Close to Home (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 5)

by Robert Dugoni

  “The brig is now called the Northwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility.” Battles shrugged. “I think it sounds better to the politicians. Personally, I like brig.”

  Yokavich gave a thin smile. Tracy had never seen him smile. He looked like a schoolboy chatting up the best-looking girl in the class. “It’s a mouthful, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” Battles said.

  “They better end this now or these people might riot,” Tracy said to Kins.

  “And with good reason,” Kins said.

  “Right.” Yokavich looked to Cerrabone as if he’d forgotten he was there. “Anything else?”

  “No, Your Honor,” Cerrabone and Moore said in unison.

  “Madam Clerk, call the next case,” Yokavich said.

  Tracy watched Battles walk with Trejo and the two burly correctional guards, bending close to whisper in his ear and pat him on the shoulder before he stepped through the door.

  The victim’s advocate present at the hearing was speaking to Shaniqua Miller and her mother, but they weren’t paying her much attention. This had gone about as badly as Tracy could have predicted. Cerrabone turned and gave her an eye roll filled with disgust but otherwise held it together.

  Battles and Moore started up the aisle to the exit. When she reached the doorway, Battles turned and looked back over her shoulder, her gaze finding Tracy, as if to drop a challenge of sorts.

  CHAPTER 15

  Del adjusted his suit jacket as he stepped from the elevator and made his way down the marble floor toward the courtroom of the honorable Deborah Kerr. He pulled open the large wooden door and slipped into a bench at the back of the sparsely populated gallery. Several jurors seated in the jury box on the front right side of the courtroom glanced at him, but only briefly. Their attention was fixed on Celia McDaniel. As Del had suspected, McDaniel was good on her feet, with an easy way about her and, today at least, a charming Southern drawl that was downright intoxicating.

  After ten minutes, when McDaniel paused to change subjects, Judge Kerr looked up at the clock on the wall. “Counsel, perhaps this is a good place to break for the day?”

  McDaniel glanced at the clock, though Del knew she’d break. The judge had just given her an opportunity to send the jurors home after a long day and long week. Only a fool would not accept. Celia McDaniel was no fool.

  “That would be fine, Your Honor. With any luck, we might all beat the traffic home.”

  As the jurors gathered their belongings and filed out of the room, Del made his way to counsel’s table where McDaniel was packing her materials into a Bekins box. She stopped when she saw him. He hadn’t seen her since the coffee shop, when she’d left a coffee and two donuts on the table. Her upper lip curled, which he figured could be a smile . . . or a smirk.

  “So, what brings you here so late on a Friday afternoon, Detective? Did you locate the drug dealer?”

  Del would work with McDaniel to prepare charges, if and when he had the name or names of the persons who supplied Allie with the drugs that had killed her and potentially killed the others who had overdosed, but that was not his reason for being there.

  “No, not yet.” Del cleared his throat. “I came to apologize about the other day. I didn’t know about your son and I said a few things that were . . .”

  “Boorish?”

  Del shrugged. “I was going to say insensitive, but boorish works.”

  She nodded. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve heard a lot worse. What’s the status of the information on the person who supplied your niece?”

  He was glad to change the subject, though Allie’s investigation had not been the reason for his visit. “I sent Allie’s phone and computer to TESU yesterday for analysis. Melton is going to try to rush it for me.”

  “I understand from Funk that there’ve been more deaths.”

  “Two. Same scene. Appears to be the same product. I brought a sample for Funk to look at and hopefully analyze. He says it isn’t black tar. It might be China white.”

  “That would be unusual on the West Coast.”

  “That’s what Funk said.”

  “Did you notify the narcotics section?”

  Del nodded. “They’re talking to known users, and I heard they have bike cops out spreading the word. I was told that the case might be pulled from Violent Crimes . . . from me.”

