Close to Home (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 5)

by Robert Dugoni

  “That’s terrible,” Celia said, though she was smiling and laughing. “But smart as hell.”

  Sonny popped up, took the treat, and hurried out of the room. It would comfort him for the moment.

  “Does he do other tricks?” Celia asked.

  “We could bore you for hours.” Del opened a cabinet and pulled out two tumblers. “I hope a glass is okay. It’s the way my parents drank their wine.”

  “When in Rome,” she said.

  “Turin.” He pulled a bottle of Italian Chianti from another cabinet.

  “Why a Shih Tzu?”

  Del glanced at her as he poured two glasses half full. “I bought him for my ex, but she didn’t want him and he didn’t want her.”

  “Well, I think he made the right choice then.”

  Del held up his glass to hers. “Salute.”

  “Salute,” she said. “How long have you been divorced?”

  “More than four years.”

  “How long were you married?”

  “Six. I got married late in life. It was a mistake,” Del said.

  “Getting married?”

  “Getting married to the wrong woman. We had too many fundamental differences we both tried to overlook. In the end we couldn’t.” He led Celia into the back room, his sanctuary. He was about to flip the light switch, but she caught his hand.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said. “Can we leave the lights off?”

  “Did I tell you?” he said, admiring a view that never got old. “Best room in the house.”

  They sat on the leather couch, sipped their wine, and looked out over the sparkling but still-sleeping city.

  “You think Evans is telling the truth?” Celia said.

  “About Trejo? After what Tracy told me, yeah, I think he is. But I did before somebody put a bullet in his head. Frankly, I don’t see Evans as the type of guy to read the newspaper or watch the news, so it’s unlikely he would have known about Trejo being arrested for the hit and run. This also explains why Trejo didn’t stop that night when he hit that kid.”

  “And it explains how Trejo’s car ended up in that woman’s backyard,” Celia said.

  The name Evans had provided was Eric Tseng. Tseng rented a home in Rainier Beach. “It could,” Del said. “But it doesn’t explain who took the videotape. Tseng didn’t do that.”

  “If someone took it,” Celia said.

  Del sipped his wine, thinking about that. “Heck of a coincidence, if someone didn’t.”

  “Let’s assume Evans is telling the truth,” Celia said. “There’s a bigger issue here, Del.”

  “I know. Where’s Trejo getting the drugs?” Del said. “Funk said it’s a very pure form of heroin.”

  Celia lowered her glass. “And depending on how much he delivered and how much has been delivered to others . . . more people will die, Del.”

  “Narcotics is working with patrol to get the word out.” Del sighed.

  Celia set her wine on the coffee table and shifted toward him. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I was just thinking of Jeanine Welch,” he said. “It brought back the memory of that morning when my sister called, when she’d found Allie.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I just can’t imagine anything being worse, Celia. I know I said this before, but I’m sorry about your son. I’m sorry I was so insensitive to you that morning.”

  She leaned forward and kissed him, then folded into his side; he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “I don’t try to figure out why it happened anymore, Del, and I don’t try to change what I know I can’t. I just accept that there had to be a reason for it, that maybe I can save another one or two kids with the work I’m doing now.”

  Del said, “I read that Seattle is likely to pass that law, the one that would create places where addicts can go to get high under a doctor’s care.”

  “It’s getting closer,” she said. “But there’s still opposition.”

  “I hope it passes,” Del said.

  She leaned back to look up at him. “Are you going soft on me, Delmo Castigliano?”

  He laughed. “Let’s just say I’ve come to realize the error of my ways. You were right. I can’t make a difference this way, arresting people.”

  She shook her head. “I was too hard on you that night too, Del.”

  “No,” he said. “I’m a big enough man to admit when I’m wrong, and I was wrong. Nothing I’ve done has removed the sting of Allie’s death, not in the slightest. I feel like I’m swimming in mud and my arms and legs keep getting heavier, and I’m making less and less progress.”

