In Her Tracks, page 2
“I won’t, Butterfly. I promise.” Chin tried to help Elle slip on her jacket, but she protested, claiming it would crush her butterfly wings. He carried her over puddles from a recent rain into the tent. “It’s a big Halloween party. Are you excited?”
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Elle said again.
“Oh, right. Okay. Come on, we’ll find the toilet.”
He followed signs to a series of port-o-potties. They entered one that smelled like disinfectant. The butterfly outfit being a onesie, he had to remove the entire costume. He felt like Chris Farley in the movie Tommy Boy changing his clothes in an airplane bathroom. Once finished, Chin reversed the process and put his daughter back into her costume. They used a hand sanitizer and stepped from the port-o-potty at 9:35 p.m.
“Okay. You ready for the corn maze?”
“I’m hungry.”
Chin stifled a scream. Jewel refused to feed Elle when it was his night to have her.
Inside the tent he found bags of popcorn, caramel corn, cookies, soda, and bottled water. He was about to give up, promise food when they got home, when he spotted a signboard advertising hamburgers, fries, corn dogs, and chicken sandwiches. Perfect.
“Two hamburgers and fries,” he said to a teenager behind the counter.
The teenager shook his head. “We’re closed. I think all we have left are corn dogs.”
Not great, but better than the alternative. “Fine. Two corn dogs.”
The kid took Chin’s money. Then he said, “I have to heat them in the microwave.”
“How long?”
“Just a couple of minutes. Unless you want to eat them cold.”
Chin couldn’t tell if the kid was being a smart-ass or a dumbass. “We’ll wait.”
The kid shrugged.
“Let’s take a picture,” Chin said to distract Elle. He lifted her onto a hay bale. “Okay, spread your wings.”
Elle proudly lifted her colorful wings. Chin snapped her picture, then dropped to a knee and they took a selfie. When the food hadn’t arrived, Chin went back to the counter, but the teenager was gone. “We’re closed,” a woman cleaning up said.
“I ordered two corn dogs from a kid working the counter five minutes ago.”
The woman opened the microwave and found them. “Sorry about that. Jimmy must have forgot. I sent him to the corn maze.”
Major dumbass.
Chin took the corn dogs and sat with Elle, watching to be sure she chewed each bite, so she didn’t choke. He checked his watch: 9:42.
Elle ate half the corn dog and announced, “I’m done.”
Chin threw the remainder of both dogs in the garbage, lifted her, and hurried to the corn maze ticket booth. Jimmy stood behind the counter.
“You left us,” Chin said.
Jimmy shrugged. “They moved me over here.”
“Two tickets.”
“Can’t,” Jimmy said. “We close at ten.”
“It’s nine forty-five.”
Jimmy explained that the maze took forty minutes to complete—if Chin stopped to decipher the clues and did all the rubbings. He wasn’t supposed to sell any tickets past 9:20 p.m.
Chin ignored him. “Look, Jimmy, she’s five. We don’t care about the clues or the rubbings. We’re just going to walk through. I get one night a week with my little girl, and I promised her a corn maze.”
The boy sighed. “Fine.” He sold Chin two tickets at full price. “But you have to be done by ten. ’Cause that’s when we turn the lights out.”
Chin took his daughter’s hand and they entered the maze. The thick stalks exceeded six feet and made the path narrow. He moved as quickly as Elle’s little legs allowed, not wanting to rush her, but wanting to get through the maze before the lights went out.
“Pretty cool, huh, Butterfly?”
Elle stared at the stalks of corn. Then she said, “Let’s play hide-and-seek, Daddy.”
“We don’t have time for that, Elle. We have to get through.”
“Please, Daddy.”
“I’m sorry, honey. Maybe we can play at home.”
Elle cried. Then she sat down in the dirt.
“Elle, get up, honey. You’re getting your costume dirty.”
“No.”
“Honey, you have to stand up.”
“I want to play. Mommy lets me play.”
The counselor Chin had seen for his court-ordered anger-management classes had warned that kids going through a contentious divorce could become defiant and play one parent off the other.
“Elle. You need to stand up.”
“No. Graham plays with me.”
