Her Final Breath (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 2)

by Robert Dugoni

  “How so?” Tracy asked.

  “He doesn’t touch them. He isn’t killing them. They’re killing themselves. I think it’s his way of divorcing himself from, and justifying, the murders.”

  Kins put down his coffee mug. “What about the fact that the bed is made and the clothes are folded?”

  “Definitely a ritualistic act,” Santos said. “Those are common chores many children are required to perform.”

  Kins frowned. “So, what, this guy thinks he’s killing his mother because she made him make his bed?”

  Santos shook her head. “I’m not a fan of the Freudian crap that every boy wants to sleep with his mother. I wouldn’t get too wrapped around the wheel about why he’s killing these women. What we’ve learned is that these guys kill for one common reason. They enjoy it.”

  Despite her reluctance to meet with a profiler, Tracy was starting to like Santos.

  “Is he crazy?” Kins asked.

  Santos shook her head. “I think he’s very sane, and by that I mean he definitely knows right from wrong. Look, Detectives, I could give you some psychobabble bullshit explanation about why someone chooses to kill being a complex process based on biological, social, and environmental factors, but that’s not going to help you. And frankly, it’s why profilers have gotten such a bad rap. We try too hard to figure out why these guys kill when it’s really not possible to identify all of the factors that cause an individual to become a serial murderer. Think of the billions of things that have gone into developing who you are. I’m not just talking genetics and upbringing—think of all the things you’ve experienced every day of your life that have shaped who you are. That’s why there’s no template for these guys. The best we can do is to try to identify certain common traits.”

  “What would those traits be?” Tracy said.

  “Antisocial behavior in early childhood.”

  “Skinning the neighbor’s cat or lighting the dog’s tail on fire,” Kins said.

  “Getting in fights at school,” Santos said. “A seeming lack of remorse for bad acts, a callousness toward physical pain or torture. Then, usually by late twenties, the urge to control and to kill becomes too powerful to resist, and once they begin to kill, to act out their fantasies, the delusion, whatever it is, takes over.”

  “But there are instances of serial killers who have stopped killing, some for decades,” Kins said. “Ridgway killed most of his victims between 1982 and 1984, and he wasn’t caught for two decades.”

  “Ridgway claimed to have killed as many as eighty women,” Santos said. “Who knows when he stopped? He was also married multiple times and could have fulfilled some of his sexual fantasies and impulses with his wives. The same might be true of the BTK Killer in Kansas. My point is, the impulse to kill never left, and the longer the period of time in between killings, the harder that impulse became to suppress. Once they started, they couldn’t stop.”

  “So we can expect this guy to keep killing,” Tracy said.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Kins sat forward. “Let me ask you something. How likely is it, if this guy is all about getting away with killing these women, that he would stalk a police officer?”

  Santos looked across the table to Tracy. “If it is the same guy, it would be unusual, but not unprecedented. Detective Crosswhite has been in the news. Serial killers have big egos. They want to be the center of attention. He could see you as stepping into his spotlight.” Santos paused. “Or he could see you as his ultimate prize.”

  CHAPTER 32

  The man who greeted Dan in the small reception area did not look much like the profile picture on the firm website. James Tomey had aged and put on weight since the photographer’s visit. He wasn’t fat, but he had the bloated appearance Dan associated with someone who drank too much. It showed mostly in a broad and puffy face accentuated by thick lips and a full mane of blond hair.

  Tomey extended a hand. “You O’Leary?”

  “I am.” Dan looked up at Tomey. He guessed the attorney was six four.

  Tomey shouted down a hallway. “Tara, the conference room open?”

  “Garth has it booked.”

  “For what?”

  “The Unger deposition at one.”

  Tomey tugged up a shirtsleeve, revealing an expensive wristwatch. “Put me in there until then.”

  “He’s got crap all over the table.”

  “Just put me in there.” He rolled his eyes. “Sometimes I wonder who’s working for whom.”