  “That’s not true, Del. If you’re right about this, you could be responsible for taking down a major drug supplier and getting a dangerous drug off the street.”

  “And another four will step forward to take his place and ’round and ’round we go, like Sonny.”

  She smiled. “There are no easy answers, Del.”

  “I know, but I’m starting to agree that this is not a police problem—not one that we can fix. And it’s going to get a hell of a lot worse before it gets better.”

  Sonny, finished with his treat, trotted into the room and came to an abrupt stop, staring up at Celia as if she’d wronged him.

  “Let me guess,” Celia said. “I’m in his spot, aren’t I?”

  Del laughed. “Yes, you are.” Celia shifted a bit and Sonny jumped onto the couch, snuggling between the two of them. Del rubbed Sonny’s head. “You hardly touched your wine.”

  Celia stood and took Del’s hand. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go to bed.”

  Her abruptness surprised him; Del had hoped to ease into this moment. “Celia, not to be presumptuous, but it’s been a long time since I’ve been with a woman . . .”

  She smiled. “I’m not surprised.”

  Del chuckled. “Ouch.”

  “You’re a good man, Del; you’re moral and ethical and kind. So I’m not surprised. Don’t worry. I won’t hurt you.” She winked.

  Del stood, surprised that he didn’t feel nervous, not in the slightest. He felt comfortable with Celia, and this felt right.

  They walked to the staircase where Del had put Celia’s bag. Del picked it up. At the same moment Sonny came running around the corner and bolted up the stairs. He turned at the top landing and looked down at them. Del smiled, stifling a laugh.

  “Let me guess, he also sleeps on the bed, doesn’t he?” Celia said.

  “He does,” Del said. He made a ball with his two hands. “But he’s small and doesn’t take up much room.”

  CHAPTER 37

  Tracy slept for a few hours at a hotel in Bremerton, awoke, and called Dan. She’d called him the night before, but well ahead of everything that had happened. After assuring Dan that she was fine, she called Billy Williams, her detective sergeant, to also give him a heads-up. Williams had spoken to Del earlier that morning, and he relayed to Tracy what they knew about Nick Evans and Eric Tseng.

  “I got a detective out here at the Bremerton Police Department who wants to be kept involved,” Tracy said.

  “You need me to have a talk with his sergeant?” Williams asked.

  “He is the sergeant.”

  “I can give him a call, let him know of our involvement and the potential tie between Trejo and the recent heroin deaths.”

  “I can handle it for now. We’re meeting with Battles this morning. If things change and he gets territorial, I may need you to make that call.”

  “You think she could have killed Trejo?” Williams asked.

  “Ordinarily I’d say this is a drug deal gone bad, and someone is eliminating the pieces, but that doesn’t explain the missing video,” Tracy said. “How are we doing on that warrant to get a copy of the security footage from inside the Defense Service Offices?”

  “Ron’s working on it,” he said, meaning Ron Mayweather.

  “I’d like to get it today, while I’m out here.”

  “Understood. We’re going to need an affidav
it to support the warrant.”

  “I’ll type one up and send it over,” she said.

  “Did Battles see the video?” Williams asked.

  “She said she did, and she says there’s nothing on it, but I’m dotting i’s and crossing t’s at this point.”

  “Okay. Just watch your back,” Williams said. “Kins isn’t there to watch it for you. He called, by the way.”

  “I spoke to him also.”

  “He’s driving us all crazy, so I guess that means he’s getting better.”

  Tracy typed up an affidavit on her laptop to support the search warrant and e-mailed it to Ron Mayweather after speaking with him on the phone. Then she drove back to the Bremerton Police Station. She would have preferred to talk to Battles someplace else, someplace more private, but that wasn’t going to happen. She compromised and met with Owens. After some discussion, he agreed to let Tracy talk to Battles alone in one of their conference rooms, since they’d already established a rapport.

