What She Found (Tracy Crosswhite #9)(72)

“Tracy, I don’t know . . .”

“You’re the guerilla emailer.”

Faz eyed her, but he didn’t deny it.

“I had the tech department trace the IP address to Fremont. I don’t know anyone who lives in Fremont. I’ve been racking my brain.

Then I remembered the night we all went to Antonio’s new restaurant to try out his menu items before the grand opening. Me and Dan.

You and Vera and Del and Celia. Fazzio’s. In Fremont.”

Faz sighed. “I’m just trying to help out a friend, Tracy.”

“What did Del get himself into, Faz?”

“It wasn’t his fault, what happened.”

“Tell me.”

“As a detective or as a friend?”

“That’s not fair, Faz.”

“I know. But sometimes we got to choose.”

“Is that what you did?”

“Del and I were both relatively new on the homicide team. I’d come up through the different divisions in Seattle so I’d kicked the tires for a few years, but Del transferred in from Wisconsin. He was fresh off the boat.”

“And he got assigned to Moss Gunderson to show him the ropes.”

“That’s right. It was just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“The two crewmen whose bodies floated up at the marina?”

Faz nodded, then said, “But listen, Tracy, I’m not going to shoot off my mouth. If Del wants to talk about this, that’s up to him.”

“I’m hoping that I can help him, Faz.”

“How? This is deep.”

“Lisa Childress is alive.”

“What?” Faz said. “The newspaper reporter? Has to be twenty-five years since she went missing.”

“It has been.”

“What’s she got to say?”

“Not much. She can’t remember a damn thing that happened to her, but she’s alive. And I got a hunch when that news breaks it’s going to make a lot of people uncomfortable. I need help.”

“She’s alive,” Faz said, not sounding convinced. “Sweet Jesus.”

Tracy told him the story of how she’d found Lisa Childress.

“Why’d you email me, Faz?”

“Del’s been carrying this burden on his shoulders for twenty-five years, Tracy. He feels responsible for what happened to David Slocum, and what he thought happened to Lisa Childress. He’s not.”

“Then why does he feel responsible?”

Faz made a face like it hurt each time he spoke. He shook his head and put up his hands. “I don’t think this is my place to tell you this, Tracy. I think it should be Del.”

“Will he talk to me?”

“I don’t know. But if I was him, I’d want to get this off my chest.

He just hasn’t had the right opportunity.”

“Can you call him? Talk to him?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll help you both. But let’s not talk here. I don’t want Vera to hear and think any less of Del. What happened wasn’t his fault, and he could not have prevented it.”

“Where do you want to talk?”



Faz checked his watch. “I know a quiet place. A restaurant doing a killer take-out business and all the privacy we could ever want.”

Maybe, Tracy thought, but it didn’t quell the butterflies congregating in her stomach. She thought of Del as an uncle and a colleague who had guided her career and stood up for her when she was the only female homicide detective in the Violent Crimes Section. She hoped she didn’t have to do anything that could jeopardize his career—and their friendship.

Fazzio’s was located at a busy intersection on Fremont Avenue in the heart of the Fremont neighborhood. Antonio had worked hard to give the restaurant an old-world feel. A black awning extended over the door and sidewalk, the word “Fazzio’s” facing the street. Menus adorned a lighted stand beside an ornate, cast-iron bench. Inside, the ma?tre d’ greeted Faz warmly. Soft lighting descended from the copper-tiled ceiling and subtly lit the hardwood floors and brick walls.

Copper pots and pans hung on hooks from the wall. The windows were curtained. To Tracy it felt like eating in Vera’s dining room, which was how Antonio had been raised. The tables were full, and waiters in formal white dress shirts and black slacks covered by long black aprons tied at the waist scurried from one table to the next, delivering baskets of bread and olive oil and plates of hot food and refreshing wineglasses.

Antonio met his father just inside the door and they exchanged kisses on each cheek. The young man Tracy had first met as a boy was as tall as his father and looked the way Tracy imagined Faz had looked playing power forward on his high school basketball team, tall and lean. “I got the room set up for you in back, Pop,” Antonio said.

“You don’t worry about us,” Faz said. “You take care of your customers.”

“It’s no worry, Pop.”

“Del here?” Faz asked.

“Just arrived. I put three glasses back there with a nice Syrah, and I have some calamari and bruschetta on the way.”

“You didn’t have to do that, Antonio,” Tracy said.

“You come to my restaurant and not eat? My mother would disown me.” He smiled. “Okay, Pop, I got to get back to it. You need anything you just ask, okay?”