Bankston shrugged. “Maybe a little.”
Kins slid Bankston a piece of paper. “These are the questions the examiner will ask you.”
Bankston’s focus shifted from the paper to Kins, then to Santos. “You’re giving me the questions?”
Kins smiled. “Not like high school, right? We give you the questions but not the answers. We’re not trying to trick you, David. You can take as much time as you’d like to go over the questions. You’ll see the first few are pretty basic—your name, address, age. The examiner calls them control questions. She uses your responses to those questions to get a baseline of your reaction to the other questions. As I said, this is all about clearing you so you can get on with your life.”
He handed Bankston a pen and noted that he took it with his right hand.
After further explanation of the procedure, Kins looked to Santos, who subtly shook her head.
“Okay,” Kins said. “Unless you have any questions, David, I’ll introduce you to the examiner.”
He walked Bankston down the hall to Stephanie Ludlow’s office. She’d already put a sign in the hall asking for quiet. The anteroom was all about comfort, an open space with leather chairs, a potted plant, and soft colors and lighting. After introducing Bankston to Ludlow, Kins went back to the interrogation room.
“Strange guy,” Santos said. “He wouldn’t make eye contact with me.”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
“What about when you and Detective Crosswhite first interviewed him? Did you notice anything like that?”
Kins shook his head. “No, but Tracy took the lead.”
“Ask the examiner her impression,” Santos said.
“He didn’t tell his wife,” Kins said. “I asked him in the elevator if he’d told his wife he was coming in. Does that strike you as odd that he wouldn’t tell her?”
“Maybe. Or maybe he didn’t want to upset her unnecessarily,” Santos said.
“Or he’s afraid of her reaction,” Kins said. “What do you make about him wanting to help with the rope and the video cameras?”
“With all the cop shows now on TV,” Santos said, “everyone is an amateur detective. I think a part of him is enjoying being a part of this.”
Kins wasn’t at his desk when Tracy returned to the Cowboy Room, so she’d asked Faz if he wanted to take a drive to find Taggart. They’d struck out at the apartment building in Pioneer Square—the superintendent hadn’t seen Bradley Taggart for days. They’d knocked on the neighbor’s door, but she also hadn’t seen or heard him, nor had the bartender at The Last Shot.
Late on a Friday afternoon, traffic was heavy, and they were inching their way back to the Justice Center garage when Tracy’s cell rang. Dispatch had a bead on Taggart’s car, and the location instantly improved Tracy’s mood. Disconnecting, she said to Faz, “Taggart’s parked on Fourth Avenue South.”
“Fourth Avenue South,” Kins said. “Why does that sound familiar?”
Tracy nodded. “Because he’s at the Dancing Bare.”
Graffiti artists had tagged the bluish-gray stucco, which was nicked and chipped where patrons had misjudged the distance between the one-story building and their cars’ bumpers. The Dancing Bare preferred a lower profile than The Pink Palace—the only thing that revealed the nature of the club was the name, hand-painted across the façade, along with the outline of a nude dancer.
Tracy and Faz did a drive-by to confirm that Taggart’s car remained parked out front.
“That’s our boy,” Faz said.
The windows facing the street had been blacked out from the inside with heavy film, but Tracy recalled the club’s layout from the Hansen investigation. She also recalled that the building was situated on a V-shaped lot, with the tip of the lot at the intersection of Fourth Avenue South and the BNSF railroad tracks.
They drove around the corner. The back of the building abutted a chain-link fence that separated the lot from the railroad tracks. The alley was too narrow to get a patrol car behind the building, and on the other side of the fence was a gated parking lot, for a warehouse with semitrailers parked in loading bays.
“This dump even have a rear exit?” Faz asked.
Tracy pointed to the only door. “That’s it.”
A patrol unit pulled up alongside them. Tracy gave the two officers a photograph of Taggart and explained the problems with the layout of the building and the lot. She instructed them to wait on Sixth, where the warehouse parking lot exited.
As the officers departed, Tracy turned to Faz. “He obviously knows me. I go in and he’s liable to run. You go in the front. I’ll wait out back.”
Tracy was in position outside the back door when she heard Faz’s call on the radio.
“We got a rabbit!”
But Taggart did not burst out the back door. He came around the corner of the building, skidded to a stop when he saw Tracy, then leapt onto a waist-high concrete-block wall and launched himself at the fence. He caught the top rail, but his square-toed boots prevented him from getting a toehold and he started kicking at the fence, unable to pull himself over.
Tracy made the same leap and caught Taggart around the waist, her weight pulling his grip from the rail. She hit the ground, and her right ankle twisted, producing a stabbing pain. Taggart rolled and kicked at her. She avoided a blow to the face, but the heel of his boot struck her hard in the collarbone. She managed to pull herself up Taggart’s body and pin him until Faz arrived, wheezing like a man with asthma, dropped a knee, and put all of his considerable weight on Taggart’s shoulders and neck.
“Okay, okay,” Taggart groaned, going suddenly limp.
Tracy jerked both his arms behind his back, cuffed his wrists, and rolled off, winded and in pain. Her shoulder and ankle felt like they were on fire.
