Close to Home (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 5)

by Robert Dugoni

  Del pushed back from the table. “So let me tell you how this is going to go. The prosecutor will charge you with a controlled substance homicide and try you separately for each death. The penalty is a ten-year sentence, each to run consecutively. That’s ninety to one hundred years, Nick. You’ll never get out. And a guy like you . . .” Del shrugged. “So you go ahead and be a tough guy, and you tell us you’re not going to talk to us. You go right ahead. But we aren’t coming back again.”

  Evans sat back. His right leg bounced, making the chain between his legs rattle like he had loose change in his pocket. His head bobbed to a different beat—out of sync with his leg, and he looked to be having trouble catching his breath, breathing in deeply as if trying to ward off hyperventilating. “I need a lawyer,” he said, voice cracking.

  “Okay.” Del looked to Faz, who shrugged. “Let’s go.”

  Evans quickly stopped them. “No! I mean . . . I need a lawyer to structure a deal.”

  “A deal?” Del said. “Why would we make a deal with you?”

  “Because I know some things.” Evans stumbled over his words, speaking in a rush. “I know . . . I know where the drugs are coming from.”

  “The drugs are coming from you,” Del said. “We have text messages and e-mails confirming . . .”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “What I mean is, I know where they’re coming from . . . I could tell you where I’m getting them. You’d want to know that, right?”

  Bingo, Del thought. “Okay, be my guest. Tell us. Where are they coming from?”

  Evans shook his head. “That’s why I need a deal. That’s why I need a lawyer.”

  Del nodded to Faz to proceed.

  “We have families to think about here,” Faz said. “They’re going to want to see someone punished for their child’s death. What are we supposed to tell them?”

  Evans didn’t have an answer. His legs continued the jig, the left leg now accompanying the right.

  “You see the problem?” Faz said. “So if you want a deal, you’ve got to give us something to take to the prosecutor, because I can tell you he’s not going to be inclined to make any kind of a deal with someone who’s selling death.”

  “I didn’t know it was killing anyone,” Evans said. “I didn’t know that.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Del said. “It’s one of the hazards of selling heroin.”

  They sat in silence for almost a minute, Evans looking uncertain, chewing on his bottom lip. Finally, he said, “What if I told you that I know something about that guy, the one you arrested a couple weeks ago?”

  Del frowned. “You’re going to have to be a little more specific than that, Nick.”

  “The guy who was involved in that hit and run, the guy who killed that black kid in Rainier Beach.”

  CHAPTER 34

  Nicholas Evans looked up at Faz, who now sat beside Rick Cerrabone in the interrogation room. Del was in the adjacent room behind the one-way glass, listening and watching with Celia McDaniel and the narcotics detectives.

  Upon Nicholas Evans’s revelation, Del and Faz had called Cerrabone and Celia at home and told them, “We got a drug dealer in the interrogation room. You’re going to want to hear what this guy is telling us.” Del also tried to call Tracy, but she did not answer her cell.

  Faz made the introductions. Cerrabone, in a striped button-down shirt that he’d likely worn to work that day, looked tired, but he always looked tired, the bags under his eyes like spent tea bags. Balding, he combed his hair straight back from his forehead. They said sixty was the new forty, but for Cerrabone and a lot of trial lawyers, forty looked to be sixty.

  “I’m told you might have information on a hit and run in Rainier Beach,” Cerrabone said.

  Evans nodded. “But I want a deal. I won’t testify or put anything in writing unless I have a deal.”

  “I understand,” Cerrabone said, calm and matter-of-fact. Making no promises. “But I need to know a little more about what you told Detective Fazzio before I can consider anything.”

  Evans gave this some thought. He sat forward, as if imparting a secret. “You guys arrested a guy in Rainier Beach for a hit and run. He was in the Navy, right?”

  “That’s right,” Cerrabone said.

  “Well, I know what he was doing in Seattle that night.”

  Cerrabone didn’t react. Neither did Faz. When Evans didn’t continue, Cerrabone said, “How do you know what he was doing?”

  “Someone told me.”

