The Trapped Girl (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 4)

by Robert Dugoni

  “Need to talk to you about the woman we pulled from Puget Sound in a crab pot.”

  “She wasn’t mine, if that’s what you want to know.”

  “That’s where I was going to start. You heard anything about it?”

  “Come on in. You got me out of bed; I haven’t even had my coffee yet and I can’t think without caffeine.” Nikolic looked again to Del. “Is this your bodyguard?”

  “Partner. Del, meet Nik.”

  Del offered a tentative hand, as if any movement would throw him off balance. Nikolic took it, then stepped back, leaving the door open.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Nikolic asked.

  “He’s not much of a water person,” Faz said.

  The bottom floor of the house was Nikolic’s office, the upper floor his personal residence. At the end of a narrow, wood-paneled hallway, they entered a room with three desks, multiple computer terminals, printers, and assorted clutter. Filing cabinets lined the back wall. Above them hung a colored print of a man standing in the doorway of a lighthouse built on a rock that looked to be in the middle of an angry ocean, a massive wave bearing down on him. Below the lighthouse it said, “Want to get away?”

  A light breeze blew through an open sliding-glass door, bringing the faint odor of diesel fuel and the sound of a boat engine and seagulls cawing. The paddles of a ceiling fan slowly rotated above a barefoot woman standing near the door, sucking on a cigarette and holding a mug of coffee with the word “Gotcha!” on it.

  “Sorry to get you up so early, Marta,” Faz said.

  Marta wore a tank top and shorts. “Good to see you’re still an asshole, Fazio,” Marta said.

  “Some things never change,” Faz said.

  “Where are your manners, Faz?” Marta nodded to Del like he was the special on the menu. “I assume this is your partner now that you’re a big homicide dick.”

  “Del, meet Marta Nikolic. The Nikolics are two of Seattle’s most upstanding citizens.”

  “How do you work with this guy?” she asked Del.

  “It ain’t easy sometimes,” Del said.

  “So what do a couple of big-shot homicide detectives want with a couple of law-abiding citizens such as us?” Marta asked.

  Ian Nikolic poured himself a mug of coffee from the stained pot and filched a Camel from his wife’s pack. “Let’s sit on the deck.”

  Del looked like he’d just been asked to jump out of an airplane without a parachute.

  “Too hot to sit outside,” Faz said. “You know me. I don’t tan. I cook.”

  Nikolic and Marta had begun their careers as skip tracers. Clients paid them thousands of dollars to find people who didn’t want to be found or to locate money others had wrongfully taken. They were so adept at finding people, even the police department had, on occasion, used their services, which was how Faz got to know them. In fact, they’d become so good at finding people they’d branched out to hiding people—women in abusive relationships, corporate whistleblowers who feared for their safety, and stool pigeons not interested in entering the Federal Witness Protection Program and spending the rest of their lives living in a Midwest suburb as some everyday Joe. For the most part, they kept their noses clean, but getting information often required ingenuity that bordered on illegal.

  Nik spoke to Marta. “He wants to know if we’ve heard anything about the woman who died on Mount Rainier and showed up in a crab pot in Puget Sound.”

  “Wondering if anyone was looking for her,” Faz said.

  “Someone looking for a dead woman,” Nikolic said, nodding his head. “Not a bad place to start.” Nik and Marta blew smoke out of the corners of their mouths toward the open door. “If someone around here helped her, they’re keeping it quiet and I don’t blame them,” Nik said.

  “Why’s that?” Del asked.

  “It’s bad for business when your client gets found, worse if she gets killed,” Nikolic said. “Not only is your reputation ruined, you got the police and everybody else knocking down your door.”

  “What about a husband looking to find his wife?” Faz turned to Del. “What was his name?”

  “Graham,” Del said. “Graham Strickland.”

  “You heard his name or rumors of a husband searching for his missing wife?” Faz asked.

  “I haven’t, but I can ask around.”

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  “Enough to actually pay me?”

  Faz smiled. “Unlike you, I can’t afford a Ferrari. I’m making payments on a 2010 Subaru.”

