Her Final Breath (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 2)

by Robert Dugoni

  “Pretty much.” Bankston picked at the cuticles of his fingernails, which Tracy noticed were nub-short.

  “I notice you’re not wearing gloves,” Kins said.

  Bankston shifted to reach behind himself and produced a pair of black-and-yellow work gloves. “I took them off.”

  “You normally wear gloves?” Kins asked.

  “Normally. Not all the time.”

  “When do you take them off?”

  Bankston blew out a breath. “Breaks, lunch. Sometimes I’ll forget to put them back on, and then I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, my gloves.’” He gave another nervous smile.

  “You worked the swing shift Sunday night and last night?” Tracy said.

  Bankston fidgeted and leaned back, gazing up at the ceiling. “Uh, yeah I think so. Sometimes it blurs. It varies.” Another nervous smile.

  “What time does the swing shift end?”

  “Midnight.”

  “What did you do after your shift?”

  A shrug. “Went home.”

  “Are you married, David?” Tracy asked.

  Bankston’s mood seemed to instantly change. He sat up, looking and sounding defensive. “Why do you want to know if I’m married?”

  “I’m just wondering if there was anyone home when you got there.”

  “Oh. Um, no.”

  “So you don’t live with anyone?”

  “She was working.”

  “Your wife?”

  “Right.”

  “What does she do?” Tracy asked.

  “She works for a janitorial company; they clean the buildings downtown.”

  “She works nights?” Kins said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you have kids?” Tracy asked.

  “A daughter.”

  “Who watches your daughter when you and your wife are working nights?”

  “My mother-in-law.”

  “Does she stay at your house?” Tracy said.

  “No, my wife drops her off on her way to work.”

  “So nobody was at home when you got there Sunday night?”

  Bankston shook his head. “No.” He sat up again. “Can I ask a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why are you asking me these questions?”

  “That’s fair,” Kins said, looking to Tracy before answering. “One of our labs found your DNA on a piece of rope left at a crime scene.”

  “My DNA?”

  “It came up in the computer database because of your military service. The computer generated it, so we have to follow up and try to get to the bottom of it.”

  “Any thoughts on that?” Tracy said.

  Bankston squinted. “I guess I could have touched it when I wasn’t wearing my gloves.”

  Tracy looked to Kins, and they both nodded as if to say, “That’s plausible,” which was for Bankston’s benefit. Her instincts were telling her otherwise. She said, “We were hoping there’s a way we could determine where that rope was delivered, to which Home Depot.”

  “I wouldn’t know that,” Bankston said.

  “Do they keep records of where things are shipped? I mean, is there a way we could match a piece of rope to a particular shipment from this warehouse?”

  “I don’t know. I wouldn’t know how to do that. That’s computer stuff, and I’m strictly the labor, you know?”

  “What did you do in the Army?” Kins asked.

  “Advance detail.”

  “What does advance detail do?”

  “We set up the bases.”

  “What did that entail?”

  “Pouring concrete and putting up the tilt-up buildings and tents.”

  “So no combat?” Kins asked.

  “No.”

  “Are those tents like those big circus tents?” Tracy asked.

  “Sort of like that.”

  “They still hold them up with stakes and rope?”

  “Still do.”

  “That part of your job?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Okay, listen, David,” Tracy said. “I know you were in the police academy.”

  “You do?”

  “It came up on our computer system. So I’m guessing you know that our job is to eliminate suspects just as much as it is to find them.”

  “Sure.”

  “And we got your DNA on a piece of rope found at a crime scene.”

  “Right.”

  “So I have to ask if you would you be willing to come in and help us clear you.”

  “Now?”

  “No. When you get off work; when it’s convenient.”

  Bankston gave it some thought. “I suppose I could come in after work. I get off around four. I’d have to call my wife.”

