Her Final Breath (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 2)

by Robert Dugoni

  “Why’d you come in last night?”

  “I own the clubs, Detective. I don’t need any reason to come into my own club.”

  “Did you talk to Veronica Watson last night?” Tracy asked.

  Nash gave a disgusted laugh. “Are you serious?”

  “Is that a yes?” Kins said.

  “I don’t recall speaking to Veronica.”

  “What time did you leave?” Tracy asked.

  “Am I a suspect?”

  “You’ll know when you’re a suspect,” Kins said. “It’s a lot of fun. We get to read you your rights.”

  Nash shook his head. “I came in to check the gate and left just before closing. I went back to the Aurora club, helped shut it down, and went home. You can ask my wife. Now, are we finished?”

  “Someone is killing your independent contractors, Darrell,” Tracy said. “We’re a long way from finished.”

  Tracy stepped into her kitchen at just after three in the morning. Roger sounded like a litter of cats. She fed him, then walked through the darkened living room to her bedroom, not bothering to turn on the lights. She dropped her briefcase and jacket on the bed along with her badge, keys, and Glock. After leaving the Pink Palace, she and Kins had made a trip to Pioneer Square to wake up Bradley Taggart, but if Veronica Watson’s boyfriend was still residing at their last known address, he wasn’t home, or chose not to come to the door.

  In the bathroom she removed her blouse and pants, tossed them in the dirty-clothes pile in the corner, and gave her teeth a perfunctory brushing before turning to use the toilet.

  The seat was up.

  She felt her stomach drop. She tried to recall when Dan had last been at her home; the days had become a blur. Unable to remember for certain, she retrieved her Glock and checked the bedroom closet and under the bed. The sliding glass door remained locked. She made her way through the living room and dining room turning on the lights. She looked down the stairs to the door. The deadbolt was flipped to the right, engaged. She checked the closet near the front door and peered out the sidelights to ensure that the patrol officer was present, then crossed the room and rattled the sliding glass door to the patio. Also locked.

  Having cleared the upper level, she returned to the bathroom. The water in the toilet bowl was clear. She told herself it was probably just Dan. She lived in a fortress. But when she climbed into bed, she again set the Glock on the pillow.

  CHAPTER 22

  The following morning, Tracy and Kins stepped into the elevator together and rode it to the seventh floor. “You feel like I look,” Kins said, bastardizing the usual phrase.

  “You look like crap.”

  “I know.”

  They made their way to the A Team’s bull pen. Faz, always an early riser, gave them a huge grin. “Look what the cat dragged in,” he said. “Are we having fun yet?”

  “More like what the cat left in the litter box,” Kins said.

  Tracy hadn’t even taken off her coat before Johnny Nolasco stepped into the bull pen. Nolasco handed Kins the list of names he and Tracy had compiled for the task force. They had left it on Nolasco’s desk before leaving to talk to the Pink Palace dancers. And from the amount of red ink she could see, Nolasco had struck at least half the names.

  “I told you, I have funding for a limited task force,” he said. “This is not going to be another Ridgway with fifty detectives running around on wild-goose chases.”

  “We didn’t pick fifty,” Tracy said, taking the list and scanning it. “How are we supposed to catch this guy?”

  “By doing your jobs. The names on that list are your responsibility. Someone screws up, the shit runs downhill and stops with you.”

  When Nolasco departed, Faz, who was sitting quiet at his desk, stood and hitched up the waist of his slacks. “Am I on that list?”

  “You got a resume for us to consider?” Kins said.

  “You and the horse you rode in on, Sparrow.”

  “Your name’s on the list,” Tracy said.

  Faz smiled. “Good.”

  “You might be the only one happy about it,” Kins said.

  They’d consulted a detective who’d worked the Green River Task force, which had lingered for years before ultimately being disbanded. He’d instructed them to choose detectives who could handle the psychological strain of pursuing a killer no matter how cold the leads became, and suggested they avoid new detectives and detectives with small children, since a single assignment could stall a career and the department bean counters still cared about production. He also cautioned them not to deplete one unit, since the job of picking up active investigations would fall to those who remained, which could cause friction and animosity.

