In Her Tracks (Tracy Crosswhite #8)(49)
“What was it you were thinking about?”
“The loss of my sister tore my family apart, as I’ve explained. But everything I’ve read about this woman . . . the mother . . . It was as if she wasn’t impacted, that she was more concerned with the police arresting her ex-husband than finding her daughter. That’s odd, isn’t it?”
“I can’t really say. She may have compartmentalized her feelings rather than deal with them. The two are not the same.”
Tracy had done the same thing with Sarah’s case, but that had been long after the incident, unlike with Jewel Chin. “That’s what was so shocking about the responding police officer’s report. He was first on the scene the night the little girl vanished. He said he got the impression that Jewel Chin didn’t care. He didn’t say she had compartmentalized her pain. He said it was as if she didn’t have pain to compartmentalize. She was too busy being angry at her ex-husband. I’m just wondering, is that some fundamental flaw in her character?”
“I don’t know. It certainly could be, but without speaking to her it isn’t possible to guess. I think we should get back to you.”
“A flaw, or she knows something the rest of us don’t, that maybe her daughter isn’t really gone.”
“I think we should stop for the day,” Walsh said.
Tracy looked at the clock on the wall. “You do?”
“I don’t think this is productive,” Walsh said. “You’re in what I’d refer to as combat mode; you’re in a battle. Your mind is singularly focused, and you’ve pushed aside thoughts that might interfere with the battle.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . Do you think that’s a bad thing?”
Walsh set down her pad. “There are instances of people achieving incredible success because they have the ability to be intensely, singularly focused, Tracy. It allows them to work relentless hours with little sleep, food, or outside distractions. Da Vinci, Edison, Alexander Bell, even Bill Gates have been described that way.”
“I like that company,” Tracy said, but Walsh wasn’t smiling.
“Did you watch the documentary Free Solo?”
“No,” Tracy said.
“It’s about a young man, a rock climber who wants to ascend El Capitan in Yosemite without any ropes or clips. No one has ever done it. He becomes so singularly focused he can recite every move of the nearly three-hour practice ascent from memory. But when they did a scan of his brain, they determined that the portion of the brain that detects danger and fear was virtually turned off. As if he didn’t register the possibility that he could fail, that he could fall and die, despite his knowing many rock climbers who had.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I want you to be careful, Tracy. We know the men I named because they lived and achieved what they set their minds to. We don’t know the many others who slipped and fell. Every man I named was on a similar wall. Every one of them could just as easily have fallen, and we would never have known their name.”
CHAPTER 22
Tracy left Walsh’s office less than certain about what had transpired during their session. Walsh intimated that Tracy was headed for a fall—at least that was how Tracy interpreted it. Tracy didn’t have a lot of time to dwell on it. She had an interview with Elle Chin’s former teacher that morning and hoped to gain further insight into both parents. Then she had to bust ass to get into the office so she and Kins could determine their next step with regard to Stephanie Cole. The clock ticked, and the odds of finding Cole alive grew worse by the minute.
The preschool was located inside a church in the Green Lake neighborhood. Tracy arrived early and parked to review the investigative file the North Precinct emailed her that morning on the death of Graham Jacobsen, Jewel Chin’s boyfriend. She pulled up the report, reading it on her phone. The police had concluded Jacobsen shot himself in the head at close range with a Glock 9 mm pistol he had purchased on Craigslist several years before. Jewel Chin provided a statement that she had discovered Jacobsen’s body after returning from a Green Lake bar. Her alibi had been confirmed. Based on a subsequent autopsy, Jacobsen had been drunk and had several known steroids in his system including prednisone and methylprednisolone, which, in conjunction with the alcohol, could have acted as a depressant. Nobody had checked to determine where Bobby Chin had been that night.
The police did not find a suicide note. They had Jacobsen’s phone, however, and noted dozens of text messages to Jewel Chin and her very infrequent and brief responses. In one, she told Jacobsen she thought it best if he moved out of the house. The detective’s report the evening of Jacobsen’s death was eerily similar to Officer Bill Miller’s report the night Elle Chin disappeared. Jewel Chin, the detective said, seemed largely detached from the suicide and had been more concerned with the mess, and whether the death could impact the sale of the home. She even asked whether she had to disclose the suicide to interested purchasers.
In short, Art Nunzio would have said that Jewel Chin “didn’t give a shit.” Tracy wondered if it was a fundamental but undiagnosed flaw in her character.
Tracy made her way to the preschool. Inside the church facility she passed young moms dropping off children and imagined herself doing so with Daniella. Orange-and-black Halloween motifs and scrawled pictures of witches and ghosts and pumpkins decorated the classroom windows. Tracy stepped into the lobby and approached a woman standing behind the reception desk, thumbing through files in a three-drawer file cabinet.