My Sister's Grave

by Robert Dugoni

  Tracy felt herself getting angrier. “It’s a small town, Captain. I knew everyone growing up in Cedar Grove.”

  “There’s an indication you’ve been conducting your own investigation,” Nolasco said.

  “What indication would that be?”

  “Have you been conducting your own investigation?”

  “I’ve had doubts about House’s guilt since they first arrested him.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “Twenty years ago I questioned the evidence that led to House’s conviction. It made some people in Cedar Grove less than happy with me, including the Sheriff.”

  “So you have been conducting an investigation,” Nolasco said.

  Tracy knew what he was driving at. Using her official position on a personal investigation would be grounds for a reprimand and perhaps suspension.

  “Define ‘investigation.’ ”

  “I think you’re familiar with the term.”

  “I’ve never used my official position as a homicide detective, if that’s what you’re asking. Anything I’ve done has been on my own time.”

  “So it’s an investigation?”

  “More like a hobby.”

  Nolasco lowered his head and rubbed his brow, as if fighting a headache. “Did you facilitate an attorney’s access into Walla Walla to meet with House?”

  “What did Vanpelt tell you?”

  “I’m asking you.”

  “Maybe you should just tell me the facts and save everybody a lot of time.”

  Williams and Laub cringed. Laub said, “Tracy, this isn’t an inquisition.”

  “Sounds like one, Lieutenant. Do I need a union rep here?”

  Nolasco’s lips pinched. He was growing red in the face. “It’s a simple question. Did you facilitate an attorney’s access to speak with House?”

  “Define ‘facilitate.’ ”

  “Did you assist in any manner?”

  “I drove with the attorney to the facility in his car, on a day I was off duty. Didn’t even pay for the gas. We entered through the public access on a day scheduled for inmate visitations just like everyone else.”

  “Did you use your badge number?”

  “Not to get in.”

  “Tracy,” Laub said. “We’re getting inquiries from the press. It’s important we’re all on the same page, saying the same thing.”

  “I’m not saying anything, Lieutenant. I told Vanpelt it’s a private matter and nobody’s damn business.”

  “That’s not reasonable given the public nature of the proceedings,” Nolasco said. “Whether you like it or not, it’s in the public domain, and our job is to make sure it does not reflect badly on this department. Vanpelt is asking for an official comment.”

  “Who gives a shit what Vanpelt is asking for?”

  “She’s the police beat reporter for the number one news station in town.”

  “She’s an ambulance chaser. She’s a hack. And she’s unethical. Everyone knows that. No matter what I say, she’ll twist it to create a seeming conflict. I’m not playing her game. It’s personal. We don’t comment on personal matters. Why is this being treated differently?”

  Laub said, “I think what the Captain is asking is, Tracy, do you have a suggestion for how we should respond?”

  “More than one,” she said.

  “Something printable?” Laub asked.

  “Say it’s a personal matter and neither I nor the department will comment on ongoing legal proceedings. That’s how we handle open files. Why should this be any different?”

  “Because it is not one of our files,” Nolasco said.

  “Bingo,” Tracy said.

  Laub turned to Nolasco. “I don’t disagree with Detective Crosswhite. We gain nothing by making a statement.”

  Williams backed her too. “Vanpelt will report what she wants regardless of what we say. We’ve been down this road before.”

  “She’s going to run a story that one of our homicide detectives is assisting an attorney in getting a convicted killer a new trial,” Nolasco said. “We say ‘no comment,’ it’s a tacit admission we condone it.”

  “If you feel compelled to make a comment, tell her I’m interested in a thorough resolution of my sister’s murder,” Tracy said. “How does that reflect on the department?”

  “That sounds good to me,” Laub said.

  “There are some people in Cedar Grove who think there already was a thorough resolution twenty years ago,” Nolasco said.

  “And they didn’t like me asking questions then either.”