  McDaniel thought about this. “Maybe with respect to determining what’s in the product and where it’s coming from, but not if we charge whoever is supplying it with a controlled substance homicide. That would be Violent Crimes jurisdiction.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  She started to pick up the box, but Del put out a hand, wanting to discuss the reason for his visit. “I was hoping to maybe buy you a drink . . . as a peace offering for my boorish behavior.”

  McDaniel’s brow furrowed. “Is this a pity drink, Detective?”

  “No,” Del said quickly, not expecting her response to be hostile. “No. Nothing like that.”

  “So you’re just trying to clear your conscience because you feel bad.”

  Del rocked back on his heels, now completely uncertain of what to say. “I didn’t think of it that way either.”

  McDaniel smiled. Her eyes glinted. “I’m just playing with you. Friday night after a long week, who can’t use a drink?” She picked up the box. “But I never drink unless I’m eating, and I already told you I love to eat. Do you like Thai food?”

  “Yeah,” Del said. In truth, he wasn’t a big fan but he wasn’t about to say anything that could send the conversation off track. “Love Thai food.”

  McDaniel handed him the box. “Help me drop this off at the office,” she said. “I know a great place downtown.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Monday morning, Leah Battles unclipped her bike shoe from the pedal and pulled on the string around her neck. When riding to and from work, she carried her military ID in a clear slip holder beneath her riding shirt. She flashed the ID at the master-at-arms, or MA, working the Charleston Gate as she did each morning, and started to slip it back beneath her shirt.

  “Hang on.” The guard came out of the shack and walked toward her.

  Battles had ridden her bike to Naval Base Kitsap every day for the past three years, rain or shine. Was she obsessive about it? No. She was frugal. She wasn’t getting rich in the Navy, and owning a car in downtown Seattle without a designated place to park meant feeding an expensive garage. She’d rather feed herself. The cost of driving a car onto the ferry every morning and every night was also not inconsequential. A bike saved money, and provided at least some exercise for those days and weeks when work got crazy, as she sensed it was about to. The ferry terminal was just blocks from her Pioneer Square apartment, and it was about a two-mile ride from the Bremerton Ferry Terminal to the Charleston Gate.

  And every morning she showed her badge to the MA on duty.

  Unfortunately, while her routine remained consistent, the MAs did not. Some, like this lug nut making her take the ID out of the plastic slip, were anal about their job. Next would be a cavity search—of him, not her.

  She fought the urge to say something sarcastic, tried not to become frustrated, told herself the MA was just doing his job, but she was also butt-ass cold and wanted to get inside, get coffee, and get warm.

  “Do you have a chip reader or can I just slide the card in a slot?” she said, handing the MA her card.

  The guard looked up, puzzled. “Excuse me?”

  “I’d also like fifty dollars cash back and a couple of Powerball lottery tickets.”

  The MA didn’t smile. Maybe he was practicing to be a member of the Queen’s Guard at Buckingham Palace. His eyes shifted from the ID to Battles and back again. She smiled, wide.

  He handed back the card, apparently not expecting the rank. “Thank you, Lieutenant.” He even saluted.

  Battles returned a halfhearted salute, slipped the ID into the sleeve, and tucked it beneath her top. She pushed away from the boo
th but didn’t bother to clip her shoes back into the pedals—she could coast down the slope in the road—turned on Barclay Street, and cut across the parking lot to building 433. The last door on the right was the Defense Service Office, West Detachment Bremerton, or DSO—her home away from home. Like Naval Base Kitsap, which emerged from the reorganization of Naval Station Bremerton and Naval Submarine Base Bangor, the DSO had been reorganized from the Naval Legal Services Office (NLSO), which had provided both defense services and legal assistance—things like drafting wills, landlord-tenant contracts, and other exciting crap. The civil and criminal offices had been separated, and thank the Holy Trinity for that. Battles hadn’t signed up to fight over who got what or who lived where.

  Battles removed her bike helmet, entered the last four digits of her Social Security number on the touch pad to unlock the door and record her presence, and went inside the building. The warm air on her chilled skin felt comforting. Darcy, the receptionist, greeted her from her seat at the front desk, as she did every day. “What’s up, ma’am?”

