Her Final Breath (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 2) (9 page)

“Maybe. We don’t know that for sure yet. We know he was more infatuated with her than he admitted.” Kins slid copies of the photographs they’d found in the storage shed across the table, talking as Cerrabone considered them. “These were taken in that motel room, and in at least one of them Schreiber is on her hands and knees.”

“But not with a rope around her neck,” Cerrabone said.

“No, not with a rope around her neck,” Kins agreed.

“Anything else?”

“She rented the room for longer than an hour,” Tracy said.

“He said his wife was away. He didn’t have to rush home.” Kins gave her a “two can play devil’s advocate” smile.

“Why is that significant?” Cerrabone said.

“Tracy thinks she might have rented the room for longer than an hour because she was meeting someone after Gipson,” Kins said.

“That’s what prostitutes do, Kins,” Tracy said. “It’s not a stretch she did it.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m not buying it,” Kins said. “Really, what are the odds? Gipson takes her to the motel and has sex with her, and it’s the next guy who comes along and kills her? That makes Gipson the most unlucky son of a bitch on the planet.”

“What did the motel owner say?” Cerrabone said.

“Says he has a two-hour minimum,” Kins said, “but he doesn’t keep records of cash payments.”

Cerrabone looked to Tracy. “You don’t think he did it?”

Her head was pounding. She wanted food and sleep. She wasn’t going to get the latter for a while. “I don’t know.”

“Something else?”

“I don’t know. I mean . . . he gets his girlfriend pregnant and marries her. I could tell talking to him it wasn’t his first choice, but he did the right thing.”

Kins grimaced. “Ridgway was married twice, and he was still a sick dung heap. He used his kid to attract women. These guys do things for reasons we’ll never understand.”

“I’m just saying it’s something to weigh, along with everything else. I’m not saying it makes him a Boy Scout,” Tracy said.

Cerrabone beat a rhythm on the table with his index and middle fingers. “We
might
get past the probable cause hearing, but we won’t get past an arraignment or a motion to dismiss. And if I file a complaint, we’ll have played our hand and the media will know about the similarities to Nicole Hansen.”

“And then it’s Katy bar the freaking door,” Kins said.

Cerrabone looked at his watch, stood and slipped on his jacket. “Anything comes up, let my office know.” He did not sound optimistic. At the door he turned back. “We have
no
evidence to link him to Hansen?”

“Nothing yet,” Tracy said.

Given the lack of evidence, Tracy was not surprised when Cerrabone called late that afternoon as she and Kins left a fly-fishing shop. They’d presented samples of Gipson’s flies to the proprietor and asked if he could tell whether the person who tied them was right- or left-handed.

“Something that intricate,” the man had said, “he’d have to be able to tie equally well with both hands.”

Great,
Tracy had thought.

Cerrabone said what Tracy had already deduced. “We’re not going forward.”

She respected him. Unlike some prosecutors who cherry-picked which cases to try to preserve their win-loss percentage, Cerrabone wasn’t afraid to try a case he might lose. But this was a reasoned decision. They did not have enough evidence, and the last thing they wanted to do was to move forward with an evidentiary hearing and give the media another reason to criticize them when a judge ended up setting Gipson free and the murder of another young woman remained unsolved.

After hanging up with Cerrabone, Tracy walked around the corner to Nolasco’s office to make a request. She suspected she knew the answer, but she wanted to note in the file that she had tried.

“We want to put a tail on Gipson,” she said.

“Do your job and I don’t have to authorize an unnecessary expenditure of funds,” Nolasco said.

Early that evening, Walter Gipson, aficionado of prostitutes and fine motels, and skilled creator of intricate fishing flies, walked free from King County Jail.

CHAPTER 14

T
racy returned to her desk to go through crime scene photographs, hoping she’d see something she’d missed. From across the bull pen, Faz muttered one of his famous sayings, breaking her concentration.

“Kick me in the nuts—hey, Professor?”

“Rather not, Faz. A few other people I can think of that I’d like to, however.”

Faz frequently called Tracy by the nickname given to her at the police academy.

“I think you might want to come see this.”

Tracy rotated her chair. It was just the two of them. Kins had left for the day to have dinner with the family. He’d already missed too many, which wasn’t helping the strained relations at home. Del, too, had departed, leaving a pile of papers, food wrappers, and coffee mugs on his desk.

She pushed away from her desk and walked to Faz’s cubicle, looking over his shoulder. Faz was peering over the top of half-lens reading glasses at his computer screen. Tracy recognized the dark and blurred image of the Pink Palace parking lot captured by one of the two surveillance cameras. She’d also reviewed the surveillance video from inside the club, but it had been focused on the cash register and, more specifically, on Nash’s employees handling the money. It didn’t record the patrons.

“Tell me what you see,” Faz said, tapping his keyboard.

She leaned closer to the screen but pulled back when she detected garlic, a lot of it. Whatever gum Faz was chewing wasn’t close to conquering the smell. She waived at the air. “You expecting an attack by vampires, Faz?”

“It ain’t Italian food if you don’t reek,” he said.

“Mission accomplished.”

Faz vacated his chair. “You sit. I’ll stand and try not to breathe on you.”

Tracy took his seat and hit “Play.” The video was poor quality, largely because the lights working in the parking lot were sporadic, creating patches of dark shadows. The club’s pink stucco walls looked pale gray, and when the neon marquee and Jumbotron flashed, everything on the video washed out. Nash had no doubt skimped on the security cameras when running the budget for his “gentlemen’s club.”

