Fields removed his jacket and pulled out his chair, sitting. He smelled of cigarette smoke. “In Arizona, you stay indoors in the summer and venture out in the fall and winter.”
He removed his aviator sunglasses, folded them, and put them in his shirt pocket. When the waitress approached, he said, “Bring me a Corona with a lime, darling.” Tracy fought to keep her tongue in check. Fields directed his attention to Tracy. “So, why all the intrigue?”
“No intrigue. I have some information for you on the Andrea Strickland case, a few things we were working when they pulled jurisdiction.”
“No intrigue?” Fields gave Tracy a shit-eating grin. The mustache ends lifted. “Judging from your appearance, you’re not working today. You have information for me not in the file you shipped down, but you didn’t want to discuss it over the phone, and you asked me to come to you. I’ve been doing this job a while also.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s not your first rodeo,” Tracy said. “So you got the file?”
Fields nodded. “And I had another chat with Graham Strickland, or, I should say, I tried.”
“He’s lawyered up?”
The mustache twitched. “Everything has to go through the attorney. I told the attorney we’d charge him and his client with obstruction.”
Tracy could only imagine how far that tactic had gotten Fields.
“He told me to put up or shut up,” he continued. “We compromised. He’s going to make Strickland available for questioning.” Fields sat back, watching two young women in shorts walk past the patio before redirecting his attention to Tracy. “Not sure how much good it’s going to do since we can’t get an exact time on the murder, and there are no forensics to speak of with the salt water doing a number on the crab pot and body. Even if we found the gun, which is less than doubtful, we don’t have a bullet. We’re working to get Strickland’s credit card and phone records to see if maybe he rented a crabbing boat for the day. Not likely.” Fields took a chip, dipped it in the salsa, and popped it in his mouth. “In other words, it remains circumstantial, and the little prick knows it.”
The waitress returned with Fields’s beer, a lime slice sticking out the neck.
“Are you ready to order?” she asked.
“Just bring me that steak dish you have,” Fields said. “What’s it called, carne asada, am I right?”
The woman smiled. “How do you like it cooked?”
“Bloodred. You tell the chef I want it to ‘moo’ when I stick it with my fork. And throw a couple of them big green peppers on the grill for me also.”
Tracy ordered a tostada. “No sour cream or guacamole,” she said.
Fields shoved the lime slice into the bottle. “Watching your figure?” He took a sip of his beer. “So what do you have for me?”
Tracy dipped a chip, munching. “I spoke to Andrea Strickland’s aunt in San Bernardino.”
“Yeah?” Fields said, sounding surprised and irritated. “What? You just happen to be down there, like you just happened to want to spend your day off working a case no longer yours? Don’t they keep you busy up here in Seattle?” Fields’s eyebrows drew together.
“I also spoke to her counselor,” Tracy said, ignoring him.
“Strickland’s or the aunt’s?”
“Strickland’s. The aunt took Andrea to see him after the car accident that killed her parents. She continued when she realized her husband was molesting Andrea.”
“No shit?” Fields said loud enough for heads to turn at the other tables.
Tracy sipped her iced tea. “The kid loses her parents in a car accident then has to endure crap like that.”
“Not everyone grew up in the Brady Bunch,” Fields said, taking another sip of his beer.
“Yeah, far from it,” Tracy said.
“So she was all screwed up,” Fields said.
“Counselor called Protective Services and she was removed from the home until the aunt moved to a new place.”
“Charges pressed?”
“I haven’t looked.”
“What happened to her?”
“Counselor isn’t certain but said it is entirely plausible Andrea could have developed what he called a dissociative disorder—multiple personalities she might take on to avoid the real world.”
“Sort of like that Sybil movie?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Did he name any of these other personalities?”
“You mean like Lynn Hoff? No. But he said Andrea was an obsessive reader and could have taken on the role of the characters in the books she read.”
“Let’s hope she didn’t read Carrie,” Fields said. “Sounds like she was a train wreck waiting to happen.”
“Maybe. He also said she could have been prone to violent acts.”
“He ever witness that?”
Tracy shook her head. “Andrea left when she turned eighteen. He said the symptoms likely would manifest, if they were going to manifest, in her early twenties.”
“So she could have been a time bomb waiting to go off; did he say what could set her off?”