Her Final Breath (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 2)

by Robert Dugoni

  As Wright and the CSI van departed, Kins and Tracy stood together on the sidewalk. “You sure you’re going to be okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah. I have Dan, and I have my Glock.”

  “You’ll call if you notice anything.”

  “You know it.”

  “I’ll see about getting a patrol officer put back on watch.”

  Tracy doubted Nolasco would authorize it. “Go on home. I appreciate you coming out, Kins.”

  “No problem.” He started for his car, then stopped. “Hey, I just wanted you to know. There’s no hard feelings. I know you were just trying to protect me.”

  Tracy nodded.

  “So we’re good?” Kins said.

  “We’re good.”

  Tracy shut the wrought iron gate behind him and shook it to ensure that it was locked. She watched Kins drive off down the street, his BMW disappearing over the small crest in the road. They’d seen each other nearly every day, eight to ten hours a day, for more than six years. She’d miss working with him.

  Inside, she closed the front door, hearing the deadbolt engage automatically.

  Dan was ascending the stairs from the lower level. “Everything is locked up tight,” he said. “I checked every window and door. Did you change the code to the gate and the front door?”

  She nodded.

  “I’ll bring down Rex and Sherlock and leave them here when I can’t stay.” He looked at his watch, which caused Tracy to check the clock on the kitchen wall. It was just after two. So much for an early night.

  “I don’t think I can sleep,” she said. She went to a cabinet beneath the kitchen counter and pulled out a bottle of Scotch and two glasses. She poured two fingers in each and handed a glass to Dan. They sat at the dining room table.

  “So, the noose and the photograph,” Dan said, “what’s it all supposed to mean?”

  She’d been thinking it over as CSI scoured her backyard. “I think the noose was to get my attention, to let me know he was out there. He killed Angela Schreiber later that night.”

  “Is that why he left the photograph?”

  Tracy hesitated. Then she said, “The drapes in the bedroom were open, and the lights were on.”

  Dan set down his drink. “He saw us.”

  Tracy nodded. “I noticed it when I was down there with CSI. You can see into the bedroom and the dining room from where the tracker says he was hiding. She said that from the position of his bootprints, the pressure points were more on the balls of his feet than his heels, so he was likely crouching, the way someone might if they were in a duck blind while using binoculars to watch the sky.”

  CHAPTER 49

  The following morning, exhausted and mentally drained, Tracy drove to the Justice Center with the same feeling of trepidation she’d felt the day she reported to the Violent Crimes Section as one of Seattle’s first female homicide detectives. Unlike that morning, when the staff and most of the other detectives made a point of welcoming her, this time, only Nolasco’s assistant met Tracy as she stepped off the elevator. He advised her that she’d been assigned to be the D Team’s fifth wheel and given a desk at the back of the seventh floor with the rest of the administrative staff. If Nolasco wanted Tracy out of sight, he’d succeeded. Her new desk was in a corner and literally surrounded by stacks of boxes.

  Tracy avoided the morning news and refrained from reading the Seattle Times. She had an afternoon meeting scheduled with OPA to discuss both her assault on Bradley Taggart, which was suddenly an issue again, as well as the impropriety of sharing a police file with a civilian attorney. She’d called her union representative and asked for legal representation. The lawyer was supposed to get back in touch with her about whether the meeting would proceed or be delayed.

  She spent the morning combing the Internet, reading articles on the Cowboy killings. Then she Googled the names Wayne Gerhardt and Beth Stinson and was surprised to find several pages of results. She methodically went through each hit. It wasn’t until her stomach growled that she checked the clock on her computer. Almost noon. She called Kins on his cell. “Just checking in to see how things are going.”

  Kins lowered his voice. “Nolasco moved us all back to the Justice Center, and he’s using your desk. I get the sense he’s keeping an eye on everyone. The mood in here is like a funeral. He’s called a noon meeting. What do they have you doing?’