  “Someone?”

  Evans sat back, smug. “Yep.”

  “Who?”

  “A guy who would know.”

  Cerrabone frowned. He glanced at Faz. This was all part of an act. He shrugged. “‘A guy who would know’ really doesn’t tell me anything, Detective.” He spoke to Evans. “If you don’t have personal knowledge it’s called hearsay, and hearsay evidence isn’t any good to me because a judge won’t allow it in court. It isn’t considered reliable.” He spread his hands as if to say, What am I going to do?

  Evans hesitated again, thinking. Then he said, “It’s the guy who supplies me the heroin.”

  “He’s your source?”

  “Yep.”

  “Okay. Again, Nick, look at it from my perspective. A judge, or a defense attorney, will say that I took the word of a drug dealer looking to make a deal about another drug dealer. Do you see the problem? The story of the young boy killed in the hit and run has been in the newspaper and on the evening news. He’ll say you could have just read about it and made the whole thing up. And that’s just not going to get me very far.”

  Evans pointed to Faz, seemingly alarmed that his big news might not be his ticket out of trouble. “What if I tell him? Then he can find out if it’s true or not, right?”

  “Maybe,” Cerrabone said. “What did your supplier tell you?”

  Evans licked his lips. “He asked if I’d read about the Navy guy who’d got busted for hit and run. I said I hadn’t heard anything about it. That’s when he told me.”

  They were going in circles. Cerrabone, after a breath, said, “Told you what, exactly?”

  Evans squinted as if looking into a bright light. “Do I have a deal?”

  “I don’t know. You really haven’t told me anything yet.”

  “So this guy that sells, he asked me whether I knew about the Navy guy, and I said no. Then he said that the Navy guy was delivering over a pound of heroin when he hit that kid.”

  “Delivering?” Cerrabone said.

  “That’s right.”

  “From where?”

  Evans shrugged. “I don’t know, but he was definitely this guy’s supplier.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Tracy sat in a room at the Bremerton Police Department on Burwell Street, just after midnight. She’d been to the Bremerton station on one prior occasion, seeking support for the execution of a search warrant in a homicide case. The red brick-and-metal building took up half a city block, including a fenced-in area for police vehicles—part of a weird zoning mix of residential homes, apartment buildings, and parking lots. She looked and felt like a sodden cat, her clothes still damp. She’d called in Laszlo Trejo’s body, then waited several hours while the coroner and detectives completed their work.

  A secure door opened, and a man, perhaps five nine, midfifties, his hair slicked back and graying at the temples, entered. Despite the hour, he looked fresh in a button-down, the cuffs neatly folded up his forearms, revealing a silver watch, silver-and-turquoise band, and wedding ring. He had not been one of the detectives at the site. Tracy figured him to be a sergeant.

  “You must be Crosswhite?” The detective offered a hand and a confident smile. “No one else would be out this time of night or in this weather. John Owens,” he said. “Come on back.” Tracy followed him through the door. “It’s a late night for me, but it has to be a very early morning for you,” Owens said.

  “I’m working the night shift,” she said, though she no longer kne
w what shift she was working.

  “On Bremerton?” Owens glanced back over his shoulder as he worked his way down a hall. Police could be territorial, and Tracy knew that foremost on Owens’s mind was the reason for SPD’s presence at a crime scene in his jurisdiction, and why he hadn’t received any notice. He stepped into a small office with a cluttered desk and pointed to a round table. “Make yourself comfortable.” He held up a mug and a pot of coffee. “Coffee? Just made it.”

  “Sure,” Tracy said. She accepted the coffee, the mug warm in her hands, and sat at the table. Above her she heard the low hum of the air conditioner and felt a brush of cold air from a vent. She noted several framed certificates on the wall, one bordered in navy-blue and gold, an honorable discharge from the United States Navy.

  “You served,” she said.

  Owens glanced over his shoulder as he poured himself a cup of coffee. “I did. Thought about making a career out of it but decided I’d rather be a cop. Ironic that I would end up here where the naval base dominates.”