  Nik shook his head.

  “The wife was using an alias: Lynn Cora Hoff,” Del said.

  Nikolic found a pen amid the clutter and wrote it on a piece of paper. “What was the first name you said?”

  “Andrea. Andrea Strickland.” Del spelled the last name. “Her maiden name was Moreland.”

  “And while you’re at it, ask around about a Devin Chambers,” Faz said.

  “Hang on, hang on,” Nikolic said. “Give me the last name you said.”

  “Chambers. Devin Chambers,” Faz repeated.

  “Another alias?” Nikolic blew smoke toward the sliding-glass door.

  “A friend who might have helped the wife disappear.” Faz opened up his briefcase. “I was hoping you could take a look at some documents, give me your learned opinion.” Faz was playing to Nikolic’s large ego. He set his file on one of the desks and pulled out photocopies of Lynn Hoff’s birth certificate and the driver’s license they’d obtained from the DOL. He handed the photocopies to Nikolic.

  Nikolic studied each while sipping his coffee and sucking on the cigarette. Marta extinguished her cigarette butt in an ashtray, blew a stream of blue smoke, and picked up the photocopies as Nik discarded them.

  Nik held up the certified copy of the birth certificate. “Looks legit.”

  “It appears to be,” Faz said.

  “Likely a real person then. It’s easier than using a dead person since they check the death records now.” Nikolic continued to study the copy of the birth certificate. “The typeset is intaglio printing, which is appropriate for an official document. And the seal looks good. Can’t tell you about the paper from photocopies.” He put down his mug and walked to one of the desks, which had a combination light and magnifying glass on the end of a retractable arm. He turned on the light and examined the paper.

  “Likely it was quality safety paper, though. If someone had erased or altered anything on the original, you would have seen it on these photocopies.”

  “You’re saying it was a legitimate birth certificate?”

  “I’m saying it looks like it, yeah.”

  “We didn’t find a record that a Lynn Cora Hoff is deceased.”

  “She might not be, or she might be dead but nobody ever reported it,” Nikolic said, confirming Faz’s suspicion.

  “So is the birth certificate stolen?” Del asked.

  “Stolen, purchased, or given in exchange for some favor,” Nikolic said.

  “What kind of favor?” Del asked.

  “The privilege of keeping your finger,” Nikolic said. “Organized crime does it all the time. They get somebody under their thumb who owes them money and take their paperwork in exchange for not cutting off a finger. Then they sell the ID to pay off the debt.”

  “Why would they use a California birth certificate?” Del asked.

  “Bigger state, more people,” Nik said. “If the person who obtains the fake ID doesn’t do anything illegal, the real Lynn Cora Hoff would never know someone was using her ID.” Nikolic set down the documents and flicked his cigarette butt, still burning, out the door. “I can ask around, but if I find anything, you didn’t hear it from me.”

  “We don’t even know who you are,” Faz said.

  “You don’t know how much I wish that were true,” Nikolic said.

  “You’d miss me,” Faz said.

  “Like a bad case of the flu. I’ll ask around though. This one is getting some notoriety. Someone is liabl
e to start bragging about it.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Tracy pulled to the curb of the Metropolitan Courthouse in downtown Los Angeles.

  “So what are you up to today?” Dan asked in a tone that made clear to Tracy that he had figured out she wasn’t going to be spending the day at some museum.

  “An interview,” she said.

  “Do I want to ask who the interview is with?”

  “The aunt of the woman in the crab pot,” Tracy said.

  “You mean the case in which you no longer have jurisdiction.”

  “That would be the one.”

  “So how are you going to justify it?”

  “Thorough police work,” Tracy said. Dan gave her a look like he wasn’t buying it. “Nolasco said to wrap up what we were working on. I was working on an interview with the aunt. I’ll talk to her, write it up, and ship it down to Tacoma.”

  “And how far do you think that will get you if he finds out about it?”

  “Let’s hope I don’t have to make that argument,” she said. “Seriously, though, I can say I was in Los Angeles on pleasure, and didn’t talk with Patricia Orr in an official capacity as a Seattle police officer.”

