“Why?”
Tracy shrugged. “Didn’t we discuss this already? That’s my desk and my computer, regardless if I’m in court or not.”
“I told you I want her to get up to speed on your active files. You got a problem with her reviewing your files?”
Tracy shook her head. “That’s why they’re accessible. I do, however, have a problem with her gaining access to my privatized files. They’re private for a reason. I didn’t set it up that way. That’s a department policy.”
Nolasco eyed her.
“Are we done?” she asked.
“Yeah, we’re done.”
Nolasco put his head down. Tracy started toward the door and turned back, as if she’d forgotten something. “I got a call from the missing persons unit. They received a report of a missing twenty-four-year-old woman and asked that we take a look.”
Nolasco looked up. “How long has she been missing?”
“Since Monday night,” Tracy said.
“What evidence is there of foul play?”
“She hasn’t communicated with her parents, her roommate, or her friends. She isn’t answering her phone or responding to text messages and she didn’t report to work. It isn’t like her. Last anyone knew she’d left on a date.”
“I’m not hearing anything to indicate foul play.”
“Isn’t that what we’re trying to avoid?” Tracy said.
“What does the boyfriend say?”
“Don’t know. They don’t know his name or if he’s even a boyfriend.”
“Nobody knows?”
“The roommate was away and the woman wasn’t speaking to her family.”
“It’s not illegal for people to go missing,” Nolasco said. “Let MPU handle it until something more develops.”
“MPU called me. They didn’t want to wait until someone finds an arm in a Dumpster.”
Nolasco knew the brass would raise hell if that happened again. It would paint the department as insensitive. Tracy went for the race card.
“She’s East Indian.”
“Del and Faz might have a print on the Monique Rodgers killer,” he said. “And Del hurt his back. If they get a print, Faz is going to need help working that case.”
“Okay, if Faz needs my help, I’ll help, but I also think we should pursue this one. This is a college grad, applying to medical school.”
Nolasco paused, a lizard stuck between a rock and a hard place. She let him contemplate the possible repercussions. “Let MPU take the lead. Provide support where and if they need it. We don’t take it unless there’s evidence of a violent crime.”
“Will do,” Tracy said, trying not to smile as she departed.
CHAPTER 22
When Faz arrived at Police Headquarters, he went into the men’s room and splashed cold water on his face, hoping to hide the evidence that he’d been crying. The cancer specialist, after reviewing an MRI of the mass in Vera’s breast, as well as a separate biopsy and CT scan, said that several lymph nodes had been impacted. He recommended that Vera undergo a mastectomy followed by chemotherapy. To ease the news, he said Vera had discovered the mass early and that a reconstruction of her breast could take place at the same time as the mastectomy. Vera took the news hard but, after time to absorb it, and further information from the specialist, she opted not to have both surgeries at the same time, feeling that the potential complications would leave her too weak; she wanted to preserve her strength to get through the chemotherapy that was to follow the mastectomy, and then deal with reconstruction.
As they left the doctor’s office, Faz told Vera he would take the entire day off, but she again insisted that he go to work.
“Monique Rodgers’s family is depending on you, and you may have a lead,” she’d said. “Besides, what are you going to do at home?”
Faz tried to remain stoic while in her presence, but on the drive into the office he kept hearing the doctor’s recommendation that they take one day at a time. He knew the doctor meant it as helpful advice, but hearing him tell Vera not to think about the future got him thinking again. Then, FM 98.1, the Seattle classical station, broadcast “Sono Andati” from La Bohème, the song when Mimi is dying. Faz lost it.
He felt relief to find the bull pen vacant. Del was at home, and he suspected Tracy and Kins were both in court, maybe to get a verdict. Eager for a distraction, Faz picked up the receiver and called Latents.
Jason Rafferty, who Faz knew well, chuckled when he picked up the line. “You’re an eager beaver, Fazzio. What, did you think we wouldn’t call if we got a hit on that car you and Del had towed in last night?”
“You’re a genius,” Faz said, trying to mask his emotions.
“No, you guys in VC are just predictable,” Rafferty said.
“I just want to know if I should get my hopes up.”
“I understand,” Rafferty said, laughing. “Hang on. Let me make a call and see where we’re at.”
Rafferty put Faz on hold, and Faz rested the phone on his shoulder, then hit “Speaker,” suffering to elevator music. As he waited, Andrea Gonzalez stepped into the A Team’s bull pen, approached, and nodded to the phone. “Tell me that’s not your version of Pandora.”
“Pan-what?”
“Music . . . Never mind.”
“I’m waiting to hear if Latents pulled a print off that car Del and I had towed in last night,” he said.
“Monique Rodgers?”
Faz nodded. “Thanks for getting the search warrant signed.”
She looked at Del’s empty desk. “Is Del in?”
“He threw his back out last night and is likely out all day. He’s hoping to be back tomorrow.”
Gonzalez gave this information a nod, then glanced over at Tracy’s desk. “I heard Crosswhite is waiting on a jury verdict. You know if she’s coming in or not?”
“I don’t know. Later I would assume.”
Gonzalez smiled. “She and I haven’t gotten off to a very good start.”