  Tracy adjusted her chair so the vent was not blowing on her.

  Owens joined her at the table. “You said you guys were interested in Trejo in a hit and run in Seattle?” He’d talked to his detectives.

  “That’s right. A twelve-year-old boy.”

  “I recall that case, but I thought the Navy took jurisdiction?” Again, the question was pointed.

  “They did,” Tracy said. “And it appeared to be open-and-shut until a key piece of evidence disappeared at the Article 32 hearing.”

  Owens sipped his coffee. Then he said, “Trejo’s Article 32 hearing was also prominent in the local newspaper. I guess what I’m more confused about is why an SPD homicide detective is here, now, if SPD didn’t have jurisdiction. Trejo’s death is our jurisdiction.”

  “The powers that be wanted us to keep a hand in this case since it looked like it could come back.”

  “Okay. So why are you here now, this time of night . . .” He checked his watch. “Morning?”

  “We were told Trejo was going to be released from the brig this afternoon. The DA in Seattle decided to issue a statement to the effect that we intended to pursue charges.”

  Owens squinted, as if trying to understand. “Do you?”

  “That isn’t for me to decide,” Tracy said, not about to throw anyone under the bus. “We were hoping that by issuing a statement, Trejo might react.”

  “Well, you got that wish.” Owens sipped his coffee and set down the mug. “What were you hoping he’d do?”

  She shrugged and explained her hypothesis that someone had helped Trejo ditch his car and get back to Bremerton.

  “So, what, you thought he might run to someone?”

  “He couldn’t while he was in the brig, so, yeah, I thought it possible he would meet that person as soon as he was out.”

  “You have any other evidence to support that theory?”

  “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  Owens’s eyes narrowed. “My detectives said you don’t believe it was a suicide.”

  “Like I said, given everything else that has transpired, it seems doubtful.”

  “It was his gun.”

  “But you didn’t recover a bullet, did you?”

  “That isn’t unusual, given the location of death. It could be lodged in a tree somewhere.” Owens sat back.

  “But without the bullet you can’t definitively say he was shot with his gun.”

  “Look, Crosswhite, this is all very interesting, but in my experience, things are often exactly what they look like. He ran over a twelve-year-old boy, the guilt and shame built, and he shot himself. That could get to anyone.”

  “Maybe. But the security tape did go missing.”

  Owens paused. “Tell me again what you saw tonight.”

  Tracy went through her surveillance on Trejo, how she’d picked the wrong trail, the shot she’d heard, and the blue-white flash of the gun that drew her, ultimately, to the body.

  “But you didn’t see a person who might have shot him.”

  “No. But I’d ask his wife whether Trejo was left- or right-handed.” Trejo had drunk the Red Bull from a can in his right hand. “The gun was on the table near his left hand.”

  “Okay, so assuming he didn’t kill himself, who’s the mostly likely suspect? His defense attorney?” Owens picked up a sheet of paper, reading from it. “Leah Battles?”

  “At this point I think everyone’s in play.”

  “Everyone?” Owens shook his head. “You said something about forensics?”

  Tracy nodded, but the lack of sleep was setting in and she did not feel like she was speaking clearly. “The inside of his car was wiped clean . . . with an antiseptic wipe, including the air bag, which was the best source of DNA for whoever was driving the car at the time it hit the boy.”

  Owens sat back and sipped his coffee. He said, “Battles is a lawyer, she knows evidence, and according to my detectives, you said she lives in Seattle.”

  “Pioneer Square.”

  Owens nodded. “So she could have helped him that night, if anyone did. And she could get to him in the brig, right, to talk to him?”

  “She could.”

  “And as a JAG, she would have known that you still had jurisdiction over him in Seattle. If she were somehow involved, which I’m not convinced she was. It sounds to me like you’re fishing and not getting a lot of strikes.”

  Tracy gave the last comment some thought. “Your detectives spoke to his wife?”

  Owens nodded. “She said he left the house just after nine to pick up some groceries.”

  “Was that something he did regularly or did he get a phone call?”

  “She didn’t know.”

  “We need to check his phone.”

