Close to Home (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 5)

by Robert Dugoni

  Darcy stepped in and closed the door.

  “How’re you doing, ma’am?” Darcy asked. Enlisted personnel always used “ma’am” as a sign of respect when addressing female naval officers.

  “I’m doing fine. Thanks for asking. What’s the status of the rumor mill out there?”

  Darcy stepped to the corner of Battles’s desk. “Everyone is talking about what happened.”

  “So what’s the verdict? Am I guilty?” The unwilling computer and empty desk drawer seemed to answer that question.

  Darcy grimaced.

  Battles managed another smile. “Don’t worry about it, Darcy.”

  “I don’t believe it, ma’am,” Darcy said quickly. “I didn’t believe it when I heard it and I still don’t. I wanted you to know that.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

  “So, you’ll still be coming in?”

  “Until they tell me otherwise,” she said, which they could do any minute now.

  “Then you’ll let me know if the sky is falling.”

  “Count on it.”

  Battles’s desk phone rang.

  “I’ll let you get back to it then,” Darcy said. She smiled as she pulled open the office door, but the smile had a sad quality to it, like she was looking at a death-row prisoner a final time before her execution.

  Battles looked at the clock on her wall: 9:01. Darcy might very well be right.

  With two nine-year-old boys in his sister’s house, Del doubted there were many secrets, especially about who was dating whom. He was right. Mark and Stevie quickly pegged “J-Man” to be Jack Welch, a senior at Ballard High School, who they said had been sniffing around Allie for six months.

  “He’s a loser,” Stevie said, dismissing Welch with a wave of his hand. “He’s in a band.”

  “They suck,” Mark said, eyes widening. “We saw him play once at a talent show at Allie’s school. He was like . . .” Mark jumped off the couch, furiously strumming the imaginary strings of an air guitar and bobbing his head so hard Del thought it might snap.

  “It was insanely awful,” Stevie agreed. “The singer was so bad, you couldn’t even understand him.” He too went into a furious imitation, grunting and mumbling his words.

  “When’s the last time you saw him over here?” Del asked.

  “Mom doesn’t let him come over here.” Stevie emphasized his words. “She hates him.”

  “He’s a loser,” Mark said again and slumped down onto the seat cushions.

  Del suspected as much, but at least J-Man now had a name.

  Battles sat across the desk from Rebecca Stanley, who kept an office just down the hall. Stanley had the look of a mother whose daughter had been invited to her first prom, but by a young man she didn’t care for. Battles decided to take the same approach she’d taken when she’d been called in to the Dean of Students’s office at her Catholic all-girls high school. She wasn’t about to start defending herself until the charges and the supporting evidence were spelled out.

  “Did you pull my files?” Battles asked.

  “I did.”

  “All due respect, but the clients I have been defending need to be notified and—”

  Stanley raised a hand. “They were, and they’ve each agreed to seek new counsel. I apologize, Leah, but these are unusual circumstances. I talked with the CO late last night.”

  “And?” Battles said.

  “I told him it was not within your character to do what you have been accused of doing. I also want you to know that my opinion might not matter much.”

  Battles knew the loss of the tape would cause significant interdepartmental stress, and Stanley had a duty to run the department. “So Brian filed papers?” she asked.

  “He dropped an e-bomb this morning, and I think we can expect that things will go nuclear. Cho is under considerable pressure, because of the nature of the crime, to court-martial Trejo. The loss of the tape . . . The CO said we can expect an investigation. I’m told that NCIS will be brought in to interview everyone.”

  Battles nodded, but did not speak.

  “Look, an Article 32 is supposed to be just a stepping stone, but Lopresti built it up to be something much more for the public and the media. He was hoping it would force a resolution and mollify public outrage. Now it’s blown up in his face, and he isn’t happy about it.”

  “Trejo wouldn’t plea,” Battles said. “I explained everything to him, the charges and the likely ramification of those charges. I went over the evidence with him, showed him the videotape. I even told him that I couldn’t beat the plea he was offered. He wouldn’t take it.”