  “Sun and sky, Darcy,” Battles said, walking past. “I’ll let you know when they aren’t.”

  Battles walked to her office, which was just past the lobby, but before she could step inside, a voice called out from down the hall.

  “Heard you had a busy weekend, Lee.” Brian Cho, the prosecution’s senior trial counsel at Kitsap, approached. He was grinning.

  Cho had an office on the second floor near the courtroom. The fact that he was downstairs indicated he’d been waiting for Battles to arrive, or had seen her come through the Charleston Gate from his window. He wore blue-and-gray camos—what the Navy called NWU, which officially stood for “Navy Working Uniform,” but which Battles unofficially dubbed “North West Ugly.” Sailors referred to the uniforms derogatorily as “blueberries,” and there had been talk the Navy was considering ditching them altogether; seemed they were unsafe to wear while fighting a fire. Flammable uniforms! Nice. Even the Secretary of the Navy was said to have taken a swipe at them. “The uniform provides great camouflage,” he was reported to have said, “if you happen to fall overboard.”

  Battles ignored Cho because, well, he was Cho, and continued into her office to her desk. She turned on the Tiffany desk lamp that had once adorned her father’s desk and tried to look busy. With no windows, the office had the charm of a prison cell, offering no natural lighting. It could feel claustrophobic, especially in the winter, when Battles often arrived before sunrise and went home after sunset.

  Cho, not to be deterred by subtle rebukes, followed Battles into her office. “I heard about Trejo and the probable cause hearing.”

  With Cho, she straddled the fence between being collegial and unloading her Krav Maga training on his butt. A good-looking Asian man with a smile as dazzlingly white as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, he didn’t hide the cadre of women at his beck and call. He was also arrogant and sarcastic. And those were his good qualities. Battles surmised that if Cho had heard the news, it meant the head prosecutor had already prepared a situation report, or sit-rep, and had put that report on the desks of all the head honchos on base. They weren’t wasting time, meaning they were likely taking jurisdiction.

  “Then you know as much as I do.” She dropped her bike helmet onto her desk.

  “You moved awfully quickly; heard you met him at the jail.”

  She didn’t take the bait. “He called. I had the phone and I was already over there.” She kicked off her bike shoes. She kept her uniform and her black boots in her closet. Cho, however, didn’t take the hint to leave.

  “Where’s Trejo now?”

  “Lewis-McChord,” she said.

  “So we’re taking jurisdiction?”

  And there was the subject of Cho’s interest. “Like I said, you know as much as I do at this point. We just tried to keep him out of the county jail.”

  “Enemy combatants?” Cho said, a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

  “You know the drill.”

  “You talk to him?”

  “Nothing specific,” she said.

  “I heard this one is coming back,” Cho said. “That we’re taking jurisdiction.”

  She didn’t respond, picking up papers and pretending to read. “Wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “You’re bucking for it, aren’t you?”

  There it was—the purpose for his visit. “Was that part of the rumor too?” She set down the pleading.

  Cho gave her a sardonic smile. He loved getting under people’s skin. “Case of that stature would look good on the resume.”

  “Are you talking about yours or mine?” She moved toward the door; the women’s bathroom might be the only way to ditch this dolt.

  Still grinning, Cho cut her off. “My resume doesn’t need any help, Lee,” he said, letting the comment and his smile linger before he departed.

  Battles shut the door, resisting her urge to call him an arrogant shit before she did, and made her way back behind her desk. On the wall, next to a framed Indian tapestry she’d picked up on a trip to Mumbai—“Join the Navy, See the World!”—hung her two Defense Counsel of the Year certificates. She’d worked hard for the acknowledgments, but Cho was right, the Trejo case could significantly improve her resume, not that she’d admit it to Cho. Cho was the only prosecutor to have beaten her, twice. She’d never beaten him. And while this one might be tough, she loved a challenge.