  “I got ADD,” Faz said. “I can’t focus if I have more than one thing to do.”

  “Yeah, well, you may have a lot more than one thing to do,” Tracy said, shaking the list of names. “This is not enough people.”

  “You can check one thing off the list,” Faz said. “Del and I spoke to Orange Cab about Veronica Watson. The driver is a Russian named Oliver Azarov. Just got off the boat eighteen months ago with a wife and two daughters. I ran him through the system. He’s clean. Del and I will take a drive later and see what he knows.”

  “Any of the local businesses know anything?” Kins asked.

  “Nobody saw nobody,” Faz said. “The convenience store connected to the gas station across the street has a camera, but it only covers the door. Camera outside is on the pumps. Can’t see the motel entrance.” Faz checked his watch. “I’ll make a call to Wash-DOT to find out what traffic cameras they’ve got around the motels and put in requests for the days Hansen, Schreiber, and Watson died.”

  Tracy nodded, but the Wash-DOT cameras wouldn’t do them any good unless they had a specific car or license plate to look for, and even that would be like searching for the proverbial needle in the haystack.

  Tracy and Kins spent much of the day educating the members of their task force on the three victims, the evidence, and a list of possible suspects that included Walter Gipson, Darrell Nash, Bradley Taggart, and every male employee and customer of the Pink Palace.

  “That narrows it down,” Faz said.

  They parceled out assignments, and the men and women went to work. Mike Melton called Tracy’s cell late in the afternoon.

  “The DNA on the rope belongs to Veronica Watson. No other hits.”

  “As we suspected,” she said.

  “But the rope from the shooting range produced three different DNA profiles and one positive hit,” Melton said.

  “What’s the nature of the hit?” Tracy said.

  “Don’t know.”

  “You got a name?”

  “David Bankston.”

  Tracy thanked him, hung up, and swiveled her chair to where Kins sat at his desk. “Mike got a positive DNA hit on the rope at the shooting range,” she said.

  Kins turned to his keyboard. “You got a name?”

  Tracy and Faz peered over his shoulder as Kins ran the name David Bankston through the system. Bankston had no criminal record and no outstanding warrants. The DNA hit was the result of a tour in the National Guard. “He served in Desert Storm,” he said. He scrolled to another hit in the system and pulled it up. “Looks like he also attended the police academy.”

  “What happened to him?” Tracy asked.

  “Doesn’t say,” Kins said, reaching for his desk phone.

  Five minutes later, he had an answer. “Bankston washed out,” he said. “He was unable to complete the fitness training.”

  “Shit, I hope they don’t test me,” Faz said.

  According to the clerk Kins had spoken with, Bankston’s Academy paperwork listed him as five eleven and 245 pounds—big, but not obese.

  “So he washes out of the Academy and joins the Army,” Kins said. “And becomes a lean, mean fighting machine.”

  “Stripes,” Faz said.

  “Stripes?” Tracy asked.

  “
Please don’t tell me you’ve never seen the movie Stripes,” Kins said.

  “I’m sure I haven’t. But let me guess, it’s a ‘classic.’” With three boys, Kins could, and often did, recite lines from movies and television shows, most of them sophomoric. He proudly proclaimed he’d seen every Seinfeld and Cheers episode.

  “Isn’t every Bill Murray movie a classic?” Faz said.

  “Spare me,” Tracy said.

  “Murray’s a cabdriver,” Kins said to Tracy. “His life is going down the toilet, so he joins the Army. One of the men in his platoon is John Candy. You do know who John Candy is, don’t you?”

  “Didn’t he die of obesity?”

  “How are we partners?”

  “Sometimes I wonder.”

  “Candy explains that the local weight-loss clinic costs four hundred bucks, so instead he joins the Army to become a . . .”

  Kins and Faz finished the line together. “Lean, mean fighting machine!”

  “Classic,” Tracy said.

