Her Final Breath (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 2)

by Robert Dugoni

  “I didn’t do it,” Gipson said. “I swear to God I didn’t kill her.”

  CHAPTER 10

  They placed Walter Gipson in one of the hard interrogation rooms on the seventh floor of the Justice Center. A windowless box, the room seemed to radiate beneath white fluorescent lights. They’d let Gipson “cook” for twenty to thirty minutes. With the door shut, the walls closed in quickly, as did the thought of spending years in a room just like it.

  Rick Cerrabone, a senior prosecuting attorney and member of MDOP, joined Tracy and Kins, all of them watching Gipson from behind one-way glass. The teacher sat hunched over the nicked and scarred table. He looked older without the baseball cap.

  “How’d he know her?” Cerrabone asked. Faz had once pointed out that Cerrabone was the spitting image of former Yankees manager Joe Torre—balding, with a hangdog look about him, dark bags beneath tired eyes, and a heavy five-o’clock shadow.

  “She was a student in his writing class at the community college,” Tracy said. “He admitted taking her to the motel on Aurora last night, but he swears to God he didn’t kill her.”

  “They always swear to God, don’t they?” Kins said. He sat in a chair near the blinking colored lights of one of the recording devices.

  “Why’d he run?” Cerrabone asked.

  “Says he got scared and panicked,” Tracy said. “He’d seen a news report.”

  “Any DNA?” Cerrabone said.

  “None on file.”

  “So no priors,” Cerrabone said. In Washington State everyone convicted of a crime was required to provide a DNA sample.

  “Not even a parking ticket,” Kins said. “The guy teaches handicapped kids.”

  Cerrabone ran a hand over the stubble of his chin. “Any DNA on the rope?”

  “Melton says he’s making it a priority,” Tracy said, referring to Michael Melton at the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab.

  “What about Nicole Hansen? Does he have any known connection to her?”

  “He says he’s never heard of her,” Tracy said. “I’ve got Faz and Del running his photo over to the Dancing Bare to see if anyone picks him out of a montage.”

  “How long before we get the search warrants for his house and office?” Kins asked.

  “And the storage shed,” Tracy added.

  Cerrabone checked his cell phone. “Probably have them by the time you’re finished. Make sure he waives his right to counsel on the tape.”

  Kins stood. Tracy said, “I’ll take this alone.”

  “You sure?” They almost always interviewed a suspect with another detective, for safety.

  “He started talking the minute I put the cuffs on him and didn’t shut up the entire ride here. Let’s see if he’ll keep talking to me.”

  Tracy removed Gipson’s handcuffs, sat across the table from him, and confirmed that he understood his Miranda rights and agreed to waive them. “Let’s go over some things again, Walter. How did you know Angela Schreiber?”

  “She was taking a course in English at Seattle Community College. I teach there a couple nights a week.”

  “Okay. So what happened?”

  “She submitted an essay on being a dancer. It was really well written, detailed. After class I asked her about it, and she told me it was true and invited me to come see her.”

  “And you went to watch her dance?”

  “Not at first. Not for a while actually. She kept asking when I was going to go, so I decided to go see, you know, just one time. I only went a couple times.”

  “So how long before you started having sex?”

  Gipson sighed. “I don’t recall. She asked for a ride to the club one night after class. She said her car had broken down and she didn’t have the money to fix it.”

  “You had intercourse in your car?”

  “No.”

  “She gave you a blow job?”

  Gipson lowered his focus to the table, embarrassed. “Yeah.”

  “And you paid her for it.”

  He closed his eyes. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Tell me what it was like.”

  He looked up. His eyes were watering. “She said she was having a hard time making ends meet. She’d come to Seattle for a job, but it didn’t work out and she hadn’t been able to find another one, and living here was more expensive than she thought, and then her car broke down. She said she started dancing to pay the bills.”

  It sounded like a sob story to separate Gipson from his money. “So, what, you were just helping her out?”