Chin felt his heart ripping apart. “Okay. One quick game. All right?”
Elle got to her feet. “Yay!”
“But when I say come out, you have to come out. Okay?”
“You count, Daddy. You have to hide your eyes.”
“Okay, but if I say come out, you come out. Right?”
“Turn around when you count.”
Chin turned and counted. It wouldn’t be hard to find Elle’s colorful butterfly wings among the green cornstalks. “One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi.”
At six he cheated and turned. He didn’t see Elle’s wings behind the cornstalks. “Here I come.” He stepped forward. “I’m coming.” He searched the aisle, looking under the drooping leaves. He turned the corner to another row. Then a third and a fourth. He checked his watch, felt himself starting to panic.
He shouted, “Okay, Elle. I give up. Come out.” He turned in a circle, looking, hearing the wind rustle the stalks. “Don’t let the lights go out,” he muttered under his breath. He called again. “Elle? You have to come out. The game is over.”
His heart raced.
He jogged, turning left and right, down the rows, shouting her name. “Elle. Come out. Elle? Elle!”
He turned a corner, disoriented.
Another corner.
Elle’s colorful butterfly wings lay in the dirt.
“Elle!”
Then the lights went out.
CHAPTER 1
Wednesday, October 30, Present Day
Seattle, Washington
Tracy Crosswhite inhaled deeply and slowly let out her breath, a meditative technique she’d learned in her counseling sessions to calm her mind. Following the traumatic events she had experienced in Cedar Grove the prior winter, Tracy started having nightmares and difficulty sleeping, then flashbacks in the middle of the day. A doctor diagnosed her with situational PTSD and recommended counseling and an extended leave from her duties as a Violent Crimes detective with the Seattle Police Department.
Already on maternity leave, Tracy took the additional medical time, and things slowly improved. With Therese, their nanny, already in place to watch Daniella, Tracy worked out daily and ate better, which helped her to clear her head and to sleep. She got in better physical shape than before she had Daniella. She couldn’t recover the washboard stomach, but it was once again flat. She also spent time at the SPD shooting range in Seattle, and her most recent scores topped the scores of detectives at the Violent Crimes Section for the year.
But it was time to get back to work.
She’d miss Daniella. Tracy’s counselor, Lisa Walsh, had three kids of her own and had warned that the first day back would be difficult. Having Therese helped, but this morning Tracy found herself teary, and short with Dan. The extended leave hadn’t made the return to work easier—it made it harder.
Tracy pushed from her Subaru and walked across the secure lot adjacent to the Justice Center on Fifth Avenue in downtown Seattle. The brass now referred to the building as “Police Headquarters,” but Tracy and the other veterans—old dogs—didn’t easily learn new tricks or accept change. That thought made Tracy smile. She’d missed Kinsington Rowe, Vic Fazzio, and Delmo Castigliano, her colleagues on the Violent Crimes Section’s A Team. The four of them had worked together for more than a decade and had become like family. Faz and his wife, Vera, were Daniella’s godparents.
Tracy took the elevator to the seventh floor, already feeling comfortable again. She nodded to the detectives on the telephone and acknowledged others who called out to welcome her back. She stepped into the A Team’s bull pen, one of four bull pens for the Violent Crimes Section’s sixteen detectives.
Tracy noticed framed photographs of people she didn’t recognize on her desk. Kins had called to give her a heads-up that Nolasco had hired Maria Fernandez while Tracy and Faz were out. Faz took medical then paid administrative leave after sustaining injuries while pursuing a drug dealer. He’d been back at work for roughly a month. Kins told her that he and Del had been up to their eyeballs, and they had asked their captain, Johnny Nolasco, for the help. Nolasco had offered the position to Henry Johnson, the A Team’s overflow detective, also known as a “fifth wheel,” but Johnson declined. He had four kids under the age of eight and needed the flexibility the fifth-wheel position provided.
“Hey, hey! The Professor’s in early. Who died?” Vic Fazzio lumbered into the bull pen with a mug of coffee and a familiar greeting—an old homicide joke made colorful by Faz’s perpetually hoarse voice and New Jersey accent. They called Tracy “the Professor” because she’d once taught high school chemistry.