  “Let’s hope you never have to make that argument either,” Dan said.

  She smiled. “I’ll plan on being back around four.”

  Dan kissed her. “Wish me luck.”

  “I’m the one driving in Los Angeles. You should be wishing me luck.”

  She jumped on the I-10 east and settled into a steady stream of traffic. Ten years ago, she would have been dismayed at the sheer number of cars, but with Seattle the fastest-growing city in the nation, traffic had also become a way of life in the Northwest. So had a drought, all along the West Coast, and it had hit Southern California hard, especially with the recent heat wave. The hills had turned a dirt-brown and the sky a rust-colored haze. It reminded Tracy of the grainy images the Mars rover had transmitted back to Earth, and it looked like the slightest spark would cause everything to burst into flames.

  Just under an hour into her drive, she merged onto I-215 north into San Bernardino, one of Southern California’s sprawling cities, which had become infamous in 2012 as the largest city in the United States to declare bankruptcy, and then again in 2015 when two radicalized Islamic losers killed fourteen innocent people.

  She exited onto East Orange Show Road and turned right onto South Waterman Avenue. Her GPS directed her onto Third Street, and she slowed when the voice informed her that her destination, a beige stucco apartment complex, was on her right. She turned into the parking lot and pulled into a spot abutting a wrought-iron fence enclosing an amoeba-shaped swimming pool. Two palm trees towered over the pool but offered little shade.

  She slipped on sunglasses and exited the car. As she ascended an outdoor staircase to the second story and made her way down the landing, she heard traditional Mexican music filtering out an open apartment window. When she came to the second door from the end, she knocked. Inside, she heard someone turn off the television and footsteps approach the door, followed by the distinct sound of a chain sliding from a lock and a deadbolt disengaging.

  A woman answered.

  “Mrs. Orr?” Tracy said.

  “You must be the detective from Seattle. Call me Penny,” she said.

  Tracy introduced herself. She estimated Orr to be early fifties. Though she was in good shape, trim, with defined arms, she had a heaviness to her that Tracy usually associated with someone who’d lived a hard life and felt the weight of it. Orr had “dark Irish” coloring—freckled, pale skin with dark hair that showed just a few strands of gray.

  “Come in, please. You made good time,” Patricia Orr said. “Traffic must have not been too bad.”

  “Not too bad,” Tracy said. She’d called the night before and spoken to Orr, letting her know the purpose of her visit.

  She stepped into a modestly furnished but impeccably clean apartment with cream-colored leather furniture, a few bronze sculptures, and large framed prints. In one print, three Elvis Presleys dressed in cowboy garb aimed six-shooters into the living room. In another, multiple colorful images of a forever-young Marilyn Monroe winked seductively from behind the leaves of a potted fern.

  “Andy Warhol,” Tracy said. “That Elvis is one of my favorite prints.”

  “Are you a fan?” Patricia Orr asked.

  “I’m a shooter,” Tracy said. “My sister and I competed in shooting tournaments all over the Pacific Northwest.”

  “Do you and your sister still compete?”

  “I still get out every so often,” Tracy said. “My sister passed away many years ago.”

  “I’m sorry,” Orr said. “Please, sit.” She motioned to the L-shaped couch facing a large flat screen. To the right, a sliding-glass door offered a view to the simmering foothills. Orr reached for a pitcher on the coffee table. “Can I pour you some iced tea?”

  “That would be great, thank you.”

  They made small talk, then settled in. “I’m very sorry about your niece,” Tracy said.

  “I didn’t know what to feel when you called,” Orr said. “I’d already grieved Andrea’s death once. Then to find out she’d been alive . . .” She shook her head, as if confused. “And now she’s dead again. It just pains me to think that someone would be so cruel. I hope she didn’t suffer.”

  “It doesn’t appear to be the case,” Tracy said, not really knowing, but knowing what Orr wanted to hear. The autopsy did not reveal any telltale signs of torture or abuse, and the bullet to the back of the head would have killed Andrea Strickland instantly.

  “Do you know what happened?” Orr asked.