  “I know how it sounds now.”

  “How much would you give her?”

  “Fifty. Sometimes a hundred.”

  “It had nothing to do with the sex?”

  Gipson frowned. “I guess it did.”

  “And you went to the motel last night?” Tracy asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “What about your wife?”

  “She went to her sister’s to have dinner, then called and said she was going to spend the night in Tacoma.”

  “So you didn’t have to rush home.”

  “Right.”

  “Who chose the motel?”

  “She did.”

  “Did you ask her why you didn’t just go to her apartment?”

  “She said she had a roommate who worked early and she didn’t want to wake her.” According to Ron Mayweather, the A Team’s fifth wheel, Schreiber lived alone in a rented studio apartment on Capitol Hill.

  “Who paid for the room?”

  “I did. But she got it.”

  “You didn’t want to be seen.”

  Gipson shrugged. “No.”

  “What time did you get there?”

  “It was after her shift; I think around one or one thirty.”

  “And you had sex?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much did you pay her?”

  “I gave her two hundred.” They’d found $343 in Schreiber’s purse. Nicole Hansen’s purse contained $94.

  “Did you wear a condom?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what?”

  “I left.”

  “Slam, bam, thank you, ma’am?”

  Gipson closed his eyes and shook his head. “I had to teach in the morning.”

  “And were you worried your wife might call the apartment?”

  “I guess so, yeah.”

  Tracy studied him. “Were you having any second thoughts, Walter, like maybe Angela wasn’t telling you the truth?”

  Gipson sat back and exhaled. “She knew the motel. She knew where the office was, how much the rooms cost.”

  “You thought maybe she might be playing you?”

  “I just knew it had to stop. I knew it was wrong.”

  “Did you get angry when you figured out she was playing you?”

  “A little, I guess. But, you know, it wasn’t like she forced me.”

  “What time did you leave?”

  “I don’t recall.”

  “Anyone see you leave?”

  “I don’t know; I don’t think so.”

  “So you just left her in the motel room.”

  “I offered to drive her home, but she said she’d take a cab.”

  “You ever go to a strip club called the Dancing Bare?”

  “I’ve never been to a strip club in my life, not before this, except maybe once for a bachelor party.”

  “You have any hobbies, Walter?”

  “Hobbies?”

  “Yeah. You know—golf, beer pong?”

  “I fly-fish.”

  Tracy shifted her gaze to the one-way glass. “Do you tie your own flies?”

  “Since I was a kid; my dad taught me.”

  “Are you right-handed or left-handed?”

  “Right-handed.”

  “Things ever get a little kinky with Angela?”

  “What?”

  “You know, role-playing, toys. Did she ever ask to be tied up?”

  “No. I’m not into that.”
/>
  “Into what?”

  “Bondage. Sadomasochism. That stuff.”

  “How much money did you give her for the room that night?”

  “Forty.”

  “How much was the room for the hour?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did she give you back any change?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Where’d you get the money to be dropping on a stripper every week?”

  Gipson shrugged. “I took the job at the community college; we needed the money with the baby.”

  “How old is your daughter?”

  “Two.”

  A thought came to her. “How long have you been married, Walter?”

  “A year and a half.” Gipson sat back again. After a moment, he gave a resigned “what was I going to do” shrug. “She’s my daughter.”

  Tracy nodded. “Angela Schreiber was somebody’s daughter too.”

  Two corrections officers escorted Walter Gipson back to King County Jail. For now they’d hold him on solicitation, and suspicion of murder. Tracy and Kins returned to their bull pen. Cubicle walls divided the Violent Crimes Section into four bull pens, each with four desks and a table in the center. Along the perimeter of the cubicles were the sergeants’ and lieutenants’ offices. Each team was also assigned a fifth detective, called a “fifth wheel,” to take up slack. A flat-screen television hung over the B Team’s bull pen. Tonight it aired an NBA game.