“Hey, Faz.”
“Welcome back.” He burst into the theme song to Welcome Back, Kotter, a 1970s sitcom starring Gabe Kaplan and John Travolta with a song about dreams being your ticket out of your situation. “But the dream died!” Faz said, punctuating his punch line with a fist.
Faz set his mug of coffee on his desk, lowered his Windsor knot, and unbuttoned the collar of his shirt. He and Del were old-school—sports coats and slacks, despite the section’s long-established dress-down policy. Others in Violent Crimes called them “Italian goombahs.” Del and Faz called themselves “Italian stallions.” Clydesdales was more of a reality. At six foot five, Del stood an inch taller and had once outweighed Faz, who pushed 260 pounds. A younger girlfriend, an improved diet, and vanity convinced Del to lose fifty pounds. He now referred to himself as “Del 2.0.” Faz said he was “Half-a-Del.”
Faz looked to what had been Tracy’s desk. “You knew about Fernandez, right?”
“Yeah, Kins let me know.”
“She’s in a trial,” he said. “A holdover case from her time working the Sex Crimes Unit. Like you, she gave up sex for death. Bada boom!” he said, making another fist.
Faz puffed out his jowls and gave a not-so-bad impression of a supersized Marlon Brando in The Godfather. “How’s my goddaughter?”
“Growing like a weed,” Tracy said. “Anybody know what happens to Fernandez with me back?”
“Don’t know.”
“Any other teams down a detective?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
An administrative assistant appeared at Tracy’s cubicle. “Tracy. Welcome back. Captain Nolasco would like to see you.”
Tracy checked her watch. This was early for Nolasco. “Okay. Tell him I’m on my way.” She looked at Faz, who shrugged.
Tracy and Captain Johnny Nolasco didn’t have a complicated relationship. Their mutual animosity stemmed from Tracy’s time at the police academy. Nolasco had been one of Tracy’s instructors, and she broke his nose and nearly neutered him during a training exercise when he grabbed her breast. Then she’d beat his decades-old shooting score at the range, which was as much a blow to his ego as her elbow had been to his nose and groin. They tolerated one another because he was her captain, and she was too good a homicide detective to screw with—the only two-time recipient of the department’s highest award, the Medal of Valor.
Tracy walked the inner hallway. Glass walls revealed a blue October sky. She loved the crisp fall temperatures and clear views. The gray gloom of November would hit soon enough, along with the persistent rain. She knocked on a closed door.
“Come in,” Nolasco said.
Nolasco looked like he hadn’t expected her, though she suspected he had. Nolasco rarely—as in never—got into the office early. Twice divorced, he’d long ago swallowed the bitter pill, but it hadn’t kept him from working out mornings to keep in dating shape, or from getting the suspected vanity eye job that gave him the look of the perpetually surprised.
“Tracy. Welcome back,” he said with a grin she didn’t buy for a second.
“You wanted to see me?”
He gestured to one of two chairs across his desk. “Take a seat.”
She reluctantly did so; the less time she spent in his office, the better.
“How was your maternity leave?”
She didn’t take the time to correct him. “Fine. I’m looking forward to getting back to work.”
Nolasco reclined, his chair creaking. “You were out a long time.”
“What happened in Cedar Grove mandated the leave; the department approved it.”
“No doubt, but . . .”
“Is there a problem?” she asked.
He squinted, as if fighting a headache. Another habit. “We promoted Fernandez.”
“I heard.”
“I didn’t have a choice with both you and Faz out. We were short on manpower, like the rest of the department.”
Tracy and just about everyone else in the department knew Seattle PD was down as many as ninety police officers and detectives, despite a concerted, three-year effort to hire two hundred more. Tracy’s colleagues were fleeing King County for other police agencies as quickly as the homeless moved into the state. SPD had become the city council’s whipping boy, and many officers were tired of it. The council ignored drug and alcohol addiction and mental illness and stuck to its mantra that homelessness wasn’t a crime and shouldn’t be treated as such. Meanwhile, Seattle’s property-crime rate was increasing faster than Los Angeles’s or New York City’s, and annual homicides would exceed thirty for the first time in years.
