Her Final Breath (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 2) (38 page)

“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

K
ins 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.

Kins found Faz in the break room draining the remnants of coffee from the stained pot into a coffee cup with the word “Mug” embossed on the front and Faz’s face on the back.

“Here.” Faz held out the cup. “You look like you could use it more than me, and that’s bad.”

Kins waved it off. “And give up the precious minutes I can kill making another pot? Not on your life, Fazzio. This is the highlight of my day.”

“What the hell is Nolasco up to?” Faz said. “We ain’t gonna catch this guy sitting with our thumbs up our asses.”

“Don’t know,” Kins said, “but Santos called looking for him again. Said he asked for her notes on the profile she put together and her assessment of each suspect.”

“She didn’t know why?”

“Nolasco didn’t tell her why, just asked for them ASAP.”

“Where’s he now?”

“Don’t know.”

“Well, that’s one good thing about him being out of the office. He ain’t here.”

On the way back to his desk, still in need of a mental break, Kins picked up the remote and turned on the television. It remained tuned to Channel 8 from the previous night when they’d gathered to watch the news. He stood sipping his freshly brewed coffee and noticed a news ticker scrolling along the bottom of the screen.

Breaking News in Cowboy Investigation.

Kins’s stomach fluttered. He was watching an aerial shot from a helicopter hovering above a white single-story home on a patch of lush green lawn with what looked like half a dozen fruit trees and a metal shed.

“Hey, Faz?” Kins called out.

“Yeah?”

“I think I know what Nolasco is up to.”

Tracy’s phone woke her from a deep sleep. She lay facedown on her bed, where she’d collapsed fully dressed after getting home from meeting Kins. The screen on her cell glowed just inches from her face, but when she reached for it her right arm felt leaden. She’d slept on it, cutting off the circulation, and her arm and hand had gone numb. She rolled onto her back and felt the tingling sensation shooting needles all over her skin. She and Sarah used to call it a “dead arm,” which could also be caused by a well-placed knuckle punch just above the biceps. She tried to sit up, but her head felt as heavy as her arm.

She recognized the incoming number and answered the call still lying on her bed. “Hey,” her voice croaked. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Hey.”

“Did I wake you?” Dan asked, and she heard the surprise in his voice.

“What time is it?”

“Almost four thirty.”

Disbelieving, she turned her head enough to see the clock on her nightstand. “Damn.” She’d only intended to sleep an hour.

Dan started to laugh. “How long was your nap?”

“About seven hours.”

“You must have needed it.”

She yawned and looked down at her feet. “Didn’t even take my boots off.”

“Everything all right there?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine. Are you still at the storage shed?”

“Just about to finish up.”

“Any luck?” she asked.

“Nothing yet. I’m about halfway through, but at least now I have a system. It gives me the false hope that I’m actually making progress. I thought since I’m this far north I’d better get home and get the boys, make sure I still have a house standing.”

“I’m looking forward to seeing them both.”

“Nothing strange? You’re sure?”

“I’m fine, Dan, seriously. It’s like you said, I live in a fortress.”

“I should be there around eight.”

“I’ll cook dinner.”

“You’ll cook dinner?”

“Hey, I can cook.”

“Knock my socks off then.”

Tracy disconnected, dropped the phone on the bed, and took another couple minutes to wake up. Lying there, she realized she was hungry. She also felt gross. Eat or shower?

Definitely food.

She got up slowly and walked to the kitchen, pulling a carton of leftover Chinese from the fridge and poking at it with chopsticks as she walked to the sliding glass door. She did small stretching exercises with her neck and shoulders, letting her mind and body continue to wake, and looked down into the yard where the man had stood the night before.

A black ball was trotting across the lawn toward the bushes.

Roger.

Kins stood staring at the television, not quite believing what he was witnessing.

“Who is that?” Faz asked.

“That would be the FBI. That’s what Nolasco’s been doing. He brought in the Famous But Incompetent to show us up.”

They didn’t have to wait long to find out who else Nolasco had brought in. Maria Vanpelt held a microphone and pressed a finger to her earpiece. She looked to be the only reporter on the scene. “He tipped her,” Faz said.

“Had to have,” Kins agreed.

