Her Final Breath (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 2)

by Robert Dugoni

  “You touch me and I’ll sue you too.”

  Faz gripped the edge of the table and leaned into Taggart’s personal space. Tracy could only hope his lunch had been laced with garlic. Taggart pulled back, but with his hands cuffed to a chain leading to an eyehook on the floor, he wasn’t going far. Faz smiled. “We got people who slip and fall in these rooms all the time. They hit their heads on the table and get all kinds of boo-boos.”

  Taggart winced. “You can’t do that; you got a tape going.”

  “A tape?” Faz looked over his shoulder at Tracy, who was enjoying the moment but trying not to show it. “Who does this guy think we are—KGB? Who am I—Putin?” He leaned closer. Taggart looked to be holding his breath. Faz pointed at the glass. “We don’t tape nothing. That there is a mirror so you can see how ugly you are. Now shut up and listen to the detective.” Faz straightened and took his seat beside Tracy.

  “Why’d you run, Bradley?” Tracy asked.

  Taggart had turned sideways, like a petulant child. “I was getting some exercise. You people are harassing me. You got no reason to keep me here.”

  Tracy placed a blown-up copy of the print generated by the AFIS computer on the table alongside the latent print CSI had pulled off the dresser in Veronica Watson’s motel room. Taggart gave the photographs a disinterested glance, then went back to ignoring her. Tracy sensed that inside he wasn’t so calm, and she let the moment linger in silence.

  Taggart broke first, looking at her. “What?”

  “Anything more you want to tell us about the night Veronica was murdered?”

  “I told you everything already.”

  “Then let’s see what we know,” Tracy said. “We know you went to the Pink Palace that night. You lied and said you didn’t, then changed your statement and said you went to get money but Veronica couldn’t give you any until after she’d tipped out for the evening. I wonder what you used for money that night.”

  Taggart smirked. “I robbed a bank.”

  “Or maybe you robbed her purse.” That comment got another brief glance from Taggart. “Purple, long gold-chain shoulder strap?”

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  Tracy’s cell phone started to vibrate. Hearing his cue, Faz slammed his fist down hard on the table, causing it to bounce and Taggart to scurry backward.

  Timing was everything.

  “I’m tired of this dirtbag’s attitude. Let’s just take him back to jail and let him rot.”

  Tracy answered her phone while Faz gave Taggart the death stare. Kins said, “Faz really missed his calling. With all those mafia movies in the nineties, the guy would have been a star.”

  “Yeah,” Tracy said. “Okay, no worries. I’m on my way.” She disconnected and turned to Faz. “Can you handle this on your own?”

  Faz continued to study Taggart like he was a T-bone steak. “It would be my distinct pleasure.”

  Tracy stepped past Faz and pushed open the door. “When you’re finished with him, have them drop him back in jail. Make sure they book him for assault on a police officer.”

  “You’re going to leave me in here,” Taggart said, “with him?”

  She shrugged. “You don’t want to talk to me. Talk to him.”

  “Wait,” Taggart said.

  Tracy sighed. “I have places I need to be, Bradley.”

  “Fine. I went to the Pink Palace that night, okay? And I asked Veronica for some money, but she said she couldn’t give me any because she hadn’t tipped out yet.”

  “We already know that,” Tracy said. “Now you’re wasting my time.”

  Taggart began to rock his chair, the front legs lifting off the ground and tapping the floor. “I need a deal.”

  “A deal?”

  “Yeah.” He tapped the table with an index finger. “A deal that says what I say can’t be used against me in court.”

  “Who are you—Perry Mason now?” Faz said.

  “A deal in exchange for what?” Tracy asked.

  “No way; I’m not saying nothing without a deal.”

  Tracy reached for the copies of the two prints and slid them closer to Taggart’s side of the table. He gave them another sidelong glance. “Take a close look, Bradley. You know what those are? Those are your fingerprints. That one, that’s the print we have on file for you. You know why the computer spit it out? It spit it out because this print was pulled off the dresser in the motel room where we found Veronica’s body.”

