A Steep Price (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 6)

by Robert Dugoni

  “Recent graduate.”

  Vilkotski rolled his eyes. “College students never pay for anything if they can find a way to get it for free, and they usually can. They would have made great Bolsheviks.”

  Tracy walked Kavita Mukherjee’s computer and the flash drive over to Katie Pryor at the missing persons unit.

  “You get anything from the service provider yet?” she asked.

  “I just sent in the Exigent Circumstances Request form,” Pryor said. She nodded to the computer. “You got the flash drive.”

  Tracy handed it to her. Pryor inserted the drive and pulled up Kavita Mukherjee’s e-mails, those received and those sent. She and Tracy immediately focused on e-mails Mukherjee had received after 5:00 p.m. Monday afternoon. Mukherjee had not responded to any of them. They did not find any e-mails pertaining to her date Monday night, nor did they find an e-mail confirming a hotel or airline reservation.

  Tracy booted up the computer and used the temporary password Vilkotski had provided to review Mukherjee’s Internet history, looking through her searches for airlines, rental car companies, websites related to other states and foreign countries. She found nothing.

  “Let’s go to her contacts,” Tracy said.

  “What are we looking for?” Pryor asked.

  “Vilkotski said people sometimes keep their passwords in a master file under a contact. Let’s see if she did.”

  In contacts, Pryor searched the name Mukherjee and pulled up Mukherjee’s parents and her two brothers. The others Tracy did not recognize but deduced to be relatives.

  “She’s not there,” Pryor said, meaning no contact information for Kavita.

  Tracy thought of her conversations with Aditi Banerjee and with Mukherjee’s family. “Type in ‘Vita.’”

  Pryor did and she got a hit for someone named Vita Kumari. “Who is that?” she asked.

  “Don’t know,” Tracy said.

  Pryor opened the contact and scrolled to the notes section. The contact included frequent-flyer account numbers, bank account numbers, log-in names, and passwords. The list was in alphabetical order and Pryor noted a bank account for the Bank of America. “Hang on.” She flipped through documents on her desk and confirmed the number to be the Bank of America account number Mukherjee’s parents had provided. “That’s her bank account,” she said.

  “She’s using a fake name,” Tracy said, thinking Mukherjee did so in case the computer was ever stolen.

  “Then those are her usernames and passwords,” Pryor said.

  “Pull up the Bank of America account and try the username and password.”

  Within minutes, Pryor was on the website. Mukherjee’s log-in information worked. The account did not show any transactions after Saturday afternoon. The last transaction had been a withdrawal of twenty dollars from an ATM on University Avenue the previous Thursday, leaving Mukherjee a balance of $1,492. She’d have trouble paying next month’s rent.

  “Why would she tear up Aditi’s rent check?” Pryor asked. “I mean, did she have so much pride she would reject help?”

  “It’s possible,” Tracy said. “Aditi said she was stubborn. Or she could have already made up her mind to either move or to get another roommate.”

  Pryor continued to scroll through the notes for the contact Vita Kumari. Near the bottom of the list, Tracy said, “Stop. What is that? Is that another bank account?”

  “Wells Fargo,” Pryor said. “Sure looks like another account.”

  “Try it,” Tracy said.

  Pryor pulled up the website for Wells Fargo and entered the corresponding username and password. It took a second to load before they gained access to the account. Tracy whistled. She and Pryor were staring at an account with a balance of $29,230. “Maybe this is why she tore up the check,” Pryor said.

  Tracy sat back, stumped. “Aditi said she was saving for medical school, but I’m having a hard time believing she saved this much working in a clothing store at minimum wage.”

  “Her parents?” Pryor said.

  “Not if they were intent on her moving home,” Tracy said. “Look at the name on the account. Vita Kumari. And the address is a PO box,” Tracy said. “She clearly did not want anyone to know about this account.”

  Tracy ran her hand down one of the columns of numbers; each deposited amount was identical. “Those are direct deposits.”

  “The same amount deposited on the same day every month,” Pryor said. “We can use the routing number to find out who’s making the payment, but I’m going to need a search warrant for the bank to get it.”