  Nolasco pointed his pen at her. She wanted to reach out and snap his finger. “If there is something to cast doubt on this man’s guilt, it should be brought to the attention of the Sheriff’s Office in Cascade County. That’s their jurisdiction.”

  “Didn’t you just tell me you didn’t want me involved? Now you want me to provide the sheriff with information?”

  Nolasco’s nostrils flared. “I’m saying, as a law-enforcement officer, you have a professional obligation to share information with them.”

  “I tried that once; it didn’t get me very far.”

  Nolasco set his pen down. “You realize that your assisting a convicted murderer reflects on the entire Violent Crimes Section.”

  “Maybe it will show we’re impartial.”

  Williams and Laub did a poor job suppressing smiles. Nolasco was not amused. “This is a serious matter, Detective Crosswhite.”

  “Murder always is.”

  “Perhaps I should ask if this is going to impact your ability to perform your job?”

  “With all due respect, I thought finding murderers was my job.”

  “And you should be devoting your time to finding out who killed Nicole Hansen.”

  Laub intervened again. “Can we all take a deep breath? Are we at least in agreement that the department will issue a statement that neither Detective Crosswhite nor anyone else will comment on ongoing legal proceedings and refer all questions to the Sheriff’s Office in Cascade County?”

  Lee started scribbling.

  “You are not to use your official position or any of this department’s resources to investigate the matter. Do I make myself clear?” Nolasco was no longer trying to mask his annoyance.

  Tracy said, “Are we equally clear that the department is not to put words in my mouth?”

  “Nobody’s going to put words in your mouth, Tracy,” Laub said. “Bennett can put together a statement and we will review it together. Does that work for everyone?”

  Nolasco did not answer. Tracy wasn’t about to capitulate without some show of good faith from him.

  “I can’t protect you on this,” Nolasco finally said. “This is outside the department’s business. Something goes sideways, you’re on your own.”

  Tracy wanted to laugh at the suggestion that Nolasco had ever had her back. She also wanted to scream. “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she said.

  Kins spun his chair toward her when Tracy returned to the bull pen, her adrenaline still pumping from the confrontation with Nolasco. “What’s going on?”

  Tracy sat and rubbed her hands over her face, massaging her temples. She opened her desk drawer, shook out two ibuprofen, tilted back her head, and swallowed them without water. “Vanpelt wasn’t asking about the ME’s office finding Sarah’s remains,” she said. “She wanted to know if I was helping an attorney get Edmund House a new hearing. The brass got wind of it and aren’t happy.”

  “So just tell them you’re not.” When she didn’t immediately respond, Kins said, “You’re not, are you?”

  “You know that cold case we have, the elderly woman on Queen Anne a year ago?”

  “Nora Stevens?”

  “Does it bother you, Kins, not knowing?”

  “Of course it bothers me.”

  “Imagine how much it would bother you after twenty years, and it had been someone you loved. How far would you go to get answers?”


  CHAPTER 31

  Tracy knocked on the door and stepped back, letting the screen door slap shut. When no one answered, she cupped her hands to the window and tried to look through white lace curtains. Seeing no one, she walked along the covered porch to the side of the house and leaned over the railing. A late-model Honda Civic sat parked in the driveway in front of a freestanding garage.

  She called out, got no answer, and walked back toward the porch steps, about to descend when she saw a figure through the window crossing the living room. The front door pulled open.

  “Tracy.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Holt.”

  “I thought I heard someone knock. I was in the back doing some needlepoint. Well, this is certainly a surprise, hearing from you. What are you doing back in Cedar Grove?”

  “I needed to take care of a few matters involving my parents’ estate.”

  “I thought you’d already sold the house?”

  “A few loose ends,” she said.

  “That must have been heart wrenching. Harley and I had such wonderful memories of our times there, especially the Christmas parties. Well, come in, come in. Don’t stand out in the cold.”