  “You spoke to his wife?”

  Battles nodded. “She said he was home, but I believe she’s standing by her husband.”

  “He told her to say he was home,” Stanley said.

  “I think so.”

  “He couldn’t have somehow known that the tape would go missing, could he?” Stanley’s eyes narrowed and her brow furrowed.

  Battles sat back in her chair. “Nothing I said would have given him that impression.”

  “Well, we now have a massive headache and the public wants the Navy’s head on a stake.”

  “And Lopresti needs a designated head, and I’m it. I get it.” Battles had had difficult cases before, but she’d always had the safety net of knowing she could walk away after doing her job. This was different. This time, she was the person with much to lose. “But if it’s all the same to you and the CO, I intend to keep my head.”

  “I hope you do,” Stanley said. “Lopresti asked that I pull and review the security tape for the DSO night before last. I’m to report to him in about an hour and tell him what the tape reveals.”

  Battles knew the security camera was positioned over the front door to cover the interior lobby. She suspected Stanley had not elaborated on the tape’s contents because it didn’t help Battles.

  “Can I see it?”

  Stanley nodded. “I don’t see why not.”

  It took Stanley a few minutes to load the security feed onto her computer. She pivoted the monitor forty-five degrees so they could both watch. The black-and-white camera captured anyone who entered and exited the building. The angle, however, meant the viewer was looking at the top of people’s heads as they entered and exited the front door. If they entered the building wearing their baggy blueberries and cap, everyone looked similar.

  “I asked for a copy of the tape from ten p.m. to six a.m. the following morning,” Stanley said.

  Neither woman intended to watch the full eight hours. Stanley hit “Fast Forward.” At 10:31, Brian Cho came down the hall and stopped outside Battles’s office. Cho knocked before entering, and closed the door.

  “That’s when Brian came down to find out if Trejo was going to plead,” Battles said.

  “When he saw the box of evidence?” Stanley asked.

  “I still had it,” Battles said.

  At 10:37 p.m. Cho reemerged, pausing outside Battles’s office door. He looked to be smiling. In his hands he held his hat, what the Navy referred to as his “cover.” Then he shook his head, put on his cap, and exited the building.

  “What was that?” Battles asked. “Was he smiling?”

  “I don’t know.” Stanley glanced at her before returning her attention to the computer. She hit the “Fast Forward” button again.

  At 10:49, Battles exited her office carrying the evidence box, the top affixed and in place. She carried the box away from the camera, toward the stairs leading up to Bob Grassilli’s office on the second floor just across from the courtroom.

  “That’s when I took the evidence box back,” she said.

  “Unfortunately, there’s an argument that the tape isn’t in the box,” Stanley said.

  On the tape, Battles returned to her office. Several minutes later, she came out dressed in bike clothes and wearing her backpack as she strapped on her bike helmet.

  “The backpack doesn’t help either,” Stanley said.<
br />
  No one else entered or exited the building until 11:03 p.m., when the civilian janitor pushed in a rolling garbage can. Stanley hit “Fast Forward” and the janitor’s movements looked a bit like a Charlie Chaplin movie.

  “Can you slow it down?” Battles asked.

  Stanley did.

  The janitor walked behind the reception desk, then in and out of the ground-floor offices, emptying their garbage cans. After doing so, he departed the building, presumably to discard the garbage, which would be incinerated. Stanley again hit “Fast Forward,” stopping the tape when the janitor returned carrying a vacuum and a bucket of cleaning supplies. He set the vacuum in the entry and took the cleaning supplies down the hall, to the bathrooms. Stanley advanced the tape, slowing it when the janitor returned, placed the cleaning supplies on the reception desk, and started vacuuming. When he’d finished, he exited the building, this time for good.

  No one else entered or exited until office workers arrived the following morning—Cho had been one of the first at 7:15 a.m. He walked through reception and down the hall to the stairs leading up to his office on the second floor.