  Tracy thought of Aditi, specifically, the way the young woman had looked to her husband, as if embarrassed when Tracy asked her questions about Kavita.

  “You feel like taking a drive?” she said. “I might know a way to get a faster answer.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Andrea Gonzalez told Faz that the name Eduardo Felix Lopez had produced a hit for a nineteen-year-old male arrested just two months earlier for possession of a controlled substance—meth. He had provided an apartment in a multistory brick complex in South Park as his home address. That was both good news and bad news. With the address being two months old, Lopez could have moved, or maybe even fled to Mexico, if he was their shooter. There was no phone number associated with the address, nor could they locate a building superintendent to ask whether Lopez remained a tenant. Lopez had several other priors, each for possession, and one for intent to distribute, but no arrests for a violent crime. Nothing in the system indicated Lopez was a member of the Sureños, but if he was dealing drugs in South Park, that seemed a given. Perhaps Monique Rodgers’s husband had been correct, and his wife’s shooting had been a prerequisite to Lopez’s gang initiation.

  Faz decided to treat the interview as noncustodial, at least until they determined whether the address was still good. If it was, and if Lopez was home, they’d ask to search his apartment. If he refused, they’d seek a search warrant for the apartment, specifically seeking the .40 caliber revolver that had killed Rodgers, then sit on Lopez until they had it.

  As Faz and Andrea Gonzalez drove out of the police parking structure, she looked up through the windshield at roiling dark clouds to the northeast. “What’s going on with the weather? It looks like a biblical plague,” she said.

  “Thunderstorms,” Faz said.

  “I thought we weren’t supposed to get thunderstorms west of the Rocky Mountains. Earthquakes are what I was told to worry about.”

  Faz cut down Columbia Street to the on-ramp to the Alaskan Way Viaduct. “We get one or two thunderstorms a year in the Northwest. We got one last year about this same time of year. It caused fires all over Eastern Washington.” Faz took the Viaduct south. From their perch above the surface streets he could see whitecaps, stirred by the wind, picking up on Puget Sound. “I watched the storm last year from a ringside seat at Police Headquarters working the night shift. The Space Needle lit up like something out of a science fiction novel.”

  Gonzalez gave a small chuckle. “And here I thought I’d found nirvana. Eighty degrees, no rain, clear skies. Felt like LA without the smog, the crowds, and the traffic, and still about twenty degrees cooler.” Gonzalez looked again at the sky before sitting back. “You think Lopez is our guy?”

  “The timing and the location are right.”

  “He could’ve heard the shooting and run for cover.”

  “He could have, but then why the hoodie over his face?”

  Gonzalez gave that some thought. “You think he’s still around?”

  “If he was working for Little Jimmy, following orders, it’s possible he got sent to LA or to Mexico. We’re going to find out.”

  “And if he’s home, what do we say? How do we justify knocking on his door?”

  “If he’s home we’ll say we’re canvassing the area, asking if anyone saw or knows anything about the shooting. We’ll ask to search his apartment. Most of these guys don’t know any better and let us in. If he refuses, we�
��ll call in a search warrant and keep an eye on him until we get it signed.”

  “You think he’ll run?”

  “If he was acting on Little Jimmy’s orders and they find out we’re onto him, he won’t have a choice. Little Jimmy will kill him.”

  Tracy called Aditi on the pretense that she wanted to provide an update on the search for Kavita. Aditi and her new husband had temporarily moved into her parents’ home, which was less than a mile from the Mukherjee family home. Tracy needed to talk with Aditi in private, away from Rashesh and the rest of her family. She sensed Aditi was holding something back, something about Kavita that she would not discuss in their presence, something that might explain the $30,000 sitting in a bank account under the name Vita Kumari.

  On the drive to Bellevue, Pryor received an e-mail from the cell phone provider with the last known longitude and latitude of Kavita Mukherjee’s telephone—47.652770 latitude and 122.174406 longitude. “It’s a state park,” she said, pulling up the coordinates, “and it’s very close to both homes.”

