Her Final Breath (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 2)

by Robert Dugoni

  “Mission accomplished.”

  Faz vacated his chair. “You sit. I’ll stand and try not to breathe on you.”

  Tracy took his seat and hit “Play.” The video was poor quality, largely because the lights working in the parking lot were sporadic, creating patches of dark shadows. The club’s pink stucco walls looked pale gray, and when the neon marquee and Jumbotron flashed, everything on the video washed out. Nash had no doubt skimped on the security cameras when running the budget for his “gentlemen’s club.”

  After thirteen static seconds ticked off the timer in the lower right corner, a man in a cap and a woman with a red handbag slung over her shoulder walked out from behind the building. “Gipson and Schreiber,” Tracy said, feeling slightly unnerved watching the final moments of Schreiber’s life, like some sort of deity peering down from the heavens, knowing what was about to happen. The couple held hands, swinging their arms like high school sweethearts strolling on a warm summer evening and reveling in the feel of each other’s intertwined fingers. Gipson pulled Schreiber to him to sneak a kiss. He looked like he wanted more, but Schreiber leaned away, putting a hand to his chest. She glanced back to the Pink Palace. Did she know there were surveillance cameras and was worried Nash might fire her, or was she just concerned about someone coming out the door?

  They separated and quickly slid in opposite sides of the car. The headlights did not immediately illuminate, and it was too dark to see what was happening inside the car, though easy enough for Tracy to venture a good guess. Gipson was probably trying to get some of what Schreiber wouldn’t give him in the parking lot. Thirty-eight seconds ticked off the timer before the headlights turned on and two elongated beams of light shot across the asphalt. Gipson drove to the driveway, briefly paused, then turned onto the street fronting the Pink Palace, departing the camera’s coverage in the direction of Aurora.

  Tracy looked back at Faz, who was grinning like somebody just invited him to dinner. “Nothing, right?”

  “Nothing,” she agreed.

  Faz stepped forward and hit the “Play” button again. “This time, don’t watch Gipson and Schreiber; watch the upper left corner of the screen.” Gipson and Schreiber reappeared, but Tracy kept her eyes on the corner. When Gipson’s car pulled to the driveway entrance, another car appeared, a dark-colored sedan.

  Faz said out loud what Tracy immediately noticed. “Headlights are off.”

  The building blocked the camera’s coverage, and the car disappeared from view. Gipson’s Toyota pulled out of the lot. Seconds later, the other car, just a blur, flashed past the Pink Palace.

  “Remember you said maybe Gipson wasn’t the last one with Schreiber?” Faz said.

  Tracy went back to the beginning of the video and pointed to the corner. “Watch where the car enters the frame.”

  “Thinking the same thing,” Faz said. “If it was parked, it was parked just out of the camera’s coverage.”

  She played the video again, trying to time the car’s reappearance. She hit “Stop,” but too late, the blurred image was no longer on the screen. She tried several more times before she’d captured the frame she wanted, the dark-colored sedan just in front of the Pink Palace. The clarity of the picture, already poor, was made worse by the Jumbotron, which at that moment had flashed a brilliant white.

  “Not going to get the license plate,” Faz said.

  Tracy leaned closer, but she couldn’t see inside the car or make out anything definitive about its make or model.

  “Let’s get it over to the lab,” she said. “See if Mike can do anything with it.”

  “Hey, it ain’t nothing, right?” Faz said.

  Sometimes it was the little pieces of evidence that, when put together, led to an arrest.

  “It ain’t nothing,” she agreed.

  Tracy picked up Chinese food on the way home and sat at the dining room table picking at a carton of orange chicken. In the kitchen Roger pushed a tin can across the tile counter. The door intercom buzzed. She knew it wasn’t Dan. He’d called earlier to check in and tell her about his arbitration, which he felt was going well, though slow. Tracy set down her chopsticks and made her way to the front door, thinking it could be the officer assigned to watch the house in need of the bathroom.

  “Yes?” she said, pushing the button.