  Taggart lowered his gaze but didn’t otherwise move.

  “So you tell me, Bradley, how did your fingerprint get on a dresser in a motel room when you told me you didn’t see Veronica after the Pink Palace?” Tracy paused. Taggart looked to be having difficulty swallowing. “You’re in no position to be making any deals, Bradley. Right now you’re looking at spending an awfully long time in jail, maybe the rest of your life—unless you get the death penalty.”

  Taggart rocked faster. The chair legs started banging against the floor, and he was making wheezing noises. Tracy had seen people hyperventilate in this room. He raised his cuffed hands and leaned forward to wipe perspiration from his forehead. “Okay, look. I went to the club to get some money but V didn’t have any, so I left.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “The Last Shot.”

  “How’d you end up at the motel room?”

  “I was shooting pool. Next thing I know, the bartender is saying last call. By the time I got back to the club, they said V had already tipped out and left. I called her cell and told her I needed the money. So she told me to meet her at the motel.”

  “Why’d you need the money?”

  “That’s what I can’t tell you, not without a deal.”

  “You were buying drugs,” Tracy said.

  “I’m just saying . . . you know, yeah, I went to the motel, okay, and I took the money. She didn’t need it. She was going to get a couple hundred.”

  Tracy looked to Faz, who remained statue-still, arms folded across his chest and resting on his stomach. “That sound plausible to you, Faz?”

  “Not a freaking of word of it.”

  “Man, I’m telling you the truth now, okay?” Taggart said. “I didn’t tell you before, but now I am.”

  Tracy leaned closer. Her left shoulder ached where he’d kicked her. The scrape on her knee burned, and her ankle was sore. “Let me tell you my problem, Bradley. I gather the information. The prosecutor? He’s the guy who’s going to decide whether he believes you or not, and I guarantee you that if I go to him with ‘He was lying before, but now he’s telling the truth,’ he’s going to say, ‘We have his prints in the room. He admits being there, he’s got no alibi, and now we have him patronizing the Dancing Bare. We have more than enough to hold him indefinitely on a murder charge.’” She shrugged and felt pain in her collarbone. “So you’re going to have to give me something to go to him with, Bradley. Something to make him think you’re not a liar.”

  “I’ll take a lie detector test,” he said. “Hook me up.”

  “You know the problem with lie detectors?” Tracy said. “Defense attorneys start making all kinds of objections and motions at trial, and you just can’t be certain the test is going to get in. So it really doesn’t do you, or us, any good.”

  Taggart was biting at his lower lip, and the front legs of the chair steadily pounded the floor.

  Tracy made a show of looking at her watch. “It’s getting late, Bradley, and Faz here likes to have Friday dinners at home.”

  “I get irritable when I don’t eat. What do they call that, Professor?”

  “Hypoglycemic.”

  “That’s it.”

  “I can’t tell you what I was doing without some kind of deal,” Taggart said.

  “He wants the King’s X,” Faz said.

  “The what?” Taggart asked.

  “Didn’t you ever play tag?” Faz made an X with his two index fingers. “It means time-out. You’re safe.”

  Taggart
looked to Tracy as if Faz was crazy. Then he said, “I was in Belltown, okay. I was at an apartment picking up some product. So the guy there, you know, he can prove I was there, but . . .”

  “What kind of product?”

  “Meth.”

  “What’s this guy’s name?” Tracy asked.

  “That’s what I can’t tell you, man. He’ll kill me.”

  “I need an address.”

  “Come on, man.”

  “Let’s say the prosecutor agrees,” Tracy said. “We still have resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer.”

  “You could talk to him, though, explain what happened.”

  She spoke to Faz. “Maybe we could let the prosecutor know he’s cooperating in a murder investigation. I suppose that couldn’t hurt his cause.”

  Faz shrugged his big shoulders, and what existed of his neck disappeared. “Not that much. He might be the murderer.”

