“Well, at the risk of not starting this relationship off with complete honesty, I didn’t go into the office this morning.”
“I figured that. How did you get them to let you use the lighthouse?”
“I have a friend who works with the Coast Guard and is tight with the commander. He had one of the guards leave the gate unlocked and came after closing to arrange the flowers. I called and gave him the cue to light the candles for me. I owe a few people some really good bottles of wine. So, did I do good?”
He’d blown her away. She’d thought they’d get married, but she thought it would be a decision they made together, and then they’d drive down to the courthouse. She never expected Dan to propose, to go to so much effort to surprise . . . and amaze her. She couldn’t stop smiling. She couldn’t recall the last time her face hurt from smiling so much.
“You did good,” she said.
She twisted her ring in the fading light coming through the window, watching the diamonds surrounding the large center diamond sparkle and flicker. Out the window, gentle waves rippled on Puget Sound, and sailboats tacked into and against the wind. It was perfect. The entire night was perfect, until she realized the view was almost directly in line with the honey hole where Kurt Schill had pulled up the crab pot containing Andrea Strickland’s body.
CHAPTER 23
Thursday morning, Tracy arrived at the office tired from a fitful night’s sleep. After dinner, she and Dan had returned home and made love. Getting to sleep had not been a problem, but she had awakened at just after three, out of breath, her nightshirt soaked with sweat, the way it used to get when she’d been dreaming of Sarah. This time, the nightmare had nothing to do with her sister. This time, in the nightmare, Tracy had been sitting in Kurt Schill’s boat on Puget Sound, struggling to raise the crab pot, arms straining to pull the line through the block at the end of the davit pole. It seemed she’d pulled forever, yard after yard of rope winding in a neat circle around her feet until, finally, the crab pot breached the surface. She tied off the rope and carefully slid across the seat, feeling the boat tip off balance. Carefully, she stretched out her arm. The boat inched closer to the water’s surface. She strained to reach the cage, fingers twitching, just inches from the metal.
A hand shot out from between the bars, the polished blue fingernails gripping her arm, yanking her overboard, into the dark waters.
Tracy had lain in bed, unable to get back to sleep. Her mind churned over the evidence in the Andrea Strickland case, something about the dream bothering her, though what exactly she couldn’t be sure. She read on her Kindle until six o’clock, then got up and made Dan breakfast in bed—which seemed a poor trade for all the effort he’d gone to the day before. After they’d eaten, she made her way into the office.
Tracy stepped off the elevator, in no hurry now that Pierce County had taken back her only open murder. The A Team was back to working their regular schedule. Two months on day shifts, then they’d work a month on nights. She’d do the legwork on her other violent crime cases, and get those that didn’t plead prepared for trial. As she walked the hallway, her section came alive. She smelled the bittersweet aroma of coffee and heard the voices of her colleagues and of the morning newscasters from the flat screen. Mentally, she was settling into the thought of a relaxing morning when she entered her bull pen and saw the yellow sticky note on her computer monitor summoning her.
See me in
conference room
immediately when
you get in!
Knowing Nolasco, with the Strickland case no longer filling Tracy’s plate, he’d give her some administrative crap—a tedious project like digging through boxes of old files he’d been avoiding but would now say he needed ASAP.
The blinds on the windows had been drawn, preventing her from seeing into the conference room. She reached the open door, about to knock, but caught herself when she saw others seated at the table. She momentarily thought she’d walked in on a meeting. Nolasco sat on the far side of the table beside Stephen Martinez, the assistant chief of criminal investigations—Nolasco’s immediate superior. On the other side of the table, the side closest to the door, sat Stan Fields and an officer Tracy could venture a good guess was Fields’s captain—a pale, pudgy, officious-looking man bearing an expression like his shorts were too tight and riding up on him.
She also had a good guess why they’d all gathered. Stan Fields had ratted her out.