After thirteen static seconds ticked off the timer in the lower right corner, a man in a cap and a woman with a red handbag slung over her shoulder walked out from behind the building. “Gipson and Schreiber,” Tracy said, feeling slightly unnerved watching the final moments of Schreiber’s life, like some sort of deity peering down from the heavens, knowing what was about to happen. The couple held hands, swinging their arms like high school sweethearts strolling on a warm summer evening and reveling in the feel of each other’s intertwined fingers. Gipson pulled Schreiber to him to sneak a kiss. He looked like he wanted more, but Schreiber leaned away, putting a hand to his chest. She glanced back to the Pink Palace. Did she know there were surveillance cameras and was worried Nash might fire her, or was she just concerned about someone coming out the door?

They separated and quickly slid in opposite sides of the car. The headlights did not immediately illuminate, and it was too dark to see what was happening inside the car, though easy enough for Tracy to venture a good guess. Gipson was probably trying to get some of what Schreiber wouldn’t give him in the parking lot. Thirty-eight seconds ticked off the timer before the headlights turned on and two elongated beams of light shot across the asphalt. Gipson drove to the driveway, briefly paused, then turned onto the street fronting the Pink Palace, departing the camera’s coverage in the direction of Aurora.

Tracy looked back at Faz, who was grinning like somebody just invited him to dinner. “Nothing, right?”

“Nothing,” she agreed.

Faz stepped forward and hit the “Play” button again. “This time, don’t watch Gipson and Schreiber; watch the upper left corner of the screen.” Gipson and Schreiber reappeared, but Tracy kept her eyes on the corner. When Gipson’s car pulled to the driveway entrance, another car appeared, a dark-colored sedan.

Faz said out loud what Tracy immediately noticed. “Headlights are off.”

The building blocked the camera’s coverage, and the car disappeared from view. Gipson’s Toyota pulled out of the lot. Seconds later, the other car, just a blur, flashed past the Pink Palace.

“Remember you said maybe Gipson wasn’t the last one with Schreiber?” Faz said.

Tracy went back to the beginning of the video and pointed to the corner. “Watch where the car enters the frame.”

“Thinking the same thing,” Faz said. “If it was parked, it was parked just out of the camera’s coverage.”

She played the video again, trying to time the car’s reappearance. She hit “Stop,” but too late, the blurred image was no longer on the screen. She tried several more times before she’d captured the frame she wanted, the dark-colored sedan just in front of the Pink Palace. The clarity of the picture, already poor, was made worse by the Jumbotron, which at that moment had flashed a brilliant white.

“Not going to get the license plate,” Faz said.

Tracy leaned closer, but she couldn’t see inside the car or make out anything definitive about its make or model.

“Let’s get it over to the lab,” she said. “See if Mike can do anything with it.”

“Hey, it ain’t nothing, right?” Faz said.

Sometimes it was the little pieces of evidence that, when put together, led to an arrest.

“It ain’t nothing,” she agreed.

Tracy picked up Chinese food on the way home and sat at the dining room table picking at a carton of orange chicken. In the kitchen Roger pushed a tin can across the tile counter. The door intercom buzzed. She knew it wasn’t Dan. He’d called earlier to check in and tell her about his arbitration, which he felt was going well, though slow. Tracy set down her chopsticks and made her way to the front door, thinking it could be the officer assigned to watch the house in need of the bathroom.

“Yes?” she said, pushing the button.

“Detective Crosswhite? It’s Katie Pryor from the shooting range.”

It took a moment for Tracy to register the young female officer she’d trained for her qualifying test. Though it had only been a few days, it felt like weeks. “I’ll buzz you in,” she said.

Pryor shut the gate behind her and crossed the courtyard carrying a card and a potted plant. She was in uniform. There were now two patrol cars parked in front of the house.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you,” she said, reaching the front door.

“Just got home.”

“I was going to leave this for you, but the gate . . .” She handed Tracy the plant—a cactus—and a card. “I thought it best to get you something that didn’t require a lot of care.”

Tracy smiled. “Good call, but you didn’t have to do this.”

As she took the plant, Roger shot past her. Tracy lunged to stop him, but too late. He bolted into the courtyard and around the side of the house.

“I’m sorry,” Pryor said. “Do you want me to help you get him back inside?”

“Easier said than done,” Tracy said. “I’ll get him in a bit. He doesn’t like the cold for long, and he’s a sucker for a can of food. Are you heading to work?”

Pryor shook her head. “Finishing up, actually. We live over by the school. I didn’t realize you were this close.”

Tracy had no idea what school Pryor was referring to. “You want to come in for a minute?”

Pryor surprised Tracy when she accepted. “Maybe for a minute,” she said.

Tracy shut the door, and they stepped inside.

“I interrupted your dinner,” Pryor said, eyeing the cartons of Chinese food.

“Have you eaten?”

“I don’t want to impose.”

“No imposition. I have more than I can eat, and I’d enjoy the company.”

Tracy went to the kitchen and returned with two plates, another set of chopsticks, two glasses, and a bottle of wine. She poured Pryor a glass, and they sat scooping out rice and exchanging the cartons of orange chicken and garlic beef.

“Do you always work at night?” Pryor said, looking at the laptop.

“We’ve had a couple homicides.”