One Last Kill (Tracy Crosswhite), page 10
“We’re divorced now, but I’d like to get away,” Cesare said. “Finally live life in peace.”
“Sounds nice.”
“Good luck,” Cesare said. “I think the investigation damn near drove Nolasco crazy. I hope it doesn’t do the same to you.”
Tracy returned to her office and got her first glimpse of crazy. It looked more like a storage room. She counted twenty-five boxes stacked five high along her far wall, each marked with the Route 99 case number. She sighed just thinking about the amount of time it would take her to go through those boxes and read all those documents. Weeks at a minimum. Maybe months. She wished she had an Augustus Cesare to perform her drudgery.
She decided to find the disk Nolasco and Cesare had mentioned and have TESU convert it into a usable format. She removed the lid of the first box and searched through its contents, using the opportunity to generally familiarize herself with the materials, but she did not find a disk. She searched the second box. Then the third and fourth. An hour later, she’d removed the lid on the final box. She had found several floppy disks, each clearly labeled as the copied computer files of task force members. She did not find one labeled with the name Augustus Cesare, or that indicated it contained the tip line information he had described.
She called Cesare, but he didn’t answer his desk phone, which prompted Tracy to check her watch. It was after five. A man on the verge of retirement was not going to work a minute past five. She didn’t blame him.
She recognized the three knuckle raps on her office door and wished she, too, had left the office a minute earlier.
“Come in,” she said reluctantly.
Johnny Nolasco stepped in and took a long look at the stacked boxes. “That should keep you busy.”
Tracy didn’t respond.
“I left you a couple messages,” Nolasco said.
Tracy glanced at her phone. “I just got in a few minutes ago.”
“Where have you been?”
“Why didn’t you tell me you asked Mike Melton to rerun the DNA he had from one of the crime scenes and try to match it to Levi Bishop?”
Nolasco didn’t immediately answer, clearly measuring his response. Finally, he said, “There was no reason for me to tell you; you had no involvement with the case until two days ago. It’s another dead end. Now you can concentrate on going through all those boxes.”
“But you knew the killer wasn’t Levi Bishop, or someone else incarcerated for another crime.”
“It might not be the killer’s DNA,” Nolasco said.
“Then why ask Melton to run it?”
“Why not? What did I have to lose? Maybe we get lucky, get a hit, find the killer. Solve those thirteen murders.”
They were talking in circles. “At the moment I have another suggested route to take,” Tracy said.
“I’m all ears.”
“I talked to Augustus Cesare, and he confirmed what you told me about copying all the leads that came in over the tip line, which included any connections, onto a disk. He said he gave the disk to Moss Gunderson to be filed in storage.”
“And?”
“And the disk isn’t in any of those boxes.” She gestured to her side wall.
“You’ve been through them?”
“Looking for the disk, yes. Santos said to focus on the last four victims.” Tracy didn’t add that Nabil Kotar, aka the Cowboy, had said something similar. “I’d like to determine what tips might have come in about the final four victims, determine if they could be related in any way.”
“They weren’t.”
“They all worked for or with the City of Seattle,” she said, repeating what Cesare told her.
“And I had that very question explored to see if there was more to it. There wasn’t.”
“Explored by whom?”
Nolasco paused. “Moss Gunderson and Keith Ellis.”
“And now the disk Cesare says he gave to Gunderson is missing? I find that curious.”
“It’s been years. The disk could have simply been misplaced. Not everything is a dark conspiracy.”
“How could the disk have been misplaced? Who’s been looking at those files?”
Nolasco offered no response, which meant she had a point.
“I’d like to talk to Gunderson about it,” she said.
“Be my guest.”
Tracy needed Nolasco to get Gunderson to speak with her and decided to play to the man’s enormous ego. “I need your help.” Her request seemed to knock him back on his heels. “Moss and I don’t exactly get along, given my investigation into the Last Line and his involvement. He won’t talk to me. But I’m betting he’ll talk to you.”
“Why is that?”
“You were his superior officer. His captain. He’ll still see you that way. And you were around when all this was going down with the Last Line. You might have some leverage over Moss.”
“I don’t.”
“But he might think you do, which is just as good, but listen, if you don’t . . . just forget about it.”
“What?”
“Nothing. I’m probably overplaying my hand. Moss is retired. I doubt he’d talk to you either.”
Nolasco gave her a blank stare, but she could tell the wheels in his head were spinning. “You know where to find him?”
“Moss? I know exactly where he’ll be tomorrow morning.” Moss had a standing golf date every Saturday morning with three men who collectively called themselves “the Mailmen” because they played in rain, sleet, or snow.
“Set something up.”
Men. They were so predictable.
CHAPTER 13
January 27, 1996
Seattle, Washington
Nolasco stepped into the restaurant and considered the few people seated at the tables and in the booths along the wall. A waitress greeted him and told him to sit anywhere. He chose a booth at the back and sat facing the door. The waitress brought him a glass of water and two menus. Nolasco looked over the menu and realized the restaurant was vegan. A cursory glance didn’t reveal anything appealing. He set the menu down, took a deep breath, and tried the relaxation breathing techniques his counselor had given him.