  Tracy opened the door and stepped inside the room. Battles sat at a round table with her feet propped on an adjacent plastic chair, though she didn’t look comfortable or relaxed. She wore her blueberries, as if it were just another workday. Battles was not under arrest. Nor was she being detained, not yet anyway, but being a lawyer, she had to know she hadn’t been called in to the police station just to say hello.

  Battles gave Tracy a sly grin. “‘Intriguing. Arousing one’s curiosity or interest. Fascinating.’”

  Tracy gave her an inquisitive look, uncertain what Battles meant.

  Battles took her legs off the chair and sat up. “The dictionary at Zeitgeist Coffee—I told you it was prophetic.”

  “Ah.” Tracy readjusted the chair and sat. “You have a photographic memory?”

  “No. Just very good. It’s why I’m so good at chess. I can remember my opponents’ moves and draw upon that the next time we play. It’s judgment that has always been my Achilles’ heel. How am I doing so far? People think I stole a video to get my client off of a murder charge. Now they think I shot him.”

  “Did you?” Tracy asked. What the hell? Battles had opened the door.

  “No. But would that be enough to convince you?”

  “You want coffee?” Tracy asked.

  “I’m having enough trouble sleeping,” Battles said.

  “You don’t seem like the type who’d have trouble sleeping.”

  “I usually don’t.” Battles sat forward. “So what are you doing here? And what am I doing here?”

  “Trejo’s my case,” Tracy said, not wanting to offer anything more.

  “I saw the press conference. It was convincing, but we both know King County wasn’t going after Trejo.”

  “No?”

  “Not without the tape,” Battles said. “Same problem the prosecution here would have had. Trejo would argue that without the tape he could not effectively cross-examine witnesses. That being the case, why would Seattle’s DA want to interject himself into that mess?”

  Battles was sharp, perhaps too sharp to give away anything. Tracy felt, at the moment, like she was in a chess match, and she wasn’t the better player. “Has the Navy made any decision about going forward?” Tracy asked.

  “Against me?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s an ethics investigation under way. Whether there will be a court-martial, I don’t know. The best I might do is a plea to an honorable discharge in lieu of a court-martial and I get to keep my dignity and my pay. Most people in my shoes might be happy with that.”

  “Not you?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” Tracy asked.

  “Because someone set me up to take this fall, Detective, and I don’t like being set up. And I really hate losing.”

  Battles sounded sincere, but then Tracy had interviewed others who’d sounded sincere about their innocence and hadn’t been. “Some people would argue that’s the reason you took the tape.”

  “They already have,” Battles said.

  Tracy knew she meant Cho. “So where were you last night?”

  She smiled softly. “Do I have an alibi?”

  “Do you?”

  “I was at home. I went to work, sat there twiddling my thumbs, then realized that I was likely going to be court-martialed and assigned an attorney to defend me. Well, I’m not exactly great at listening to others—it was a real problem in grammar school—so I decided I’d better start defending myself. I left at four o’clock, took the ferry back to Seattle, went to a workout class, and went back home and did some research.”

  “How late were you up?”

  “Midnight.”

  “Anyone who can verify that?”

  “I wish.” She shook her head. “I live alone. But my computer won’t lie.”

  “Did you make any phone calls?”

  Battles smiled. “Okay. You play detective and I’ll play suspect.”

  “Actually, I’m intrigued,” Tracy said.

  Battles smiled softly. “Do you play chess, Detective?”

  Is that what this was? Tracy wondered. “Like golf. Poorly. But I still think I should be better every time I go out.”

  “I used to be a junior champion. Now I go into the Seattle parks looking for games. I’m good. I rarely lose. I think it makes me a better lawyer because it forces me to think several moves ahead of my opponent.”

  “Who are you playing against now?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m convinced Trejo knew, and that’s why he’s dead.”

  “Tell me your analysis.”

  “You already know it. You were in court. You saw Trejo’s reaction—or lack of reaction when he heard the tape went missing. You think, like I do, that he expected the video to go missing. He expected to get off.”