“Faz came back first, so I had to slot him into the A Team.”
“I heard that also.”
“I offered a temporary position to Johnson, but he couldn’t take on the extra responsibility with four kids at home.”
Nolasco was stalling. Tracy’s skin crawled with each minute in his office. “What’s the problem?”
“I couldn’t do a lateral move and offer Fernandez a temporary position. Sex Crimes wouldn’t hold her position open.”
More stalling and lying. He hadn’t mentioned any of this to Kins. Tracy did her best not to show her aggravation. Nolasco was vague, but the picture was becoming more clear. He was nothing if not predictable. He’d done this before—hired a woman to take Tracy’s position so Tracy couldn’t allege discrimination, or argue that he was forcing her out of Violent Crimes, which was always his ultimate goal.
“Give her another position on another team.”
“There aren’t any openings at the moment.”
“There rarely are.”
“Unless someone goes out on maternity leave,” he said.
“Or medical leave,” she countered.
“It tied my hands.”
Did he want her to apologize for having a child or for having a vagina and a uterus? “Give her a fifth-wheel position.”
“All full.”
“Then what do you suggest?” Tracy knew she was entitled to her position . . . if it was available. She didn’t want to screw Fernandez, whom she knew well and liked. She and Fernandez had coordinated investigations involving sex crimes and homicides, and Tracy found her diligent and knowledgeable. Violent Crimes, however, was the pinnacle—the macabre joke once being that homicide detectives only left the section in a body bag. She was eager to hear what bullshit Nolasco had concocted this time to get rid of her.
“Nunzio is retiring. He gave word two weeks ago.”
Technically, Art Nunzio worked in Violent Crimes, but for the past two years he’d been the section’s cold case detective.
“You want me to take cold cases?”
“It’s comparable.”
“Only the pay.”
“I’m offering you a position in the section at the same salary and the same benefits.”
In other words, Tracy would be hard-pressed to win a complaint if she sought the union’s help. She bit her tongue. The case in Cedar Grove had been a cold case that turned into a nightmare and nearly got her killed. The only other cold case she’d worked had been the disappearance of her sister, Sarah, and that had become an obsession that put her personal life on hold for nearly twenty years. To move forward she’d had to lock Sarah’s files in her apartment closet and lock her memories in a mental box.
“When do you need an answer?”
“Art gave notice for the end of next month, but with accrued vacation days and sick time he’s never taken, his last day is today.”
Son of a . . . “You want an answer by the end of today?”
“I need someone in place, so Art can smoothly transition his files,” Nolasco said, withholding a smile.
Tracy wanted to tell him where he could shove those files.
CHAPTER 2
Tracy hesitated as she approached the open door to Art Nunzio’s cramped, windowless office. She wouldn’t take the position. She’d tell Nolasco to shove it and retire. She and Dan didn’t need the money; Dan made plenty as a plaintiff’s lawyer. Tracy could stay at home and raise Daniella, teach her things like single-action shooting, like her father had taught her and Sarah. She’d take Daniella to shooting competitions. It had been a good life—until her sister’s disappearance destroyed her family.
Tracy had been surrounded by death ever since.
Maybe it was time to surround herself with the living.
Maybe . . .
But the police department had not just been a job.
It, and her colleagues, had sustained her through dark years, gave her a sense of purpose and self-worth. The A Team had again provided her a family.
It had saved her life.
And she wasn’t about to let Nolasco or anyone else take that from her or force her into a decision she didn’t want to make.
She’d retire when she was damn good and ready.
She stepped to the open door. Nunzio had his head down. A bald spot peeked out from what had once been a full head of red hair. His reading glasses sat perched on his head like swimmer’s goggles as he went through papers, tossing some in the nearly full wastebasket at his feet. Nunzio was fifty-eight years old, and simple math told Tracy he was retiring twenty-five years after reaching Violent Crimes, likely damn near to the day, she’d bet. Nunzio had worked on the C Team until a long and emotionally demanding murder trial took three years of his life, and no doubt a large portion of his soul.