Faz grabbed Taggart by the collar and nearly lifted him off the ground, which triggered more profanity-laced threats. “I’m going to sue all of you. This is harassment. I’ll be out in the morning, and I’m going straight to the news station.”
“You ain’t seen harassment yet, pal,” Faz said, “But keep talking and I guarantee you, you will.”
CHAPTER 37
Kins sat in Stephanie Ludlow’s office, staring in disbelief at her preliminary assessment of David Bankston’s polygraph.
“Not all the questions,” Ludlow said, “but—”
“What questions did he fail?”
She pointed. “Flip the pages. There. Stop there. See? Whether he knew any of the victims; whether he’d ever been with any of them.”
Kins looked up from the report. “What about whether he killed them?”
“No discernible response.”
“How can that be, Stephanie? How could he be lying about not knowing them but not be lying that he didn’t kill them?”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Kins.” Ludlow handed him the list of questions and her preliminary conclusions. “He also spiked when I asked him his current place of residence.”
“So it’s inconclusive.”
“That he’s lying? No. But what he’s lying about, that’s hard to say. He’s skittish and distrusting. He never did fully calm down.”
Kins remembered Santos’s request. “What about eye contact? Did he make eye contact with you?”
“I sit off to the side when I’m administering the test. He was facing straight ahead. But nothing really struck me as out of the ordinary.” She considered her watch. “I told him someone would get in touch with him. I have to be somewhere. Why don’t you go over the questions and results and call me tomorrow to discuss it further.”
Kins thanked her and made his way back to his desk. He phoned Tracy, but the call went directly to voice mail. When he called Amanda Santos, she answered on the third ring.
“It’s Detective Rowe. So, you said that sometimes these guys can beat the test because they feel no remorse, that they don’t believe they did anything wrong. What does it mean when they fail?”
Tracy l
imped into the bull pen with Faz’s help, surprised to find Kins sitting at his cubicle desk.
Kins stood. “What happened to you?”
“Professor here kicked the crap out of Taggart again,” Faz said, helping Tracy drop into her desk chair. “I’ll get some ice and a first-aid kit.”
Her ankle and back ached, and her right elbow was tender. She wondered if Taggart’s kick had broken her collarbone. It hurt to lift her arm overhead. She anticipated the pain would get a whole lot worse before it got better. She pulled open her bottom desk drawer and found a small white bottle of Aleve.
“Why did you pick up Taggart?” Kins asked.
Tracy shook out two of the little blue pills, swallowing them without water, then told Kins about Latent’s matching a print in Veronica Watson’s motel room to Taggart.
“Patrol spotted his car parked outside the Dancing Bare. When we arrived, he bolted.”
“So he’s got a connection to the Dancing Bare.”
“Maybe. He said he only went there after he wasn’t welcome at the Pink Palace.”
Faz reentered carrying an ice pack and the first-aid kit. “Professor here was leaping tall fences in a single bound.”
Tracy looked down at a tear in her jeans. Her knee was scraped and bleeding. “These were brand-new jeans.”
“I think that’s the style now,” Faz said. “My son’s girlfriend wears them that way.”
“That’s great,” she said, “if I’m ever out looking to pick up fifteen-year-old boys.” She took off her shoe and sock and pulled up her pants cuff, examining her ankle. Thankfully, it didn’t look swollen or discolored.
“How bad is it?” Kins said.
“Just twisted it.” She set the ice pack on her collarbone. The cold felt soothing. “They’re bringing Taggart up after he’s booked. I told them to call us. I want to go at him before he has time to start thinking things through.” She readjusted the ice. “Did Bankston show?”
Kins handed her Ludlow’s preliminary findings. “He failed.”
Tracy looked up at Kins, then started flipping through the pages. “He failed?”
“Not every question, but Stephanie says it’s enough to make his answers suspect. He lied about whether he knew the dancers.”
Tracy quickly skimmed that portion of Ludlow’s evaluation.
Have you ever met Veronica Watson?
No.
Have you ever met Nicole Hansen?
No.
Have you ever met Angela Schreiber?
No.
In the polygraph recordings, there were significant physiological responses, which are usually indicative of deception, when Mr. Bankston answered the above series of relevant questions. It is the opinion of the polygraph examiner, based on careful evaluation of the physiological responses, which were quality-controlled by computerized statistical evaluation, that Mr. David Bankston was NOT being TRUTHFUL (deception indicated) in his responses to these questions.
“He knew them?” Tracy asked.
“The test would indicate that to be the case.”
Tracy continued reading.
Did you kill Veronica Watson?
No.
Did you kill Nicole Hansen?
No.
Did you kill Angela Schreiber?
No.
In the polygraph recordings, there were no significant physiological responses, which are usually indicative of truthfulness. It is the opinion of the polygraph examiner, based on careful evaluation of the physiological responses, which were quality-controlled by computerized statistical evaluation, that Mr. David Bankston is being TRUTHFUL (no deception indicated) in his responses to these questions.
“This doesn’t make any sense.”
“I said the same thing.”
“How does Stephanie explain it?”