They didn’t work.
He pulled the prescription bottle from his coat pocket, shook out one of the small lorazepam tablets his doctor had prescribed, and slipped it under his tongue. The pill’s effects would take a few minutes. In the meantime, his mind churned over his most recent fight with his wife, though they had become so frequent they had begun to blend together. She wasn’t happy with the long hours he’d been working and said if she had wanted to be a single parent, she could have found a sperm donor and not gone through all the other crap, namely having sex with him.
Nolasco was putting in sixty to eighty hours a week. The overtime pay helped to get out from under some expenses, like his wife’s car lease, but the hours were taking a toll on her, him, and their marriage.
The latest fight erupted when he suggested she sell the Volvo so they could ditch the monthly lease payment. Nolasco wanted to buy a used car. She told him it would be over her dead body. She wasn’t about to drive her kids to school in some beater. Most of the cars in the parking lot of their private grammar school on North Capitol Hill were Mercedes and BMWs. The Volvo, his wife said, was already not in that league, making it sound like she was schlepping the kids in a Pinto. But the argument wasn’t about the car. The car was just an excuse to fight. If she wasn’t complaining about the car, she complained about their two-thousand-square-foot home. Most of the other parents with children at the school lived in stately homes with spacious yards.
Nolasco had purchased his home before they married. The Realtor had told him it was a teardown, but on a great lot. He did much of the cosmetic remodeling himself, painting the interior and exterior, stripping and refinishing the hardwood floors, replacing countertops in the kitchen and bathrooms with marble, and modernizing the light fixtures.
The house had not been an issue until his wife enrolled their children in the same private school she had attended. Nolasco had lobbied for public school, but the district was reassigning children at random, and the school to which their eldest child had been assigned was not up to his wife’s standards. Not a chance in hell, she had said.
Between the private school, the lease on the car, the mortgage, and the private trainer his wife paid twice a week at her local gym, they were having trouble making ends meet, not that his wife paid any attention to money. Except how to spend it.
Nolasco also suspected the personal trainer was more than just a trainer. Each time he suggested his wife knew the workouts and no longer needed the trainer, she acted as if he’d suggested she get rid of her parents. Nolasco was so busy at work, he didn’t have time to determine if his wife was doing deep-knee lunges on top of her trainer. He didn’t have time to crap in peace.
The bell above the restaurant door chimed. Nolasco’s potential contact walked in, looking as spacey as she had looked at the press conferences, until she opened her mouth and asked those precise questions that cut through most of the rehearsed bullshit he’d been told to say.
His task force had not caught the Route 99 Killer. They had no solid suspects and little in the way of clues about where to go after the third and fourth killings of middle-class women.
Lisa Childress looked around the restaurant as if expecting someone else. She saw him and walked to his table carrying a handbag. Nolasco didn’t stand. This wasn’t a date. “Thank you for coming,” he said.
She sat across from him.
Nolasco handed her a menu. “I assume you’re vegan?” he said.
She had been looking up at the hanging light above the table, then lowered her gaze. “Why would you assume that?”
“This is a vegan restaurant. You suggested we meet here.”
“It is?” She looked around. “I’ve never been here.”
“Why did you suggest it?”
“I noticed it on my drive home from work.”
The waitress returned to the table and asked if she could get them started with drinks.
“I’ll have a Heineken,” Nolasco said. He motioned to Childress.
“Coke,” she said. “No ice.”
After the waitress departed, Nolasco said, “You must have been surprised to get my call.”
“Why?”
“Do police officers call you often?”
“No. I usually have to call them.”
She said it matter-of-factly, rather bland. Nolasco didn’t know if Childress was being deliberately obtuse, but he didn’t think so. It was just her demeanor. “I’ll cut to the chase,” he said, but the waitress reappeared with their drinks and asked if they needed more time to order. Nolasco said, “Do you want anything to eat?”
Childress checked her watch, then said no.
Nolasco handed the waitress back the menus and she departed. “As I said, I’ll cut to the chase, but I’d like this conversation to be off the record.”
Childress drank her Coke, nearly half the glass.
“Do we have a deal?”
She sat back against the green vinyl seat. Nolasco half expected her to belch. “Off the record?” she said.
“That’s right. I want this to be a private conversation just between the two of us.”
“Okay.”
He assumed she had agreed. “I think we might be able to help each other.”
“Help each other?” she said.
“The recent killings have thrust the investigation into the public spotlight. The pressure is mounting for us to find a suspect. We’re working on several leads.” It was a bluff.
“How does that help me?” She said it without any animosity.
“I’m willing to give you the names of five suspects, names we have not yet made public, with the caveat that you don’t run the information in the newspaper until we have narrowed the list to a solid suspect and I give you the okay.”
“Won’t the information come out when you have a solid suspect?”
“Not necessarily. We’d want to confirm it, but I would ensure you knew before any other reporter. It would be exclusive. You would run the story before any other media outlet, print or television.”
