In Her Tracks, page 6
“Just to clarify. The little girl didn’t appear to be struggling at all?”
“No,” Ingram said. “She was just walking along.”
CHAPTER 9
The morning after Halloween, Tracy stepped from the elevator onto the seventh floor and turned for the A Team’s bull pen out of habit. “Old dogs,” she said, changing direction and making her way to the Cold Case office.
She had rushed home following her interview with Jimmy Ingram, and she and Dan had pushed Daniella’s stroller through a Redmond neighborhood. She was surprised to find entire families dressed in matching costumes, characters from the movies The Incredibles and Frozen, even The Wizard of Oz. Tracy had not even contemplated dressing in costume, though Dan apparently had. He’d worn a Frankenstein mask, an Elvis wig, and a hideously colorful jacket. Leave it to him—people thought Franken-Elvis was hysterical.
Tracy had dressed Daniella in a bumblebee outfit, which everyone said looked adorable. Daniella only lasted an hour before falling fast asleep in her stroller. They returned home to a mess; Rex and Sherlock had eaten chocolate bars Dan bought and left on the kitchen counter. Lucky for the dogs, they’d thrown up. Not so lucky for Dan. Since the chocolate bars had been his idea, in the unlikely event a child trekked to their remote home, Tracy gave Franken-Elvis the privilege of cleaning up the mess and calling the vet to determine if the dogs needed to go in. Considering the amount of chocolate and kibble Rex and Sherlock had thrown up, the vet didn’t need to see them.
She’d spent much of the remainder of the night going through the Elle Chin file, looking for something the prior detectives had missed, some clue hidden in the photographs and witness statements that would unlock what had happened to the little girl. Experience had taught her that detectives could get so close to the evidence during an investigation, their focus becoming myopic, they’d let something significant slip past, unnoticed.
That’s when Tracy sought fresh eyes. A fresh opinion. A fresh start. She reviewed the Elle Chin case as if just beginning the investigation.
The Chin divorce had been bitter and ugly in just about every sense of the words. It had also been violent, at least according to Jewel Chin. The detectives had run a background check on Bobby Chin but found no prior incidents of physical or verbal abuse of women—his wife, the notable exception. Was this an allegation just to get leverage? Tracy didn’t think so. Her mother used to say tigers didn’t change their stripes. Once a cheater, always a cheater. Once abusive, always abusive.
She decided to find out if Bobby Chin was a tiger. The burning question was whether he could have hated his ex-wife so much he might have harmed his daughter. Tracy didn’t want to believe that was possible but, sadly, she knew it happened far too often. SPD had also appeared to give Chin the benefit of the doubt; he was one of their own. Tracy would not do so.
Chin had graduated from the University of Washington, where he’d been a member of the Phi Delta Phi fraternity. The investigating detectives found no police reports evidencing he’d ever abused woman, though he certainly could have. Many college women chose not to report such incidents. They didn’t trust the system, and they feared spending their college years as a leper. Chin’s plea to domestic battery, and the two other documented incidents that brought police officers to the home, indicated a propensity for violence, and Chin’s only “excuse” was his wife had baited him into hitting her, which wasn’t exactly an admission of remorse or regret.
She added a note to her list to find and talk with some of Chin’s fraternity brothers.
The file also did not contain any evidence that Jewel Chin had a psychological disorder, or an addiction, as Bobby Chin alleged, though again, that wasn’t necessarily something someone walked into a shrink’s office and volunteered. Jewel certainly could have a psychological problem that had gone undiagnosed. The guardian ad litem’s report made no such reference, but again, Tracy presumed both Jewel and Bobby Chin would have been on their best behavior when meeting the person who would determine their parental rights.
As for Jewel Chin being a suspect in her daughter’s disappearance, the file contained multiple statements from both Jewel Chin and her boyfriend, Graham Jacobsen, that supported each other’s alibis for that evening. The two claimed to have stayed at home—except for approximately fifteen minutes when Graham left to pick up Chinese food at a nearby restaurant. The restaurant had confirmed the order and the pickup. Detectives had obtained receipts. Bobby Chin dismissed this as a planned alibi. At his urging, the detectives had put together a timeline and determined that, even with the boyfriend’s drive to the restaurant, there would have been sufficient time for him and Jewel Chin, or someone else, to drive to the maze and snatch the little girl, and still be home in time before all hell broke loose. If the little girl Jimmy Ingram saw that night had been Elle Chin—unlikely, Tracy thought—the timeline could explain, perhaps, why that little girl did not appear to be struggling. She’d been walking with her mother.