  Pryor showed the phone to Tracy, who felt a pit in her stomach when she saw a heavily wooded area. Pryor’s further research revealed the park to be nearly five hundred acres—an ideal place to hide a body. However, Pryor’s further research also revealed the park to be heavily trafficked, particularly in the summer, with joggers, walkers, berry pickers, and horseback riders. Odd then that no one would find a body.

  Tracy checked her watch. They had just a couple hours of daylight. “Call the canine unit,” she said. “Ask if they can stand by in case we need them. We’ll go after we speak to Aditi.”

  Aditi answered the door of her parents’ home and, for a brief moment, Tracy thought they’d caught a break and the young woman stood alone, but as the door pitched farther in, Rashesh appeared behind it.

  Rashesh invited them into the living room, which looked to be more for show than use. Beige walls. Gray furniture. Brown carpet. A decorative piece of spiraling copper hung on the wall. It took Tracy a second to realize the image was a peacock. Two plastic plants adorned each side of a bay window through which Tracy could see an expansive backyard and, behind it, a thick grove of trees.

  “Is that the state park?” Tracy asked, pointing out the window.

  “Yes,” Aditi said. “Bridle Trails.”

  “Does Kavita’s parents’ home also butt up against the park?”

  “Not exactly but it’s very close,” Aditi said.

  Tracy glanced at Pryor, who nodded and said, “Are your parents home?”

  “No,” Aditi said. “They’re out.”

  “We spoke with Kavita’s family and a couple of her coworkers yesterday afternoon. I wonder if you can answer a few additional questions?” Pryor said.

  “I can try.” Aditi adjusted in her seat.

  “What type of relationship did Kavita have with her two brothers?” Tracy asked.

  Aditi shrugged. “There has always been a sibling rivalry between Vita and Nikhil because they are so close in age.”

  Tracy noted Aditi’s use of the name Vita. “He seems to have pretty strong opinions about his sister’s refusing to move home or submit to an arranged marriage.”

  Aditi appeared to cringe at Tracy’s use of the word “submit.” “Nikhil is very traditional. He believes it is a waste of his parents’ money to send Vita to medical school. He believes that is a decision for her future husband to make.” Aditi smiled at Rashesh, though it looked forced.

  Tracy said, “Why would he care if the parents weren’t going to pay for it?”

  “He considers her actions disrespectful and an embarrassment to the family,” Aditi said. “It is just Nikhil’s way, as the oldest son. He has always been more traditional than Vita.”

  “And what about Sam?”

  Aditi smiled. “Sam is more like Vita.”

  “How did Kavita plan to pay for medical school without her parents’ help?” Tracy asked.

  “She was working and saving money,” Aditi said.

  “At the store?”

  “Correct.”

  “Anywhere else?”

  Aditi shook her head. “Not that I know of. She could have gotten another job while I was away but . . .”

  “But she didn’t say that she did?” Tracy asked.

  “No.”

  “And she was receiving minimum wage at the clothing store?”

  “I believe so.”

  “So how could she save for medical school?” Tracy asked. “Even with you living there?”

  Aditi paused before answering. “We had talked about applying for financial aid and student loans. Living on our own, not declaring our parents’ income, Vita was confident we would receive assistance.”

  “How much had she saved?” Tracy asked.

  “I don’t know,” Aditi said.

  “Did she inherit any money from anyone, a grandparent perhaps?”

  “I don’t believe so,” Aditi said. She shifted, looking uncomfortable with the topic.

  “I wonder if I could get a drink of water?” Pryor asked, as planned. She turned to Rashesh. “Would you mind?”

  Rashesh looked puzzled by the request.

  “I’ll get it.” Aditi started to stand.

  “No, you stay here with Detective Crosswhite,” Pryor said, trying to keep her tone casual but forceful. “Her questions are directed at you. Would you mind, Rashesh?”

  Rashesh, looking somewhat flummoxed, stood and led Pryor out of the room.