  “Four o’clock works,” Tracy said. She was still trying to figure Bankston out. He seemed nervous, which wasn’t unexpected when two homicide detectives came to your place of work to ask you questions, but he also seemed to almost be enjoying the interaction, an indication that he might still be a cop wannabe, someone who listened to police and fire scanners and got off on cop shows. But it was more than his demeanor giving her pause. There was the fact that Bankston had handled the rope, that his time card showed he’d had the opportunity to have killed at least Schreiber and Watson, and that he had no alibi for those nights, not with his wife working and his daughter with his mother-in-law. Tracy would have Faz and Del take Bankston’s photo to the Dancing Bare and the Pink Palace, to see if anyone recognized him. She’d also run his name through the Department of Licensing to determine what type of car he drove.

  “What would I have to do . . . to clear me?”

  “We’d like you to take a lie detector test. They’d ask you questions like the ones we just asked you—where you work, details about your job, those sorts of things.”

  “Would you be the one administering the test?”

  “No,” Tracy said. “We’d have someone trained to do that give you the test, but both Detective Rowe and I would be there to help get you set up.”

  “Okay,” Bankston said. “But like I said, I have to call my wife.”

  “Clear it with the boss,” Kins said grinning. “I know that drill.”

  David Bankston gave them a blank stare.

  CHAPTER 23

  Tracy and Kins met Faz and Del, each carrying two boxes of materials, on the second floor of the King County Courthouse. They descended an interior staircase to a little-used floor, referred to as 1-A, and Tracy led them down a hall to a locked door, which she opened with a key. It led to a shorter metal staircase that ended at a landing and a metal door. Their footsteps echoed as if they were in the bowels of a ship.

  “Feel like I’m in a submarine,” Faz said, looking up at the pipes traversing the ceiling and running vertically up the walls.

  Tracy pulled the metal door open, stepped in, and turned on the light. The room, roughly twenty feet by twenty feet, had the feel of a concrete bunker. Fluorescent tubes on a low ceiling flickered above half a dozen battered desks. Holes pocked the walls where maps and charts and the photos of victims and suspects had hung in the ’70s during the search for the Pacific Northwest’s first notorious serial killer, Ted Bundy.

  “Charming,” Del said from the stair landing.

  Kins stepped in. “So this is the infamous Bundy Room.”

  Tracy was told of the room when she said she wanted someplace private that would limit the chance of a leak on the progress, or lack of progress, in the investigation. It was as small and dreary as rumored, though two wood-framed windows at least provided some ambient light.

  Kins checked his cell phone. “We got reception, so we can let the world know we’re still alive.”

  “Come on, Fazzio, move your ass,” Del said. “These boxes aren’t getting lighter, standing here.”

  Faz lingered on the landing outside the door, looking pale and uncertain. “There’s bad karma in this room,” he said.

  “You afraid of ghosts, Faz?” Del stepped past him and
dropped his two boxes on a desk. His head seemed precariously close to the overhead lights. “You want us to leave the light on for you?”

  Faz took an uncertain step into the room, and Tracy recalled him once confiding that he suffered from claustrophobia. “Let’s just say I have a healthy respect for the dead. This place has seen too much evil.”

  “Why don’t you take one of the desks by the window, Faz,” Tracy said.

  “Roger that, Professor.”

  Kins shut the door. “Home sweet home. At least it’s quiet.”

  Maybe Faz’s comment about the room having seen too much evil was making Tracy edgy, or maybe she also suffered low levels of claustrophobia, but when Kins closed the door the hairs on her arms twitched and stood on end. The room was eerily silent but for the buzz and tick of the fluorescent tubes, and the stale air smelled of damp concrete dust.

  “Let’s leave the door open,” she said, propping it with a chair.

  They used one of the walls to tack and tape photos of the victims, suspects, and crime scenes, along with aerial photographs showing the locations of the motels in relation to the Pink Palace clubs. Since it was their first day, Tracy sent out for pizza and salad, which immediately improved Faz’s mood. They ate at one of the desks while a technician worked to set up phones and computers.

