The Trapped Girl (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 4)

by Robert Dugoni

  Besides, Tracy suspected she already knew that answer. Without some evidence tying Graham Strickland to the private investigator searching for Chambers, evidence linking him to the missing money, or evidence proving that the gun used to kill Chen also killed Chambers, the DA would not opt to go forward.

  The forensic examination of the PI’s computer was still not complete, and a forensic accounting had only confirmed what they already knew—someone had emptied Lynn Hoff’s bank accounts after Devin Chambers had been killed. From what they could determine thus far, the money had been wired out of the country, to a bank in Luxembourg, which fiercely guarded customer privacy. Not that it mattered. It was unlikely the money had stayed there long, or that the person had used a name they would know. Likely they’d used a corporate name and quickly rerouted the funds. Locating where it went would take a lot more time and expense, without any guarantee the result would provide the necessary evidence to convict.

  “What about Andrea Strickland?” Tracy asked Nolasco.

  Nolasco shrugged, and Tracy knew Andrea Strickland was already becoming an afterthought. “Unless the husband admits he killed her, or the glacier up there gives up her body, she remains a missing person. That’s Pierce County’s problem. Not ours.”

  Left unsaid was that neither Andrea Strickland nor Devin Chambers had family who’d push for answers or make a stink that the investigations into their death and disappearance were not receiving the proper attention. In other words, there were no squeaky wheels demanding to be oiled.

  “We know who killed them,” Nolasco said, as if to justify the decision, but which only sent shivers of irritation up Tracy’s spine. “We just might not get the chance to prove it. Sometimes that’s the way it is. You all know that. The most important thing is Strickland is going to jail for the rest of his life.”

  In the interim, Nolasco told Tracy and Kins to provide the Portland Police with whatever support they needed in their investigation and prosecution of Strickland.

  Tracy spent her days working her other files, but she remained distracted, and for a reason she never would have anticipated. As much as she tended to tune out what Nolasco said, something he’d said early in the investigation, something that Kins had repeated, kept circling through her thoughts, like a repeating message on a Times Square billboard. She doubted Nolasco had meant it as a pearl of wisdom. To the contrary, he’d likely meant it to disparage Tracy, but still, she couldn’t get the thought out of her mind. He’d said, “Sometimes these cases aren’t as difficult as you make them. Sometimes the answer is as simple as it seems.”

  In the case of Megan Chen, that certainly appeared to be the case. Tracy kept thinking about that concept with respect to Devin Chambers and Andrea Strickland. Had she made those investigations too complicated? The facts were complicated, no doubt, but what about the human element—the motivation? She’d concluded that, if Andrea Strickland were still alive, she’d acted out of a desire for revenge. Chambers’s actions, it seemed, had been fueled by her addiction and greed.

  After the other members of the A Team had left for the day, Tracy spread out the contents of the case file on the worktable in the center of their bull pen. Over her years in Violent Crimes, she’d developed the method as a way to help get her unstuck during an investigation. More visual than analytical, laying out the evidence helped her to see connecting threads between the evidence. Her intent was to do what Nolasco suggested, to break the case down to its simplest questions and see if she could find answers.

  The first question she wrote on her notepad was the question Graham Strickland had posed. Who had elevator and front door access code?

  She wrote Graham Strickland in block letters. Beneath his name she wrote Andrea Strickland, Megan Chen, Cleaning Lady, Landlord, Other?

  Tracy circled Graham Strickland and wrote, Case Closed.

  But what if it wasn’t Strickland who’d entered using the code? What if Graham Strickland was telling the truth? What if he hadn’t killed Megan Chen?

  She drew a second line, put an arrow on the end, and wrote Not Strickland.

  She crossed out Megan Chen’s name. She also crossed out the cleaning lady. That left Andrea Strickland, the landlord, and Other. Of the two known people, Andrea Strickland was a far more likely suspect than the landlord. Random killings were rare, except in the case of psychopaths. The landlord didn’t strike her as a psychopath.