  “I got guys already on it.”

  “Did she say whether he was right- or left-handed?”

  “I’m not sure my detectives asked, but we will.”

  After a beat Tracy asked, “How’s she doing?”

  Owens gave another shrug. “About as well as you’d expect for a woman who just lost her husband violently and unexpectedly.” Owens scowled. His voice changed. “I don’t appreciate being left in the dark on this. If you intended to pursue the hit and run over here, I would have liked a little heads-up. Maybe this could have been avoided.”

  Tracy nodded, but she wasn’t about to apologize. Her cell phone rang, which was odd, given the hour. She checked caller ID. Del’s cell phone. He’d called her earlier, but she couldn’t take his call at the time. She excused herself, stepped into the hall, and explained where she was and what had happened.

  “Then that’s a problem,” Del said.

  CHAPTER 36

  After speaking to Tracy, Del went home, feeling both physically and emotionally exhausted. He drove the Impala far enough forward for the second car to pull into his driveway. Celia McDaniel lived thirty-five minutes away. At three in the morning, that was too far to be driving home. At least that’s what Del told himself when he’d invited her to spend the night. She winked and told him she’d brought a change of clothes.

  So she’d been thinking about it also. He felt both excited and anxiety stricken.

  On the drive home, Del kept his mind occupied by contemplating Tracy’s news that Laszlo Trejo had been shot in the head. It certainly seemed to jibe with what they’d learned that night from Evans—that Trejo had been delivering heroin. Free from the brig, somebody saw Trejo as a liability, especially after SPD and the prosecuting attorney put out the statement that they intended to go after him. The best way to keep that from happening—to keep Trejo quiet—was to put a bullet in his head. Someone had succeeded.

  Del and Tracy had speculated on what this would mean to D’Andre Miller’s family, and about how the conspiracy theorists would start crying foul and speculating that the Navy was somehow involved—that Trejo had been killed to hide a secret. Del and Tracy doubted the heroin had anything to do with the Navy, as far as th
ey could tell, anyway. Still, they couldn’t deny that Trejo’s death muddied the water—“bloodied” might be the better word.

  Del exited his Impala and met Celia, who was opening the back door of her Honda. “Let me help with that.” He carried her overnight bag and led Celia up the front steps.

  The heavy rains and wind had passed, leaving a partially cleared sky with billowing clouds and gaps of silver moonlight.

  “You’re tired,” she said.

  Del had pulled down the knot on his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. He carried his sport coat over his arm. “Yeah, I’m beat. Night shift gets harder every year. But this has got to be really late for you.”

  “Why do you and Faz still wear ties, Del?”

  Del shrugged as he flipped through his ring for the key to the deadbolt. “I do it out of respect for the justice system,” he said. “Faz? I think he’s too cheap to buy another set of clothes.”

  She smiled and looked at the window. “Sonny must be going stir-crazy.”

  “I got him out for his walk earlier,” Del said, “but yeah, I’m sure he is.”

  When Del inserted the key in the lock, Sonny came running. Time was inconsequential to him. He leapt onto the back of the couch and furiously pawed at the window.

  “Okay, okay,” Del said. “Don’t break the glass.”

  Del opened the door and Sonny bounded from the couch to the front hall to meet them, dancing on his hind legs. He toppled over onto his back, rolled, and got right back up again. When Celia bent to greet him, he ran from her—down the hall, into the kitchen, and back out the door into the living room, a loop. After three circles he came back exhausted, his tiny tongue hanging out of his mouth, panting.

  “Let me get him a treat to calm him,” Del said. He put her overnight bag down at the foot of the stairs. Celia followed him into the kitchen, the heels of her shoes clicking on the parquet. “You want a glass of wine?” Del asked.

  “Small one,” she said.

  He got Sonny a treat from the pantry but didn’t immediately give it to him. “Watch this,” he said. “He’s a true police dog. Okay, Sonny, don’t let me down.” He held up the treat. His other hand made a gun. “Bang,” he said. Sonny, who’d been on his back legs, promptly fell over, legs in the air.