Her Final Breath (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 2) (2 page)

“What does your husband do?”

“He works for a construction company.”

“Does he want you to keep your job?”

“Of course. We need the money.”

“Then he needs to watch your daughters so you can practice.” Tracy showed Pryor her right thumb. “Do you know what that callus is from?”

“Shooting.”

“Loading my magazine. I’m here twice a week, rain or shine, night and day. The only way to get better at shooting is to shoot. You fail to qualify and you can’t work. They put you in a remedial training program. You carry a stigma. You’re a woman, Katie. You don’t need any other reason for them to think you’re incompetent.”

Pryor needed to hear it. Her husband really needed to hear it.

“Now, are you willing to work at this?”

Pryor pulled out her cell phone from the back pocket of her jeans. “Let me call home.”

As Pryor stepped away to make the call, Tracy started to reload her magazine. One of the men who’d been shooting at the opposite end of the range approached. “You ladies come down to take out some pent-up female aggression?” Johnny Nolasco was captain of the Violent Crimes Section, Tracy’s boss. He was also an ass.

“Just doing a little shooting, Captain.”

“Qualifying test coming up,” Nolasco said. Despite the cold weather, he wore a skintight short-sleeve shirt, putting the barbed-wire tattoo on his right biceps on full display. “Should we make it interesting?”

Tracy’s qualifying target from her graduation from the police academy had replaced Nolasco’s target in the trophy case at the entrance to the school. In the intervening twenty years, no one had achieved a higher qualifying score, and Nolasco’s ego had never recovered. “I’m good,” she said, continuing to reload.

“Not that good,” Nolasco said, looking Pryor up and down before leaving.

Pryor ended her phone conversation and stepped back to Tracy. “Who was that?”

“The reason you need to pass your qualifying test.”

Darkness set in, along with a layer of marine fog that colored the stanchion lights a sickly yellow and reduced visibility. Tracy encouraged Pryor to ignore the elements and focus on subtle shooting techniques, like how to properly use her gun sight. “If you can shoot in this lighting and this weather, you’ll be more confident shooting during the test.”

“What’s your best qualifying score?” Pryor asked.

“One fifty.”

“That’s a perfect score. Where’d you learn to shoot?”

“I did a lot of shooting competitions growing up. It was a family thing. We were judged on speed and accuracy. It’s like anything you do; if you want to do it well, you have to work at it. The main thing is a lot of repetition and developing good habits.”

Pryor flexed her fingers, then blew into her fist.

“Your hands are sore.”

“Little bit.”

“Get one of those balloons filled with sand and squeeze it when you’re on patrol or sitting at home watching television.”

“Hey, Tracy!”

Tracy turned. Though he was partially obscured by the fog, she could see Lazar standing outside his plum-colored Plymouth with the door open. He was backlit by the dome light and waving his arms overhead. The car’s headlights illuminated the thickening fog, and the tailpipe spit puffy white clouds of exhaust. “Office is locked. Lock the gate when you leave?”

“No problem, Lazar.”

Lazar waved again before getting back into his car and driving off, the engine rumbling like a boat.

Tracy had Pryor continue to shoot until they’d run out of ammo. When they’d finished, Pryor wore a contented smile. She’d need more practice, but her shooting had already improved.

“I’ll help you pick up the brass,” she said, though the spent practice casings were aluminum.

“I’ll do it,” Tracy said, feeling a little guilty for keeping Pryor late in miserable weather. “You get home. Let’s not push your luck the first night.”

“What about you?” Pryor asked.

“Just a cat waiting for me. Go on. Get home to your family.”

They retrieved Pryor’s target, and Tracy walked her to the gate. Pryor handed Tracy the goggles and ear protection to return to Lazar. “Listen, I can’t thank you enough.”

“Yes, you can. Pass your qualification test. Then pass along what I’ve taught you.”

