In the Clearing (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 3)

by Robert Dugoni

  Tracy greeted a female uniformed officer holding a clipboard with a scene log.

  “This zoo belong to you, Tracy?” the officer asked.

  Tracy had trained many of the female officers to shoot, but she didn’t recognize this one. Then again, she’d recently captured a serial killer known as “the Cowboy,” receiving the Seattle Police Department’s Medal of Valor for the second time in her career and making her a bit of a celebrity, especially to the younger officers.

  “That’s what they’re telling me.” She scribbled her name and time of arrival on the log. “Are you the responding officer?”

  The officer looked to a fire-engine-red front door. “No. He’s inside with your sergeant.”

  Tracy considered the house. It appeared well kept, recently painted, and likely north of $350,000 in a seller’s market. The lawn smelled like newly laid sod, and the glow from landscape and porch lights revealed recently spread beauty bark in flower beds with hearty rosebushes and well-established rhododendrons. Divorce, Tracy thought. They were fixing up the property to sell. The dead body inside won’t help the asking price.

  She ascended three steps and ducked under red crime scene tape stretched taut across the entry. Inside, Billy Williams talked with a uniformed officer in a simple but well-maintained front room. A conical crystal sculpture lay on the dark bamboo flooring that flowed between two square pillars meant to differentiate the living room from the dining area and open kitchen. The walls looked freshly painted, the color choices—soft blues and hunter greens—something out of a home-improvement magazine.

  Paramedics were attending to a brunette woman seated on a dark-blue leather couch. She was grimacing and pointing to her ribs. She also had a bandage wrapped around her head, and the left side of her face appeared swollen, with a small cut near the corner of her mouth. Tracy estimated her to be midforties to early fifties. Beside her sat a young man in the awkward throes of puberty—hair unkempt, lanky arms protruding from a size-too-small T-shirt, and pipe-cleaner-thin legs poking out from baggy cargo shorts. He had his head down, staring at the floor, but Tracy could see the left side of his face was a splotchy red. Both the woman and the young man were barefoot.

  “That’s Angela Collins and her son, Connor,” Billy said, keeping his voice low. Billy resembled the actor Samuel L. Jackson, right down to the soul patch just beneath his lower lip and the knit driving caps he favored, this one plaid. “Her estranged husband is in a bedroom down the hall with a bullet in his back.”

  Tracy looked down a narrow hall to a room at the end where several members of the medical examiner’s office milled about. A pair of black dress shoes and suit pants were visible to midthigh. The rest of the body was hidden behind the door fame and wall.

  Tracy tilted her head toward Angela Collins. “What’s she saying?”

  “She said she shot him,” Billy said, giving a nod to the officer.

  Tracy turned to the officer. “She confessed?”

  “To me and my partner,” the officer said. “Then she asked for the words and sat down. Her lawyer is apparently on the way.”

  “She called her lawyer?” Tracy asked.

  “Apparently,” the officer said. “I heard her talking to the paramedics. She said her husband hit her with that thing.” He pointed to the sculpture on the floor.

  “But did she specifically say she shot him?”

  “Absolutely. To me and my partner.”

  “And you read her Miranda rights to her?”

  “She signed the card.”

  “Where’s the gun?” Tracy asked.

  The officer pointed down the hall. “On the bed. A .38 Colt Defender.”

  “You didn’t secure it?”

  “No need. She was just sitting right there, waiting for us with the door open.”

  “What’s the kid saying?” Tracy asked.

  “Not a word.”

  Kins ducked under the tape, slightly out of breath. “Hey.”

  “Where were you?” Billy asked, eyeing Kins’s suit and dress shirt, absent a tie.

  “Sorry. Didn’t hear my phone. What do we got?”

  “Looks like a grounder,” Tracy said.

  “That’d be nice,” Kins said.

  Billy explained the situation to Kins. Then he said, “I’ll have Faz and Del start with the neighbors, find out if anyone saw or heard anything tonight or in the past. And let’s make sure we fingerprint that thing.” He pointed to the sculpture.

