“Novels?” Tracy asked. “Any specific genre?”
“No, just everything and anything. Westerns, romance, sci-fi, fantasy, mysteries, detective novels. Everything. I would take boxes of paperbacks to the used bookstore every month and trade them in for another stack.”
“What did her counselor have to say about Andrea reading so much?”
“He said Andrea had withdrawn from the real world because the real world was too painful. He said books offered her comfort.”
“Did she make much progress?”
“In counseling? Some, but she left San Bernardino when she turned eighteen. I came home from work one day and she was gone. She left a note thanking me and saying she needed a change of scenery.”
“She didn’t tell you she was leaving?”
Orr shook her head. “I understood,” she said softly. “Andrea needed to make a life for herself, whatever that was going to be. She needed to get away from here, away from the memories. I understood that.”
“Did she tell you where she was going?”
“She said she wanted to live in Portland or Seattle because it rained all the time and she could read. She said she would contact me when she’d settled.”
“Did you speak to her after she left?”
“Yes. She kept her word, said she’d settled in Portland, and assured me she was fine. She called a couple of times after that, but not too much.” Orr paused. “I really tried to do what was right for Andrea, and for my sister.”
“I’m sure you did.”
“When I found out my husband had been abusing her, I felt like I’d failed them both. I guess Andrea was just too emotionally scarred, and living here reminded her of those scars. I was part of those bad memories. I just think she needed to get away.”
“I’m sure you did your best,” Tracy said.
“I tried,” Orr said.
“Did Andrea gain control of her trust fund when she turned eighteen?”
“No. At twenty-one she got say over the use of the interest. My sister and brother-in-law originally set it up to pay for Andrea’s college. When they died, the rest of their estate rolled into that trust, but it had restrictions. It could only be used for Andrea’s well-being.”
“Were you the trustee?”
“No, there was a professional trustee. It was very complicated. When she lived with me, I had the trustee roll the interest back into the trust. I never touched a dime. I wanted that to be hers, something good that came out of such a tragedy. Do you know what happened to it?”
“That’s one of the things we’re trying to find out. It appears Andrea was in the process of hiding it.”
“From who?”
“We think her husband. We think that was one source of tension in their marriage. Apparently, he wanted to use the trust to pay off his business debts and Andrea had refused.”
“The trust wouldn’t allow that,” Orr said.
“I think that was the reason for the tension.”
“So you think he might have killed her to try to get control of the money?”
“We don’t know,” Tracy said. She changed the subject. “Penny, have you ever heard the name Lynn Hoff?”
Orr’s face scrunched in thought. “I don’t think so. Who is she?”
“It appears to be the alias Andrea was using when she was in hiding. Sometimes people will use a name familiar to them, maybe a childhood friend who died, or a relative.”
“No,” Orr said. “It isn’t familiar. Maybe a character from a book?”
“Maybe. Did Andrea have any close friends when she lived here—high school friends?”
Orr shook her head. “Not really.” She shrugged. “At least no one that I’m aware of. She didn’t like school. Andrea wasn’t dumb. Don’t misinterpret what I’m saying. She had her father’s intellect, and she was curious about things. I think that’s why she liked to read all the time. She retained everything she read on a subject. At the parent-teacher conferences, the teachers would all say the same thing. Andrea was extremely bright, off the charts in some areas, but she didn’t apply herself.” Orr shrugged again. “What was I supposed to do, punish her?” She wiped her tears and made a face as if the thought were ridiculous. “She’d been punished enough.”
Tracy gave Orr a moment to regain her composure. Then she asked, “I take it she didn’t have any boyfriends?”
“No.”
“And no enemies.”
“Not that she ever spoke of. She just mostly kept to herself.”
“You didn’t know she’d gotten married.”
Orr frowned. “No.”
“You never met her husband?”
“No. But he doesn’t sound like a very good man.”
“Did Andrea ever mention the name Devin Chambers?”
“Devin Chambers? No. Who is he?”
“She, actually. She appears to have been a friend of Andrea’s in Portland.”
Orr smiled but it had a sad quality to it. “I’m glad she had someone. She had so much sadness in her life, so much pain.”
Tracy thought of Sarah often, of her being subjected to the demented mind of a psychopath the last days of her life. The thought still caused a visceral reaction, and brought a dark cloud of bitterness and anger, but she realized something else, something that had never happened before on any of her other cases. She was starting to realize this case wasn’t personal because of the victim’s similarities to Sarah. It was personal because of Andrea Strickland’s similarities to Tracy. Tracy had also had a wonderful life shattered by tragedy. She, too, had been the daughter of a doctor, living in a beautiful house with a mother and sister she loved. Just as suddenly, her sister had been abducted, and her father soon thereafter shot himself. Her husband left, and everything she had thought would be her life changed forever. For years she had medicated her depression by working out and shooting often, but every once in a while she sat in her apartment, depressed, and wondered why the world had crapped on her.
“Did your ex-husband know about Andrea’s trust?”
“Yes,” Orr said, “but he’s dead, Detective. He died three years ago of colon cancer.”
“What about her trustee? What kind of man is he?”
“He’s a wonderful man. If he had wanted to cheat Andrea he could have done it easily.”