  “Detective Crosswhite? It’s Katie Pryor from the shooting range.”

  It took a moment for Tracy to register the young female officer she’d trained for her qualifying test. Though it had only been a few days, it felt like weeks. “I’ll buzz you in,” she said.

  Pryor shut the gate behind her and crossed the courtyard carrying a card and a potted plant. She was in uniform. There were now two patrol cars parked in front of the house.

  “I hope I’m not disturbing you,” she said, reaching the front door.

  “Just got home.”

  “I was going to leave this for you, but the gate . . .” She handed Tracy the plant—a cactus—and a card. “I thought it best to get you something that didn’t require a lot of care.”

  Tracy smiled. “Good call, but you didn’t have to do this.”

  As she took the plant, Roger shot past her. Tracy lunged to stop him, but too late. He bolted into the courtyard and around the side of the house.

  “I’m sorry,” Pryor said. “Do you want me to help you get him back inside?”

  “Easier said than done,” Tracy said. “I’ll get him in a bit. He doesn’t like the cold for long, and he’s a sucker for a can of food. Are you heading to work?”

  Pryor shook her head. “Finishing up, actually. We live over by the school. I didn’t realize you were this close.”

  Tracy had no idea what school Pryor was referring to. “You want to come in for a minute?”

  Pryor surprised Tracy when she accepted. “Maybe for a minute,” she said.

  Tracy shut the door, and they stepped inside.

  “I interrupted your dinner,” Pryor said, eyeing the cartons of Chinese food.

  “Have you eaten?”

  “I don’t want to impose.”

  “No imposition. I have more than I can eat, and I’d enjoy the company.”

  Tracy went to the kitchen and returned with two plates, another set of chopsticks, two glasses, and a bottle of wine. She poured Pryor a glass, and they sat scooping out rice and exchanging the cartons of orange chicken and garlic beef.

  “Do you always work at night?” Pryor said, looking at the laptop.

  “We’ve had a couple homicides.”

  “The two dancers over in North Seattle? Those are your cases?”

  “They’re mine.”

  “Is it the same guy?”

  Tracy sipped her wine. “Appears to be.”

  Pryor worked a piece of beef into her mouth. “Thanks for this.”

  “How’s your husband?”

  Pryor smiled. “Surprisingly okay. I’ve been to the range twice since we met.”

  “How are you shooting?”

  “Really well.” Pryor set down her chopsticks. She looked to have something on her mind. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure?”

  “It’s just you here?”

  “Me and the escape artist.”

  “Is it the job? I mean, is that why you’re not married? Working late? If this is too personal . . .”

  Tracy raised a hand. “It’s fine. I understand what you’re asking. My situation is a lot more complicated than that. I was married, briefly, and a long time ago, before I became a cop.” Tracy set down her chopsticks. “Look, I’m not a good role model, Katie. Twenty years ago if you’d asked me where I saw my life in five years, I would have said I would be married with two kids, living in a small town and teaching at the high school.”

  “What happened?”

  “Someone murdered my sister.”

  “I’m sorry,” Pryor said.

  “The thing is, her murder was why I became a cop. It isn’t why I’ve remained one.”
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  “Why have you?”

  “I love what I do. I love the mental and the physical challenge, and I love to shoot, always have. The thing is, you can make all kinds of plans for your future and then stumble ass-backward into what you were meant to do. Do you like being a cop?”

  Pryor smiled. “I was a criminal justice major. I thought I’d become a prosecutor or a defense attorney.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I got married young, got pregnant, the housing market went in the toilet, and we needed the income.”

  “And now?”

  “I enjoy it. I do.”

  “But . . .”

  “I worry about the strain on my marriage and being away from my daughters at night. I’ve met a lot of divorced cops.”

  “How old are your daughters?”

  Pryor pulled out a photograph from her shirt pocket and handed it to her. “Four and two. This is how I take them to work with me every day.”