  Tracy wiped her feet on a welcome mat and stepped inside. The furnishings were simple but neat. Framed photographs lined the mantel and rested on doilies on the dining room credenza. A china cabinet was filled with porcelain figurines, a collection of some kind. Carol Holt closed the door behind her. Tracy estimated her to be in her midsixties, heavyset with short silver hair and matching glasses. She still apparently favored stretch pants, long sweaters, and colorful beaded necklaces. When Sarah had disappeared, Carol Holt had made sandwiches at the American Legion building for the volunteers searching the hillsides.

  “What are you doing now?” Mrs. Holt asked. “I heard you live in Seattle.”

  “I’m a police officer.”

  “A police officer,” she said. “Wow. I’ll bet that’s exciting.”

  “It has its moments.”

  “Sit down and visit for a bit. Can I get you anything? A glass of water or coffee?”

  “No, Mrs. Holt, thank you. I’m fine.”

  “Please, dear, I think you’re old enough to call me Carol now.”

  They sat in the living room, Tracy on a maroon couch with crocheted throw pillows. One said “Home Sweet Home” with a picture of the front of the house. Carol Holt sat in a nearby chair.

  “So what brought you by to visit?” she asked.

  “I was on my way back to Seattle, and I drove by the service station to talk to Harley, but it looks like it’s closed.” That wasn’t exactly true. Tracy had planned the visit to Cedar Grove, but not to settle her parents’ estate. She’d hunted down Ryan Hagen’s former employer a month earlier and had found some interesting documents. She’d hoped Harley Holt had additional documents that would further enlighten her.

  “I’m sorry, Tracy. I lost Harley a little over six months ago.”

  Tracy felt suddenly deflated. “I didn’t know, Carol. I’m so sorry. How did he die?”

  “Pancreatic cancer. It got in his lymph nodes and they just couldn’t stop it. At least he didn’t suffer long.”

  Tracy couldn’t recall a time when she’d dropped a car off at Harley’s station for servicing and Harley hadn’t been there to greet her with a cigarette in his mouth. “I apologize.”

  “Nothing to apologize for.” Carol Holt smiled, close-lipped, but her eyes had filled with tears.

  “Are you doing okay?” Tracy asked.

  Carol gave a resigned shrug and twisted her necklace. “Well, it’s hard, but I’m trying to stay active and make the best of it. What else are you going to do, right? Oh Lord, why am I telling you something like that. You’ve certainly had more than your fair share of tragedy.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “My kids visit with the grandkids and that helps.” She slapped her thighs with both hands. “So tell me, what is it you wanted to discuss with Harley after all these years?”

  “Actually, I was hoping to talk a little shop with him. Harley worked on just about everyone’s car in Cedar Grove, didn’t he?”

  “He sure did. Your father was a regular customer. Harley appreciated that about him. Such a shame what happened. Your father was such a good man.”

  “Do you know who Harley bought his car parts from, Carol?”

  Carol Holt made a face like she’d been asked a question on quantum physics. “No. I didn’t get too involved in any of that, dear. I imagine he bought them from any number of places.”

  “I remember he had all those cabinets in his office,” Tracy said, getting to the reason for her visit.

  Carol Holt threw up her hands. “That office was an abomination, but Harley didn’t have a problem with it. He had his own way of doing things.”

  “How long ago did he close the station?”

  “It was when he retired. He was hoping our son Greg might take it over, but Greg had different plans. Three, four years ago, I suppose.”

  “Would you happen to still have a key to the building?”

  Her eyebrows arched. “I wouldn’t know. I suppose it’s somewhere around here. What is it you’re looking for?”

  “I’m curious about something, Carol. I know it sounds crazy, but I was hoping I could just take a look through Harley’s records to satisfy my curiosity.”

  “I’d be happy to help, honey, but I’m afraid you won’t find anything at the service station. Harley cleared it out when he closed it.”