“She didn’t. She wants to talk tomorrow. I called Santos and sent her the test.”
“Where’s Bankston now?”
“Home. I had a car pick him up when he left the parking lot but told them to keep it loose. His car is parked in his driveway, and they’re parked in a gravel lot near I-90. If Bankston gets on the freeway to come downtown, we’ll know it. If he drives to the grocery store, we won’t.”
Tracy’s desk phone rang. King County Jail advised that Taggart had been booked. “They’re bringing him up,” she said.
Dan had spent the remainder of the afternoon trying to track down witnesses identified in Beth Stinson’s murder file. After nine years, some of the telephone numbers were no longer working and the memories of the witnesses had faded dramatically. Two people told him that they remembered calling the police but couldn’t remember what information they thought relevant and they hadn’t given it much thought in years. A third person said he’d sold Stinson a car earlier in the week and just thought the police might want to know, not that he’d really thought it had any significance. Dan made a note that Tracy might want to check the guy out, given her comment that the killer might have had contact with Stinson. She’d been right about one thing. Nolasco and Hattie had not followed up with any of the witnesses.
Dan’s most productive call was to Beth Stinson’s former supervisor at the big-box retail store in North Seattle where Stinson had worked as a bookkeeper. Abe Drotzky told him Stinson hadn’t lit the world on fire but she was at work every Monday through Friday “earning her keep.” He knew little about her personal life but said he got the impression she burned the candle at both ends, often coming to work looking a little bleary-eyed.
As Dan left the interview, he decided to try one more name in the file—Celeste Johnson—before getting something to eat. Her telephone number was no longer in service, but the address provided wasn’t far from the big-box store. Dan decided to drive over.
He guessed the woman who answered the door to be mid-seventies. She looked amused when Dan asked for Celeste. “Celeste hasn’t lived at home for years.”
“She’s your daughter?” Dan guessed.
“And who are you?”
Dan told the woman he was an attorney looking into the Beth Stinson matter.
“Is that animal coming up for parole?” the woman said.
“I wasn’t able to reach your daughter with the number in the file.”
“Celeste’s married now. Her last name is Bingham.”
“Does she still live in the area?”
“She better,” the woman said. “I need my granny fix at least once a week.”
The woman wouldn’t give out Celeste’s address but provided a phone number. When Dan called, he got one of the children.
“Hey, Mom, phone’s for you!”
“You don’t have to shout. I’m right here.”
The kid, being a kid, shouted again. “Phone’s for you!”
“Stop it!” Dan heard the phone being exchanged. “Hello?”
“Celeste Bingham?”
“If this is a solicitation, please put me on your no-call list.”
“This isn’t a sales call,” Dan said. “Your mother gave me your phone number. I was calling about Beth Stinson.”
The response was silence, and Dan spoke quickly to fill it. “You called the police when Ms. Stinson was murdered and indicated you might have some information relevant to the case.”
Another extended silence.
“Ms. Bingham, are you still there?”
“What’s this about?” she said.
“I’m trying to follow up on a few things, and I wonder if I could ask you some questions.”
“Are you a police officer?”
“I’m an attorney.”
Another hesitation. Dan sensed Bingham was about to tell him either that she couldn’t recall or didn’t want to be bothered. “What is this about?” she asked again, sounding more upset.
“I’m trying to find out if Mr. Gerhardt got a fair trial,” Dan said, not feeling like he could avoid her question any longer.
Again, Bingham did not immediately respond, and this time Dan
was certain she would tell him she had nothing to offer. He tried once more to fill the silence. “I could meet you at a convenient time if that would be easier. Or I could come to your house.”
“No,” she said. “Not to my house.”
Dan waited, sensing it better not to speak.
“I’m about to take my son to a soccer practice. I’ll have an hour while I’m waiting for him to finish. There’s a sports bar in North Seattle called the Iron Bone, on Fifteenth Avenue across the street from a strip mall. I’ll meet you there.”
CHAPTER 38
Tracy nodded to the two corrections officers standing outside the hard interrogation room. “This may not take long,” she said.
“Take your time,” the male officer said. “Boy needs a serious attitude adjustment.”
“I’m going to watch from the other room,” Faz said, turning to leave.
About to pull open the door, Tracy recalled Taggart’s probation officer saying the tough-guy attitude was a façade and Taggart was just another punk. She grabbed Faz’s arm. “You still able to do your Italian gumba act?”
“What do you mean ‘act’?” Faz said, his New Jersey accent suddenly pronounced.
To Kins, Tracy said, “I have a hunch about this.”
“You want me to sit this one out?”
“Call my cell in five minutes.”
Kins departed to watch from behind the glass. Tracy pulled open the door and stepped in with Faz lumbering in behind her like an extra-large bodyguard.
“This is bullshit,” Taggart started. The bruises around his eyes had become nasty shades of purple and yellow. “I’m going to sue you, the police department, and the city. My attorney says this case is worth millions.”
“Hey, dirtbag,” Faz said, dwarfing Taggart. “Shut your freaking pie hole or I’m gonna shut it for you. And I shut it, it’s gonna be wired shut.”
Her Final Breath (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 2) Page 19