  Taggart’s eyes shifted between the two of them. “I cared about her, you know. I did. And not just because she gave a good blow job. I didn’t mean that; I just said it to piss you off. Yeah, we fought. Who doesn’t, right? But it was nice having someone. I never had that before.”

  “Touching,” Faz said. “Just like Romeo and Juliet.”

  “Look, you asked if I was working her. I wasn’t. That’s the truth.”

  “What does that mean?” Tracy asked.

  “V got her own clients. I didn’t force her to do any of that.”

  Tracy thought it over. She didn’t think Taggart was the Cowboy, but he might have information they could use. “Who saw you talking to Veronica at the club that night?”

  “I don’t know. But it was right out there at one of the tables, so anyone could have seen us.”

  “Did you tell anyone you were going to the motel?”

  “No.”

  “What about Darrell Nash. Did you see him that night?”

  “Nash? Yeah, he was there.”

  “Did he see you talking to Veronica or to any of the dancers when you went back?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t stay long. They wanted me to pay the cover, and I was like, ‘No way.’”

  “What about at the motel, did Veronica tell you who she was meeting?”

  “No.”

  “Not a name?”

  “Nothing. She didn’t say nothing.”

  “And you didn’t see anyone hanging around the room or the motel?” Faz asked. “No one in the parking lot, sitting in a car?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Had she been with anyone yet?”

  Taggart nodded. “I think so.”

  “You think so?” Tracy said.

  “When I called, she told me to give her an hour. So I think so.”

  Tracy looked to the one-way glass. “And you didn’t see anyone?”

  “Not when I went into the room,” he said. “It was only V.”

  “Did she ever talk about any regular customers?”

  “Yeah, there was a guy made appointments online. They called him ‘Mr. Attorney.’ He liked V. Always asked for her.”

  “But you don’t know if that’s the guy she was meeting that night.”

  “No.”

  Tracy glanced at Faz, then said, “Tell you what, Bradley. I’m going to take you up on that lie-detector offer. You pass, and I won’t bust your chops about the name of the dealer. You fail, and I’m going to tell the prosecutor to put you away for a very long time.”

  CHAPTER 39

  Johnny Nolasco slid the reports into the top drawer of his desk and locked it. At the door he slipped on his jacket. His desk phone buzzed.

  “Yeah?”

  “Got a call for you, Captain,” the receptionist said over the speaker. “Woman says she spoke to you several years back about a murder in North Seattle. JoAnne Anderson?”

  Nolasco blew out a breath, debating whether to take the call. He checked his watch. “What did she say the victim’s name was?”

  “Didn’t say. She was apparently the witness. Said her name was JoAnne Anderson.”

  Nolasco walked back to his desk. “Put her through.” He lifted the receiver on the first ring. “This is Captain Nolasco. How can I help you?”

  “Detective, my name is JoAnne Anderson. We spoke more than nine years ago about the murder of my neighbor, Beth Stinson. I lived across the street from Beth. I was the eyewitness.”

  The name and the murder clicked, though Nolasco hadn’t thought about either in years. Beth Stinson was the last homicide he and Floyd Hattie had worked before Hattie retired. He remembered JoAnne Anderson. Her testifying had been like putting Betty Crocker on the witness stand. “Certainly, I remember you, Mrs. Anderson. What can I do for you?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me how the investigation is going?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I’m sorry to trouble you, but I couldn’t find the card for the attorney who came to see me.”

  “An attorney came to see you?”

  “He said he was looking into some matters and talking to witnesses.”

  The picture started to clear. “Mrs. Anderson, I’m sure the attorney was hired by Mr. Gerhardt’s family. It isn’t unusual. He’s either coming up for parole and they’re looking for something that might help him, or he’s getting ready to file another appeal to overturn his conviction. It’s nothing to worry about. If Mr. Gerhardt were ever to be released, we would be certain to alert you.”

  “It’s just that I still think about that horrible night,” she said.

