Her Final Breath (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 2) (29 page)

Tracy unfolded the piece of paper and read the name. “Shereece,” she said, recalling the name of the African American dancer from the Pink Palace. She called the number.

A woman answered. Tracy said, “Shereece, this is Detective Crosswhite.”

“’Bout time you called me back,” Shereece said. “We need to talk. Now.”

Johnny Nolasco chose a table in the corner beside a stone fireplace. The surrounding tables were empty. He nursed a coffee and watched the door while replaying his conversation with JoAnne Anderson in his head, growing angrier each time through it.

Dan O’Leary was the attorney who had represented Edmund House. He was Tracy Crosswhite’s childhood friend. If he was looking into the Beth Stinson case, Crosswhite had to be behind it.

The Stinson investigation had been intense. Beth Stinson was not some dead prostitute, drug addict, or runaway. She was the girl next door, living in a middle-class neighborhood, attacked in her own home. Murders didn’t happen to the girl next door. They didn’t happen to the daughters of the middle class living in safe neighborhoods. The neighbors were scared, the local politicians were outraged, and the politicians downtown were pushing the brass for an arrest. And, since shit flowed downhill, Nolasco and Hattie were getting a steady flow day and night.

They caught a break when a review of Stinson’s credit cards revealed a service call from Roto-Rooter the day before she was murdered. A few quick phone calls led to Wayne Gerhardt, a twenty-eight-year-old living alone in an apartment not far from Stinson’s rented home. Gerhardt’s fingerprints were all over the house, and he’d left a muddy bootprint on the carpet, which he’d unsuccessfully tried to clean up. He had no alibi. Nolasco and Hattie were convinced he was their guy, but although the neighbor initially said she believed she’d seen Gerhardt that night when she got up to get a glass of water, she was the religious type and kept vacillating, concerned about convicting an innocent man. Without the witness’s testimony, they didn’t have enough to convict.

Back then, it had been a different time and a different administration. Montages could be manipulated. So could police lineups. Witnesses could be encouraged to remember what they saw. There were techniques, subtle but effective, with the sole goal being to put the bad guy in jail, and no homicide team had ever had the success rate Nolasco and Hattie had put together. Hattie hadn’t been about to retire with an open case, and Nolasco didn’t want that on his record as he worked his way up the ranks. Wayne Gerhardt was their guy. They were certain of it. They just had to give JoAnne Anderson reason to be confident in her ID. They knew that once she got on the witness stand, the trial would be over. Gerhardt would have two choices: take a plea or face the death penalty. Nolasco predicted Gerhardt would see the light.

So they told Anderson they had a suspect and just needed her to confirm he was the guy she’d seen that night. They showed her Gerhardt’s photo, and she ID’d him. Then they asked her to come downtown for a police lineup and she picked Gerhardt without hesitation, dead certain. And when she got on the stand at trial, she didn’t equivocate. Gerhardt took the plea, and Hattie put four other suspects’ photos in the file along with Gerhardt’s mug shot and rode off into retirement with a clean slate. Nolasco left the streets and started to make his way up the ranks to lieutenant, then to captain. He’d never given Beth Stinson or Wayne Gerhardt another moment of thought.

Until now.

After hanging up with Anderson, Nolasco had made a call to Olympia and confirmed that Crosswhite had pulled the Stinson file from storage and had it shipped to the Justice Center. Initially he could think of only one reason why she’d be looking at his old files: she’d heard the rumors circulating among the older detectives questioning his and Hattie’s investigation methods, and she was looking for something to embarrass him. When his initial anger had subsided, he began to think more clearly. Tracy Crosswhite was not stupid; she wouldn’t be pursuing a decade-old case without good reason, especially not one of his. She had to know any attempt to get another killer a new trial would make her media fodder. So there had to be a reason.

Nolasco reconsidered the details of the old case and recalled that Stinson had been tied up and strangled with a rope. He also remembered that they had noted something odd about the crime scene—that Stinson’s bed had been made despite the fact that the murder occurred in the early hours of the morning. That left one possible conclusion. Crosswhite thought there was a connection between Stinson and the Cowboy killings, and she had O’Leary going through the file and talking to the witnesses, who would no doubt tell him that Nolasco and Hattie had never followed through with them. He wondered if JoAnne Anderson recalled that Hattie had only showed her Gerhardt’s photograph and not a montage. If she had, O’Leary might argue that Nolasco and Hattie had improperly influenced a witness to convict Gerhardt, and that maybe, because of police misconduct, not only had an innocent man been convicted, but a serial killer had been left free to kill for nearly a decade. Nolasco didn’t believe that to be the case. He believed Gerhardt had killed Beth Stinson. But he didn’t want Crosswhite poking her nose in his old files.

He’d stewed for several hours, thinking about how best to respond. If he confronted Crosswhite directly, she could go over his head, maybe go to OPA or to one of the prosecutors. She could suggest that not just the Beth Stinson case be reviewed, but all of Nolasco and Hattie’s cases.

He couldn’t make it look personal.

That’s when he’d thought of Maria Vanpelt. Sure, it was a risk saying anything to an investigative reporter, but even he had to admit Vanpelt was a hack. More often than not, she chose the low-hanging fruit, because she was lazy, not interested in doing any real work to uncover facts. She sought out the sensational stories that would get her face front and center on the six and eleven o’clock newscasts.

And Nolasco had something that could do just that—make her career.

Vanpelt walked into the coffee shop looking and sounding annoyed.