“I’m live on the scene of what we are being told is a significant break in the Cowboy investigation.” She pointed down the street to the single-story house. “Moments ago FBI agents rushed the home of David Bankston, who they are describing as a person of interest in the killings.”

“Bankston?” Kins said.

Vanpelt continued. “Bankston, who works at a warehouse in Kent, came under suspicion when his DNA turned up on a noose found at one of the crime scenes.”

“It wasn’t at a crime scene,” Kins said.

Faz was swearing a blue streak. “He shut us out. Nolasco shut us out.”

“The search is being led by Seattle Police Department captain Johnny Nolasco, who recently took over the Cowboy Task Force.”

The front door to the house opened, and Vanpelt continued her narration. “FBI agents are now escorting a woman and a young girl out of the house.” The camera cut to a large shed. “Other agents are using what looks to be a bolt cutter to remove a padlock on the shed behind that house.”

The camera zoomed in. Men and women in blue jackets with
FBI
in gold across the back were using a pry bar to pop the clasp on the shed. Then they regrouped and entered the shed in tactical gear, guns drawn.

“Idiots,” Kins said. “If he was inside the shed, how could he have applied the lock!”

“We’re going to cut away for a moment,” Vanpelt said, “to talk to Captain Johnny Nolasco.” Nolasco, walking across the lawn by the house, wore jeans and a blue jacket, though his said
SPD
in white. Vanpelt shouted, “Captain Nolasco?” He stopped. “Can you tell us what’s going on?”

Nolasco raised a hand, like he couldn’t be bothered, and kept walking. The camera followed him to the shed, where he looked to be speaking with agents before ducking inside.

“I got to call Tracy,” Kins said. He hurried to his desk and retrieved his cell phone, placing the call as he walked back to the bull pen. He got voice mail and left a short message. “Tracy, call me. Turn on your television to Channel 8. You’re not going to believe this.”

On TV, Nolasco was walking out of the shed with something in his hand.

“It appears that Captain Nolasco has found something of interest in the shed,” Vanpelt said as the camera zoomed in. “That’s a coil of rope.”

Kins felt his blood run cold.

Vanpelt shouted again. “Captain Nolasco?”

This time Nolasco did not wave her away. He stepped closer, holding the coil of yellow rope. Nolasco had his cop face on, stern and determined.

“Can you tell us if that is the same rope used in the Cowboy killings?” Vanpelt said.

“I won’t comment on any evidence.”

“Then why are you holding it?” Kins asked loudly.

“Is David Bankston the Cowboy?” Vanpelt said.

“I won’t comment at this time.”

“Can you tell us what led you to search this property?”

“When we made changes in the task force, I revisited the evidence, and based on my assessment of that evidence, I felt it warranted.”

“Do you have David Bankston in custody?”

Nolasco paused, just a slight hesitation, but Kins instantly knew why. “They don’t have him in custody,” Kins said. “They don’t know where he is.”

“Are you freaking kidding me?” Faz said. “They didn’t find him before they went to his home?”

“We expect to have him in custody shortly,” Nolasco said.

Kins looked at his phone.

“What is it, Sparrow?” Faz asked.

“Tracy didn’t answer. Why wouldn’t she answer her phone?”

“Maybe she turned it off,” Faz said.

“She never turns her phone off.” Kins tried Tracy’s number again. The call again went to voice mail. He tried her home phone number, but it rang through to voice mail too. “Screw this,” he said and hurried to his desk to grab his wallet and keys.

“I’m going with you,” Faz said.

CHAPTER 52

D
an rolled the metal door shut and reapplied the padlock through the eyehook. Going through the boxes had been tedious and slow. He’d found files and documents from one business misplaced in a box labeled for a different business, and other files similarly mismarked. It meant that he had to look through the contents of every single box and file. When he’d called Tracy, he’d gone through approximately half the shed. He’d thought about stopping, but the search had become addicting, the odds of finding the materials increasing with the elimination of each box. Three times Dan had lifted the lid on a box, telling himself it was the last box for the day. Three times he’d opened another lid. And on the third box, he beat the odds. He found folders with “Dirty Ernie’s” written on the tabs. A quick look indicated financial records and employment information.