Her Final Breath (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 2)

by Robert Dugoni

  “Nolasco and Hattie also didn’t follow up with any of the other witnesses in the file. If they had, they’d have known Stinson was dancing at a local club and had started to bring men home with her. Stinson’s best friend told Dan she spoke to Stinson the night she was murdered and told her to be careful. Stinson told her not to worry about the guy she was bringing home that night because she said they both knew him.”

  “So maybe Nolasco’s worried for good reason,” Kins said. “Maybe they got the wrong guy. How far did you get with the DNA evidence?”

  “Cerrabone got a judge to issue an order. I dropped it off to Mike this morning and asked him to rush the analysis. It may not exonerate Gerhardt, but it may give us—you—another suspect, or confirm one you already have.”

  “You’re not going to let it go, are you?”

  “Not a lot more they can do to me, Kins.”

  “They can fire you.”

  “They probably will.”

  Kins’s jaw clenched. “Where’s the Stinson file?”

  “Nolasco will never let you see it. I’m to box it up and get it back here right away.”

  Kins was mulling this over, his lips pinched tight. “You’ll keep me posted?”

  “Yeah, I’ll keep you posted.”

  “Okay. And keep your head down.”

  “I’m not worried about Nolasco.”

  “That’s not what I meant. Remember, while you’re out there trying to find out who this guy is, he already knows who you are.”

  CHAPTER 47

  She exited the elevator into the secure garage and made her way toward her truck to drop off her box of belongings. She intended to go to the Cowboy Room to speak to anyone who was there. She owed them an explanation. Though the concrete bunker had indeed started out creepy, as Faz had said, it had begun to feel like home. If nothing else, that told her that she and Kins had chosen their team wisely, dedicated men and women who’d make the sacrifices necessary to catch a killer. She’d miss them. She’d miss working with them. And she’d really miss the rush of the hunt.

  The din of the cars on the I-5 freeway, adjacent to the garage, nearly drowned out the cooing of pigeons in the overhead concrete recesses, and everything took on an orange tint beneath the garage’s dim lighting. As she neared her truck, Tracy sensed she was not alone. That cold tickle of self-preservation that made the hairs on her neck tingle migrated up her spine as she unlocked the cab door and set the box on the bench seat.

  Footsteps behind her.

  She drew her Glock as she spun and raised the barrel, dead center on her target.

  Nolasco’s eyes widened, and he stumbled backward, off balance, into a parked car. “What the hell is wrong with you?” He looked to be having trouble catching his breath. When Tracy didn’t answer he said, “You always draw your gun without fully assessing your situation?”

  “I’d fully assessed my situation,” Tracy said, her weapon still raised. “If I hadn’t, you’d be lying on the pavement with a bullet hole in your forehead and two in your chest.”

  Nolasco raised a hand. “You want to put the gun down?”

  She kept it raised a moment longer, then lowered it, but didn’t put it back in its holster. Nolasco’s eyes appeared glassy, and now she smelled alcohol poorly disguised by a wintergreen fragrance. If Nolasco had been chewing gum, he’d swallowed it. “What do you want?” she said.

  “I just wanted to know why you did it.”

  “I told you why.”

  “We know that wasn’t the reason,” Nolasco said. “Did you think I was going to let you embarrass me?”

  “Is your ego so fragile you’re still trying to recover from something that happened twenty years ago?” Tracy said. “That’s just sad.”

  “And what were you doing, going after one of my closed files?”

  “Trying to catch a killer.”

  Nolasco smirked. “Bullshit. You were trying to embarrass me. Well, now you know the outcome.” He turned and started for his car.

  “Who told you about Gerhardt?” Tracy said.

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  She raised her voice. “Doesn’t it bother you that an innocent man may be in prison, and the guy killing women is still out there?”

  Nolasco reached his Corvette and turned back to face her. “That’s a fantasy. Gerhardt was our guy. We knew it from day one.”

  “Is that why you made JoAnne Anderson believe she’d seen him?”

  “She saw things just fine.”