  The little girls, wearing matching floral dresses and black Mary Janes, had their arms around each other’s necks in a loving embrace. Tracy had a dozen photographs just like it, of herself and Sarah as young girls. The framed pictures had once adorned their family home in Cedar Grove but were now packed in one of the boxes in the garage. She handed back the photograph. “They’re beautiful.”

  “You have any advice?” Pryor asked.

  Tracy found herself suddenly thinking not only of Sarah, but also of Nicole Hansen and Angela Schreiber. “Love them every chance you get,” she said.

  CHAPTER 15

  The 911 call was made at 11:25 the following morning. Tracy and Kins arrived at Joon’s Motel half an hour later. They walked across a parking lot littered with uniformed officers and patrol cars. News vans lined Aurora Avenue, and a pack of photographers and reporters jockeyed for position on the sidewalk with a crowd of onlookers attracted to the motel by the two news helicopters hovering overhead, blades thumping. It didn’t help that the morning had dawned crisp and clear, and now, near noon, the sun burned bright in a cloudless blue sky. People in the Northwest got outdoors when the sun came out, and nothing piqued curiosity more than a crime scene.

  “This is going to get ugly,” Kins said, eyeing the crowd.

  “It already is.”

  Two officers stood sentry at the foot of a staircase leading to the second level. “Room 14,” the younger-looking officer said. “In the corner.”

  His hands were empty. So were the other officer’s. “Who’s keeping the crime scene log?” Tracy asked.

  “Responding officer.” He pointed.

  The stairs vibrated beneath their feet as they climbed to the second floor. At the end of a landing blistered and worn bare, red crime scene tape had been tied from a door handle to the railing. A third uniformed officer stepped from an alcove holding a clipboard.

  “Tell us what you did,” Tracy said, signing the log and handing the clipboard to Kins.

  The officer pointed over the railing to the porte cochere. “The owner met me outside the office. He said the maid found her when she went in to clean the room.”

  “Where’s the maid now?” Kins asked.

  “My sergeant’s got her in the office with the manager. She’s pretty shook up.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said she knocked, got no answer, and used her passkey to enter. Said she walked in, saw the body, and ran out. The only thing she recalls touching was the door handle.” He cleared his throat. “She keeps praying in Spanish, making the sign of the cross, and kissing her crucifix.” His voice faded. He was shaken up too, though he was trying hard to hide it.

  Kins nodded toward the open door. “Did you go in?”

  “No, but I saw her when the fire department went in.”

  “String another piece of red tape at the foot of the stairs,” Tracy said, “and give the log to one of the two officers down there. Tell them I said no one comes up the stairs without signing and providing a shield number. Tell them to tell anyone who tries to cross that line that they’re going to have to file a report.”

  Kins opened his go bag and handed Tracy latex gloves and booties. Slipping them on, they stepped inside. The room smelled of fresh cigarette smoke and urine. As with the rooms where Nicole Hansen and Angela Schreiber were found, the thin bed cover had not been disturbed and the woman’s clothes had been neatly folded and left on the edge. The woman lay hog-tied at the foot of the bed. Unlike Hansen and Schreiber, she hadn’t toppled onto her side, nor was she blonde. Her dark-brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She was also bigger-boned, stockier. Her breasts pressed flat against the brown shag carpet. Cellulite dimples pocked her buttocks and the back of her thighs. A dark spot stained the carpet beneath her pelvis. Like Schreiber, the soles of her feet were red and blistered. Tracy let out a held breath and closed her eyes.

  “You all right?” Kins asked.

  “What’s his point, Kins? What’s he trying to tell us? Is he just humiliating them, or is there something more to it?”

  “Don’t know. I’ll tell Faz to have screens set up outside the alcove and at the foot of the stairs. Funk can back the van up to the landing to block the view.”

  The King County medical examiner would not be able to straighten the young woman’s limbs for several more hours. Even covered with a sheet, it wouldn’t be difficult for the media and the growing crowd of civilians to discern that the woman’s body was grotesquely contorted.

  Tracy looked about the room, taking it all in. She walked to the desk and pointed to a purple purse, a long gold chain dangling over the side. The purse matched the color of the dress folded on the corner of the bed. “You got it?”

