One Last Kill (Tracy Crosswhite), page 17
“Don’t need one. You have DNA,” Del said.
“Which showed two different sources. Once being McDonnel, the other unknown.”
“Come on, Tracy, what are the chances there’s been some kind of mistake?” Faz said. “McDonnel was a suspect. Just a few weeks ago, he’s picked up for trying to strangle another prostitute. Why would he shoot off his mouth and say he’d killed others if he didn’t?”
“You’re right,” Tracy said. “The chances are less than minuscule. So why not wait until the ME finished processing McDonnel’s body? Weber rushed the press conference to beat the articles the Times intended to run. What’s a few more days when we’re talking decades?”
“She makes sense,” Del said.
“The families of those victims have been waiting long enough,” Faz said.
“Come on, Faz, you know as well as I do that press conference had nothing to do with bringing closure to the victims’ families and everything to do with heading off the press’s criticism of the department at a time when funding is critical. This was about Weber’s budget.”
“Maybe so . . . But so what? They got their man and they beat up the Times. Why not both?”
“I wouldn’t have done it that way.”
“You weren’t in those meetings,” Faz said. “You don’t know how it was.”
She’d heard it before. “When’s the last time a serial killer killed himself?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“I’m just saying some things don’t sit well with me. I think we should have resolved those things before holding the press conference.”
“Is that all?” Faz asked.
“Meaning what?”
“You sure this doesn’t have to do with your personal animosity toward Nolasco?”
“You were just in the press conference. I gave him one hundred percent of the credit.”
“For solving an investigation you’re worried isn’t solved and could come back to bite us all in the ass,” Faz said.
“He’s right,” Del said. “It could bite everyone in the ass, but it will take the biggest chunk from Nolasco’s ass if it does.”
She shook her head, wounded. “You two know me better than that.”
Faz raised his palms. “Look, I’m sorry. I apologize. That was a cheap shot.”
“Do you remember the Cowboy Task Force?” Tracy asked. “Nolasco jumped the gun on that investigation and said the killer was David Bankston because everything pointed in his direction, but he was wrong.”
“The circumstances aren’t the same, Tracy,” Faz said. “This time we have DNA.”
“I know, Faz. And I’m hoping you’re right. I’m hoping Nolasco is right. But I have a feeling about this. I don’t know why, but I can’t deny it.”
Faz was silent for a moment. Then he said, “This one time, I hope your intuition is wrong.”
“So do I,” Tracy said.
Amanda Santos’s message to Tracy said to call her. Tracy decided it would be better to see her in person and walked to the FBI’s office.
“I watched the press conference,” Santos said, entering the reception area. “I assume that’s why you called, to let me know you had identified the killer.”
“Actually, I have a question for you.”
“Okay. Come on back.”
They went to the same conference room as before. Neither sat. “In your research, how likely is it a serial killer will commit suicide rather than face a criminal trial?” Tracy asked.
Santos smiled as if she had anticipated the question. “A study was done on that very question about a dozen years ago. The percentage is low.”
“How low?”
“Don’t quote me on it, but less than ten percent. Closer to five percent.”
“It’s unlikely.”
“According to the study. But suicide is not unheard of. When a serial killer finds himself in an environment that will not allow him to seek the kind of pleasure he craves—”
“Like police custody?”
“Like police custody. And he’s facing a life sentence without parole, or the death penalty, it is not unthinkable he would take his own life. The few I’m aware of who committed suicide did so after conviction and while in custody. Most hung themselves.”
Tracy thanked Santos for indulging her and left the building feeling a bit more at ease. She resolved not to let the matter interfere with her weekend and her time with Dan and Daniella.
She was good at making resolutions.
She wasn’t always good at carrying them through.
CHAPTER 23
Monday, August 3, Present Day
Seattle, Washington
Tracy shut off her work phone over the weekend and placed it in her desk drawer so it didn’t interfere with family time. Shutting off the phone was easy. Shutting off her thoughts, not so much. Despite Amanda Santos’s assurance some serial killers took their own lives, Tracy continued to have doubts. Or maybe it was just the lack of certainty that bothered her. She told herself that even if McDonnel had lived, he might not have confessed. He’d had the chance in custody but steadfastly refused.
As she grew older, Tracy realized everybody struggled with something, even those who looked sure and confident. Her something was needing to be certain. Needing things to be buttoned up and put to bed without loose strings. It was likely a product of her sister’s death and the twenty years Tracy had spent compulsively searching for Sarah’s killer, needing to know what had happened.
It became her obsession. She recognized it and she’d sought counseling. She’d had to learn how to lock her work in a box so it would not dictate her personal time. Not let it keep her from enjoying life. Reuniting with Dan, the birth of Daniella, creating a family of their own, had helped. She no longer wanted to think about work 24-7. She didn’t want to bring her work home with her.
She spent Saturday and Sunday with Dan and Daniella, as planned. Monday morning, she refused to turn on her work phone until she arrived at the office. Her counselor said it gave her control over her work instead of her work having control over her.