“Come in, Detective Crosswhite,” Martinez said, voice grim. He gestured to the chair at the head of the table. Apparently, she didn’t get to choose sides. Nolasco and Martinez sat on her right, Fields and his captain on her left. Faz had once described Martinez as a pit bull because of his short legs and stout body. His salt-and-pepper crew cut accentuated a prominent jaw and he had intense, light-blue eyes. Martinez chose to wear a uniform at all times, and it added to his image as a no-nonsense cop.
Tracy could feel the tension in the room—as if a gas leak could cause an explosion with just the faintest spark.
Fields had only briefly glanced up when Tracy entered, but she’d looked hard at him. He wore a collared gray dress shirt beneath a brown suede jacket. This guy had really missed his decade for fashion.
When Tracy sat, Martinez nodded to Nolasco, who adjusted in his chair, the leather creaking. “Detective Crosswhite, I’m going to cut to the chase here. We’ve received a complaint from Captain Jessup of the Pierce County Major Crimes Unit that you interfered with their investigation of the Andrea Strickland matter. Do you know anything about that?”
Tracy struggled to keep her temper from being the spark that ignited the room. A part of her was pissed at Nolasco, who could have handled this matter internally, but chose instead to put on a show, likely for Martinez. She shifted her gaze to Stan Fields, not about to let him hide behind his captain. Fields’s facial expression remained largely disguised by the thick gray mustache, but his eyes held the bemused glint of a schoolboy who knew he’d screwed up, and had found a way to shift blame. Tracy’s initial judgment of Fields had been only partially correct. Yes, he was a sexist, lazy ass, but he was also an insecure, vindictive prick too stupid or arrogant to realize she’d handed him information that could help his investigation, and she’d been content to let him take all the credit—whatever might have come from it. Instead, he’d directed the spotlight back on Tracy, apparently failing to realize it only illuminated his own incompetence. So be it. If Fields wanted to drag her before her captain, she was more than happy to let his captain know his detective couldn’t find his ass with both hands.
“Do I know anything about it?” she said. “I know that I had lunch with Detective Fields yesterday and provided him with additional information relevant to the investigation.”
“What information, exactly?” Nolasco asked.
Nolasco already had the answer to that question because Fields had run to his captain the minute he got back to Tacoma and told him, and Jessup had clearly called SPD. “I provided him with the details of an interview I conducted with Andrea Strickland’s aunt as well as her counselor. I also provided him with information we received from a skip tracer I’d asked to determine if anyone in his world had been asking about a Lynn Hoff.” Tracy turned to Jessup, speaking to him as if he were a little slow. “If you’d like me to explain who these people are—since you won’t find them in your detective’s file—I’d be happy to.”
Jessup’s cheeks flushed red, and the bemused glint in Fields’s eyes sharpened.
“When did you conduct the interviews of the aunt and the counselor?” Nolasco asked.
“Last Friday,” she said, turning back to him.
“After Pierce County had reasserted jurisdiction,” Jessup said to Nolasco, in case anyone in the room was too stupid to figure that out on his own.
“Yes,” Tracy said.
“So you flew to Los Angeles on official SPD business after this department no longer had jurisdiction of the case?” Nolasco said.
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“No, I flew to Los Angeles on personal business. I spoke to the aunt on my personal day. I didn’t know about the counselor until I spoke with the aunt. She arranged for me to speak to him and to obtain Andrea Strickland’s file. That’s how good police work is conducted,” she said, looking again to Jessup and Fields. “I provided that information to Detective Fields.”
Jessup said, “Personal business?” not trying to hide his skepticism.
“That’s right. I flew to Los Angeles for a long weekend with my boyfriend. I paid for the flight and the hotel, and all meals.” She looked to Nolasco. “I used the time to follow through with the conversation I’d set up with the aunt, as you’d instructed.”
Nolasco’s eyes narrowed in concern. “As I instructed?”