The case-file detectives had also contemplated this scenario, but they found no further Evidence to support it. Bobby Chin could label his ex-wife a nut job all he wanted. He was throwing stones from a glass house.
Bill Miller, the first officer to the Chin home the night Elle went missing, filed a report that was strange, to say the least, and it made Tracy wonder if Miller had seen the detectives’ reports before writing his own and had been looking out for a fellow officer. He and Chin both worked out of the North Precinct. Miller was also on Tracy’s list of people to speak with.
Reading the file made Tracy think of that line in Parenthood—a movie she and Dan had watched prior to Daniella’s birth. Keanu Reeves played a son-in-law and said something to the effect that you needed a license to buy a dog or to drive a car, even to catch a fish, but they let any asshole be a father . . . or a mother for that matter.
Too true.
“Knock. Knock.”
Tracy looked up. Kinsington Rowe, her former partner on the A Team, stood in the doorway.
Kins flashed a cautious smile. “Came by earlier to see if you wanted to get a cup of coffee.”
Tracy knew Kins’s unspoken intent. He wanted to talk about Fernandez.
“Don’t worry about it, Kins,” she said. She had expressed doubt to Kins when he told her Nolasco said Fernandez’s promotion was temporary, but she didn’t want to get sideways with Kins by throwing an I told you so in his face.
Kins stepped into the office holding a folded sheet of paper. He wore a collared shirt beneath a brown V-neck sweater, jeans, and tennis shoes. His eyes scanned the daunting shelves of black binders. “You’re going to take the position?”
“I don’t really have much choice,” she said, unable to entirely mask the bite in her tone.
Kins winced. “Look, Tracy—”
“Forget it, Kins. Seriously, this might give me more flexibility to spend time at home.” As she spoke, she had another thought. “How’d you know I took the position?”
“Well, you’re sitting at the desk, and . . .” Kins handed her the folded sheet of paper.
“What is it?”
“It went up on the website about an hour ago and, I assume, was sent to the news media.”
Tracy felt her pulse race as she read.
Update: Decorated Detective Will Lead Seattle’s Cold Case Unit
Written by Public Affairs on November 1, 2019, 11:22 a.m.
11/1: Decorated Violent Crimes detective Tracy Crosswhite will lead the Seattle Police Department’s Cold Case Unit, renewing the department’s commitment to resolving past crimes and bringing justice to victims and their families. “The assignment of Detective Crosswhite reiterates the department’s dedication to resolving crimes, no matter how old, and putting the perpetrators behind bars,” new police chief Marcella Weber said. Crosswhite is a two-time recipient of the Seattle Police Department’s Medal of Valor, its highest honor, for her investigative work. Last year the Cold Case Unit resolved twenty cold cases, Weber said, which she attributed to both improved and evolving forensics and devoted investigative work by Violent Crimes detective Arthur Nunzio.
The language of the news release had Nolasco’s hands all over it. He’d released Nunzio’s statistics as a benchmark, something he could and would use to evaluate Tracy’s performance, which was unreasonable since the large majority of the cases Nunzio resolved were due to the evolution in DNA analysis, and there was no guarantee that evolution would continue or provide a new tool Tracy could use to solve other cold cases.
She also knew other detectives wouldn’t want to hear her plight. Back between the rock and the hard place. She shrugged. “My bed. I’ll lie in it.”
“Don’t get too comfortable. I could use your help.”
“On what?”
“Katie Pryor called.” Pryor had been a patrol officer Tracy mentored and helped to get a position in the Missing Persons Unit, so Pryor could better schedule time with her family. “A young woman is missing. The mother filed a missing person report and—”
“Why isn’t Katie handling it if it’s a missing person?”