  “Detectives?” The female police officer who’d greeted Tracy on the sidewalk spoke from behind the red tape. “There’s a man at the curb, says he’s the woman’s lawyer. He’s asking to speak to her.”

  “I’ll handle it,” Tracy said. She ducked under the tape and stepped back onto the porch but stopped when she saw Atticus Berkshire, counselor at law, standing at the curb. “Damn.”

  Many of the cops and prosecutors in King County had had the unpleasant experience of encountering Atticus Berkshire. Those who hadn’t certainly knew of him. A notorious defense attorney, when Berkshire wasn’t fighting to get his clients off criminal charges, he was suing the police department for violations of those clients’ civil rights, or for police brutality. He’d hit the city for several large and well-publicized verdicts. Urban myth among SPD was that Berkshire’s mother had named him after the lawyer in To Kill a Mockingbird, thereby condemning him to become a criminal defense lawyer the same way parents condemned their sons named Storm to become weathermen.

  “Detective Crosswhite,” Berkshire said before Tracy had made it halfway down the sidewalk. “I want to speak to my daughter.”

  That bit of information gave Tracy pause. Recovering, she said, “That’s not going to happen for a while, Counselor. You know that.”

  “I’ve instructed her not to say a word.”

  Tracy raised her hands, palms up. “For the most part, she’s listening.”

  “What do you mean, ‘for the most part’?”

  “She said she shot him. Then she asked for her Miranda rights.”

  “That’s not admissible.”

  “We’ll let the judge decide that.” Tracy couldn’t see how a judge would exclude the statement, since Angela Collins had said it while still under stress from a startling event, making it an “excited utterance,” but she’d let the lawyers fight that battle.

  “What about Connor?” Berkshire said.

  “The boy? He’s not saying anything either.”

  “I meant, may I see him?”

  “Not until after we speak to him,” Tracy said.

  In court, Berkshire was easy to dislike, with his expensive Italian suits, tasseled loafers, and obnoxious demeanor. He wore down prosecutors and judges with tactics that straddled the line between unethical and dirtbag, but he was even more infamous for his bombastic rants against injustice and prejudice. They worked more often than they should have, but Berkshire had the benefit of preaching his nonsense to liberal Seattleites. Tonight, however, there was a thin glimmer of vulnerability to him—dressed in jeans, his hair not perfectly coiffed, his daughter and grandson part of a crime scene. Tracy almost felt sympathy for him.

  “I’ve instructed him not to speak with you either,” he said.

  And then it was gone. “Then it will be a short conversation.”

  Berkshire grimaced, a facial expression not ordinarily in his trial lawyer’s repertoire. “What would you do if it was your daughter and grandson?”

  “What would you do if it was your investigation, and you were a homicide detective?”

  Berkshire nodded.

  “I assume your daughter and son-in-law are divorced?” she said.

  “In the process.”

  “And it’s gotten ugly?”

  “I won’t answer that.”

  “It’s going to be a long night. You might want to wait at home.”

  “I’ll wait right here.”

  Tracy left him on the sidewalk. A senior prosecutor from the county’s Most Dangerous Of
fender Project would be coming, since MDOP responded to every homicide scene in King County. He or she could deal with Berkshire.

  Inside, Kins was walking back from the bedroom. “You talk to the lawyer?”

  “Atticus Berkshire,” she said.

  “Shit.”

  “It gets worse. Angela Collins is his daughter.”

  “No,” Billy said.

  “I think our grounder just took a bad hop,” Kins said.

  CHAPTER 2

  It had been a long night and a longer morning. Tracy and Kins had worked late with King County Prosecutor Rick Cerrabone to prepare the certification for determination of probable cause, setting out the known evidence showing that Angela Collins had shot her husband and should be detained in jail pending the filing of formal criminal charges.

  Tracy flashed her shield to the court corrections officers and stepped around the metal detector inside the Third Avenue entrance to the King County Courthouse. She found Kins and Cerrabone huddled outside the district court. Cerrabone was the MDOP prosecutor who’d come out to the scene the night before, and he and Tracy and Kins had worked multiple homicides together.