“This better not be some ploy to just get me over here, Johnny. I’ve had a long day.”

“Nice to see you too,” he said.

She dropped her keys on the table, which drew the barista’s attention. “Coffee, decaf. Black.”

The young girl stared as if Vanpelt were speaking a foreign language.

“They don’t have table service,” Nolasco said.

“Just bring me a cup of coffee,” Vanpelt said to the girl. “There’s a tip in it for you.”

The girl went to work. Vanpelt gave Nolasco her everything-has-a-price smile. “So what’s so important it couldn’t wait until the morning?”

“I may have a big story for you.”

“I already have a big story. The Cowboy is getting me the nightly lead, and I’m going live tomorrow with Anderson Cooper about Seattle being a killing ground. Nancy Grace may want me early next week.”

“Good for you.” Nolasco slowly adjusted his position in his seat, put his forearms on the table, and leaned over his cup. “Tracy Crosswhite’s at it again,” he said.

The barista approached. Nolasco sat back to clear room. Vanpelt said, “I don’t have any cash on me.” Nolasco reached into his front pocket, flipped through some bills, and handed the girl a five. “Keep the change,” Vanpelt said. She sipped her coffee and set the cup down. “So what is
it
?”

“What if I told you I have information Crosswhite is working to free another convicted murderer—another man who killed a young woman?”

Vanpelt had lifted her cup but set it down without drinking. “How good is your information?”

“Infallible. All you’d need to do is make a few phone calls.” He slid a piece of paper across the table. “Start with this one. It’s the number for the State Archives.”

“What am I supposed to do with that?”

“Tell them you’d like to review a file. I wrote the case number below the telephone number.”

“They’re not going to give me the file without a FOIA request.”

“They’re not going to give you the file because it isn’t there. Ask who last checked it out and when.”

“What’s in the file?”

Nolasco sat back. “This is when you might want to get out a notepad and pen.”

Vanpelt slowly reached into her purse and retrieved a pen, but she didn’t take out a pad. Instead she flipped over a napkin.

“Nine years ago Beth Stinson was a single woman living alone in North Seattle,” Nolasco said. “Wayne Gerhardt, a Roto-Rooter man, comes to the house to unclog her drain. He comes back later that night and murders her. An eyewitness saw Gerhardt leaving Stinson’s house early in the morning. His prints and DNA were all over the crime scene. He had no alibi, and he pled to the killing and received a twenty-five-year sentence.”

“So what’s Crosswhite’s interest in it?”

“That’s your job.”

“Why isn’t it your job?”

“Because she’s keeping it from me, which means she doesn’t want me to know what she’s doing and isn’t likely to give me a straight answer. I can tell you, however, that she’s working with the same attorney who represented Edmund House. He’s already spoken to the eyewitness and visited Gerhardt in Walla Walla.

“Dan O’Leary,” Vanpelt said, smiling, clearly remembering him. She scribbled another note, then stopped, sat back, and studied Nolasco with a hint of a smile. “You’re worried about this.”

“‘Pissed’ is a better word.”

Vanpelt’s grin widened. She looked positively gleeful. “It was your case.” When Nolasco didn’t answer she said, “What could Crosswhite hope to get out of it?”

“I think it’s her way to try and embarrass me, to get back at me for whatever perceived injustice she thinks I’ve caused her.”

“Embarrass you?” Her eyebrows arched. “You said you had an eyewitness, DNA, a confession. How could she embarrass you?” She paused. “Could this guy be innocent?”

“Of course not.”

“Then what are you worried about?”

“I told you, I’m not worried. I’m pissed.”

“You sound worried.”

“Look, I’m throwing you another bone. You don’t want it, I’ll make another call.”

“To whom?”

“Don’t you think it would make for interesting television drama?”

Vanpelt smirked. “I don’t know, Johnny. If Crosswhite gets booted from the force, I lose my best stories.”

“You don’t need Crosswhite to make your career for you. I can do that.”

“How?”

“There’s something else I’m working on,” Nolasco said. “Something bigger, but you can’t move on it, not yet.” If Tracy Crosswhite was determined to embarrass him, Nolasco would be more than happy to reciprocate.

“What is it?” Vanpelt asked.

“One of the prime suspects in the Cowboy case failed a polygraph.”

“Which one?”

“Like I said, you can’t move on it just yet.”

Tracy pulled to the curb and gazed up at a house typical of the houses in the Central District. Two stories with a narrow front porch, it sat perched above the sidewalk with a sloping front yard. Tracy ascended wooden steps to the porch and knocked on a red door. A moment later she was staring down at the cherubic face of a young boy in blue pajamas spotted with red basketballs. Tracy guessed he was seven or eight.

“Hello,” he said. “Scott residence, may I help you?”

That got a smile. “Yes, you may. Is your mother home?”

Tracy almost didn’t recognize the woman who appeared at the door, but she recognized the voice. “What are you doing out of bed, young man? And what have I told you about opening the door to strangers?”

“It’s a lady.”

“Do you know her?” Shereece asked, hands on hips. “Hmm? Do you know her?”

The boy shook his head.

“Then she’s a stranger.”

The boy displayed a mischievous grin, and a gap where his two front teeth would have been. Tracy had no doubt he was a handful.

“Were you expecting company?” Shereece asked.

He shook his head again.

“Then get on back up those stairs to bed.”

“Good-bye, stranger lady.” The boy dipped beneath his mother’s arm and scurried up carpeted steps.