  Dan had run a quick Google search on Tomey. The attorney shared the suite with four other defense lawyers: three former public defenders and one prosecutor. The firm specialized in DUI defense, police misconduct, civil rights violations, sexual deviancy and felony, and misdemeanor defense. They offered payment plans and took plastic.

  “You want coffee?” Tomey asked, pouring himself a cup.

  “No, thanks,” Dan said.

  Tomey had the trial lawyers’ swagger. He hadn’t hesitated when Dan called and asked for an hour of his time to discuss Wayne Gerhardt, and now Tomey’s body language as he led Dan into a conference room revealed no concern. In Dan’s experience, attorneys like Tomey were usually more gunslinger than technical practitioner. They shot from the hip, which meant they could be sloppy, and unpredictable.

  Tomey pushed a stack of papers down the freshly waxed dark wood table and sat back sipping his coffee. “So, Wayne Gerhardt?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me a bit about his case.”

  “He’s hired you?”

  Dan had not told Tomey he was a lawyer. “I’m just looking into some things for a friend.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “I’m not at liberty to divulge my client’s identity.”

  “The sister, right? She never wanted him to plead. He almost didn’t.”

  “Why did he?”

  Tomey pursed his lips. “Had to. Prosecutor had him by the short hairs.”

  “Did Wayne Gerhardt confess?”

  “I can’t tell you what he said and didn’t say—that’s a privileged communication—but I’ll tell you he claimed he was innocent. That doesn’t matter though.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because the evidence is what matters, and they had it in spades. Gerhardt had been at the house that day; his fingerprints were all over the place. He had no alibi. And the neighbor made him. Plus, I didn’t like the jury. You get a feel for these things. They were gonna hang him.”

  “He pled after the neighbor testified.”

  “Had to. Like I said, she’d made him. Dead certain.”

  “She didn’t seem dead certain in her police statement.”

  Tomey gave a condescending smile and set down his coffee mug. “Mr. O’Leary, I’ve been doing this a while now, and let me tell you, what the witness says to the police doesn’t mean squat. What matters is what she tells the twelve idiots seated in the idiot box, and what she told them was she saw Gerhardt at the house. You try to impeach a nice old lady like that too much and the jury just ends up disliking you and your client even more.”

  Tomey’s condescending tone confirmed he thought Dan was a private investigator, and Dan was content to let him keep thinking it. “I can appreciate that,” Dan said. “What about the DNA evidence? Why not get it tested?”

  Tomey showed Dan his palms. “You get the DNA tested and it proves it’s your client, the prosecutor isn’t going to swing a deal. He can’t. He’s got to go for the jugular. What’s he gonna tell the victim’s family if he doesn’t? You see the problem? You guess wrong and you just signed your client’s death certificate, because they’re gonna hang him.”

  “And what if the DNA proved it wasn’t Gerhardt?”

  “See, this is what the general public doesn’t understand. The DNA was on her clothes. It wasn’t inside her. He drops his seed inside her and it isn’t your guy, now you got something to argue. But the medical examiner’s report said no sex. So even if the DNA hadn’t been
a hit, it doesn’t mean he didn’t do it. It just means she picked up DNA from some other guy—a boyfriend or somebody else who’d been in the house. It isn’t definitive. It isn’t exonerating. So you’re gambling. You’re gambling on the death penalty or life without parole versus twenty-five years. Gerhardt was young. With good behavior, time served, maybe he gets out in fifteen.”

  “No sex in seventy-two hours?” Dan asked. “So what was your guy’s motivation?”

  Tomey shrugged. “Who knows, right?”

  “What was the prosecutor’s theory?”

  “Didn’t get the chance to rape her because she died.”

  “Did she have a boyfriend?”

  “Who?”

  “Beth Stinson. You said the DNA could have belonged to a boyfriend. Did she have one?”

  “I don’t remember whether she did or didn’t; what I’m saying is you’re gambling with the house’s money you go down that road.”