“She’ll be fine,” Faz said. “Just use her desk.”
“I’d rather not,” Gonzales said. “Better to let that alone for a while. I just hate sitting in the back away from everything.”
“Then use Del’s desk.”
“Thanks.” She dropped her bag beside Del’s chair, sat, and manipulated the mouse. “Damn.”
“What?”
“I haven’t got a password set up yet to get into the files.”
“Gumba two!”
“What’s that?”
“Del’s password. Gumba two! I’m Gumba one!”
Rafferty returned to the phone. “Faz?”
Faz took him off speaker. “Still here.”
“Sorry for the delay. Okay, I’m told we have a preliminary finding.” Rafferty explained that they had pulled fingerprints and a palm print in the location where the video showed the suspect putting his hand on the car’s hood. They couldn’t get every fingerprint, but they got enough to eliminate the prints of the husband, the wife, and the son. Del and Faz had taken elimination prints from the Blaismith family before leaving their home.
“We ran it through ABIS,” Rafferty said, meaning the Automated Biometric Identification System, which was formerly the Automated Fingerprint Identification System.
The switch in the acronym was an acknowledgment of ever-improving technology. The detectives had been ordered to take a class to keep up, and the technical instructor emphasized that fingerprints were now just one form of biometrics—palm prints, irises, and facial recognition software being the others. The FBI had also changed the name of its system—to “NGI” for Next Generation Identification system—and the instructor touted that system as providing the criminal justice community with the world’s largest and most efficient electronic repository of biometric and criminal history. It all sounded very Star Trek to Faz, who just wanted one hit, for one suspect.
“Did we get a hit?” he asked.
“Eduardo Felix Lopez,” Rafferty said. Faz scribbled
the name on a sheet of paper on his desk. “You got that?” Rafferty asked, spelling out the name.
“I got it,” Faz said, underlining the name twice, his mind already thinking about how they might tie Lopez to the shooting.
“He’s in the system. You going to run him or want us to do it?”
“I’ll do it. Did they say when I might get the full report?”
“Sometime later this afternoon. I’ll e-mail you the draft to get you started. I know this one’s getting a lot of attention from the media. Nail this asshole, huh?” Rafferty said.
“That’s the plan.” Faz hung up and banged a fist on his desk. “Yes.”
“Good news?” Gonzalez asked.
“We got a hit on the shooter, or at least the guy who put his hand on the hood of the parked car. I’m going to call Del, then run him, see if he’s got priors and a current address.”
“You want me to run him while you call Del?”
“Yeah, could you? This might not get him out of bed, but he’ll take great pleasure in hearing it.”
CHAPTER 23
Tracy watched the jurors carefully as they entered from the back of the packed courtroom, walking single file, like a chain gang. They did not make eye contact with the defendant, Dr. John Stephenson, or his attorney. Instead, they kept their attention on the worn linoleum or stared at the neutral figure of Judge Miriam Gowin standing behind the elevated bench. Adam Hoetig seemed to also catch this nuance and glanced at Tracy out of the corner of his eye.
Once everyone had taken a seat, Judge Gowin ran the jury through the preliminaries before she asked if they’d chosen a foreperson. The choice surprised Tracy and, based on another sidelong glance, Hoetig. With hindsight, however, the choice of a mother of two children made sense, especially if the verdict was guilty. Stephenson’s wife had been a mother.
“Has the jury reached a verdict?” Gowin asked.
The foreperson confirmed that the jury had. Reading from a note card she said, “On the count of murder in the first degree, we the jury find the defendant guilty as charged.”
The verdict was like a sex act, everything up until that climactic moment just foreplay that tantalized and teased and sometimes frustrated. The reading of the verdict, followed by the release of tension, left everyone involved exhausted.
Hoetig gave Tracy a subtle nod. Behind them, members of the gallery wept or quietly cheered. Some clenched fists. Others dropped their heads and their shoulders.
Litwin asked that the jurors be polled, and one by one they each uttered a single word. “Guilty.”
When it was over, the jury would get a break, likely a couple weeks, then return for the penalty phase, which often took as long as the trial. For the moment, however, their civic duty was completed.
As court adjourned, Hoetig thanked Tracy, and they agreed to grab a celebratory drink at a later date.
“You going back to the office?” Kins asked when he and Tracy met at the courtroom door. He’d been seated in the gallery.
“Not right away. I need to run something down,” she said. “I’ll catch up with you when I get back.”
“Would that something be related to that girl in the University District?”
“Vice has her computer. I got a message that they’ve unlocked it and downloaded her e-mails.”
The vice unit looked like a high-tech classroom with computer screens amid other gadgetry. Tracy developed a rapport with members of the unit when she’d worked for CSI in the same building. One of the people with whom she’d worked well was Andrei Vilkotski.
Vilkotski, from Belarus, immigrated to the United States in the early 1990s and was largely considered a genius when it came to computers and other electronic equipment. Rumors surrounded his past, including one that he was formerly a KGB agent, who, when the Soviet Union collapsed, quickly fled the country. None of the rumors were true, except the part about him being a genius with computers.
“Andrei,” Tracy said, entering his cubicle. “How’s it going?”