  “Hey, it ain’t nothing, Professor. You want me and Del to go talk to this guy?”

  “No. We’ll handle this. Where’re we at on trying to enhance that video from the Pink Palace parking lot?”

  “Melton’s working on it,” Faz said. “The lighting is the shits, and it’s tough with the car moving. He said getting any detail is going to be next to impossible. I’m hoping he’s just setting himself up to look good.”

  David Bankston worked at a Home Depot warehouse in Kent, where Kins correctly noted he’d have convenient access to a lot of rope. For the first time since they walked into the motel room and found Nicole Hansen, Tracy felt a twinge of optimism.

  The warehouse manager escorted them through a large open-air structure filled with home improvement materials to an area at the back of the building with offices, a lunchroom, an employee lounge, and bathrooms. He led them into a generic office of oak veneer furniture and watercolor prints and introduced them to Bankston’s supervisor, Haari Rajput, who stood and greeted them formally, offering a soft hand but firm handshake. The manager left.

  “How may I be of assistance?” Rajput asked in heavily accented English. Thin, with narrow shoulders, Rajput wore black-framed glasses that, along with a thick mustache and broad nose, brought to mind the classic dime-store Groucho Marx disguise.

  “We’re interested in speaking to one of your employees,” Tracy said. “David Bankston. We understand he’s working today.”

  Rajput reached for a radiophone on his desk. “David? Yes. I will get him.”

  “Before you do,” Tracy said, raising a hand, “we’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  Rajput slid back his hand. He looked concerned.

  “You’re Mr. Bankston’s supervisor?” Tracy asked, starting slowly to get Rajput to relax.

  “Yes.”

  “How long has Mr. Bankston worked here?”

  “I do not know. He started before my employment. I will have to pull his file.” Rajput rose from his chair and started for a file cabinet behind the desk.

  “Just an estimate is fine,” Tracy said.

  “Several years,” Rajput said, retaking his seat.

  “You’re open twenty-four hours a day?” Tracy asked.

  “Yes.”

  “So the employees work shifts?”

  “Three shifts—day, swing, and night.”

  “What shift does Mr. Bankston work?” Tracy asked.

  Rajput adjusted his glasses. “It varies. Sometimes day. Sometimes swing. Sometimes night.”

  Tracy pointed to a punch clock on the wall inside the door, the slots filled with beige time cards. “How far back do you keep those cards?”

  “Many months. We are required to do so.”

  “Are those cards for this week?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I see Mr. Bankston’s card?”

  Rajput rose again and moved to the bank of cards. He lifted his eyeglasses, resting them just above his eyebrows, and bent for a closer look. He plucked a card from its slot and handed it to Tracy.

  “When does the swing shift start and end?” Kins asked, taking over the questioning while Tracy reviewed the time card.

  Rajput retreated behind the desk and sat. “Four to midnight.”

  “What kind of guy is David?”

  “Good employee. Very good. No problems.”

  “I mean, what kind of person is he? Is he loud, quiet? What’s his demeanor?”

  Rajput had a habit of raising his palms, as if under arrest. “Good person. Quiet. He gets his work done with no problems.”

  “Is he single, married?” Kins continued.

  “He is married. Two dependents.”

  “He has a child,” Kins said.

  Rajput nodded.

  Tracy handed Kins the card. Bankston had checked out just after midnight the nights Angela Schreiber and Veronica Watson were murdered. As Faz would have said, it wasn’t nothing.

  “Does Mr. Bankston work in any particular department?” she asked.

  “No. No department. The employees work all over.”

  “So electrical, plumbing, construction supplies? He could be loading and unloading materials in any of those departments? Whatever is coming in or going out that day?”

  “Yes, exactly.

  “And this warehouse delivers to which Home Depot stores?”

  “All of the stores in the Puget Sound.”

  “How many stores is that?”

  “Twenty-four.”

  A lot of stores. A lot of invoices for someone to look through for sales of polypropylene rope with a Z twist.

  “Can the employees make purchases here?”