  Tracy kept her gaze on Aditi, who watched until Pryor and Rashesh had left the room. Then she said, “We can’t help if you’re not honest with us, Aditi.”

  Aditi tried to look surprised. “I don’t know what—”

  “We obtained Kavita’s bank records. She has a Wells Fargo account under the name Vita Kumari. It has close to thirty thousand dollars in it.”

  She watched for Aditi’s reaction. The amount seemed to surprise her, but not the fact that Vita had another account.

  “A payment of two thousand dollars is being deposited into the account on the first day of each month. We can trace the routing number, but I think you know where that money is coming from.”

  Aditi looked stricken. “Rashesh cannot know,” she said, her voice rushed and almost pleading.

  “We don’t have to tell him anything,” Tracy said. “But we need to know.”

  “I can get away later to speak with you.”

  Aditi turned when Katie Pryor and Rashesh reentered the room. She sat back with a forced smile and pleading eyes. Tracy was tempted to push her, to tell her they couldn’t afford to waste any time; that the longer a person was missing the less likely they would be found alive, but she decided to respect Aditi’s request, pursue other lines of inquiry, and go to the park to search for the phone while it remained light out.

  “Sam said Vita told him she had a date Monday night. Did she mention a date to you?”

  “No,” Aditi said. “I did not know.”

  Tracy looked at the window. “You’re familiar with the state park?”

  “Bridle Trails?” Aditi said. “Yes.”

  “Does it have any significance to you and Kavita?”

  “We spent a lot of time in that park when we were young,” Aditi said. “We used to run the trails and occasionally we’d ride horses. Our families picked blackberries and hunted for chanterelle mushrooms. Why do you ask?”

  “Was there any place in particular where you and Kavita would go inside the park?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Did you have a favorite spot, a place you might meet?”

  “No. No place in particular.”

  Tracy recalled what Andrei Vilkotski had told her and asked, “Did you and Kavita share any apps on your phones?”

  Aditi continued to look puzzled by the line of questioning. “I don’t think so.”

  “Did you have an app on your phone called Find My Friends?”

  She shook her head. “Do you want me to che
ck?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Aditi stood, left the room, and returned with her phone, scrolling through the apps. “No. I don’t have that one.”

  “What about Find My iPhone? Do you own that app?” Tracy asked.

  “That one I have,” Aditi said. “Here.” She held up the phone for Tracy and Pryor to see.

  “And what about Kavita? Did she also have that app?”

  “I believe it comes with the phone, doesn’t it?” She looked to Rashesh but he shook his head.

  “I don’t know,” Tracy said. “Did you and Kavita share an Apple account, you know, to download music and movies, books?”

  Aditi looked up at Tracy, about to speak. Then she paused, and in her suddenly widening eyes, Tracy could see that the young woman had figured out Tracy’s line of questioning and maybe, just maybe, a way for them to find Kavita Mukherjee’s phone.

  Kavita had kept up a happy persona, a perky smile on her face, her emotions carefully tucked away, this one last time. When the date, and the relationship, ended, she left the hotel room feeling the gravity of her day. It felt like too much for her to bear alone, too much for her to handle. She did not want to go back to an empty apartment to sit alone, wondering what the hell had happened in the course of three months. She had always told herself that it was not her dream she was pursuing; it had been their dream, hers and Aditi’s.

  No longer.

  Aditi was married. She would not be attending medical school.

  As Kavita drove from the hotel, the sun had begun to set, and the weather had cooled to a comfortable temperature. She drove out of the hotel parking lot without ever looking back and thought that to be a good metaphor for how she would now get through life. She would not look back. There was no time to look back. She had made the decision to share her money with Aditi willingly and without any regret because she knew it had been hard for Aditi to stomach how easy things seemed to be for Vita, though Aditi had never expressed any resentment or jealousy—until Monday night. Maybe Kavita should have known. Throughout their lives Aditi had always been there for Vita, and she had looked upon this as an opportunity to be there for Aditi, to not leave Aditi behind. Wherever Kavita went, to whatever school, she had decided she would not leave Aditi behind.