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” Nolasco said. “And, Mrs. Anderson, you don’t have to talk to these people if it upsets you. You’re under no legal or moral obligation to speak to them. So if this attorney is pressuring you in any way—”

  “Oh, no, he was very nice. I just can’t seem to find his card. Maybe he didn’t give me one. I’m not certain. I forget things now. I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”

  “Not a problem.” Nolasco was about to hang up, then said, “Mrs. Anderson, if you’d like, I could make a few calls and find out what’s going on and get back to you.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  “Not a problem.” He picked up a pen and found a piece of paper, turning it over to the blank side. “Would you happen to remember the attorney’s name?”

  “I do. It was Dan. Dan O’Leary.”

  The Iron Bone looked to be popular. Men and women shot pool and played at a shuffleboard table. Others chatted and glanced at an NBA game on a television monitor or sat in booths eating pub food. Dan caught the eye of a woman sitting alone in a booth at the back, beneath a wall of license plates from all over the United States.

  “Celeste Bingham?” he asked, reaching the table.

  The woman nodded but didn’t get up. When Dan introduced himself, she reached out and briefly shook his hand. Dan guessed Bingham to be early thirties, about the same age Beth Stinson would have been had she still been alive. She was attractive but in a stressed-out soccer-mom sort of way. Her red hair looked to have been hastily pulled back in a ponytail, and she had pronounced crow’s-feet. Dan didn’t detect any makeup or, but for a modest wedding ring, jewelry.

  As Dan removed his jacket, a waitress approached. He ordered a beer and looked to Bingham, who had both hands wrapped around a glass of water but who looked in dire need of something stronger. “Can I buy you a drink?”

  Bingham shook her head. “Just water for me.”

  The waitress departed. Dan slid into the booth. Music filtered down from overhead speakers, classic ’80s rock—Steve Perry from Journey singing “Don’t Stop Believin’,” which Dan thought might have been the theme to his senior prom. “What time do you need to pick up your son?”

  Bingham checked her watch. “I have about forty-five minutes.” Her gaze flicked around the bar before again settling on him. “You said this has to do with Beth?”

  “You knew her well?”

  “We were best friends since high school
.”

  “I’m sorry about what happened to her.”

  “Who do you work for, Mr. O’Leary?”

  “Call me Dan. I’m sorry. I can’t reveal my client at the moment,” he said. “I can tell you that I’m going back through the file and trying to follow up on a few things. I noticed that, well, it appears that the police detectives never called you back.”

  Bingham shook her head. Her hands remained wrapped around the glass of ice water, her thumb carving lines in the condensation. “No, they didn’t.”

  “You had something you wanted to share with them?”

  Bingham started to answer but stopped when the waitress returned with Dan’s beer. She set it on a coaster. “Anything from the kitchen?” the waitress said.

  “I think we’re good,” Dan said, though he was starving and hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

  Bingham waited until the waitress had departed. “I can’t get involved in anything,” she said. “I mean, I can’t be a witness or testify in court or anything.”

  “Okay.”

  “I mean, if this goes further and you go to court for something, I can’t . . . I can’t testify.”

  “Okay. Why don’t you just tell me what you wanted to tell the police.”

  Bingham settled back against the leather and dropped her hands onto the table. As she spoke, she picked at her fingernails and cuticles. “My husband and I own a printing and marketing company in town. We do a lot of work here for the schools and the church. My husband’s a bishop in the Mormon Church. Are you familiar with the Mormon Church?”

  Dan smiled. “I saw the play when it came to town.”

  Bingham didn’t smile. “I was Catholic before I converted. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  “I think so,” Dan said. “You converted to Mormonism when you got married.”

  “I converted to get married. Dale wouldn’t marry someone who wasn’t a Mormon. His family wouldn’t allow it. He doesn’t know anything about what I’m about to tell you, and he can’t find out. He . . . can’t . . . find . . . out.” She looked past Dan, as if to be sure the couple in the booth behind them wasn’t eavesdropping. Then she took a breath, struggling to calm herself. “Sorry, it’s just . . .”