  “The cabbie says he picked up Veronica Watson alone at the Pink Palace and dropped her off just outside the motel office,” Faz said. “Doesn’t recall seeing anyone hanging around waiting for her, but he also didn’t stay long. Dispatch confirms he got another call and picked up a fare two blocks from the motel. Receipts confirm he was busy most of the rest of the night.”

  “Has he ever picked her up before?” Tracy speared a piece of lettuce with a plastic fork.

  “Couldn’t recall her,” Faz said. “But his English ain’t too good.”

  “Neither is yours, apparently,” Del said.

  “Yeah, like you speak the Queen’s English.”

  “Bankston’s coming in late this afternoon to take a polygraph,” Tracy said. “When he leaves, I want to put a light tail on him. Stay on him a couple nights and see where he goes.”

  “Why the tail?” Faz asked.

  “His time cards indicate he punched out at midnight the nights Schreiber and Watson were killed. We’re working to get his cards to check the night Hansen was murdered. Run his photo over in a montage to the Dancing Bare and the Pink Palace and find out if anyone recalls seeing him.”

  Faz scribbled in a spiral notebook before snaring another piece of pizza. They heard footsteps descending the metal stairs. Ron Mayweather stuck his head in the room, looking uncertain he was in the correct place, or wanted to be.

  “Charming,” he said. “I take it the morgue wasn’t available?”

  “Welcome back, Kotter,” Faz said. “Your dreams were your ticket out.” Nicknames in the department were hard to shake, particularly the good ones. Somebody had watched a late-night rerun of the television show Welcome Back, Kotter and thought Mayweather, with his curly black hair and thick mustache, was a dead ringer for Gabe Kaplan, the actor who’d played the lead role. Mayweather hated it.

  “Barney Miller called, Faz. He wants his slacks and loafers back.”

  Del howled.

  Mayweather dropped his backpack and snagged a slice of pizza.

  “Any luck?” Tracy asked. She had asked Mayweather to find out if there was any way to track a shipment of rope from the Kent warehouse to a particular Home Depot store.

  “Maybe,” Mayweather said. “I’m still working on it. Everything that goes in and out of that warehouse is tracked by a bar code.”

  “Can they distinguish between the different types of rope?” Tracy asked.

  “I don’t know yet. I’m waiting for a guy to call me back. We got phones?”

  “Working on it,” Kins said. “Use your cell for now. We got reception.”

  “Supervisor says they can track purchases through employee numbers,” Tracy said. “See if you can get records of any purchases made in the last six months by an employee named David Bankston.”

  Mayweather wrote down the name, then picked up his backpack and took his slice of pizza to one of the remaining open desks.

  Kins stood and dumped his paper plate in the trash. “I’m going to call Taggart’s employer and see if he’s been around.”

  Tracy’s desk phone rang. “We have phones,” she said, answering it. “Detective Crosswhite.”

  “Detective, this is David Bankston.”

  Tracy checked her watch. “Yes, David. Thank you for calling.”

  Kins gave her a look, and she nodded.

  “Yeah, um, I’m not going to be able to come in today after all.”

  “No?” She shook her head to let Kins know Bankston was backing out.

  “My mother-in-law is sick, so she can’t watch my daughter. I have to get home.”

  “Won’t your wife be home?”

  Bankston paused. “She got called in early, so that’s why she called her mother, to cover until I could get home.”

  “What about tomorrow?”

  “I can’t tomorrow. I got to watch my daughter, and I’m working the night shift.”

  “Tell me what day works for you? We’d really like to get you cleared.”

  “I’ll have to call you back after I find out my schedule and talk with my wife.”

  “Will you call me tomorrow?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I’ll try. I have to go now. I’m still at work. We’re not supposed to be making personal calls.” Bankston disconnected.

  Tracy looked to Kins. “Says he can’t come in; he has to watch his daughter.”