  “I was afraid of that when I went by earlier and looked through the windows, but I thought, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Well, I better let you get back to your needlepoint, and I better get started back to Seattle.”

  “What about the records?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You said you wanted to go through his records.”

  “I thought you said he threw them out?”

  “Harley? You saw his office. That man never threw out a scrap of paper in his life. You’ll have to dig a bit to reach them, though.”

  “You have the records here?”

  “Why do you think I park in the driveway? Harley brought everything from the station here and put it in the garage. He kept telling me he was going to go through them, but then he got sick and, to be honest, I haven’t given them a second thought until you brought them up.”

  CHAPTER 32

  Tracy gave up and got out of bed at just after two in the morning. During her years investigating Sarah’s disappearance and murder, she’d rarely slept through the night. It had gotten better when she’d finally put the boxes in the closet, but now her insomnia had returned. Roger, her black tabby, followed her into the living room, meowing loudly.

  “Yeah, well, I’m not happy to be awake either,” she said. She grabbed her laptop and a down comforter, along with the remote control, and sat on the sofa in her seven-hundred-square-foot apartment in Seattle’s Capitol Hill district. She hadn’t rented the apartment for its amenities or its view—which was of another brick apartment building directly across the street. She’d rented it because it was the right price and in the right location for when your profession didn’t include the initials “Dr.” before your name but required you to live close and be frequently on call.

  Roger leaped into her lap and, after a moment kneading the blanket to get comfortable, curled into a ball. Tracy reconsidered her conversation with Dan earlier that evening. After she’d told him about Maria Vanpelt and the meeting with Nolasco, Dan had broached the subject of him driving down to Seattle the upcoming Friday, taking her to the Chihuly glass exhibit, and then getting dinner.

  Since her initial visit to Cedar Grove to bury Sarah’s remains, Tracy had, in the intervening weeks, made several additional trips to provide Dan with the rest of her files and go over what her investigation had revealed. She’d spent the night twice. Nothing romantic had happened between them since her impromptu golf lesson. Tracy was wondering if she had misinterprete
d Dan’s intentions, though she had certainly felt the sexual tension and didn’t think she had been imagining it. A part of her wanted to act on it, but she worried that a relationship with Dan would not be wise under the circumstances. Not to mention the fact that she did not see herself ever moving back to Cedar Grove, where Dan had clearly reestablished a home. It was a complication she had decided to put aside. The Chihuly invitation, however, forced her to reconsider his possible intentions. She could not rationalize the invitation as work related, not to mention the fact that it put their sleeping arrangements at the center of a target. She only had one bedroom. Caught off guard, she’d accepted, and had spent the rest of the evening wondering if she’d made the right decision.

  She fired up her laptop, pulled up the Washington State Attorney General’s website, and typed her username and password to log into the Homicide Investigation Tracking System, or HITS. The searchable database contained information on more than 22,000 homicides and sexual assaults across Washington, Idaho, and Oregon that had occurred since 1981. Assuming Hansen had been murdered and hadn’t died from a sex act gone horribly wrong, studies had revealed that persons who killed in such a unique manner often practiced their craft in order to perfect it. So, after the long days at the office working on the case, Tracy would drag herself home and sit at the computer running searches and reviewing cases similar to Nicole Hansen’s murder.

  Her initial search using the key words “motel room” had reduced the 22,000 cases to 1511. She’d added the word “rope,” but not “strangulation,” because she wanted to keep the search broad enough to capture cases in which the victim had been bound, though maybe not strangled. That further reduced the field of cases to 224. Of those 224, 43 of the victims had not been sexually assaulted—Nicole Hansen’s autopsy had revealed no semen in her body cavities. That anomaly could be explained by the fact that it would have been a near physical impossibility to have intercourse with Hansen with her body hideously contorted and bound. Hansen had also not been robbed. Her wallet, flush with cash, had been left untouched on the motel dresser. That ruled out the second most logical motive, again assuming Hansen had been murdered.