“Yes, Captain. You told us to wrap up anything we had working and to provide written reports to Pierce County so their file would be complete and they could hit the ground running. I had already arranged a telephone meeting with the aunt. Since I was traveling to LA I thought it better to do the interview in person.”
Martinez cleared his throat. “Be that as it may,” he said, his voice as deep and gravelly as a comic-book villain’s. “Your discussion with the aunt was related to the victim’s disappearance, was it not?”
“No, it was related to the victim’s murder,” Tracy said, keeping her tone flat and professional. “Pierce County handled the disappearance. Our jurisdiction was her murder.”
Martinez said, “And that discussion took place after SPD had relinquished jurisdiction.”
“My discussion with the aunt? Technically, yes.”
“So it’s really semantics, isn’t it, to say you were not on official SPD business?”
“I could see how someone could look at it that way, but I wasn’t.”
“How would you look at it, Detective?” Jessup asked, clearly struggling to keep his composure.
Tracy had already decided she liked Jessup about as much as she liked Fields. Since he wasn’t her captain, she didn’t feel compelled to answer him, but she did so because it gave her the chance to take a dig at Fields. “I’d look at it as a dedicated police detective taking steps to complete her file, as instructed by her captain, so that all relevant information could be provided to the agency taking over jurisdiction, with the common goal of capturing the murderer, sir.”
Jessup gave her a sardonic smile. “So you think we should say, ‘Thank you.’”
“You’re welcome.”
Jessup flushed again and looked across the table to Nolasco and Martinez, who looked to be suppressing a smile.
“Why not just give Pierce County the information and let them follow up?” Nolasco asked.
“Because I’d already made the contact with the aunt and I thought to blow her off would be unprofessional.” Tracy shifted her gaze to Fields. “And because Pierce County had the investigation for six weeks and had yet to talk with the aunt.”
“That was a different investigation,” Fields said. “It was a missing person case.”
“Except you said you thought all along the husband killed her,” Tracy said.
“There was no certainty Andrea Strickland had been murdered,” Fields said, voice rising.
“Yet you immediately operated under that premise, narrowing your investigation so much that you never spoke to Strickland’s best friend or her aunt, and you didn’t even know about Andrea Strickland’s counselor, or that her friend had also disappeared about the same time Strickland walked off Mount Rainier. Had you done your job, you would have obtained evidence that pointed your investigation in another direction, namely that Andrea Strickland had not been killed, but walked off the mountain and was still alive, possibly preventing the situation—”
Fields slapped the table with the palm of his hand and rose out of his chair. “Yeah, you’re great with twenty-twenty hindsight, Crosswhite.”
“Hindsight has nothing to do with it,” Tracy said, rising from her chair and speaking loud enough to be heard over the others who had jumped in. “Had you done your job, the next logical step would have been to look for Lynn Hoff.”
“That’s your opinion!” Fields shouted back.
“No, that’s good detective work.”
“It was no longer your call to determine how another organization conducts its investigation,” Jessup said, also standing, his face a red beacon. “Nor is it up to you to critique my department or to step in when you deem it appropriate. You never should have spoken to the aunt.”
“Exactly how did it interfere with your investigation?” Tracy asked.
Jessup froze for an instant. Without an answer, he resorted to the schoolyard equivalent of “It’s mine.”
“Because it was no longer your investigation.”
Tracy looked to Martinez. “I didn’t hide the fact that I spoke to anyone. In fact, I called Detective Fields on my day off and invited him to meet with me so I could immediately provide him with the information. I didn’t tell him what to do with it.”
Fields said, “I had every intention of speaking to the aunt and to the friend.”
“You didn’t even know the friend’s name. Your file made no mention of the friend or the aunt.”
“Enough,” Martinez said, quiet but deliberate. “Everyone sit down.” After a brief pause to allow everyone to catch their breath, he said, “Have you written up the reports of your conversations with the aunt and the counselor?”