  She left the fluorescent lights off, went back to her closet, and quickly changed into her uniform and black boots. She sat and went through the research she’d conducted over the weekend. Trejo faced a potentially long imprisonment. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, were Trejo to receive a general court-martial, a military judge or a jury could impose a sentence well in excess of ten years—the maximum civilian penalty. Given the current political climate since the Black Lives Matter movement, and given that Trejo had not stopped his vehicle, he was ripe for being made an example.

  And that was what bothered Battles. Trejo didn’t strike her as particularly dumb, or devious. He also had a wife to consider. So why’d he run? Trejo wasn’t saying. He’d stuck to his story that he wasn’t there, hadn’t been in Seattle. He said the videotape that SPD had showed him wasn’t of him. Maybe it wasn’t. Since Battles hadn’t seen it, she had no reason to doubt her client. She suspected command would call an Article 32 hearing, probably sooner rather than later. If Trejo wasn’t in Seattle, the defense was simple. If he was, she’d need mitigating arguments—D’Andre Miller was hurrying to get home and not paying attention. It was dark out. Miller stepped off the curb without looking, leaving Trejo little chance to stop before striking him. Miller might not have even been in the crosswalk. Any number of things could have happened to explain the accident.

  But not to explain the fact that Trejo had fled—if he’d fled.

  Someone knocked on her door.

  “Come in,” she said.

  “Lieutenant, may I have a word?”

  Rebecca Stanley, Leah’s officer in charge, or OIC, entered. Battles stood but resisted the urge to salute; the Navy was less formal than other branches of the military. A salute was only exchanged outdoors. However, Stanley had just recently been assigned to Kitsap and was a bit more formal than Leah’s prior OIC. Battles didn’t want to appear disrespectful, which was why she’d stood.

  “Please,” Battles said.

  Stanley closed Leah’s office door, turning gingerly to do so. It was a poorly kept secret at Kitsap that Stanley had injured her back while serving at a base in Kabul, Afghanistan, where she’d been assigned to help process the plethora of claims filed by Afghani civilians who’d suffered property damage or had lost loved ones during the United States’s military mission. During one of those nights, Stanley’s base had taken mortar fire, which wasn’t unusual, though this time the accuracy of the attack had been. A mortar hit Stanley’s room, throwing her from her bed and into a wall. She’d suffered a broken back and had to have several of her ver
tebrae fused.

  Stanley looked up at the bank of unused overhead lights. “Is it always this dark in here?”

  “I like to think of it as mood lighting,” Battles said.

  Stanley gave a polite smile and slowly lowered herself into one of the two cloth chairs. Battles sat behind her desk.

  “The probable cause hearing has caused a bit of a stir around here this morning,” Stanley said, getting right to the point.

  “Thought it might.”

  “You met with Trejo?” she asked, her dark eyes fluctuating between dull and unexpressive, and piercing. She folded her dark hair behind her ears.

  “Not to any great degree,” Battles said, still positioning to get the case. “I got his call Thursday night. The King County Jail was on my way home from working out so I stopped off and told everybody he wasn’t talking and to not even try.” She shrugged, trying to make it appear as no big deal.

  “I’m told NCIS is investigating the allegations, but there isn’t a lot to do—no witnesses, a couple of videotapes. Forensics on the car are apparently inconsequential. I’m also told by senior trial counsel that the Navy will take jurisdiction.”

  “He indicated that at the hearing. I figured we would . . . under the circumstances.”

  “Trejo say whether or not he wanted civilian counsel?”

  “He didn’t, but I don’t see how he’s going to afford civilian counsel.”

  “And the videotape, what did he have to say about it?”

  “He says it’s not him.”

  “Have you seen it?”

  “Not yet.”

  Stanley put her hands together, as if about to say grace at dinner. “Well, that brings it back to us.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “You want this case.”

  It wasn’t a question. “I do.”

  “It has all the appearances of a dead-bang loser, unless Trejo is telling the truth and he isn’t on the tape.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “You think you’re up to it?”

  “Absolutely.”