  Battles arrived a half hour later.

  The tape ended. Battles sat back. “Cho’s office is on the second floor, close to the court reporter.”

  “Yes, but he left before you brought the evidence back,” Stanley said.

  “But if the tape wasn’t in the box . . .”

  Stanley shook her head. “That’s a hell of a risk—that you might look for the tape and not find it—and we don’t have any information to confirm that was the case.” Stanley readjusted her monitor back to its initial position. “NCIS spoke with the janitor. He doesn’t recall any videocassette on your desk or on the floor, and he said he wouldn’t have touched anything even if it was there.”

  Battles nodded. “So where do we go from here?”

  Stanley shrugged. “Trejo has asked for new counsel. I’ve assigned Kevin Cipoletti.” Cipoletti used the office across the hall from Battles. “It’s for the best, Leah, under the circumstances. If they reconvene the Article 32 hearing, you can’t very well be Trejo’s counsel, not to mention the ethics investigation is going to keep you busy.”

  “Do they intend to reconvene the hearing?”

  “I don’t know, but I understand Cho is going to argue that he can use other evidence to at least establish probable cause. He might be right, but that decision will be for the preliminary hearing officer to decide. I’m scheduled to have a conference call with Lopresti and senior trial counsel later this morning. I don’t know what the outcome will be, or if they’ve even had time to make that decision.”

  “You mean regarding the ethics investigation?”

  “Among other things,” she said. “But I’m not sure they’ll stop there, Leah. If they get that far, and there’s no better explanation for the tape having gone missing, they could seek to court-martial you for dereliction of duty and obstruction.”

  And in one fell swoop wipe away all the reasons Battles had joined the Navy, to make some money, to try cases, and to serve her country and earn a pension. She exhaled. “And until then, what am I supposed to do?”

  “Until that decision has been made, you can either work desk duty or take an accrued leave of absence. Given the climate around here, the latter might be worth considering. You don’t need to tell me your decision now.”

  “That’s not a problem,” Battles said, thinking again of her mother’s admonition about not being present, and what it signified. “I have no intention of taking a leave of absence. If I have to twiddle my thumbs at my desk, then so be it. But I intend to show up here every day, until someone tells me not to.”

  When he arrived at work, Del ran Jack Welch through the system. Welch had turned eighteen years old during the school year, an adult. He had no prior arrests. Faz had looked him up on Google and found a Facebook page. Welch played guitar in a band called CHAOS. In his posted pictures, he looked a lot like the drug addict in the pictures in Allie’s text messages—so rail thin it was a mystery how he was still alive.

  “Listen to this crap,” Del said to Faz. Noise burst from his computer speakers. It sounded like cats walking over guitar strings. “Apparently that’s music.” He shut it down. “And here I thought Stevie and Mark were making it up when they said the band was bad. Hell, they sounded better than the band.”

  Del also determined that Welch lived at an address not far from Allie’s home. He wanted to pick him up outside of the high school and bring him downtown for questioning.

  “You’re inviting unnecessary problems,” Faz said, rocking his chair away from his desk. “Let’s pick him up at his home. Maybe he’s willing to talk. Maybe his parents will talk.”

  Del paced the workspace in the center of the A Team’s four cubicles. Tracy was not yet in, and Kins was out on medical leave, finally having his hip replaced. “He’s over eighteen. We don’t have to go through his parents.”

  “If he asks for a lawyer, or his parents get him a lawyer, we won’t get squat out of him,” Faz said. “Let’s hope he’s scared. Wouldn’t you have been at eighteen? Look, a lot of these parents know each other. They knew Allie. I say we use his parents rather than fight them. He’s not the guy you’re after, Del. You want his dealer, and whoever his dealer is buying from.”

  “And if the parents won’t cooperate?” Del asked.

  “Then we take your approach, assuming we can prove he supplied the drugs. We have enough to at least bring him in and question him.”

  “Fine, but if he provided Allie with the heroin that killed her, I’m going to see that Celia McDaniel charges him with a controlled substance homicide.”