“Can you think of anyone else who knew about the trust?”
Orr gave it a moment of thought. “Not unless Andrea told someone about it.”
The comment made Tracy think of Brenda Berg, Devin Chambers, and Andrea’s counselor.
“I’d like to get Andrea’s counseling records,” she said. “I’d need a signed letter authorizing their release. Would you do that?”
“I will,” Orr said, “with one caveat.”
“Sure.”
“I see no reason why any of this has to be made public. Andrea was hurt enough in life. I don’t see any reason to hurt her after death.”
Tracy agreed.
Orr called Alan Townsend’s office, got his call service, and left a message. Toward the end of Tracy and Orr’s conversation, Townsend called back and said he could meet Tracy at his office. They set a time and Orr signed a letter authorizing the release of Andrea’s counseling records.
Tracy thanked Orr for her time, and handed her a business card as she walked Tracy to the door.
“Do you know who I would contact about her body?” Orr said. “I’d like to have Andrea buried alongside her parents.”
Tracy wrote the King County Medical Examiner’s phone number on the back of her business card. “They should be ready to release the body,” she said.
When Tracy opened her car door in the apartment complex parking lot, a blast of searing heat escaped. She waited a moment, then reached in and started the engine but did not get in. She wanted to give the air-conditioning time to do its job. While she waited for the oven to become a car, she thought again of Andrea Strickland, and of her uncle. What kind of a person would take in a
young girl whose parents had died in a horrific car accident, and see it as an opportunity for his own sick and twisted sexual desires? It was another reminder that the psychopaths of the world were not always the stereotypical monsters who tortured cats in their youths and lived in solitude.
When the car had cooled, Tracy slid behind the wheel. She left the parking lot and turned on North Waterman Avenue, a four-lane street pocked with palm trees located just around the corner from the St. Bernardine Medical Center. As Tracy had found with most of Southern California, the street consisted of an odd mix of single-family homes, apartment buildings, strip malls, and commercial buildings, as if the city planners had given no consideration to zoning.
She parked on the street and approached a two-story, sand-colored stucco building. Alan Townsend’s counseling practice was located on the second floor off an outdoor staircase. The inside looked like a small two-bedroom apartment converted to an office, with the front room the waiting area. The furnishings were dated—shag carpeting, cloth-and-laminate furniture, and nondescript prints. Behind a vacant reception counter were two closed doors with nameplates. The plate on the right was empty. The plate on the left read “A. Townsend.”
Tracy slapped a bell on the counter, which emitted an obnoxious ting. Seconds later, the door on the left opened and a middle-aged man with a head of silver hair emerged wearing cargo shorts, a T-shirt, and flip-flops. With a skin complexion more orange than bronze, he looked just like the actor George Hamilton. Welcome to LA.
“Dr. Townsend?” Tracy said.
Townsend extended a hand and flashed a smile so bright it almost caused Tracy to put her sunglasses back on. “You must be the detective from Seattle. Come on in.” He turned his back and went into his office. “I don’t usually work Fridays so I’m operating without a receptionist. You’ll have to excuse me if I look a little disorganized.”
“I’m sorry to bother you on your day off.”
“Not a bother,” he said. “I understand the circumstances. Besides, I’ve already had a full day. Friday mornings I surf and do a little meditating. I thought I’d get some work done in an air-conditioned office while waiting out the heat. I play tennis in the evenings.”
“Surfing around here?”
“The ocean is an hour and a half. That’s why I only do it once a week and I go early. It’s exhilarating.”
“Sounds like a good day.”
“Every day we’re alive is a good day,” he said.
This guy made actors on Sesame Street seem depressed.
The back wall was a window facing east toward the San Bernardino hills. The wall to Tracy’s left was the ego wall, with framed diplomas and citations, some partially obscured by the leaves of a collection of potted ferns, cacti, palms, and a peace lily. Townsend had a modest desk beneath the diplomas. He took a seat in a leather chair, leaving Tracy to sit on a two-seat couch. On the wall beside the window was a framed quote.
WHO LOOKS OUTSIDE, DREAMS;
WHO LOOKS INSIDE, AWAKES.
CARL JUNG
The room smelled of incense.
Tracy handed Townsend the signed authorization from Patricia Orr for the release of Andrea’s records, which was valid because Andrea had been a minor when she received counseling.
“I was hoping to get your impressions.”
“Well, first off I can tell you I was not surprised to hear Andrea had died in an accident on Mount Rainier.”
Apparently, Townsend did not know Andrea had not died on Rainier. Tracy decided to explore his thinking. “No? Why not.”
“Because I was not convinced it was an ‘accident.’”
“You thought the husband killed her?”
“No. I would maintain that Andrea took her own life.”
“Why would you come to that conclusion?”
“Because of three years of therapy. This would be the kind of grandiose gesture I’d expect Andrea would choose to leave the world—something to let the world know she’d been here.”
“Grandiose? I understood from Mrs. Orr that Andrea was an introvert who hid from the world.”
“That was her coping mechanism,” Townsend said. “That was how Andrea chose to hide from her problems, to shut them away in a closet, so to speak. But that wasn’t who she really was.”