  Tracy was delayed because she’d been researching the King County Superior Court’s civil files. She handed Cerrabone a legal pleading. He put on reading glasses as Tracy gave them both the highlights. “Angela Collins filed for divorce about three months ago,” she said. “And from all appearances, it’s been nasty from the start. She alleged cruelty, emotional and physical abuse, and adultery.”

  “Sounds like her civil attorney is taking lessons from her father,” Kins said.

  Washington was a “no-fault divorce” state. There was no need for either side to assign blame. The idea was that making such allegations was inflammatory and usually intended to embarrass, or to try to gain the moral high ground when it came to divvying up the estate or child custody.

  “Mediation failed. They were scheduled to go to trial next month,” Tracy said. “The index fills three computer screens. It looks like they’re fighting over every asset. The attorney’s fees will wipe out most of the estate.”

  “Not anymore,” Kins said.

  Cerrabone flipped the pleading back to the first page. “Berkshire will allege self-defense. That’s going to complicate things.” Once a defendant made a self-defense claim, the prosecutor bore the burden to prove the killing had not been in self-defense, not the other way around.

  “But if it was self-defense,” Kins said, “why isn’t she talking to us and telling us what happened?”

  “Probably because she grew up watching Hill Street Blues and because the first words her father taught her were ‘Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law,’” Tracy said. “Or she’s covering for the kid.”

  They’d discussed the possibility that Connor Collins had shot his father and that Angela Collins’s quick confession had been motivated by a desire to protect her son—something they’d have to investigate going forward.

  “Battered wife syndrome still plays well in Seattle,” Cerrabone said. Early afternoon, he already had a five-o’clock shadow, which accentuated his hangdog appearance—pronounced bags beneath his eyes and cheeks that sagged, though Cerrabone wasn’t heavy. Faz had pegged Cerrabone as a “dead ringer for Joe Torre,” the one-time New York Yankees manager.

  Tracy knew Cerrabone well enough to know he would want to slow down the train and give her and Kins time to gather the evidence and sort it out before formally charging either Angela Collins or Connor Collins; he was fine with whatever played out. King County prosecutors didn’t like to bring charges and ask questions later, and they really despised having to dismiss charges due to a lack of corroborating evidence.

  Cerrabone folded his glasses and returned them to the breast pocket of his charcoal-gray suit. “Let’s go see what Berkshire has in store for us.”

  Tracy followed Kins and Cerrabone into the cramped courtroom. Spectators and media filled the usually empty benches in the gallery. More people stood at the back of the room.

  Atticus Berkshire sat in the first bench. Any trace of the sympathetic father and grandfather had vanished. Berkshire’s silver curls were swept back from his forehead, just touching the collar of his blue pin-striped suit jacket. He was busy typing on an iPad, head down. An oscillating fan on the corner of the clerk’s oak counter swung from side to side. With each sweep, papers weighted down by her nameplate fluttered like the wings of a bird. There were no counsel tables—attorneys and their clients stood at the counter during what were typically brief hearings.

  At 2:30 p.m. Judge Mira Mairs entered from the right, strode between two burly corrections officers, and quickly took her seat. An American flag and the green flag of the state of Washington hung limply behind her. Ordinarily, Mairs would have been considered a good draw for the prosecution, but Mairs had forged a career prosecuting domestic violence cases against husbands and boyfriends, and Tracy feared she could be overly sympathetic to Angela Collins’s anticipated self-defense argument. Mairs instructed the clerk to call the case first, no doubt so she could get back to the normal afternoon routine.

  Angela Collins entered in white prison scrubs with the words “Ultra Security Inmate” stenciled on the back, her hands cuffed to a belly chain. After a visit to the hospital to treat the bump on her head with three stitches and to x-ray her jaw and ribs—both were negative—Collins had spent the night in jail. The cut near the corner of her mouth had scabbed over and looked to be turning a dark blue.