  Kins’s phone rang before he’d reached his desk. He answered, listened a moment, then said, “We’ll be right there,” and hung up. “Nolasco.”

  It was a Nolasco power play to make everyone go to his office. They walked around the corner and down the hall. The captain’s office had a view west, toward Elliott Bay, or it would have, if Nolasco ever raised the blinds.

  Nolasco was seated at his desk with his back to the framed commendations on the wall. On a credenza were stacks of paper and photographs of his two children, a son in a hockey uniform and a daughter holding a soccer ball. Nolasco displayed no pictures of either of his ex-wives, who he frequently complained were stealing him blind.

  He did not look happy, but Nolasco rarely looked happy unless he was busting somebody’s chops. “Did Mayweather tell you I wanted to see you as soon as you got in?”

  “We were with a suspect in the dancer murders,” Kins said.

  “And?”

  “Says he didn’t do it.”

  “Tell me what you got.”

  Tracy and Kins remained standing. “Angela Schreiber was a stripper at the Pink Palace,” Tracy started.

  Nolasco leaned back in his chair. “I’ve read some of the witness statements. I want to know if it’s the same guy.”

  “Appears to be,” Tracy said.

  “Don’t give me ‘appears to be.’ The mayor and city council are riding the Chief hard, and shit flows downhill.”

  Which explained why Nolasco was still at the office this late. Despite the similarities in the manner of death between the two dancers, the brass and city hall would be reluctant to acknowledge a “serial killer.” Each was well versed in the media frenzy those two words stirred in a population that had experienced more than its fair share of infamous murderers, not to mention the economic impact a task force could have on an already taxed police budget. Serial killers could get away with killing for years, sometimes decades, while task forces devoured man hours, budgets, and often careers.

  “Same method to strangle both victims,” Kins said. “In both instances the bed was made, the victim’s clothes neatly folded.”

  Tracy watched Nolasco to see if any of the information triggered a recollection of Beth Stinson, but Nolasco didn’t flinch.

  “What about the ropes?”

  “Preliminarily? Looks like same type, same knot. Melton’s got it at the lab.”

  “Who you got working it from here?”

  “Faz and Del were next up. They’re running down fingerprints. Ron is running down the license plates at the motel and last phone calls and text messages on Schreiber’s cell.”

  “Too many similarities to not be the same guy,” Kins concluded.

  Nolasco put up a finger. “That’s why we’re talking in my office, Sparrow,” he said using Kins’s other nickname. “We don’t know that.”

  “Seriously?” Tracy said.

  “The mayor and the Chief don’t want to be answering those questions right now. What about this guy you pulled in?”

  “Walter Gipson,” Tracy said. “He admits being with the victim at the motel last night. Denies killing her.”

  “Sounds like bullshit.”

  “It may be,” Tracy said.

  “How good is the evidence?”

  “His fingerprints are all over the motel room. We’re waiting on the DNA. The only DNA on the rope that strangled Hansen was hers.”

  “How does that happen?”

  “Don’t know,” Tracy said.

  Kins’s phone buzzed. He read the text message. “Cerrabone sent over the warrants. Maybe we find a coil of rope and we all go home.”

  Tracy didn’t think so.

  CHAPTER 11

  Margarita Gipson answered the door looking tired and scared. Inside the modest but clean apartment, a woman who bore a strong family resemblance, likely the sister from Tacoma, held the little girl, who had her head tucked to the woman’s chest, thumb stuck in her mouth.

  She’s my daughter, Walter Gipson had said, and it seemed to somehow make him more human. Then again, Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, had killed at least forty-nine women in Seattle, and he told the detectives who arrested him that he’d lured victims into his car while his young son was in the backseat.

  Crosswhite served the warrant to search Walter Gipson’s home and storage shed, and the CSI team accompanying them went to work, first retrieving Gipson’s handgun from a locked safe in the bedroom closet. The four-digit code to open the safe was Margarita’s birthday. “So I don’t forget,” she said.