  Dan didn’t fully understand the mixed metaphor, but he got the gist. “What about the other witnesses?”

  “What other witnesses?”

  “The ones listed in the police file; did you speak to them?”

  “Probably. Nothing that rocked my world that I can remember.” Tomey checked that expensive watch again. “Okay, we good?”

  Dan nodded. “Yeah, we’re good.” He wasn’t, but he knew Tomey wasn’t going to give him any more time. In Tomey’s world, time was money, and he wasn’t making any sitting and talking to Dan about a client from a decade ago sitting in prison. Besides, Dan had figured out what he needed to know.

  Tomey had done a horseshit job defending Gerhardt.

  When he got back to Tracy’s, Dan took a long run, showered, and spent the rest of the afternoon going through the remainder of the materials in the Beth Stinson file. Tracy called at five in the afternoon to tell him she was coming home early, then called again at five thirty and said she’d been delayed.

  Dan managed to scrape together a salad to serve with frozen chicken breasts he’d marinated in soy sauce, which was about all he could find in Tracy’s refrigerator. He put the chicken in the oven when he heard the garage door roll open. The oven clock said 6:33. When he heard the door to the house open, he stood behind the wall and reached out waving a white towel. “Is it safe to come out?”

  She laughed. He poked his head around the corner. Despite her smile, she looked as tired and beat as she’d sounded on the phone. She set her briefcase down and tossed her coat over the back of a chair. Dan gave her a kiss. “You want a glass of wine?”

  “I better not,” she said. “I’m liable to fall asleep.”

  “Dinner will be ready in twenty minutes. I thought you might want time for a shower.”

  “Thanks. I’m a bit ripe. What did you do with your day off?”

  “Day off? I wish. It can wait. Take your shower.”

  She eyed him. “You want to tell me something. I can tell.”

  “Actually, I’m debating how much I should tell you.”

  “Beth Stinson?”

  “I talked to JoAnne Anderson this morning.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Then I spoke to Wayne Gerhardt’s public defender.”

  “And?”

  “What if they start asking you questions—Nolasco or someone else? Maybe it’s best if you don’t know the details.”

  She leaned back against the counter. She appreciated Dan’s concern, but at the moment the investigation was going nowhere fast. And if finding some evidence to change that meant risking getting in trouble for working an old file, then so be it. “I talked to an FBI profiler today,” Tracy said. “She said this kind of serial killer practices killing the way the rest of us practice golf swings, that he doesn’t necessarily get it right the first time. It could explain the difference between the way Stinson was tied and the other dancers.”

  Dan appeared to be giving that some thought. Then he said, “Anderson’s nearsighted. She can’t see to the sidewalk without her glasses. I asked her if she was wearing them that night. She said she couldn’t be certain. She thinks she put them on because she thinks she saw Gerhardt. I don’t think she did, and I’m not certain she could have seen him even if she had. I drove out to her house late last night to get a perspective similar to the one she would have had. It was pitch-black—no street lamps, just a few lawn lights. No lights on the exterior of Beth Stinson’s home.”

  “Could have been different nine years ago.”

  Dan shook his head. “There are some photos of the exterior of the home in the file. Besides, people usually add exterior lights, not take them down.”

  “So how’d Anderson ID Gerhardt?” Tracy asked.

  “Initially, she didn’t. She told Nolasco and his partner she couldn’t be certain about what she had seen, that she thought she saw a man but she didn’t want to be responsible for convicting an innocent man and have that on her conscience.”

  “But she testified she saw Gerhardt.”

  “Only after she picked him out of a police lineup, which was after Nolasco showed her a photograph of Gerhardt.”

  “She picked him out of a montage?”

  Dan shook his head. “She said they showed her just Gerhardt’s photograph.”

  “But there are photographs of four other men in the file,” Tracy said.

  “I know. But Anderson was certain.”

  “I think I need that glass of wine,” Tracy said.

