. Their skin sagged and wrinkled. You could fight it with diet and exercise, but it was like those smoldering piles Cerrabone referred to—you never caught up and you never got ahead.

“You’re a detective?” Jones said.

“That’s right,” Tracy said.

“What division?”

“Cold Cases.”

He gave her a curious look. “My son said you wanted to talk to me about the time the police tried to frame me.”

“I do.”

“Why would a cold case detective want to ask me questions about something that happened that long ago?”

“I’m working a cold case about a woman who went missing, a reporter who was looking into the task force that tried to frame you.”

Tracy said the word with intention. She wanted Jones to know she didn’t believe the charges against him.

“How do you know the police framed me?”

“You would have pled if they hadn’t—if they had any evidence to support the charges. The penalties make the risk of going to trial too high.”

“You talk like you know what you’re talking about.”

“I spent some time working narcotics. I also looked you up. You haven’t had an arrest since 1989.”

“Maybe I’m just stubborn.”

“Or you had something to be stubborn about.” She looked to the young man in the room, who appeared about the right age, and recalled Childress quoting Jones as saying he gave up dealing when his son was born.

“You said this reporter went missing?” Jones asked.

“She did.”

“Doesn’t surprise me. The things they were doing.”

“Will you tell me?”

“Not sure what I can remember. That was a long time ago.”

Tracy had a hunch Jones knew more than he was intimating.

“Just what you remember,” she said.

Jones studied her for a moment, then motioned for Tracy to take a seat on a brown corduroy couch in a room that was neat but sparingly furnished, likely to maintain open spaces for Jones’s wheelchair. Recently refurbished hardwood floors led to tile in the small entryway, and a doorway presumably led into a kitchen. No carpet or throw rugs to impede the wheels of his chair. Tracy detected the smell of lemon, a cleaning product. His son sat on the other end of the couch, looking distrustful. Jones wheeled to a recliner with a collapsible walker beside it. On a small table beside it rested the remote control to a flat-screen television, the newspaper, an open magazine, and a basket with several prescription bottles. A University of Washington Yeti tumbler was set beside the basket.

Jones didn’t get up from his wheelchair.

“I don’t have a mark on my record in more than thirty years because I haven’t dealt drugs or broken the law in thirty years,”

Jones reiterated when Tracy settled onto the couch. “I gave up that stuff when my first boy, Marshawn, was born. You’ve met Deiondre.”

He motioned to the young man now seated on the couch. “Got a daughter too, Lachelle. I couldn’t be much of a father if I was in prison. Can’t be much of a role model either. I didn’t want my life for my kids. I knew that the moment Marshawn popped out. My wife didn’t either. She told me to give it up or give her up. I gave up selling to raise my kids. I’m proud of them. All three are college graduates. Lachelle is a lawyer in California. Marshawn works for Boeing, and Deiondre is in computer technology at Microsoft and comes over every Tuesday afternoon to look in on me and clean the house. All the kids look after me.”