  “Then why’d you lie in there today? Why’d you say you spoke to the witnesses when you hadn’t?”

  “I have a big day tomorrow,” Nolasco said, smiling. “I have to tell the media the circumstances of your dismissal from the task force. You might want to get a good night’s sleep too. I imagine they’re going to have plenty of questions for you, along with OPA.”

  Dan’s Tahoe was parked where the police cruiser had been the prior four nights. Likely another move by Nolasco—Tracy was no longer on the task force, so she was no longer in need of protection. She parked her truck in the garage, got out, and retrieved her box of personal belongings.

  Dan held the door open for her, and Tracy’s expression must have revealed how she felt. “What happened?” he said. “What’s wrong?”

  She stepped past him and set the box down on the kitchen counter. Roger hopped up to greet her, and she stroked his back and listened to him purr.

  “Tracy, what’s going on? What’s in the box?”

  “You didn’t see the news?”

  “I’ve been in a storage shed for two hours.”

  She opened the fridge and pulled out an open can of cat food. “Nolasco found out about Gerhardt and fed it to Vanpelt.”

  Dan’s face went blank. She stepped past him and pulled a plate from the cabinet.

  “How bad was it?”

  “I just came from a meeting with the brass. I’m off the task force. Assigned to desk duty until OPA conducts an investigation.”

  “What does that all mean?”

  She spooned the food onto a plate, fending off Roger until she could empty the tin can. “It means I’m likely fired.”

  She dropped the spoon in the sink and the can in the garbage and stepped to the sliding glass doors, but she didn’t go out onto the deck when she saw that it had started to rain. Dan came up behind her and put his arms around her.

  “Are you all right?”

  She considered the view. It was beautiful, no doubt, but she’d spent many nights viewing it alone. “You asked me once if I could be happy again in Cedar Grove.” When Dan didn’t respond, Tracy continued. “It was the life I once wanted. I think I could want it again.”

  “Tracy, there’s nothing I’d want more than for you to mean what you’re saying—”

  “I do mean it.” She turned to face him.

  He smiled, but the expression had a sad quality to it. “This is your life now. This is what makes you happy. And you’re good at it. You love it.”

  “I was a good chemistry teacher too, and I was doing something useful.”

  “Why don’t you take a few days—?”

  “I’ve taken twenty years, Dan. Isn’t that long enough?”

  “You’re serious about this?” He sounded cautious.

  She wrapped her arms around his waist and gave him a deep kiss. “Yes, I’m serious.”

  Roger jumped onto the dining room table and whined at them. “Did you talk this over with him?” Dan said. “Because I don’t think he’ll be too happy about it.”

  “He’ll get used to it,” she said. “How long did it take you, when you moved back?”

  He gave it a moment of thought and ran his hands along her back. “Not as long as I thought it might. I mean, I’d been gone as long as you, but it really didn’t feel that different. I don’t think we ever completely get our hometown out of our system. Cedar Grove is part of our DNA.”

  “I just wish Sarah was still there,” Tracy said. “I still miss her,
Dan. I still think about her every day. I don’t think I’m ever going to stop.”

  Tracy cranked the water temperature to almost unbearably hot and eased beneath the shower, allowing the beating jets to sting her skin. Her muscles began to slowly relax, and she felt the tension in her neck and shoulders dissipate. Feeling weak, perhaps overwhelmed, she leaned her head against the tile wall and let the water soothe her.

  After twenty minutes, she shut off the shower, wrapped herself in a banana-yellow towel, and stepped out onto the marble to her bedroom. Roger lay sprawled on her comforter, and Tracy took a moment to give him some affection, scratching him beneath his neck and about his head and ears. He rolled onto his back, paws raised in submission, gently purring as she stroked his stomach. “It’s a good thing you’re self-sufficient,” she said. “You have a terrible owner.”

  The lights in the backyard came on.

  Annoyed, Tracy wrapped the towel tighter and stepped to the sliding glass door. The wind had picked up and was blowing the rain sideways across the two shafts of light. The lawn was empty.