  Next, Tracy contemplated her interview of Graham Strickland. She sat in her desk chair, put in her earphones, closed her eyes, and listened to the recording of her interview, allowing herself to hear and contemplate Strickland’s answers without the stress of the situation. She’d been cautious during the interview. She knew sociopaths sprinkled lies and half-truths into their stories to try to throw off an interrogation, confuse the issues, or raise a basis to argue reasonable doubt, if their prosecution ever got that far.

  What were the lies and half-truths Strickland had sprinkled in with the truth?

  Had he only intended to kill his wife, or had he actually carried out his intent?

  Strickland said he’d been unable to carry through his plan, though it wasn’t because of a change of heart. He’d said he physically couldn’t function, that he’d felt drugged, lethargic, and could not wake from sleep.

  Tracy wrote and circled drugged? on her notepad. A thought came to her. Under that word she wrote, Genesis Inventory?

  If Andrea Strickland did have the idea to climb Rainier, and it had been her intent to frame her husband for her murder, her first problem would have been walking off the mountain without him knowing. This would have been especially difficult given Ranger Hicks’s statement about it being next to impossible to sleep the night before an ascent with your body amped on adrenaline and anxiety—not to mention even a sociopath like Strickland had to have some anxiety about what he intended to do. So to get off that mountain without her husband knowing it, if she had indeed done so, Andrea Strickland would have needed to knock her husband out—and she had ready access to the drugs to do it.

  Tracy rolled her chair back to her cubicle, brought her computer to life, accessed the Internet, and typed in “Genesis, Portland,” and “marijuana.” The website for the business remained active. She clicked her way through it to the Menu tab and scrolled through Flowers and Edibles. She stopped when she came to Concentrates. Reading further, she noted how marijuana could be ingested in the form of a tea or other type of drink, and remembered her interview of Strickland, still playing on the earphones.

  T. Crosswhite: Did you do anything before you went to bed?

  G. Strickland: We had a prepackaged dinner and drank some tea.

  T. Crosswhite: Who made the dinner and the tea?

  G. Strickland: Andrea.

  She exited the website and Googled “liquid THC,” pulling up thousands of hits. She clicked on several and finally found one that described the physical effects. THC could make a person lethargic and impact their ability to concentrate, their coordination, and their sensory and time perception.

  She sat back. Graham Strickland could have been drugged.

  If that were true, the next question was how Andrea Strickland got off the mountain. According to Glen Hicks—the man who would know best—it was unlikely Strickland had acted alone. Tracy went back to the worktable and wrote the next question.

  Who would have helped?

  The obvious answer would have been Devin Chambers—except, according to Graham, Devin Chambers had been the person who planted the seed that Graham could get the trust money if he killed Andrea. And, according to Hicks, Chambers had receipts proving she’d been away that weekend. Maybe that was one of Strickland’s lies to help his defense down the road. As Kins had said, Strickland could say he’d been forthcoming, that he’d copped to being an adulterer, but that didn’t make him a murderer.

  But Tracy didn’t think it was a lie, and for the reason she’d already told Kins. Admitting to an affair with Devin Chambers provided a thre
ad between Strickland and Chambers that otherwise did not exist. So lying about something like that didn’t make a lot of sense. Alison McCabe had also said her sister was a con artist addicted to prescription drugs, something Devin Chambers’s credit card balances appeared to confirm. That evidence supported, to some extent anyway, Graham Strickland’s statement that Devin Chambers suggested he could solve his problems if he killed his wife. If that were true, it clearly would not have been in Chambers’s interest to help Andrea off the mountain. It would have been cleaner and neater for Chambers to let Graham kill his wife, providing Chambers with unfettered access to the money. Andrea would have been dead, and Graham Strickland couldn’t very well run to the police and say, I think my wife’s best friend stole the money I was hoping to steal when I killed her. In fact, as Graham Strickland said during the interview, he recognized that any attention he directed to Chambers had the very real likelihood of circling around like a boomerang and hitting him in the ass. With all the other circumstantial evidence pointing to him, the last thing he needed was a con artist telling the police she was sleeping with him, and maybe even that he had confided to her that he intended to kill his wife by pushing her over a ledge.