  As the CSI team continued, Margarita sat in a living room chair, fidgeting with the beads of a rosary and wiping tears with a tissue, her eyes bloodshot and puffy. Tracy sat on a cloth couch across from her. Kins and the sister remained standing. Tracy explained that Walter was in custody at King County Jail and would not be home that night.

  “But he say it is no problem,” Margarita said. “He say he would not get caught, that it is not the thing the police devote their . . .” She looked to her sister, but the woman shrugged and shook her head.

  “Their resources?” Tracy asked.

  “Attention . . . He say it is not the thing the police devote their attention.” The final words shuddered in her chest, and she covered a sob with her hand.

  Tracy and Kins exchanged a glance. Tracy was wondering if maybe they needed a translator. “What did your husband mean about the police not devoting their attention? What was he talking about?”

  “The taxes.”

  “The taxes?”

  “He say the police, they no care.”

  “Your husband was not paying his taxes?” Tracy found it hard to believe Gipson’s taxes were not automatically deducted by the school district, then thought of his part-time job at the community college. “Do you mean on the money he makes teaching?”

  “No, the fishing flies,” Margarita said.

  Kins nodded to Tracy. “He sells the fishing flies he makes.”

  Margarita looked up at him. “With the baby, we need the money.”

  “And he doesn’t pay taxes on what he sells,” Tracy said, understanding.

  “He say the police no care.”

  “Where does your husband make these flies?” Tracy asked.

  They stepped around a Toyota Prius parked in the carport. Margarita turned the dials on a padlock. “He makes the flies at night,” she said. She tugged on the lock, but the clasp didn’t open.

  After Margarita checked the four numbers and pulled again, without success, Tracy said, “Let me
try. What’s the combination?”

  “My birthday,” Margarita said. “So I don’t forget. 0-4-1-7.”

  It was the same combination to open the gun safe. Tracy tried without success.

  “I’ve got a bolt cutter in the truck,” one of the CSI detectives said.

  “Get it.”

  Minutes later, he’d snapped the lock. Tracy removed it, opened the latch, and pulled open the door.

  “There is a light,” Margarita said. “A string.”

  Tracy reached into darkness, felt the string brush across the back of her hand, and tugged. A clear bulb emitted a sharp light above a crude workbench built in a narrow space. A corkboard of intricately tied fishing flies lined the back wall, but the flies were not what immediately caught Tracy’s attention. When Margarita Gipson stuck her head inside the space, she quickly covered a sob with her hand and started to cry again.

  Walter Gipson was brought back to the interrogation room, this time wearing a red King County Jail jumpsuit, white socks, and flip-flops. Tracy and Kins didn’t wait to let him cook. They entered the room together. Tracy did not remove Gipson’s handcuffs.

  “We’ve been in the storage shed, Walter,” she said.

  Gipson’s Adam’s apple bobbed.

  Kins slid a photograph encased in clear plastic across the table.

  Margarita’s birthday had not worked because her husband had either changed the combination or changed the padlock. Amid the hundreds of flies Walter Gipson had tied, he’d also tacked a half dozen naked photographs of Angela Schreiber to the corkboard. In several, Tracy recognized the worn and stained gray carpet from the Aurora Motor Inn. Walter Gipson had been a little more infatuated with Angela Schreiber than he’d led Tracy to believe. And people who lied usually had something to hide.

  Gipson bowed his head and began to weep. “I think I’d like to talk to that attorney now.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Tracy popped a can of cat food and left it on the counter, too tired to take out a dish from the cupboard. Roger didn’t seem to mind. For herself she dumped a can of tuna on the remainder of a salad she hadn’t had time to finish at lunch and carried it with her. As she crossed through the dining room, she noticed her laptop on the table and thought again of the murder of Beth Stinson. Johnny Nolasco’s case.