  “We’re in the process of trying to find out,” Tracy said. “Obviously, Andrea did not die on the mountain. Somehow, she managed to walk off. What happened after that is not yet known.”

  “Why would she do that?” Orr asked.

  “There’s evidence she and her husband were having problems. He’d gotten them into some financial trouble and there are indications of infidelity.”

  “He didn’t abuse her, did he?”

  “We’re not aware of any physical abuse,” Tracy said, though Brenda Berg had indicated that Andrea Strickland hinted at it.

  “The other detective said the husband was a suspect; is he still a suspect?”

  “When was that?” Tracy asked.

  “When he called . . . It was a while ago now, maybe a month. It was when they still thought Andrea had died on Mount Rainier.”

  “You haven’t spoken to that detective since?”

  “No.”

  The lack of contact confirmed for Tracy that Fields had not been working the file. “We’re exploring several different scenarios,” she said. “I was hoping to get a little background about your niece. I understand she came to live with you when she was thirteen?”

  Orr set her iced tea down on a coaster. “It was just before she’d turned fourteen.”

  “Your sister and brother-in-law died in a car accident.”

  “Yes,” Orr said. “Christmas Eve. It was horrific.”

  “And Andrea was also in the car?”

  Orr nodded. “The accident was late at night on a road not well traveled. Andrea was in the backseat and barely injured, but my sister and her husband died on impact. The highway patrolman said it was one of the most gruesome accident scenes he’d witnessed in twenty years.”

  “I’m sorry,” Tracy said. “How long was Andrea trapped in the car?”

  “Close to two hours,” Orr said softly. “I can’t imagine what that was like.”

  “How was she, emotionally, when she came to live with you?”

  Orr gave the question a bit of thought. “Quiet. Reserved. She had frequent nightmares.”

  “And you lived here, in San Bernardino?”

  “Not here in this apartment; a home out near the foothills, until the divorce.” She picked up her iced tea and took a sip, avoiding eye contact.

  “Did
Andrea have counseling?”

  Orr sat back, glass in hand. Her demeanor appeared to have changed, more reticent and closed off. “Yes.”

  “A doctor here in town?”

  “Just a few miles from here.”

  “What was that doctor’s name?”

  “Townsend. Alan Townsend.”

  “Do you know if he’s still in practice?”

  “I believe he is. I don’t know for certain.”

  “Did the counseling help?”

  Orr shifted her gaze to the floor and shut her eyes, but a tear rolled slowly down her cheek. Tracy gave her a moment.

  “I’m sorry if this is upsetting, Penny.”

  Orr nodded, but the tears continued. Then her chest shuddered. “Andrea had been through so much,” she said. “I thought the nightmares were from the accident. I didn’t know.”

  Tracy put it together—the divorce, the reluctance to talk about Andrea’s counseling. “Your husband?” Tracy asked, the scenario unfortunately all too familiar.

  “He was abusing Andrea,” Orr said. “It came out in her counseling. He denied it, said she’d made it up, that she lived in a fantasy world.”

  “What did the counselor say?”

  “It was his opinion Andrea was telling the truth. The allegation required that he contact Child Protective Services. They removed Andrea from our home. I moved out because it was quicker than waiting for the divorce to become final, and found a place on my own, a small townhome. Andrea had been sent to another home until, eventually, she came back to live with me.”

  “Did you determine the truth?” Tracy asked.

  “Andrea was telling the truth.”

  “I’m sorry. Did you become Andrea’s legal guardian?”

  “Yes. My sister and brother-in-law had it in their will and the probate court had a hearing and the judge appointed me.”

  “So you could authorize the release of Andrea’s counseling records?”

  “I could,” Orr said. “But why would you need them?”

  “We’re exploring every potential reason why Andrea walked off that mountain, trying to understand what happened. The records might help. How was she, psychologically, when she came back to live with you?”

  “Worse,” Orr said. “She became very withdrawn, very nervous. She’d pick at her skin and compulsively bite her fingernails, sometimes until they bled. She also read constantly, everything she could get her hands on.”