  Bye-bye, Graham. Hello, money.

  So, the simple answer was Chambers was probably not an ally, and not likely the person who helped Andrea Strickland off the mountain.

  Brenda Berg? Possible, but Tracy didn’t think so. For one, Berg had a newborn baby to consider. Why would she risk it?

  Berg had confirmed Graham Strickland’s statement that his wife didn’t have any other friends. That left relatives or strangers.

  Alan Townsend, the psychologist, knew about the trust fund. Tracy wrote and circled his name.

  Both of Andrea Strickland’s parents were dead. She had no siblings.

  She had only an aunt. Tracy wrote, Penny Orr.

  Orr claimed that she’d been estranged from Andrea since Andrea’s move from San Bernardino to Portland; that she didn’t even know Andrea had gotten married.

  So she’d said.

  As far as Tracy knew from the Pierce County file, nobody had followed through to determine if Penny Orr was telling the truth. Nobody had pulled Andrea’s phone records or e-mail—primarily because Stan Fields didn’t think she was still alive. He thought Graham had killed her. If Andrea was alive, if she’d orchestrated the disappearance of her trust, she’d also likely not used her cell phone or her e-mail account to do it.

  Tracy sat back, considering Andrea Strickland and Penny Orr. Both, in a sense, had been abandoned under traumatic circumstances and, as Tracy had deduced between Devin Chambers and her sister, blood created a strong bond difficult to ignore or to break. As crazy as it seemed to even consider Penny Orr, Tracy could not dismiss it. For one, who was left? A random person Andrea had paid? Too risky. The person could run to the media first chance they got, seeking their fifteen minutes of fame. Alan Townsend? Maybe.

  During their interview, Orr had told Tracy she felt guilty about what had happened to Andrea while under her roof. Could helping Andrea to start a new life have been Orr’s way to cleanse herself of her own perceived sins?

  What did Tracy really know about Penny Orr?

  Nothing.

  She went back to her cubicle, hit the space bar on the keyboard, and brought her monitor to life. She logged on to the Internet, pulled up the website they used to conduct LexisNexis searches, and input information to run Penny Orr through the system. The search provided a history of the person’s past employers, former addresses, relatives, and prior criminal history.

  The history for Penny Orr was short. She’d moved twice, from the San Bernardino home address to a townhome, to the apartment complex. She’d had one sister, deceased. She had no prior criminal history. She’d had one employer.

  Tracy’s stomach fluttered.

  Penny Orr had spent thirty years working for the San Bernardino County Assessor. Sensing something, Tracy opened another Internet page and searched for the Assessor’s website. Pulling it up, she clicked her way through the pages until she came to a page announcing that, effective January 3, 2011, the offices of the County Assessor, County Recorder, and County Clerk had been consolidated. To the left of that announcement was a light-blue drop-down menu for the departments’ various services, including a link to obtain certified copies of a birth certificate.

  CHAPTER 31

  The following morning, Tracy prepared for the pushback she was certain she would receive from Johnny Nolasco. She’d spoken to Kins on the telephone the night before and told him what she’d found. He agreed it was a lead worth pursuing. Unfortunately, he was in the Lipinsky trial, the start of which had been delayed, and he would remain in court for at least the remainder of the week, likely longer.

  “Her aunt would have had access to certified copies of birth certificates,” Tracy told Nolasco as she made her case in his office. She handed him a birth certificate for Lynn Hoff. Hoff had been born in San Bernardino. Her birth date was the same year as Andrea Strickland. “We know Andrea used a certified copy of Lynn Hoff’s birth certificate to obtain her Washington State driver’s license, and that allowed her to open the bank accounts. This is how she got it.”

  “So who’s Lynn Hoff?” Nolasco asked.

  “I don’t know and it doesn’t matter. Andrea and her aunt weren’t going to steal Lynn Hoff’s identity or her finances; they were just borrowing her identity to get the driver’s license, hide the money, and ultimately disappear. Lynn Hoff would have never known.”