As she entered the seventh floor, she felt an energy in the detective division that came with the resolution of a big case. A buzz filled the air. Everyone seemed charged, their movements and conversation more animated. Victories were to be celebrated. Success put pep in everyone’s step, as her mother liked to say.
Tracy considered the boxes of documents against the far wall of her office. She’d call storage and have them returned to the vault; she marked each of the thirteen cold case files as closed. She checked her voice messages. She had several calls from reporters wanting to talk to her about the investigation, including Anita Childress. Tracy felt like she owed the young woman a return call. The rest she’d send to Nolasco.
“Tracy,” Childress said.
“Hey, Anita. I got your message but I took the weekend off and was out of cell range. What can I do for you?”
“I just wanted to ask a few questions for an article I was working on this morning, but I spoke to your captain. We ran an article yesterday morning in place of the feature pieces I put together about McDonnel’s capture.” Tracy had taken a look at the Sunday paper and did see the article atop the metro section.
“Should have run it on the front page,” Tracy said.
“I lobbied Bill for the placement but lost that battle.”
At least Nolasco would be happy. Childress’s article quoted Tracy at the press conference highlighting Nolasco and his task force. The article was accompanied by two photographs, one of Nolasco from twenty-five years ago at one of the crime scenes, and one taken recently at McDonnel’s home. Nolasco was surprisingly humble, giving credit to those members of his task force as well as to the advances in the forensic sciences that made it possible to identify McDonnel’s DNA. Childress had also spoken with Melton and got a quick synopsis of fragmented DNA analysis. Tracy knew Melton didn’t talk to the press, especially not on his weekends, unless ordered to do so. She figured that order had come from Weber.
“Melton is probably a better source than I am,” Tracy said, not meaning to rush Childress, but now in work mode. She’d pulled up her emails and scrolled through them as she and Childress talked. When Childress went silent, Tracy asked, “Something else, Anita?”
“I was just thinking about my mom.”
“What about her?”
“Still some things that I haven’t resolved.”
“Such as?”
“Who attacked her the night she lost her memory and went missing.”
The question surprised Tracy. So did Childress’s doubt. “Had to be someone on the Last Line task force. My bet would be Rick Tombs,” Tracy said referring to the deceased veteran narcotics sergeant who had run the illicit task force and kickback scheme.
“I know we came to that conclusion, but we never really proved it,” Childress said.
“I’m not sure we can prove it, Anita. Not definitively. Sometimes we just have to lock those things in a box, so we can move on with our lives. You got your mother back. That was a small miracle. Take solace in that.”
“I am. It’s just . . . I got a woman back who I know to be my mother. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have much emotional attachment to the past or to me.”
“Make a brighter future, Anita,” Tracy said, hoping the young woman was fortunate, as Tracy had been, to find comfort in her work and in another person, to start a family of her own.
They said good-bye and Tracy hung up. She’d received a message from Stuart Funk while on the phone with Childress. She called him back.
“Toxicology isn’t back yet, but blood work indicates McDonnel was intoxicated. No bruising or injuries to indicate this was anything other than a suicide.”
Tracy thanked him. Maybe it was as Nolasco had said; McDonnel was the killer but did not intend to spend a day in jail or give Nolasco the satisfaction of apprehending him. Or maybe McDonnel couldn’t take the media’s intense scrutiny, the inability to go anywhere without being hounded.
Tracy went back to scanning her emails, finding one from Andrei Vilkotski of TESU. He had converted the disk into a usable format and provided it in several attachments. He told her that, per her instructions, he had sent back the disk. Tracy picked up an interdepartmental package from TESU from her in-box. With the case now resolved, the killer dead, and the victims cold cases, all the Salumi sandwiches in the world wouldn’t persuade Melton to prioritize trying to collect DNA from the disk’s mailing envelope, if it even had DNA on it.
Tracy set the envelope down and opened the first attachment Vilkotski had sent her on her computer. She scrolled through an Excel spreadsheet with cells identifying each call, the date the tip was received, the name of the caller, if provided, the substance of the call, and the task force member to which the call had been assigned for follow-up.
She searched for those calls coded red and noted an asterisk beside several, probably to indicate some type of further priority. She looked to the column that identified the person tasked with following through. Moss Gunderson. Curious, she scrolled to the next asterisk. In many, though not in every instance in which an asterisk accompanied a tip, Gunderson had been tasked with performing the follow-through.
“Not your problem any longer,” she said and went to shut down the Excel application, but her hand just wouldn’t move the mouse to the X in the upper right-hand corner of her screen. “Screw it. In for a penny, in for a pound,” she said and pulled up the call log. She picked up her desk phone and called a number beside a red asterisk. The call rang once before a computerized voice indicated the number was no longer in service.
She called a second number, got a live person, but was told the person who had called in and left the tip was dead, and the person who answered the phone had no idea why the now deceased person had called.
Tracy called a third number with an asterisk and asked to speak to the person whose name was in the cell on her spreadsheet.
“Speaking,” he said. “If this is a solicitation, please put me on your do-not-call list.”