As the hum of Pryor’s minivan faded, Tracy retrieved a five-gallon bucket from beneath the control tower and worked her way back toward the metal overhang, picking up the casings. They rattled in the bucket like spare change. The dogs in the kennel, quiet since Pryor had stopped shooting, began barking again. Tracy stopped, thinking it unlikely they’d heard the clatter of the shell casings. She thought she detected the sound of a car engine and looked to the road, but no headlights reflected in the fog. A click overhead drew her attention, but not before the stanchion lights shut off, bringing a profound darkness. She checked her cell: 9:00 on the nose. Lazar had the lights on a kill switch.

She heard the rattle of the cyclone fence, and thought she saw someone standing near the open gate but couldn’t be certain with the fog. She set down the bucket, put her hand on the butt of her Glock, and shouted over the dogs’ barking. “I’m a Seattle police officer, and I’m armed. If anyone is there, call out.”

No one did.

She kept her hand on her Glock, picked up the bucket, and carried it to the control tower, where she set it against the wall and retrieved Pryor’s eye and ear protection—she’d drop it in the slot in the office door on her way out. She walked toward the exit, eyes scanning the road for any sign of movement.

As she passed through the gate, something prickly brushed the top of her head. She jumped back, swiping at air, Glock raised. When no one came at her, she pulled out her phone and pressed the flashlight icon. The sharp light made it more difficult to see, like high beams illuminating fog at night. She stepped closer to the exit and raised the light.

A hangman’s noose dangled from a length of rope caught in the razor wire atop the fence.

She quickly assessed her situation. She was alone and, at the moment, exposed. She killed the light.

The noose had clearly not been there when Pryor had left and the stanchion lights were still on. Tracy had not been hearing or seeing things. She was right when she thought she’d heard a car and seen someone standing at the gate. It was a bold act to leave a noose at a police shooting range. Did the person know she was still there or think the range deserted? The fog would have made it difficult for anyone to see her. She dismissed that thought. It was too big a coincidence for someone to leave the noose on a night Tracy was shooting. That meant someone had followed her. The act had been intentional. The question was whether it was personal. The department had come under media fire recently because women’s groups were upset about the investigation of a North Seattle erotic dancer strangled with a noose in a motel room. The Nicole Hansen investigation had been Tracy’s until her abrupt departure to Cedar Grove for the hearing that had led to the release of her sister’s convicted killer. While she was gone, Nolasco sent the Hansen investigation to the Cold Case Unit, sparking an uproar from Hansen’s parents and the women’s rights groups.

Tracy punched in numbers on her cell. When dispatch answered, she provided her name, badge number, and location, then asked for backup and a team from the CSI Unit.

Disconnecting, she continued to assess her situation. She didn’t like being out in the open. Her truck was parked just to the left of the gate. If she could get to it, she could drive back to the entrance of the shooting range to wait for backup.

Tracy shuffled forward, Glock raised. She avoided the noose and stepped through the gate, keeping her back pressed to the fence. Gravel crunched under her boots as she worked her way from the hood down the side of her truck to the driver’s door. She retrieved her car key, dropped her gaze to fit the teeth into the lock, and turned the key. The door lock popped. She didn’t rush, waiting a beat before pulling the door open. About to get in, she noticed something protruding from the back of the truck bed and realized it was the corner of the spring-loaded window to the truck canopy.

She slid to the rear bumper, paused, then spun and swept the bed. Empty. She spun again and swept the area behind her but saw only the outlines of telephone poles shrouded in fog.

She lowered the canopy window and turned the handle, hearing it latch.

As she made her way back to the truck cab, the dogs in the kennel began to bark again.

CHAPTER 2

T
racy drove back to the street in front of the alley leading to the Seattle Police Athletic Association. She didn’t have to wait long for a patrol unit to arrive. She instructed the uniformed officer to string yellow-and-black crime scene tape across the entrance to the alley. Shortly thereafter, she was glad she had. The news vans and reporters arrived, followed by her sergeant, Billy Williams.