  “Twiddling my thumbs,” she said.

  “Any word from Melton?”

  “Nothing yet. Let’s get coffee.”

  “I’ll call if I can get away.”

  As Tracy disconnected, she looked up to see Preston Polanco, a member of the D Team, step around a stack of boxes, carrying a pile of documents. Polanco dropped the documents on her desk. “Nolasco said to give you something to keep you busy,” he said, smiling. “I need someone to go through these witness statements and make a timeline. Not nearly as interesting as your Cowboy—just a couple gangbangers shooting each other, but we all got to do the grunt work sometimes, right?”

  Dan jogged down the hill toward the Don Armeni Boat Ramp. He could feel the impact of the pavement in his shins and knees, and suspected the pounding wasn’t great on forty-two-year-old joints. Though the temperature remained cool, low fifties, the sun had come out and the warmth felt good on his face. Once he reached Harbor Way and his lungs warmed, Dan kept up a brisk pace, his ultimate destination the Alki Point Lighthouse.

  Running had always been therapeutic for him, a time to think through problems or to just clear his head. Tracy had hit him with a lot to consider, namely the possibility of her moving back to Cedar Grove and the two of them starting a new life together. He knew part of her decision was the disappointment of being pulled from the task force, which was why he initially wanted her to take her time, but after what had transpired later, the killer showing up in her backyard, Dan wanted to get her back to Cedar Grove that day, someplace where he could protect her and keep her safe.

  He was worried about her. He’d always been concerned that she’d never fully dealt with Sarah’s death. She hadn’t had the time to properly do so. The events that unfolded in Cedar Grove had been fast and furious. Then when Tracy returned to Seattle, she was thrown immediately into more insanity with the deaths of the dancers. Dan suspected she saw those victims as she saw her sister—her responsibility—and he was worried about the stress that guilt created.

  Forty-four minutes into his run, Dan was back at the foot of the hill leading up to Tracy’s house. Round-trip, the run was just over six miles, but the hill made it feel like ten. Sherlock and Rex would have loved the run along the water, but they would have taken one look at that hill, sat their big butts on the concrete, and made it very clear the only way they were going up was in the back of the Tahoe. This morning, his adrenaline pumping, Dan didn’t hesitate. He hit the hill hard. When he reached the top, he was breathing heavily and sweating profusely. He intertwined his fingers behind his head as he walked down the block to Tracy’s gated entrance, stopping there to take some deep breaths. When he could once again breathe normally, he entered the new code on the keypad and pushed through the gate into the courtyard.

  Tracy spent an hour reading the documents Polanco had dropped on her desk, highlighting dates and times and beginning to construct a timeline. Though nearly bored to tears, she was glad to have something to pass the time. Still, she was relieved when her desk phone rang, thinking it Kins.

  “Detective Crosswhite, this is Detective Sergeant Rawley with OPA. We had a meeting at one thirty.”

  Tracy looked at the clock on her computer, surprised to find that it was 1:40. “I was told to wait until my attorney called.”

  “Your attorney is here.”

  “News to me. I’ll head over.”

  She hung up, retrieved her jacket and purse and started from her desk when her cell rang. She fished it from her purse and saw the number for the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab. “Mike?” she said, looking around as she headed quickly
to the elevator bank.

  “There’s a place called Hooverville on First Avenue, far enough south and just divey enough that nobody but the cool kids go there. Buy me a beer and I’ll spill my guts.”

  Tracy looked at her watch. “Be there in ten minutes.”

  Detective Sergeant Rawley was not going to be happy.

  He maneuvered the van to the curb and looked at the reflection in the side mirror. He could see the spiked fence enclosing the courtyard leading to Tracy Crosswhite’s home. A nice security measure, like the motion-activated floodlights in the backyard. It just meant he had to be more resourceful.

  He knew the attorney had gone for a run, because he saw him jogging along the water’s edge. If he kept to the same route he’d been running, he’d be back in less than an hour, which was more than enough time to get set up.