Childress finished her Coke. “What do you want from me?”
“You’re an investigative reporter. I know you’ve been digging on this file.”
“And others,” she said, matter-of-fact.
“What I’m asking is, should you come up with information on any of the five suspects whose names I provide you that might link a victim to a suspect, you will advise me of what you’ve learned.”
Again, she didn’t immediately answer. Then she said, “Can I run this agreement by my editor?”
“No.” Nolasco shook his head and wondered if Childress had been listening to the part about the conversation being off the record. “And no one can know I am your source of information.”
“Until I write the story.”
“Not ever.”
“And all you want from me is information I might learn in my investigation?”
“That’s all.”
“What makes you think I can uncover more information than your task force?”
Nolasco could only hope Childress had better success. “We’re limited by certain rules and regulations when it comes to suspects. Trying to get phone taps or to tail the suspects has been met with some resistance by the judiciary and because of budgetary concerns. We’re under intense pressure to find the killer, but we’re facing roadblocks in our efforts to obtain sufficient evidence to properly vet each suspect. I know you have ways of getting information that I can’t. I’m not suggesting you do anything illegal or put your life in danger, just let me know if you discover anything suspicious that we should look into further. If you find something, we’ll take it from there. And you’ll get your story.”
“I’d have the story anyway.”
“Not if we haven’t released any of the suspects’ names, or the piece of evidence that links each of the killings together.”
Childress looked to be digesting what Nolasco had said, though it was hard to tell. Her gaze never stayed in one location or on one thing for long.
“Do we have a deal?” he asked.
Childress rubbed her forehead as if the Coke had given her a brain freeze, then extended her hand across the table. “Deal,” she said.
Nolasco nodded to her large handbag. “No tape recordings, but you’re going to want to take notes.”
CHAPTER 14
Saturday, July 11, Present Day
Bellevue, Washington
Tracy met Nolasco in the Glendale Country Club parking lot in Bellevue early on a glorious Saturday morning. She didn’t like giving up weekends, but Moss played so early Tracy would be home before Dan and Daniella got their day started.
The sun had just climbed above the trees lining the course and delineating the fairways, the sky an inviting light blue with stratus clouds streaked red, orange, and yellow. Native Washingtonians considered July, at least after the Fourth, to be the start of summer. Tourists fell in love with the Emerald City during summer visits, promptly moved, then second-guessed their decision when the wet winter arrived and carried well into spring. Unfortunately, the rain had no longer stalled the most recent migration fueling Seattle’s decade-long run as the fastest-growing big city in America.
“Moss did all right for himself.” Nolasco blew out cigarette smoke while looking over the lush fairways and picturesque greens. They descended a concrete staircase to the breezeway between the pro shop and the locker rooms.
“Moss had some help,” Tracy said.
“The Last Line?”
“Bet on it,” Tracy said.
“But you can’t prove it.”
“Not in a court of law.”
“How do you know he’ll show this morning?”
“He golfs every Saturday morning at this hour with three other men—rain, sleet, or snow.”
“How do you know that?”
“The last time I needed to speak with him he made me ride passenger in his golf cart.”
Nolasco chuckled. “Beautiful day, but I ain’t riding in his golf cart. And he isn’t going to like having his golf game disrupted.”
“Which makes the day all the more beautiful,” Tracy said.
Tracy and Nolasco didn’t have long to wait. Within minutes, Moss stepped from the locker room in his colorful golf clothes and started barking at others grabbing pushcarts or climbing into golf carts. He looked like a neon, Norwegian version of Del and Faz, a big man who carried his height and girth with confidence. He glanced at Nolasco and Tracy, but their presence didn’t immediately register, like snow falling in May. It took him a moment to process what was out of order. When he did, he lost the smile.
“Moss,” Nolasco said.
Moss glanced at Tracy but spoke to Nolasco. “What brings you here, Johnny?”
“Need a word.”
“About?”
“You want to do this here, out in the open?”
Moss looked suddenly concerned. He glanced at the men and women coming and going—some were giving him side-glances—and decided he didn’t. “There’s a conference room in the back of the locker room. You can follow me. Crosswhite will have to go around.”
“We’ll all go around,” Nolasco said.
Moss hesitated, perhaps weighing the fact that he no longer had to take commands from anyone against the possibility Tracy and Nolasco had additional information to put his butt in jail. He decided to be a good boy.
“Hey, Stan,” he said to an elderly man getting into a golf cart. “I’m going to be tied up a bit.”
“You afraid of losing money this morning, Moss? Chickening out?”
“I have some police business to attend to. I’ll catch up. Keep your phone on so I can text and find out what hole you’re on.”
Then he led Tracy and Nolasco through doors to the restaurant but turned down a hall with photographs of past club presidents and plaques identifying yearly champions. At the end of the hall, he stepped into a conference room of round tables with windows looking over the pool and the golf course. He closed the door on the other side of the room, presumably leading to the men’s locker room, pulled out a chair, and sat.