“It’s not a solicitation. My name is Tracy Crosswhite. I’m a detective with the Seattle Police Department.” Silence. As usual. “I was hoping to ask you about a call you made to the Seattle Police Department in reference to the murder of—”
“Mary Ellen Schmid,” the man said.
“You remember the call?”
“Mary Ellen was my sister-in-law,” the man said. “She was married to my younger brother, Bill. So, yeah, I remember everything like it was yesterday.”
“Were you at the press conference on Friday?”
“Me? No. I know Bill was asked to attend. He called and told me they’d identified Mary Ellen’s killer, but he opted not to go.”
“Did he tell you why?”
The man sighed into the phone. “Bill’s remarried. He has a new family and a new life. It took a lot of time to get past what had happened.” Tracy understood well. “Those are painful memories I don’t wish on anyone. Bill once told me not a day goes by without him thinking of Mary Ellen. But he met a woman and he remarried, and things are better for him and his two kids. I think having it come back up now, after all these years, is like ripping off a bandage from an open wound. He told me he and their two kids would go to Mary Ellen’s grave, spend a quiet moment there, and put her to rest.”
“I understand,” Tracy said. She’d done much the same thing when she resolved her sister’s murder.
“No, I don’t think you do, Detective,” the man said. “People say they understand, but until you go through something like that . . .”
Tracy didn’t tell him her own story. “Do you remember why you called the tip line?”
“Not specifically. I know at one time I had a wild theory, but . . . You solved the case. You identified the killer. That’s good enough for me.”
“Just out of curiosity, though, what was your wild theory?”
“Well, not really a theory. Just a bit of information. The detectives came to Bill asking all the questions.”
“You were there?”
“My wife and I moved in with Bill for a few months to help with the kids, getting them to school, grocery shopping, those kinds of things. Emotional support, you know? The detectives were looking for something to connect the killings. Something to tie them together. They asked Bill about Mary Ellen’s background, where she had worked, where she went to school, former boyfriends. Neighbors. They were very thorough. I remembered something after they left that Bill hadn’t told them. The detectives had given us business cards with a tip line to handle all the calls they were getting. So I called it in on the tip line.”
“And what was it that you remembered?”
“Mary Ellen had at one time worked for Mayor Edwards as a ‘special assistant’ after she went to law school and before she worked at the city attorney’s office.”
Tracy’s pulse quickened, though she was uncertain why. “Did you get a call back from a detective?”
“I don’t know. I can’t really remember the details. I barely remember making the call.”
“Does the name Moss Gunderson ring any bells?”
“Moss what?”
“Moss Gunderson.”
“Is that a detective who worked on the case?”
“You don’t recognize that name?”
“Like I said. It was a long time ago. No. I don’t.”
Tracy wrote down the man’s name, thanked him, and hung up.
She scrolled through the Excel spreadsheet with a bit more urgency, looking for the next asterisk and reading the summary of the phone call. Her eyes stopped on one asterisk in particular. The caller had provided information on Regina Harris, the Route 99 Killer’s eleventh victim. The notes indicated Harris, too, had at one time worked as a “special assistant” in the mayor’s office. Tracy’s gaze panned across the spreadsheet’s cells to the detective tasked to follow up on the call. Moss Gunderson.
Another memory nudged her brain. She opened her desk drawer and pulled out Lisa Childress’s files, finding her investigation of corruption in Mayor Edwards’s administration. Edwards had been accused of all kinds of graft but never charged. The FBI had investigated some of the city’s business dealings when Edwards had been in power, contracts awarded to Edwards’s friends or, some said, to Edwards’s financial supporters. But Tracy was interested in something else. Edwards had also been a notorious womanizer, particularly fond of young women. Again, however, nothing had ever stuck beyond the rumors and innuendo. He had retired from office unscathed and was still revered by some and feared by others in Seattle.
She flipped through Lisa Childress’s notes.
On one of those pages Childress had written:
Credible source.
Pissed off.
Girlfriends.
Willing to talk.
Tracy wondered who the person might have been—a jilted lover? Maybe one of those special assistants? Childress had written a news article regarding women rumored to be or to have at one time been the mayor’s girlfriends, though Edwards had been married with children. Could the credible source have been someone Childress spoke with?
Tracy found the article and reread it, confirming that these “girlfriends” had started their careers in one of nearly 150 much-coveted mayoral special assistant jobs created by Edwards. Two rumored girlfriends became legislative aides, another a political advisor, and a third, a woman Edwards had helped to secure the position of city attorney, had gone on to win a seat in the United States Senate.
Tracy went to the boxes of documents in her office, removing tops and fingering through the file tabs until she found the tabs for Christina Griffin and Debbie Langford. She scanned through the files one at a time. Christina Griffin, the twelfth victim, had run the city’s minority contracting program. Debbie Langford, the thirteenth victim, had been a lobbyist. Both Langford and Griffin had at one time also worked in one of Edwards’s coveted special assistant positions.
Tracy hurried back to her desk, her mind spinning. She went down the Excel spreadsheet on her computer for tips marked with an asterisk, this time with more deliberation, and found one beside the name Debbie Langford, and another beside Christina Griffin’s name. Both tips had also been assigned to Moss Gunderson.
