What She Found (Tracy Crosswhite #9)(91)

“Like you said, it’s a hell of a story.”

“Are they credible?” Jorgensen asked. “Your witnesses. Did you speak to them and find them credible?”

“You bet your ass they’re credible,” Del said.

“And you’ll talk,” Jorgensen said, redirecting his attention to Del.

“You’ll tell what happened?”

“I’ll tell it all.”

Jorgensen pinched his bottom lip with two fingers. You could almost see his mind at work, the headlines that would run in the newspaper. After several seconds, he looked to Melissa Childs.

“What is it you want to do, Lisa?”

“What do I want?”

“It’s a hell of a story,” Jorgensen said again. “But it’s your story, and it’s going to draw a lot of attention to you and your family.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Childs said.

“Can we have a moment? Me and my mother,” Anita said.

“Absolutely,” Tracy said. She, Del, and Jorgensen stepped outside the room and went down the hall to a lunchroom to grab coffee.

“Can I ask you a question?” Jorgensen asked Del. “You haven’t spoken for twenty-five years. Why talk now? Why not earlier?”

“My former partner has a fabricated police report that says I knew about the raid and didn’t say anything.”

“Then this could hurt your career. You could get fired, couldn’t you, for not saying something earlier?”

“I could get fired, but at least I won’t have any more regret. I’ve lived for years with regret; I can live with getting fired.”

“I don’t see this as one article. I see it as multiple articles, a series with sidebars. I’d likely get the entire investigative team working on this.”

“Are you really going to let this be her decision?” Tracy said.

“I’m a news reporter, Detective, but that doesn’t mean I’m a Tin Man. I have a heart. I also have a daughter, and I once had a mother. I know what Lisa and Anita have been through and I’m not looking to pile on.”

Tracy smiled at Jorgensen’s reference to The Wizard of Oz.

From down the hall, Anita Childress stepped from the conference room and came toward them. “We’ve made a decision,” she said.

They walked back into the conference room. Childs’s gaze remained on the table. Tracy couldn’t read the meaning of her placid expression. Anita took her mother’s hand. “My mother was one of the best investigative reporters in the Pacific Northwest. I became a reporter to be like her, to have some connection to a woman I knew of, but didn’t know. We can never recover the years that were taken from us. But we can go forward with a clear conscience. My mother started this story.” Anita paused and looked at each of them. “It’s high time I finished it.”





C H A P T E R 3 6

Over the course of the next week, Tracy and Del spent their days working with lawyers appointed by the Seattle Police Officers Guild. The guild had a duty to defend them, but also had an obligation to all their members. They were fighting hard to stop the city council from defunding the police department, and Chief Weber was putting together a strong case. Tracy knew the story that was about to explode across the front page of the Seattle Times could undermine Weber’s efforts, if the department did not properly spin it.

When they weren’t meeting with their lawyers, Tracy and Del met with Anita Childress and the investigative reporters at the Seattle Times. Tracy called Tyner Gillies at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Surrey, BC, and Gillies agreed to arrange for Anita and Tracy to again meet with Captain Jack Flynt, but Flynt, just months away from freedom, declined to talk on the record.

Tracy drove Anita to meet Dennis Hopper aboard his houseboat.

Hopper, ever the character, greeted them from atop his deck.

“Hey, Detective. Did you change your mind about an older man?”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Tracy said. “Still happily married.”

“Too bad.” He looked to Anita. “She’s young enough to be my daughter, and that’s too young even for me. Come on up. Front door’s open.”

“What was that about?” Anita asked as they stepped inside the houseboat.

“Nothing, but if he asks, tell him you’re happily married with five or six kids.”

Hopper told Anita about David Slocum working as the harbormaster and supplementing that income with a marijuana-growing operation on his houseboat. He also told her Slocum accepted cash when the Egregious moored at the marina. “Which is why he didn’t tell anyone at the marina about the raid two nights before the two men floated to shore. He was cooking the books.

That, and I think he feared if they found his plants he’d maybe end up in jail,” Hopper said.

“Did he tell anyone about the raid?” Anita asked.

“He told me.”

“Did he tell you one of the detectives came back to talk to him?

Big Italian guy?” Tracy asked.

“He might have, but I don’t recall it.”

“Did he ever tell you a newspaper reporter came by, a woman?”

“I don’t know for certain,” Hopper said.

“Anything else you can think of?”