  Dan crossed the room and joined her at the door. “The lights still coming on?”

  “Apparently,” she said, peering down at the empty yard.

  “I set the sensors on their lowest setting.”

  “When?”

  “The other day, before I left.”

  It explained how Roger had gotten himself locked downstairs.

  “Maybe I should just shut them off. You do live in a fortress.”

  “No,” she said. “They don’t bother me.” In truth she liked having the lights. They were like having a dog that barked—an early warning system.

  Dan embraced her. “Feel better?”

  “Much.”

  “Good. Are you hungry?”

  “Actually, I am,” she said, surprised.

  He smiled. “Then I better get out of here, because you in that towel is a lot more enticing than chicken Alfredo.” Their kiss lingered. Dan pulled back. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m leaving the room now.”

  After he’d left, she pulled a T-shirt from the dresser and was about to put it on when she got an idea. Still wrapped in the towel, she walked to the bedroom door. “How’s dinner coming?”

  “Getting there.” Dan stood at the center island, sliding noodles into a pot of boiling water, steam rising.

  “I was hoping for that glass of red wine you promised me.”

  Dan grabbed the bottle, poured a glass, and looked up at her through fogged lenses. Tracy leaned back against the door frame, leg bent to reveal much of her thigh. Dan pulled off his glasses. “This is so not fair,” he said. “I just put in the noodles.”

  “That gives us twelve minutes, doesn’t it?”

  Dan picked up the pasta box and turned it over to consider the instructions on the back. “Nine, I think.”

  Tracy lowered her leg and straightened. “Really?”

  Dan laughed, tossed the empty box over his shoulder, and pulled his shirt over his head as he hurried across the living room and embraced her.

  “Make love to me, Dan.”

  He kissed her hard on the mouth, then softly about her neck and shoulders, hands finding the towel. It fell gently to the floor. Tracy felt herself drifting with his touch, as soothing as the shower’s warm water. Her arms and legs weakened, and she became light-headed. She managed to help him remove his pants, but they never made it to the bed. Dan lifted her against the wall, and Tracy wrapped her legs around his waist.

  Afterward, both of them still breathing heavily, Dan turned his head to see the clock on her nightstand. “I never thought I’d be proud to say that I made love in the time it takes to boil noodles.”

  “And with three minutes to spare,” she said.

  They laughed. Dan said, “Unless you like your pasta soggy, I better get out there.” He gathered his clothes, slipped on his boxer shorts and T-shirt, gave her another kiss, and left the room.

  After jumping back in the shower to rinse off, Tracy slid on sweats and ran a brush through her hair. The rain came in a rush, hard enough that it sounded like the roar of cars on a freeway and triggered the lights in the backyard.

  Tracy stepped to the glass doors. This time, the yard was not empty. A hooded figure stood in the spotlight on her lawn, though rain cascaded all around him and a shadow obscured the details of his face. Then the lights shut off.

  Pulse racing, Tracy quickly crossed the room, grabbed her Glock, and hurried for the living room stairs.

  Dan looked up as she exited the bedroom. “You want that glass—?”

  Tracy bounded down the stairs.

  “Tracy?”

  She unlocked the deadbolt and pulled open the door.

  “What’s going on?” Dan shouted.

  She hurried across the darkened lower floor to the door leading to the backyard, snapped that deadbolt, and rushed out into the pounding rain, Glock raised, head swiveling left and right, eyes searching. The floodlights burst on, illuminating an empty yard. She swung the gun left to right, following the edge of the perimeter of light while moving toward the thick shrubbery. Her bare feet sank into the water-soaked lawn. Rain blurred her vision. She shook her head to clear it. “Where are you?” she said. “Where the hell are you?”

  “Tracy?” Dan shouted from the open door. “Tracy?”

  At the edge of the brush, she searched for broken branches, a worn path, footprints in the sodden soil.

  Dan was suddenly beside her, talking over the rain. “What are you doing?”

  “He was here.”

  “What? Who?”