“Thought you called it in on your cell,” Williams said, eyeing the media.

“I did,” Tracy said.

Using a cell phone should have skirted the media, but SPD had long been a sieve. The brass liked to cull favors with reporters by feeding them information, and it was suspected among the detectives in the Violent Crimes Section that they had a leak. Tracy also remained relevant news after what had happened in Cedar Grove.

Williams adjusted a black knit driving cap that had become a fixture since he’d conceded the inevitable and shaved his head. He said the cap provided warmth in the fall and winter and protected his scalp from the sun during the summer. Tracy suspected Billy just liked the look. He’d also grown a pencil-thin mustache and soul patch, which made him look a lot like the actor Samuel L. Jackson.

Kinsington Rowe, Tracy’s partner, arrived ten minutes later. Kins got out of an older-model BMW, slipping into a leather car coat. “Sorry,” he said. “We were at Shannah’s parents’ for dinner. What do we got?”

“I’ll show you,” Tracy said. Kins climbed in the truck cab with her. Billy followed in his Jeep.

“You all right?” Kins asked.

“Me?”

“You seem a little freaked.”

“I’m fine.” Wanting to change the topic, she said, “Shannah’s parents?”

Kins made a face. “We’re trying to have Sunday night dinners together to see if it helps. I got caught in a discussion with her father on gun control.”

“How’d that go?”

“About as you’d expect.”

Tracy swung the truck wide and parked well clear of the entrance to the range. She turned on the wipers to clear the mist from the windshield. The truck’s headlights spotlighted the hangman’s noose.

“What do you make of it?” Kins asked.

“Not sure. Someone put it up right after the lights went out.”

“He wanted you to find it.”

“Appears that way.”

“Got to be.”

They got out of the cab and approached the spot where Williams now stood. “Looks like the same rope,” Kins said. “Same color. Can’t see the knot.”

Nicole Hansen hadn’t just been strangled. She’d been hog-tied, with an elaborate system intended to torture the victim. If Hansen straightened her legs, it pulled the rope and tightened the noose. Eventually, she tired trying to hold the pose and strangled herself. Tracy and Kins had treated it as a homicide, though they didn’t immediately rule out the possibility that Hansen had died during a sex act gone horribly wrong. Hard as it was for some to imagine a woman agreeing to such torture, Tracy had seen worse when she’d been assigned to the Sexual Assault Unit. When Hansen’s toxicology report revealed Rohypnol, a well-known date rape drug, they scratched that theory.

“So door number one, it’s the same guy who killed Nicole Hansen,” Kins said. “Door number two, it’s somebody angry about the Hansen investigation being sent to cold cases who wants to make a point.”

“Could be a copycat,” Billy said.

“Door number three,” Kins said.

During the Hansen investigation, Maria Vanpelt, a local television reporter, had leaked an expert’s opinion that the rope used to strangle Hansen was polypropylene with a Z twist. SPD had loudly protested to the station manager, who’d apologized profusely and said it would never happen again. No one at SPD was holding their breath.

“Whatever the choice,” Billy said, “he left it where you couldn’t miss it. It means he followed you. I’m going to have a detail keep an eye on you.”

“I don’t need a babysitter, Billy.”

“Just until we figure out what this guy intended.”

“I’ll put a hole in him before he can get within ten feet of me,” Tracy said.

“One problem,” Kins said. “You don’t have a clue who he is.”

CHAPTER 3

A
patrol car from the Southwest Precinct parked at the curb in front of Tracy’s house in West Seattle’s Admiral District as she pulled into the driveway. She gave the officer a wave and drove into a garage far too neat and organized. Furniture and cardboard boxes containing most of her belongings from her Capitol Hill apartment remained neatly stacked on the other half of the two-car space. She’d rented the house fully furnished from an FBI agent who’d moved with his wife to Hawaii but didn’t want to sell until certain they’d enjoy living in paradise.