  “Is there a record of someone putting in a request for Lynn Hoff’s birth certificate?”

  “That’s my point; the aunt wouldn’t have to put in a request; she’s one of the people who the request would have ordinarily gone through. She found a certificate of a woman born the same year as Andrea. She certified it. And if she did that, she’s also likely the person who helped Andrea off the mountain. She has to have been the person—there is no one else.”

  “Sounds too easy.”

  “Exactly. You told me not to complicate things, that sometimes these things aren’t as difficult as I make them,” she said, stroking his ego. “This is a simple theory, but it makes sense and it answers several questions.”

  “Assuming you’re right, and Andrea Strickland is alive, it’s not our case. That’s Pierce County’s case. Send them the information to pursue it.”

  “It gives us a link to Devin Chambers, which is our case.”

  “I don’t see how.”

  Tracy knew this is where the argument would sink or swim. She’d thought about it most of the night. It wasn’t perfect, but it was plausible. “The aunt helps her create the identity and go into hiding. We have to assume she also helped her to hide the money. Even if she didn’t, we know that Devin Chambers used the money to pay for her surgery and for the motel. She paid cash, though she was broke. She thought Andrea was dead. If Andrea was alive, and monitoring the accounts, she would have seen the transactions and realized Devin Chambers was accessing her money. The problem is, Andrea doesn’t know where Devin Chambers is, so she anonymously hires a private investigator to find her.”

  “So why does she kill her? Why doesn’t she just take the money and hide it again?”

  “Because if she did, Devin Chambers would have known she was still alive, and Devin Chambers was sleeping with Graham Strickland.”

  “So you think she killed Devin Chambers?”

  “Andrea’s counselor said it was possible that Andrea could be prone to violence if she became desperate. Devin Chambers, who she thought to be her friend, was sleeping with her husband, planning her death, and had access to the one thing Andrea Strickland had left—her trust fund. It’s a lead worth exploring,” Tracy said. “It’s worth having a conversation with the aunt about it. If Andrea is alive, the aunt is the person most likely to know where she is hiding. Look, Captain, think of it this way.” This was the argument Tracy thought might be most persuasive with Nolasco. After
a recent hand slapping by OPA regarding questionable investigative techniques he and his partner, Floyd Hattie, had used during their careers working homicides, Nolasco still remained on thin ice. “Portland isn’t interested in these two cases and the DA won’t want to spend the money to prosecute Strickland if he’s convicted of killing Chen. We both know the brass and the bean counters look at the bottom line. So, we could have two open files on our docket through no fault of our own. This might allow us to solve both at the same time—where is Andrea Strickland and who killed Devin Chambers?”

  Nolasco sat in silence, thinking about what she’d said. “How does Megan Chen fit into this scenario?”

  “I don’t know,” Tracy said. “Maybe she does, maybe she doesn’t. As you said, that’s Portland’s problem at the moment.”

  Nolasco rocked in his chair. After several moments he said, “Let me make a few phone calls. This is something I’m going to have to run up the flagpole.”

  “One last thing,” she said.

  “What?”

  “The money has been moved. Andrea Strickland won’t be far behind it.”

  Nolasco’s answer came late that afternoon in the form of an e-mail. It was the proverbial good news, bad news.

  You have authorization to interview Andrea Strickland’s aunt regarding her knowledge concerning the certified birth certificate for Lynn Hoff. Pierce County desires to remain fully involved. Contact Stan Fields and coordinate travel and interview.

  Tracy groaned. Traveling with Stan Fields was punishment enough.

  Still, not even the thought of spending time with Fields could dampen her excitement—the feeling she got when she believed she was getting close to answers on one of her investigations. She immediately went online and booked a direct flight leaving Seattle the following morning at 5:55 a.m. and arriving at the Ontario, California, airport at 8:30 a.m. They’d have to rent a car, but they could be at Penny Orr’s apartment before 10:00 a.m.