Vilkotski turned and shrugged. He looked a bit like a friar, bald but for a ring of hair around the back of his head. “Could be worse,” he said, his common refrain. “Let me guess. You’ve come to take me to lunch and to finally propose to me.” His accent remained thick.
Tracy leaned against a corner of his desk. “What would your wife think about that, Andrei?”
Vilkotski made a face as if considering what his wife might think. Then he said, “She’d probably tell me to take my laundry with me and call it an even trade.”
Tracy laughed and sat down. “I understand you got into that computer I dropped off this morning.”
Vilkotski looked at her over the top of half-lens reading glasses as if surprised. “Would that be the computer Katie Pryor dropped off, unaccompanied by a search warrant granting me permission to break it down?”
Now it was Tracy’s turn to be surprised. “You should have received a copy of a signed warrant. I understood Katie obtained one.”
Vilkotski’s lip curled, this time almost becoming a smile. “If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that, I’d be a rich man.”
“Check your in-box. If you don’t have it, I can have it sent over to you.”
Vilkotski typed. “Lucky for you I don’t hold my breath anymore. I would have suffocated many times over, and my skin would be a permanent blue.” He paused, seeing an e-mail from Katie Pryor. “What do you know? Look at this.” He pointed at his screen.
“You see, Andrei, I wouldn’t ask you to do anything illegal.”
“Now you sound like Vladimir Putin.”
“Would that make you Donald Trump?”
“Without the hair, obviously.”
Tracy laughed. “You were able to get into the computer?”
“Please. My grandson could get into the computer, and he’s three.”
“Grandson?” Vilkotski had told Tracy that he and his wife married young and had children early. Tracy estimated him to be just late forties.
He pointed to a picture of his grandchild tacked on the inside of his cubicle wall. “He spent the weekend at our house. My son and his wife are traveling. I’m still worn out.” He reached behind him and grabbed Kavita Mukherjee’s laptop along with a flash drive, onto which he’d transferred her e-mails.
“I programmed the computer so that a temporary password will open it. I did so before I received the warrant, so the password is, ‘I didn’t talk to you and know nothing about this.’”
Tracy smiled. “A little long, don’t you think? Is that all caps?”
Vilkotski smiled. “Then the password is ‘Password One, Two, Three’—each word starts with a cap.”
“Clever.”
“I don’t have time to be clever. Thanks to your chief, I must now be available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, to help you people find stolen iPhones.” Vilkotski did not sound happy.
“I heard about that.” Seattle Police Chief Sandy Clarridge had issued the edict after a news report that thieves had stolen more than two thousand cell phones during the first six months of the year.
“Yes, well, now it doesn’t make me sleep too good.”
Tracy grabbed the laptop. “I appreciate the help, Andrei.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said.
Tracy could have had Vilkotski e-mail her the download or have Katie Pryor pick up the computer, but she had a different question she hoped he could help her with.
“Andrei, can you track a cell phone?”
“I don’t understand.”
She gestured to the laptop. “This woman who went missing, I want to track her cell phone. Could I do that?”
“Why don’t you just call the service provider and get the longitude and latitude?”
“Yeah, I understand Katie Pryor did that this morning.” Not wanting to leave a paper trail that she was pursuing the case, Tracy had everything sent through Pryor.
“I’m just wondering if there is some other way to track h
er phone, if it’s still turned on—without using the Stingray.”
Vilkotski feigned shock. Wide-eyed, he said, “Stingray? What Stingray?”
The Stingray was a simulated cell phone tower police could set up to surreptitiously gather information from suspects’ phones, as well as to monitor any other mobile device in the area. Most police departments denied having the machine, which was developed for the FBI and provided to local law enforcement only after the department signed a nondisclosure agreement to not discuss the technology. Recent news stories reported that the Tacoma Police Department had used the machine, and ACLU lawyers quickly got worked up. In eternally liberal Seattle, it was better for a thief to commit a crime than to have his privacy invaded.
“Is there another way?” Tracy asked.
Vilkotski gave this a moment of thought. Then he said, “There are always other ways. For instance, there are certain apps that can be shared.”
“Such as?”
“For one, did the woman have a Find My Friends app on her phone?”
“I don’t know,” Tracy said.
“If she did, you might be able to track her phone from a friend’s phone.”
Tracy thought of Aditi. It was worth a try. She made a mental note. “Okay, any other apps?”
“Many phones have Find My iPhone, but you would need her Apple ID and password.”
“How might I get that?” Again, she thought of Aditi as a potential source.
“I would check her computer. Some people put that information under contacts so they don’t forget. It is sort of a master key. I do that myself.”
Tracy made another mental note to check the laptop.
“Was your woman living with family?” Vilkotski asked.
“No. Why?”
He shrugged. “Families often use one Apple ID so they can share music, movies, and books without having to purchase it multiple times. I do this also.”
“And you can share this across multiple phones?”
“Multiple phones and platforms—like laptops, iPads, computers.”
Tracy gave that some thought. “What about friends? Can they share an Apple ID?”
“You said this woman is a college student?”
A Steep Price (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 6) Page 13