  Dan poured a glass and handed it to her. Tracy took a sip. Then she said, “So they show her Gerhardt’s picture, she sees the same guy in the lineup, and now she’s convinced she was wearing her glasses and saw Gerhardt.”

  “She also said she was outside gardening the afternoon Gerhardt was working to clear the clog in Stinson’s bathroom, and she saw him walk out of the house to the back of the van.”

  “She could be remembering him from that afternoon and not that night.”

  “She testified Gerhardt was wearing coveralls.” Dan shook his head. “No way, even wearing glasses, she could make out that much detail. It was overcast and raining. I’m betting she saw him in coveralls that afternoon.”

  “None of this is in the file.”

  “No,” Dan said. “But I’m not sure it would have come out at trial even if it had been in the police reports after meeting Gerhardt’s attorney. He told me he didn’t go at Anderson too hard because he was afraid of pissing off the jury. His client was looking at prison, and he didn’t want to piss off the jury?”

  For a minute they stood not speaking. Then Tracy asked, “So what next?”

  “The next logical step would be for me to speak to Gerhardt, but we need to think this through first, Tracy.”

  “Nothing to think through, Dan. Not now.”

  “If someone finds out I’m talking to Gerhardt, how long do you think it’s going to take the media, and your boss, to tie me to you? And if he and his partner did railroad Gerhardt, he’s really not going to want you looking into this. He’ll paint you as a crusader trying to free another convicted murderer instead of catching a serial killer. I’m not sure how you survive, especially if someone starts asking how I got a police file.”

  Tracy looked out the sliding glass door. The final light of day reflected in bursts of gold off the glass exteriors of the downtown Seattle office buildings. “Do you remember Walter Gipson?”

  “The schoolteacher?”

  “He admitted being in the motel with Schreiber the night she was killed, but he says he didn’t kill her. If he’s telling the truth, it means someone went to that motel room after him. Had to have, right?”

  “That would make sense.”

  “The profiler I spoke with today said the killer is very intelligent, careful, deliberate. So what if he knew Schreiber was going to be with Gipson and used Gipson as a cover?”

  “Knew how?”

  “Schreiber brought Gipson into the greenroom at least once, and Faz found something on the surveillance video of the Pink Pa
lace parking lot the night Schreiber and Gipson left together.”

  “What did he find?”

  “A car parked on a side street pulls from the curb and appears to follow Gipson and Schreiber as they drive off.”

  “So you’re thinking that if Gerhardt didn’t kill Stinson, then the killer might have known Gerhardt performed a service call at Stinson’s house earlier that afternoon and used it as a cover.”

  “That would be the logical deduction, right?”

  “What about the other two dancers?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’m still fleshing this out. But if there’s something to it, it could mean I’m going about this all wrong. If this guy had prior contact with his victims, then maybe I need to reassess whether this really is a stranger-to-stranger killer.”

  Dan recognized the look in her eye—the look Tracy got at the shooting range when she was zeroing in on a target. “I thought you said you ran every employee through the system, and nothing suspicious came up.”

  “We did, but that doesn’t mean a lot. The profiler said these guys fly under the radar, lead seemingly normal lives with no prior criminal records. They’re one and done. They get caught and it’s life or the death penalty.”

  “There’s something else,” Dan said. Tracy followed him from the kitchen to the dining room table. He picked up the HITS form for Beth Stinson and handed it to her. “Look at question 102. It says there’s evidence of a sexual assault, but they didn’t check the box indicating they found semen in the body cavities of the victim.”

  “I noticed that also.”

  Tracy was about to say something more, but Dan said, “Hold that thought.” He picked up a copy of the medical examiner’s report, this one with his yellow highlights and sticky notes. He flipped a few stapled pages and read from the report. “No evidence of redness, soreness, or other signs of physical trauma to corroborate that sexual contact occurred. Swabs collected of the body cavities did not reveal seminal fluid. A colposcopy was performed but did not indicate any genital microtrauma indicating recent sexual contact and penetration. No seminal fluid, no spermatozoa or acid phosphatase.”