  “One step at a time,” Faz said. “First, let’s see if he talks.”

  “See if who talks?” Tracy dropped her backpack on her chair.

  “The kid who supplied Del’s niece with the heroin,” Faz said.

  Tracy looked to Del. “You found her dealer?”

  “I found the guy who knows her dealer.”

  Faz looked like he’d been struck by a thought. “Wait, what are you doing here? Did you finish the Article 32 hearing in one day?” He sounded skeptical.

  “You could say that,” Tracy said. “You remember that videotape Kins and I got from the convenience store?”

  “The one that showed Trejo buying the energy drinks?” Faz asked.

  “It’s missing.”

  “What do you mean, ‘missing’?” Del said.

  “I mean the Navy prosecutor can’t find it. Neither can the court reporter who is responsible for keeping all the evidence.”

  “Someone stole it?” Del said.

  They both started to interrupt but Tracy cut them off. “It gets better. The defense attorney was the last person to have the evidence. And no one has a copy.”

  “We don’t have a copy?” Faz asked.

  Tracy shook her head. “We never got that chance, not after the Navy asserted jurisdiction so quickly. We turned over what we had. The prosecutor said he was going to make a copy after the hearing.”

  “So what happens now?” Faz asked.

  “Good question. The preliminary hearing officer gave the prosecutor until end of today to find the tape.”

  “Then what?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “You think Trejo could walk?” Faz said.

  “I don’t know, but that tape is a key piece of evidence. Without it, I’m not sure the prosecution can place Trejo in Seattle at the time of the accident. If they can’t, I don’t see how they can prove he was driving the car.”

  “The defense attorney . . . what was her name?” Faz asked.

  “Battles. Leah Battles,” Tracy said.

  “What does she say?”

  “She doesn’t deny she had the evidence brought to her the night before the hearing, but she can’t say for certain that the tape was or was not in the box. It might have been, but she said she didn’t take it out of the box that night. She
says she put the box on the court reporter’s chair late the night before the hearing, long after he’d gone home.”

  “Sounds like bullshit,” Faz said.

  Tracy shrugged. “Maybe, but given the potential consequences, why would she do it?”

  “She couldn’t win with the tape,” Faz said. “I don’t think she could, but she’s no dummy—aggressive, yes, but not stupid. She had the evidence brought to her office and the prosecutor saw it there that night when they talked. If she was going to do something like this, wouldn’t she have been a little more discreet about it?”

  “People do stupid things all the time,” Del said. “That’s what keeps us in business.”

  “But this wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment action. She would have had time to think about it. What could she have hoped to gain?”

  Faz said, “If she didn’t take it, then who did?”

  “And why?” Del said. “I don’t know, Tracy. Seems like she’s the one with a motive.”

  “To answer your first question—who could have taken the tape, I’m assuming anyone with access to the court reporter’s office,” Tracy said.

  “Which is who?” Faz asked.

  “I don’t know yet, but apparently he doesn’t lock his office.”

  “So anyone, then,” Faz said.

  “Anyone with a reason,” Del said.

  Tracy checked her watch. “I’ve got a meeting with Clarridge, Cerrabone, and Dunleavy to discuss SPD possibly reasserting jurisdiction.”

  “They’re not going to do that, not without the tape,” Faz said.

  “I don’t think so either.” Tracy paused, thinking. “I want to talk to her. I want to talk to Battles, find out what she knows.”

  “Why would she talk to us?” Del asked. “Especially if she did take the tape.”

  “Maybe she won’t. But if she didn’t take it, then we have the same goal.”

  “D’Andre Miller’s family is going to go crazy,” Faz said.

  “They already are,” Tracy said. “The hearing got out of control, and the mother looked at me like she’d expected something like this all along.” She checked her watch again. “I’m not looking forward to briefing Clarridge and Dunleavy. They’re going to be pissed. But I’m really not looking forward to talking with the family.”