In Her Tracks (Tracy Crosswhite #8)(62)

Chin worked as chief of security at a Chinese-owned computer company. He’d left Seattle PD roughly six months after his daughter’s disappearance. Tracy speculated, based on her conversation with Officer Bill Miller, and from her own personal experience, that Chin departed because of the focus of the investigation with him as a suspect, which had to be embarrassing for a police officer.

Tracy pulled into a garage beneath a blue-glass, high-rise building—the Bellevue city center. In the lobby she spoke with a security guard, then watched fresh-out-of-college workers with lanyards dangling around their necks pass through security turnstiles.

Bobby Chin greeted her dressed in a tailored business suit and tie. His clothing surprised her, and not just that he wore a suit in the casual-dress Pacific Northwest. The suit material looked to be of high quality, meaning expensive. She had expected Chin to be wearing a drab security guard’s uniform, like the outfit worn by the man seated behind the lobby counter. After introductions, Chin handed her a pass on a lanyard for a company called Xia Tech, and Tracy followed him through a turnstile and into a glass elevator. As the elevator ascended, she had a stunning, west-facing view across Lake Washington’s glass-calm, gray waters to the spires of downtown Seattle. The snow-capped Olympic Mountains served as a backdrop.

“What kind of company is Xia Tech?” Tracy asked on their ascent.

“It’s a Chinese-owned tech company. We do business primarily in Internet translations.” Chin sounded as if he had answered the question before. “Four years ago, Xia Tech opened this branch and hired engineers to focus on artificial intelligence and cloud-based applications.”

Tracy was sure being near Microsoft and Amazon played a large part in the company’s location choice.

She stepped from the elevator car onto the fortieth floor and followed Chin along sparkling white hallways to an office door bearing his name. “Not a bad gig,” Tracy said, entering an office with the same glorious views.

Chin smiled. “You look surprised.”

A good-looking man, Chin wore his hair short, and it had started to gray at the temples. He had a strong jawline to support a million-dollar smile. The suit fit him; some men looked born to wear a suit. Chin was one of them.

“I guess when you said security, I was expecting you were a security guard.” Tracy settled into a seat across from Chin, who sat behind a desk with the windows and the million-dollar view at his back.

“In a sense I am,” Chin said. “I’m in charge of protecting the company’s proprietary interests. I oversee a team of engineers who try to anticipate where we’re vulnerable to hackers and head them off before they get there. The ideas the company generates are worth a lot of money.”

“How did you go from Seattle PD to Internet and cloud security?” Tracy suspected she knew, but she wanted to hear it from Chin.

“I studied computer engineering at UW—my parents’ choice—but there was something that always appealed to me about police work. My goal had been to eventually grow into forensic crimes at Park 90/5, but I never got that far.”

Chin’s desk phone rang. “Sorry. Let me get rid of this.”

Tracy could tell Chin spoke to his spouse on the desk phone. She used the interruption to look around his office. A framed wedding photograph of Chin and a Caucasian woman sat prominently displayed on a shelf to his left. In another, a selfie taken at a hospital, the same woman held a newborn baby in her arms after giving birth, Chin close by her bedside. In a third photograph, one Tracy had in the cold case file, a Chinese girl stood wearing a colorful butterfly costume and a beaming smile. She held the wing tips so the colors could be seen. Elle Chin.

Tracy felt a wave of melancholy wash over her.

“Yeah, I will,” Chin said. “I’m just starting a meeting. Love you too.”

Chin hung up the receiver and pressed a few buttons to hold future calls. “Sorry about that.”

“No problem. I make similar calls to my husband and the nanny,” Tracy said to broach the subject.

“How many children do you have?” Chin asked.

“A daughter. Ten months. How old is your . . . son?”

“He’s two now,” Chin said. “I need to update the photos.” He lost the smile. “Some of them anyway.” Chin reached and picked up the framed photograph of Elle Chin. “This is Elle. I took this the night she disappeared.”

“I’m sorry,” Tracy said.

“I am too,” Chin said, and he looked and sounded emotional. Though it had been five years since his daughter’s disappearance, Tracy knew that day never left the forefront of a parent’s being. She also knew that having a detective appear in your office to talk about it made it all the more real and all the more painful, especially when that disappearance came from horrific circumstances.

Chin sat back. “Pete Gillespie called and said you spoke to him. He said you asked a lot of questions about me.”

“Wouldn’t you?” Tracy asked.

Chin nodded. “I suppose I would.”

“I’ve taken over the Cold Case Unit from Detective Nunzio.”

“I figured as much. Did he retire?”

“He did.”

“Good for him.”

“I’d like to take another look at your daughter’s case.”