  “So the tape wasn’t just randomly misplaced.”

  “What are the odds of a critical piece of evidence being misplaced, Detective?”

  “You were the last person to have the evidence box. All indications are the security tape was in it when you returned it.”

  “True, but the real question isn’t who took the tape. It’s why. And I’m pretty sure why has something to do with what Trejo was doing over in Seattle that evening.”

  “He didn’t tell you?”

  “He never even admitted being there, not even after I showed him the convenience store tape.” Battles shrugged. “And before anyone accuses me of violating an attorney-client privilege, it expired when Trejo died. He said it wasn’t him. He said it was someone who looked like him. I couldn’t understand it then, why he wouldn’t take the plea. But now I do.”

  “The video was never coming into evidence,” Tracy said.

  “And Trejo knew it,” Battles agreed.

  “You said you saw the tape from inside the DSO building.”

  “It shows Cho leaving for the night, and it shows me putting back the evidence box and then leaving. Nobody else but the janitor came in or out before six o’clock the next morning.”

  “Is there an alternate entrance into the building?”

  “Not after hours. Not easily anyway.”

  “Let me ask you,” Tracy said. “Trejo worked as a logistics specialist?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How would I find out where he’d been deployed?”

  Battles’s gaze narrowed. “His service record would show every destination where he was deployed. Why?”

  “How hard would it be for him to smuggle a package onto and off of a ship?”

  Battles gave the question some thought. Finally she said, “Not that hard.” Tracy could see the wheels spinning inside her head.

  “How would he do it?”

  Battles considered her for another long moment, then sat back. “Hypothetically, say a ship stops in Thailand. A box is put in the ship storeroom. Trejo, as the logistics specialist, logs everything in. But instead of eight boxes of bananas, he only logs in seven. The ship comes back and goes into the yard for rep
airs. People and cargo come off the ship, including seven boxes of bananas, which complies with the ship’s manifest. The eighth box never got recorded. The Navy had a problem not that long ago with guys stealing cargo from the storeroom and selling it on the street. They caught them by pulling all the manifests and comparing them to what was being logged in. Someone like Trejo, however, could manipulate the manifests so that something coming on board never did, and something going off never did.”

  “So it’s possible.”

  “It’s possible.” Battles gave Tracy a small, inquisitive smile. “Drugs?”

  Tracy didn’t answer.

  “Intriguing,” Battles said.

  CHAPTER 38

  After her conversation with Battles, Tracy debriefed Owens and left the building, but not to head back to Seattle, not right away. Battles had not known the name of the janitorial service, but she had been able to describe the uniforms and the trucks she’d seen in the DSO parking lot. She said both were embossed with the logo of a cartoonish man in a white suit and cap, his lower legs spinning like the brush of a vacuum cleaner, and his uniform impressed with the initials IJS. After a ten-minute search on her laptop, Tracy located Industrial Janitorial Services on West G Street, close to the naval base. She made a few phone calls, spoke with the owner, and made an appointment to meet the janitor working in the DSO building the night before the Article 32 hearing.

  Tracy pulled into a parking space in front of a one-story brick building with a parking lot containing several white trucks with IJS on the door panels. The temperature remained cool but for the moment it was dry. A seagull strutted along the pavement, cawing in complaint when Tracy approached the building’s front door. She entered a dated lobby of wood paneling, black-and-white photographs, and lamps and furniture straight out of the 1950s. The building even held an old, musty smell.

  She had an appointment with Gary Buchman, president of IJS. Tracy announced herself to the receptionist, and Buchman entered and greeted her. He fit with the décor, his salt-and-pepper hair combed into a modified pompadour. Tracy estimated Buchman to be mid- to late sixties. His white polo shirt protruded slightly at the waistline and bore the initials IJS on the left breast. When he shook Tracy’s hand, she noticed his fingers were adorned with several rings. A chain medical bracelet wrapped his wrist, the kind Tracy had seen worn by diabetics.