  He stepped from the van, put on an orange reflector vest and yellow hard hat, took out a transit level, and set it on a tripod so that the lens was facing the house at a forty-five-degree angle. The attorney was right-handed.

  He went back to the van and removed a can of fluorescent orange spray paint and sprayed a few lines and random numbers on the pavement. Then he waited.

  The attorney came down the block a few minutes ahead of schedule, but with his hands clasped behind his head, struggling to catch his breath. Maybe he wasn’t in such great shape after all, though there was no doubt he was what Tracy wanted. There was no refuting that. He’d seen it for himself. He felt like such a fool. She’d made him feel like such a damn fool. She’d had a boyfriend the whole time.

  He set his eye to the lens and adjusted the focus, scribbled random numbers on a small pad of paper for effect, and acted as if he were adjusting the level. The attorney turned and looked at him as he approached the gated entrance, but it was only a passing glance.

  He focused the lens on the keypad for the lock. The attorney made no attempt to conceal it. He pressed four numbers, 5-8-2-9, then the pound sign. Tracy had changed the combination, as he’d suspected she might. She was a smart, well-trained detective after all. The attorney pushed the gate open, shut it behind him, and walked across the courtyard.

  He shifted the transit and quickly adjusted the focus to see clearly the keypad to the front door. The attorney entered the same four numbers, wiped his feet, and went inside.

  She was smart. He was smarter.

  Melton hadn’t oversold the bar. Hooverville wasn’t much to look at from the outside, understated with a green-and-white sign over the door that simply said “Bar.” Metal cages covered the two windows facing the sidewalk. Inside, Tracy’s boots crunched peanut shells strewn across the floor. Vintage chandeliers hung over retro dinette tables. Melton stood at a pinball machine in the corner, pushing levers and shaking the machine, making lights flash and bells ring. Tracy waited until he mistimed the flippers, and the silver ball rolled down the chute.

  “Hate this game,” he said. “Let’s grab a booth.”

  He carried a pint of beer to a cracked leather booth and sat shucking peanuts and tossing the shells. A waitress in a white T-shirt, sporting a fair number of tattoos approached.

  “Iced tea,” Tracy said.

  Melton tapped his pint of beer. “Bring her one of these, Kay.”

  The waitress left, and a different woman brought out a tray of what appeared to be fixings for tacos. She set it on a table against the wall and departed without saying a word to anyone.

  “Lunch,” Melton said, already sliding from his seat. “Come on, they do this occasionally for the regulars. Grab one. They won’t last.”

  Tracy followed Melton’s lead, returning to the table with a shell overflowing with ground beef, cheese, and tomatoes. She was grateful for the taco. She hadn’t eaten all day. She crunched the shell and leaned over her plate as some of the filling squirted out the other side.

  Melton wiped at his beard with a paper napkin. “Heard you got a scare last night.”

  Tracy finished swallowing, set down her taco, and wiped her fingers. “Came to my home, Mike.”

  “Too bad you didn’t shoot his ass,” Melton said.

  “Can you help me with that?”

  Melton reached into his coat pocket and slid a folded sheet of paper across the table. “DNA from Beth Stinson.”

  Tracy picked it up, reading.

  “Not a hit for Wayne Gerhardt,” Melton said.

  Tracy knew it. “And?”

  “Sorry. Not a hit for anyone in the system.”

  She sat back and considered the information. She’d had visions of Melton giving her a name and her driving to the police station to tell Johnny Nolasco to take the job and shove it. “Would have made my job easier, but as Faz likes to say, it ain’t nothing.”

  “I heard it’s not your job anymore,” Melton said. “Nolasco called. Told me not to do the analysis, not to spend the money.”

  “But you’d already done it.”

  “I hadn’t,” he said, wiping his beard again. “I just needed the right motivation.”