  “Maybe he figured out we’re not just looking to clear him.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Bradley Taggart’s last known employer told Kins that Taggart had called to quit and asked for his last paycheck. “Employer offered to mail it, but Taggart said he would come in and get it,” Kins told Tracy.

  “Did he say when?” Tracy said.

  “This afternoon. We just missed him. Employer said Taggart was amped up on something and was glad to get rid of him. Called him ‘dark.’”

  “Did he have any idea where he was going?”

  “He didn’t, but one of the guys in the marine shop said on paydays Taggart likes to drink at a place in Pioneer Square called The Last Shot.”

  “Might be ours.”

  The Last Shot, in one of the low-rise brick buildings on First Avenue, was already displaying signs that it would have a decent crowd for a midweek evening. People sat in booths nursing beers and shot pool in the long and narrow space at the back of the bar. Tracy recognized Taggart from his driver’s license photograph. He was seated on a barstool, sipping an amber-colored drink, with a bottle of Budweiser on the bar. Taggart’s attention was directed up, at a motorcycle race on one of the overhead televisions, watching the competitors skid and slide dirt bikes around a track. He had a small frame, but Taggart’s tough-guy attitude came through loud and clear in his clothing choice—black leather vest, black biker boots, and black jeans with a prominent wear mark in his rear left pocket, indicating he liked to chew tobacco. Tracy noted a knife sheath attached to his belt.

  She went back outside and discussed the situation with Kins, who’d double-parked, while they waited for backup. Within minutes two patrol units arrived. Tracy directed one to the alley at the back of the building and the other to the corner, where it wouldn’t be seen by someone looking out The Last Shot’s plate-glass windows.

  She and Kins entered the bar together. Tracy took the barstool one removed from Taggart on his right. The stools on Taggart’s left were occupied by a couple, so Kins sat at the end of the bar, near the back door.

  “Bradley Taggart,” Tracy said.

  Taggart gave her a cool glance and picked up the bottle of beer. His eyes were glassy, but his knee was bouncing beneath the bar. Taggart either needed a fix or was coming down off one. “Who wants to know?�
�� He tilted the bottle to his lips. Tattoos of colorful flames ran down each of his forearms. A dagger tattoo dripping drops of blood adorned his right biceps.

  Tracy showed Taggart her badge and ID. Taggart smirked and went back to watching motocross, but Tracy sensed by the way he’d slid forward on the stool to lower his boots to the floor that he was considering bolting. “There’s an officer at the end of the bar and two more at the front door,” she said.

  Taggart looked to where Kins now stood. “So?”

  “So I’m going to ask you to put both hands on the bar where I can see them.”

  “Why? I’m not doing anything.”

  “You have an outstanding warrant.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Taggart had a habit of running his hand through his hair. “You missed a court date on a possession charge.”

  “My attorney handled that.”

  “Apparently not very well. You also broke one of the conditions of your parole when you quit your job.”

  “Maybe I got a better job.”

  “You should share that with your probation officer. You still have that warrant.”

  Taggart tipped the bottle to his lips. “I’d like a lawyer.”

  “I thought you said you had one.”

  “I’d like a different one.”

  “You’ll have to make those arrangements after you’re booked. Where’ve you been the last couple days?”

  “Grieving.”

  This was going nowhere fast. “So what’s it going to be, Mr. Taggart?”

  He exchanged the bottle for the glass. “I haven’t finished my drink yet.”

  “That’s not going to happen today.”

  Taggart slammed back the liquid and gave her a defiant smirk. “Any other predictions?”

  “One. You’ll walk out that door in handcuffs. You can do it standing, or with me dragging your ass across the floor.”

  “Ain’t you under some federal indictment for police brutality?”

  “I’m asking you again to place your hands on the bar. You have an outstanding warrant. I have the legal right to bring you in.”

  “You gonna frisk me, Officer?” He winked. “’Cause I’m packing heat down the front of my pants.”