  “Yes. They get an employee discount.”

  “How does that work? How do they get the discount?”

  “The computer keeps track of employee numbers. To get the discount, the number must be entered with each purchase.”

  “So there would be a record if an employee paid cash?”

  “If they wanted the employee discount, yes.”

  Tracy looked to Kins, who nodded. “May we use your office to talk to Mr. Bankston?” Tracy asked.

  “Yes. Please.” Rajput started for the door. “I will get him.”

  “No,” Tracy said, not wanting Rajput to have time alone to talk to Bankston. She pointed to the radiophone. “Please call him. But please don’t tell him why you want to see him.”

  Rajput’s brow furrowed again, but he picked up the phone and pressed a button. It emitted a short musical melody. “David?”

  After a moment of silence, a male voice answered. “Yeah?”

  “Can you come to my office, please?”

  “I’m in the middle of unloading a pallet. Can it wait?”

  Tracy shook her head.

  “Please come now,” Rajput said. “You can finish the pallet after.”

  Tracy thought she heard a sigh. “Yeah, okay.”

  Kins put Bankston’s time card back in the slot, and they stood waiting for Bankston in an uncomfortable silence. “May I offer you some coffee, or tea?” Rajput asked. Tracy and Kins declined.

  David Bankston knocked on the open door. His gaze quickly shifted from Rajput to Tracy and Kins, and his expression changed from bored indifference to concern.

  “Yes, David. Come in,” Rajput said. “No worries.”

  Bankston stepped in, looking far from certain. He adjusted his sturdy black-framed glasses, which gave him a studious appearance despite unruly reddish-brown hair and an equally unkempt beard.

  “David, these are detectives from the Seattle Police Department, Detective Crosswhite and Detective Rowe. They would like to ask you some questions.”

  “What about?”

  “Should I leave?” Rajput asked.

  “Please,” Tracy said. They thanked Rajput on his way out. Kins shut the door behind him.

  Bankston’s Academy paperwork had listed him at five eleven, but in thick-soled work boots he stood almost eye to eye w
ith Kins, who was six two. His blue jeans rode below a pronounced belly, and he wore an orange-and-black back brace that resembled a harness.

  “Have a seat,” Tracy said, gesturing to one of the two chairs on their side of the desk.

  Bankston hesitated, then lowered into a chair. Tracy turned the second chair to face him, and Kins wheeled the chair out from behind the desk and positioned it beside hers.

  “Can I call you David?” Tracy asked.

  “Okay.” Bankston fidgeted, as if unable to get comfortable. He gave them a sheepish smile. “So what’s this about?”

  “We’re investigating the recent deaths of three women in Seattle, David. Have you heard anything about them?”

  Bankston’s brow wrinkled. “Um, I think I read something in the newspaper or maybe saw it on the news?”

  “You sound uncertain,” Tracy said.

  “No, I mean, I heard about it. Just not sure where.”

  “What did you read or hear?” Tracy asked. “Just so I’m not repeating anything and wasting your time.”

  Bankston looked to be studying a spot on the carpet. “Just, you know, that these women got killed.”

  “Anything else?”

  He gave an uncertain shrug. “I don’t think so. Not that I really remember. I think they were prostitutes, right?”

  Kins reached into his jacket and set photographs of Nicole Hansen, Angela Schreiber, and Veronica Watson on the edge of the desk. Bankston leaned forward and raised his glasses to consider them. Tracy watched intently for any sign that Bankston recognized them, but she saw nothing in his demeanor that raised a red flag.

  “Do you recognize any of the women in these photographs?” Kins asked.

  “No.”

  “What about their names—Nicole Hansen, Angela Schreiber, Veronica Watson—do you recognize any of those names?”

  Bankston shook his head. “No,” he said, voice soft. “I didn’t really pay that much attention to it, you know?”

  Kins took back the photographs. “Okay, thanks. Can we ask you a few questions about your job?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “The materials that you load and unload, I’m assuming that’s everything I would find in my neighborhood Home Depot?”