“Yes. I was going to transmit them this morning.”
“We also want the information from the skip tracer,” Fields said.
Martinez looked to Tracy. “I can provide the information that person uncovered,” she said. “I can’t provide a name.”
“Can’t or won’t?” Jessup said.
Tracy was in a tough spot. If she said “can’t,” it could lead them to determine that Faz had actually spoken to the skip tracer. “The information was provided in confidence. It’s irrelevant who provided it. It’s the substance that matters.”
“We’ll decide what’s relevant,” Jessup said. He looked to Martinez. “We want the name.”
Tracy continued her appeal to Martinez, who had a reputation for having been a good cop and protecting those that worked for him. “I don’t want to burn a source for an investigation that is no longer ours.”
“We’ll talk more about it,” Martinez said. “Is there anything else?” No one in the room spoke. Martinez rose. “Then you’ll excuse us, gentlemen.”
Jessup and Fields pushed back their chairs. They shook hands across the table with Nolasco and Martinez. Tracy got glares from both men as they departed. Nolasco and Martinez retook their seats.
“I want both reports on Captain Nolasco’s desk by noon,” Martinez said. “And I want the report on the skip tracer to include a name. We’ll decide whether to provide it or not, take you out of it.”
“I’ll give them everything I have, but I can’t give them the name, sir.”
“That’s not a request, Detective, that’s an order. I also want you to verbally provide Captain Nolasco with a full report of your actions, including dates, times, and names with respect to everything you did after Pierce County reasserted jurisdiction.”
“Do I need to get the union lawyer involved?” Tracy said.
Martinez shrugged. “That’s up to you.” He pushed back his chair and stood. “Personally, I think you did good police work, and I never have a problem with that.” He again showed the hint of a smile before it quickly faded and he left the room.
Nolasco didn’t get up. “You just can’t help stepping in the shit, can you?”
“All due respect, Captain, sometimes doing the right thing means stepping in the shit.”
Nolasco smirked. “Well, you sure have a knack for it.” He put on a pair of cheaters and lowered his gaze to a notepad on the table, pen in hand. “Who else knew about you continuing the investigation?”
Tracy shook her head. “No one.”
“No one
?” he asked over the top of his cheaters.
“I did this all on a personal day. I don’t share what I do on my personal days with people in the office. Frankly, it’s no one’s business what I do.”
“I guess OPA will decide that,” Nolasco said. “What about the skip tracer?”
“What about him?”
“That sounds like something Faz would be more inclined to know about than you.”
She shrugged. “Not this time. My investigation. My call.”
“I’m going to need his name.”
“I’m not going to provide it without some assurance Pierce County isn’t going to broadcast it and burn a perfectly good source because of their incompetence.”
“That’s not your call.” Nolasco set down his pen and leaned away from the table. “Can I ask you a question, off the record?”
Tracy shrugged.
“Why do it?”
Tracy thought of Penny Orr’s statement. “Because Andrea Strickland mattered, and just because the world crapped on her while she was living doesn’t mean she should be crapped on in death. Someone killed her and stuffed her body in a crab pot, and the two buffoons who just walked out of here will never figure it out.”
“You want my opinion?”
“Not really, no.”
Nolasco smiled. “Then I’ll give you my professional advice as your captain, because I’m going to put it in the report to OPA.” He paused a second. “This job is hard enough to do without making it personal. You make it personal, and it will impact not only you but those around you. Why do you think I’m divorced twice?”
The better question Tracy always wondered was why anyone had married him.
“Why do you think so many of us in this profession are divorced? You don’t think I had occasion in my career when a case became personal, when I got too close and paid the price with my marriages and my relationships with my kids? You’re not the only one who cares. You think you are, but you’re not. The rest of us have just found a way to shut it off. If you don’t learn how to do that, eventually you’ll hurt yourself and those around you.”
The Trapped Girl (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 4) Page 22