  CHAPTER 50

  Tracy met Kins early the following morning at a coffee shop in the Madison Park neighborhood. She was nursing a hangover. She and Dan had gone out to dinner, and she’d indulged in two martinis. On top of the two beers she’d had with Melton earlier that afternoon, it was more than she’d drunk in months. She didn’t mention her evening to Kins, suspecting he’d worked another late night.

  “You need to look into Nicole Hansen and Gabrielle Lizotte,” she said, her head pounding like it might split. “Find out if they told anyone they had a date that evening, or if they had any service repairs done at their apartments, on their cars, anything at all.”

  “You really think this guy knows his victims?”

  “Melton ran the DNA analysis for Beth Stinson.”

  “I thought Nolasco told him not to.”

  “He’d already run it,” she lied. “He didn’t get a hit for Gerhardt. Think about that. The guy’s fingerprints were all over the house, but no DNA?”

  “And since he’s spent the last nine years in prison, we can be reasonably certain he isn’t our Cowboy.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Did Melton get any positive hits?”

  “No one in the system.”

  “So not Bankston, Gipson, Taggart, or Tomey,” Kins said, each of whom had either been convicted of a crime, served in the military, or had voluntarily provided a DNA sample. That leaves Nash.”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  Kins sat back, hands cradling his cup of coffee. “Nolasco’s up to something. He’s leaving the building but not telling anyone where he’s going. Amanda Santos called looking for him yesterday. She said he left her a message to call him ASAP but didn’t say what about. She also said he’s asked the FBI to become more involved. He’s playing things close to the vest, asking us all a lot of questions but not sharing much.” Kins looked at his watch. “I better get moving. He called another meeting. If Justice had windows that opened, Faz would have jumped by now.”

  They stepped outside. The temperature was brisk, but at least it wasn’t raining. The cold air felt soothing on Tracy’s headache.

  “Have you met with OPA?” Kins said.

  “I was supposed to yesterday, but I skipped out.”

  “Be careful. I heard Rawley’s a hard-ass. He takes his shit seriously.”

  “I told him I had some female problems and left work early.”

  Kins smiled. “And he didn’t ask for specifics?”

  “Imagine that. I’m taking a sick day today just to be convincing.”

  “You weren’t drinking alone were you?” After six years together, Kins knew her well. “Do I need to worry about you?’

  She smiled.

  “Well, I’m glad one of us is getting laid.”

  “I didn’t say I got laid.”

  “You didn’t have to,” Kins said.

  A block from the Justice Center, Johnny Nolasco took out the burner phone. Maria
Vanpelt answered on the first ring.

  “We’re moving this afternoon.”

  “That fast?”

  “The Chief wants a splash. This will be a hell of a splash.”

  “How certain are you this is our guy?”

  “I spoke at length with the profiler. He fits the profile. He’s a wannabe cop and ex-military. He knows how to tie knots, and he has ready access to rope. We’ve done our homework. The rope came through that Home Depot warehouse. And, he failed the polygraph. It certainly warrants a search of his property.”

  “So how is it going to go down?”

  “I have FBI agents ready to go. All I have to do is make the call.”

  “Why not SPD?”

  “Because there’s a leak.” He smiled at that. “How can I trust Tracy Crosswhite’s team if one of them is the leak?”

  “And you get full credit.”

  “I’ll call when we’re on the move. Timing will be important. Have you thought about how you got the tip?”

  “Better. I went to my editor and said with the new task force in place, I wanted to do a ‘where are we at’ story, including an interview with you. It looks like I just happened to pick the day you were on the move to do the search.”

  “Stay close to your phone,” Nolasco said.

  CHAPTER 51

  Kins pushed back from his desk, bored and longing for exercise, which lately had been limited to getting up to use the bathroom, or to get coffee. Nolasco had given him grunt work—entering tip sheets into the computer, making charts, reviewing witness statements—anything to keep Kins chained to his desk and, he suspected, make sure he had nothing of substance to talk about with Tracy.