  Cerrabone stated his appearance. Mairs looked to Berkshire, who was whispering to his daughter. “Counselor, are you joining us this morning?”

  Berkshire straightened. “Indeed, Your Honor. Atticus Berkshire for the defendant, Angela Margaret Collins.”

  Mairs picked up the certification and folded her hair behind her ear. It flowed gently to her shoulders, as black as her judicial robe.

  “Your Honor,” Berkshire started. “If I may—”

  Mairs raised a hand but did not look up, turning over the pages and setting them on her desk as she read through the document. When she’d finished, she gathered the pages and tapped them on her desk to even them. “I’ve read the certification. Anything else to add?”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Berkshire said.

  “From the State,” Mairs interrupted. “Anything else to add from the State?”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Cerrabone said. “It has come to the State’s attention that in addition to what is set forth in the certification, the defendant and the deceased were involved in a contentious civil divorce that was set to go to trial next month after a failed mediation.”

  Cerrabone could have elaborated, but Tracy knew he preferred not to try his cases in the press. Berkshire had no such qualms.

  “A civil divorce my client initiated after years of mental and physical cruelty,” Berkshire said, becoming animated. “The shooting took place in Mrs. Collins’s residence after the deceased had moved out and had no legal right to be there. In fact, she had obtained a restraining order.”

  “There you have it,” Kins whispered to Tracy. “Self-defense. He was attacking with his back to her.”

  “Save your arguments, Counselor,” Mairs said. “I find that there’s probable cause to detain the defendant. Do you wish to be heard on bail or defer to the arraignment?”

  “The defense wishes to be heard,” Berkshire said.

  “The State objects to bail,” Cerrabone said. “This is a murder case.”

  “This is a self-defense case,” Berkshire said.

  Mairs lifted a palm as if to say “Have at it” and sat back in her chair.

  “As the State well knows,” Berkshire said, “every person in the state of Washington is entitled to bail. Mrs. Collins has not been convicted of any crime, let alone been charged. She is innocent until proven guilty, and that presumption of innocence applies here. The only issues here are Mrs. Collins’s ties to the community, whether she is a flight r
isk, and her criminal history, with which I will start. The defendant has never had so much as a parking ticket. She has been an upstanding member of the community. She has a seventeen-year-old son who lives with her, as well as parents who live in the area. She is far from a flight risk. We would ask that the court release Mrs. Collins on personal recognizance.”

  Mairs looked to Cerrabone.

  “Your Honor,” he said, “Mrs. Collins purchased a handgun while the couple was in the midst of a contentious divorce that was approaching trial. She admitted in a 911 call that she shot her husband. She also admitted that she called her attorney. When officers arrived at the home, she again admitted to shooting her husband, and she asked to be read her Miranda rights. All of this is evidence of someone operating with all of her faculties, and possibly evidence of premeditation. As for self-defense . . . she shot Timothy Collins in the back.”

  “She bought the gun because of a long history of physical and verbal abuse by her former husband,” Berkshire said, not waiting to be asked to respond, “including the night of the shooting. And she asked for her Miranda rights at her attorney’s instruction.”

  Mairs sat forward. She’d clearly made up her mind, and she was ready to get on with it. “I don’t believe the defendant is a flight risk, nor do I believe she is a danger to the community. I am going to order that she surrender her passport and any weapons she possesses. The defendant will be placed on home confinement with an ankle monitor. Bail will be set at two million dollars.”

  “May I be heard on the amount of bail?” Berkshire said.

  “No.”

  “Your Honor—”

  “It’s a murder case, Counselor. Bail will remain at two million dollars. Madame Clerk, call the next case.”

  Berkshire took another moment to speak softly to his daughter before she departed. Angela Collins would be taken back to jail, processed, fitted with an ankle monitor, and released, assuming she could come up with a couple hundred thousand dollars and a bail bondsman willing to cover the difference. That likely meant signing over a deed of trust on the house to the bail bondsman, or borrowing from her father.