Tracy knew that trick very well. She’d become obsessed with finding Sarah’s killer, so much so that when she’d finally had to walk away, she’d had to literally shut Sarah’s files in her bedroom closet so that she could function. “How would you describe her?”
“Before the car accident that took her parents’ lives, and before the abuse at the hands of her uncle, she was described by her schoolteachers and counselors as a bright, well-adjusted, mischievous young woman.”
“Mischievous?”
“She liked to play pranks on her classmates and friends.”
“What kind of pranks?”
“Oh, she’d hide someone’s lunch, short-sheet their beds at slumber parties, put pin holes in the milk cartons so when classmates drank, the milk would dribble down their chins.”
Tracy’s sister had been similarly mischievous. Sarah had liked to hide and jump out at Tracy and her unsuspecting friends. “Harmless pranks,” she said.
“For the most part.”
“Were there occasions when the pranks were not harmless?”
Townsend nodded. “A few, apparently.”
“Such as?”
“She cut the stem of a bike tire on a classmate who she believed had been mean to a friend of hers.”
Tracy considered this. “Could her pranks have increased in their vindictiveness?”
“Yes,” Townsend said, “I believe they could have.”
“What was your diagnosis for Andrea?”
“Well, Andrea left when she was eighteen, so I can’t say for certain.”
“You don’t know.”
“I believe Andrea was susceptible to a dissociative disorder brought on by the trauma and abuse.”
“What do you mean by a dissociative disorder?”
“It can be a number of different things. In Andrea’s case it could have manifested in an involuntary and unhealthy escape from reality.”
“Her excessive reading?”
“Certainly. It’s a mechanism used to keep traumatic memories at bay. The person either has memory loss—you can’t recall what you did or who certain people are in your life—or she can take on alternate identities.”
“Split personalities?”
“In a sense. The person switches to an alternate identity. Someone suffering from a dissociative identity disorder will say they feel the presence of people talking or living inside their head, and they can’t control what those people are doing or saying.”
“You said ‘susceptible.’ You don’t know if Andrea had a dissociative disorder?”
“Not with certainty. The typical onset is early twenties. She’d left counseling by then.”
“How would it have manifested, if she’d had it?”
“A number of different ways. For one, the person can be prone to mood swings and impulsive acts.”
“Would an impulsive act be getting married after just a few weeks?”
“It could be.”
“Are these people capable of committing harmful acts?”
“Suicide attempts are not uncommon.”
“I meant harmful acts against others?”
“Certainly.”
“What can trigger it?”
“Again, it can be several things. Another traumatic event—abuse or a perceived abandonment, a betrayal, or just a feeling of desperation.”
Tracy didn’t need Townsend to explain that, in those categories, Andrea Strickland had been a perfect four for four.
“Were you aware that Andrea had a trust, Doctor?”
“Andrea mentioned it,” he said and then looked doubtful. “Or it could have been her aunt said something in passing.” He paused. Then he said, “I believe it wa
s the aunt. She said she was grateful Andrea would, at least, always be financially taken care of. Frankly, I was uncertain whether that was a good thing.”
“Why is that?”
“Given Andrea’s uncertain future mental state, the trust would have made it easy for her to not work, and potentially to engage in an unhealthy lifestyle.”
“Drugs?” Tracy said, thinking of the pot store, Genesis.
“Potentially.”
“And the trust could have also made her susceptible to persons hoping to take advantage of her, could it not?”
“Yes,” he said. “It could have. If they knew of it, of course.”
“Of course.”
CHAPTER 20
On a Friday night, Devin persuaded me to go out after work. I’d made the mistake of telling her Graham had gone to a bachelor party in Las Vegas for the weekend, which meant I couldn’t use him as an excuse to get home. With Graham unemployed, he was around the loft almost all day and most nights. Having my job back felt like a reprieve from having to spend time with him. I left for work early and didn’t come home until late. Often I would take the current novel I was reading, and my laptop, to a coffeehouse with wireless Internet access. If I stayed out late enough, I could return home to find Graham passed out, avoid the perfunctory conversations, and sneak off to bed, letting him sleep on the couch.
I was counting the days until our Rainier trip.
With Graham in Las Vegas, I’d have the loft to myself the entire weekend. What I really wanted was to go home and continue planning without having to sneak behind Graham’s back, but I decided that I owed it to Devin to spend a few hours with her. I’d dumped a lot of my personal problems on her, and she’d always been there to listen. Besides, she was the only real friend I had in Portland, and soon I would be gone.
She chose a sports-themed bar close to the office that included multiple television screens. Sports paraphernalia hung on the walls and drooped from the ceiling. I guessed the bar was popular, because the tables filled quickly. We found a couple abandoning an elevated table with two tall chairs a safe distance from the televisions and quickly grabbed it. The waitress, dressed in a black-and-white referee shirt and cheek-hugging black shorts, quickly descended on us for drink orders. She set down cocktail napkins and advised that it was happy hour. Appetizers were just a few dollars. Devin ordered hummus and flatbread and an olive plate. Just the thought of food made my queasy stomach churn.
The Trapped Girl (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 4) Page 18