  She continued to search, making her way clockwise around the edge of the lawn, gun aimed at the brush. “Someone was standing on the lawn. He triggered the light.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. I saw him standing right over there, staring up at me.”

  “Let’s go inside. We can call—”

  She spun. “Who, Dan? Who am I going to call? I am the police. Okay? I’m the damn police, and that bastard was standing right there in the middle of my yard! My yard!” She turned back to the bushes and glimpsed something in the brush. She stepped in, the branches pricking her skin through her sweats and scratching her bare arms. She picked up a sodden piece of paper and noticed several more in the dirt and clinging to branches.

  “What is it?” Dan asked.

  “I don’t know.” She stepped farther in, careful she wasn’t stepping on a footprint or disturbing other potential evidence, and retrieved the pieces of paper. As she collected them, she began to get a better sense of what they had been a part of.

  A photograph.

  Tracy set the pieces of paper on the dining room table, arranging and rearranging them as if putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Her pants and shirt were saturated, puddling on the carpet; her hair was matted. Dan came into the room and handed her a towel. She wiped the water from her face, frantically moving the bits and pieces of paper. The image slowly took shape.

  Her stomach dropped, and she stepped back from the table.

  “It’s you,” Dan said.

  It was a close-up of her face shot with a telephoto lens. The hood of her jacket framed her face and protected her from the falling snow.

  “Where was it taken?” Dan asked.

  She remembered the moment. She’d been standing on the porch of the veterinary clinic in Pine Flat while Dan was attending to Rex. She’d been talking on her cell phone and looking out across a snow-covered field at a parked car. Despite the heavy snow, the windshield had been freshly cleared and she’d sensed someone inside, watching her.

  “Pine Flat,” she said. “The veterinary clinic.”

  “What?”

  She hurried to the hall, where she’d left her purse, and retrieved her cell phone.

  Dan followed. “Pine Flat? That was more than a month ago. Six weeks.”

  “He could have left a shoeprint in the mud. A piece of his clothes or hair
could have snagged on one of the bushes. Something.” She called dispatch, provided her name and badge number, and asked to be patched through to the CSI Unit.

  “You mean when Rex was shot?” Dan asked, sounding as though he was still coming to grips with it. Rex had taken buckshot in the side, and they’d had to rush him to the veterinary clinic.

  “I saw a car,” she said. “I thought it was abandoned in the snowstorm until I realized the windshield was clear. I saw it again later, at night, parked outside the motel.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I wasn’t sure it was anything. I thought it was a reporter.”

  She raised her hand, but Dan continued talking. “So it’s him. It’s the same guy. The guy who left the noose. He’s been following you for weeks?” He walked to the sliding glass door and looked down into the yard.

  After hanging up with CSI, Tracy joined him. “He was in camouflage, I think. I couldn’t tell, but I think he was wearing one of those wide-brimmed hats. It was raining too hard, and the shadows fell across his face. Then the lights went out.”

  She stepped back from the window and sat in one of the dining room chairs, feeling a sudden chill. She started to shake. Dan grabbed the towel from her and wrapped it around her shoulders. He started for her bedroom. “You need to get out of those wet clothes,” he said, but Tracy wasn’t certain wet clothes were the reason she was shaking.

  CHAPTER 48

  Kaylee Wright was the last of the CSI detectives to leave, and Tracy walked her out to the gray CSI van. The rain had lessened to a light mist. Wright was a “man-tracker” with the Special Operations Section of the King County Sheriff’s Office. An expert in crime scene investigation and reconstruction, Wright had been one of the trackers who’d sought out the remains of the victims Gary Ridgway had dumped in woods and marshes, and along the Green River. Wright said she’d found bootprints in the brush several feet from the edge of Tracy’s backyard, and broken foliage where the man had made ingress and egress up the steep hill. She also found bootprints in the water-soaked lawn, indicating the path he’d taken to cut across the backyard. The torrent of water had obliterated many of the impressions, and Wright wasn’t sure she’d be able to identify the tread to determine the brand of boot, but she was confident in the size, between a twelve and thirteen.