  Kins photographed the purse. “We’re good.”

  Tracy carefully extracted a thin wallet, the kind with the plastic slip for the driver’s license on the outside. “Veronica Watson,” she said. She did the math. “Nineteen.” She removed several credit cards before she found what she was looking for—Watson’s license as an adult entertainer.

  “She dances at the Pink Palace,” she said.

  “Danced,” Kins said.

  CHAPTER 16

  Johnny Nolasco made his way back to his office through the A Team’s bull pen, the cubicles empty. He’d just come from a meeting with the brass on the dreaded eighth floor to discuss forming a task force following the murder of a third dancer. He shut the door to his office and unlocked his desk drawer, pulling out the burner phone. A thirty-day prepaid disposable, the burner was a favorite of drug dealers and pimps.

  She answered on the first ring. “You have yourself a serial killer,” he said. “We’re calling him the Cowboy.”

  “Great name,” Maria Vanpelt said. “That will get the national networks interested.”

  “SPD will be acknowledging it. And I’ll be requesting a task force with Tracy Crosswhite as the lead detective.”

  Vanpelt paused. “When can I run it?”

  “It hasn’t gone through the proper channels yet. But when it clears, you’ll be first. You might want to run a story about this being the third killing by the same man Crosswhite was supposed to be looking for when she left for Cedar Grove trying to get her sister’s killer a new trial.”

  “I don’t have a hard-on for Tracy Crosswhite the way you do, Johnny.”

  “You don’t have a story without Tracy Crosswhite . . . or me. We both know that.”

  Another pause. She was debating it. “I might be able to mention it in a recap.”

  “Then the news just became a lot more interesting.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Tracy ate a sandwich in the car with Kins, a late lunch—or early dinner. She’d lost track of the hours of the day and the days of the week. They were driving across the 520 floating bridge after paying Walter Gipson a visit to see if he could account for his whereabouts the prior evening.

  As they dropped down from the span on the west side of the bridge, a bald eagle sat perched on the arm of a light pole,
head cocked to the side looking out over the glass-still blue-gray surface of Lake Washington. With the University of Washington football stadium behind him and the distant snowcapped Olympic Mountains serving as a backdrop, it was the type of iconic image that won contests in magazines, and the type of beauty Tracy had to occasionally make herself acknowledge.

  Her cell phone rang. She put Faz on speaker so Kins could hear.

  “What did Gipson have to say?” Faz asked.

  “Says he was at home,” Tracy said.

  “Wife verify that?”

  “Wife isn’t there. Moved to Tacoma with the sister. Gipson says he went running late, came back, and worked in the storage shed tying flies. None of the neighbors can verify it though.”

  “What do you got, Faz?” Kins said. “You solve the case for us?”

  “I wish. Make the wife happy.”

  “Get in line.”

  “Mr. Joon was not exactly a wealth of information,” Faz said, referring to the motel owner. “But he did say Veronica Watson arrived at the motel in the back of an Orange Cab.”

  “Alone?” Tracy asked.

  “Didn’t know, but nobody else came in the office with her—at least not this time. Said he’s seen her with a tall guy in a suit with a full head of light-brown hair. Thought you might want to know when you talk to the dancers.” Gipson, nearly bald, definitely did not fit that description, nor did Darrell Nash, who wore his dark hair short and spiked in the front with a liberal amount of gel. “Hey, it ain’t nothing, right?”

  Tracy’s phone buzzed, indicating another incoming call. “It ain’t nothing, Faz. You and Del taking a drive over to Orange Cab?”

  “On our way,” Faz said.

  She accepted the second call.

  “It’s Earl Keen.” His voice was as deep as a bass drum. “You left a message about Veronica Watson. I heard she’s dead.”

  A black man with a shaved head and a serious scowl, Keen had been Veronica Watson’s probation officer. Watson had multiple arrests for solicitation and possession of narcotics, and one petty theft charge to which she’d pled no contest.