“She said she has a hunch, given the circumstances, that this isn’t going to turn out well.”
Katie’s hunches were usually accurate. “Why? What do we know?”
“I talked to the mother this morning. The roommate called her and said the young woman”—he looked at a notepad—“Stephanie Cole, hadn’t come home for two days, which isn’t like her. Apparently Cole just moved here from LA. With Fernandez in trial, and Del and Faz up to their eyeballs with that bar shooting in Pioneer Square, I was hoping you had time to give me a hand.” Kins flashed the charming smile that must have been a killer with the girls in college.
“You run this by Nolasco?”
“Nope. But I did run it by Billy,” he said, meaning Billy Williams, the Violent Crimes Section’s detective sergeant.
“And Billy was good with it?”
“Billy said bringing you in sounded like the prudent thing to do, given that we’re shorthanded.” Again, Kins smiled. Billy and Tracy were close. As a black man, Billy well understood discrimination, both overt and subtle.
“Is this a pity case, Kins?”
“I don’t know. Are you taking pity on me? You are, after all, the twice-decorated detective in this room. It would be a real honor to work a case with you.”
“You’re a jackass,” she said, and grabbed her purse.
CHAPTER 10
As Kins drove the pool car from the secure lot, he gave Tracy the Reader’s Digest version of the case.
“High risk?” Tracy asked as she looked through the notes of the mother’s statement. She wanted to know if Stephanie Cole was a prostitute, or an addict, or simply one of the homeless said to be moving to or being bused to Seattle by other states to take advantage of its homeless resources.
“Doesn’t appear to be. She’s nineteen, just moved here a month ago from LA, and works as a receptionist at a trucking company in Fremont, though she didn’t show up for work yesterday or today—I confirmed with her employer—which coincides with what the roommate told the mother.”
“Is the roommate Scott Barnes?”
“Affirmative.”
“Roommate or a boyfriend?” Tracy asked.
“Just a roommate, though I haven’t talked to him yet.”
“How old is the roommate?”
“Barnes is twenty.”
“You run his ID?”
“Clean. Not a scratch on him. He’s a student at UW Bothell and works as a barista at a Starbucks and as a dog walker.”
“It’s always the boyfriend, isn’t it?” Tracy said.
“Seems to be.”
Barnes had suggested he and Kins meet at Green Lake’s east parking lot so he could perform his afternoon job walking two dogs. The lake was the basis for the neighborhood’s name, and it included a three-mile walking path.
“That’s him,” Tracy said as they pulled into the relatively full parking lot and saw Barnes standing near paddleboats stacked on their sides and holding the leashes of what looked like an aging golden retriever and a spry rat terrier. Kins parked, and he and Tracy approached.
Kins took the lead and made introductions.
“Do you mind if we walk?” Barnes said. “I have to get the dogs their exercise or they drive the owner crazy the rest of the day.”
“Not a problem,” Kins said.
Tracy was glad to keep moving rather than stand in the cold. The temperature hovered in the upper thirties, and their breath was visible as they walked around the lake. The two dogs walked ahead of them, though they were relatively well behaved. Barnes called “heel” a few times, and both dogs obeyed. Tracy zipped her jacket closed and slid on gloves to protect her hands from the cold.
As lead detective, Kins asked the questions. “Tell me why you called Stephanie Cole’s mother.”
Barnes said, “I got up this morning and Stephanie wasn’t home. That was two days in a row. I thought maybe she could have driven home to LA. I really didn’t know who else to call. I didn’t want to freak out her mother, but . . . She kind of freaked out anyway.”
“And what’s your relationship to Stephanie?”
“Just roommates,” Barnes said. They stepped to the side to accommodate two approaching women. Joggers, bikers, mothers with strollers, and walkers of all ages were taking advantage of clear blue skies. “She moved up here about a month ago from the San Gabriel Valley. I was looking for a roommate . . . to save on rent.”
“You don’t share a room?” Kins asked.
“With Stephanie? No. It’s a two-bedroom apartment. We’re not boyfriend and girlfriend, if that’s what you mean.”
“Could Stephanie have come home and left before you got up?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“First, her bedroom door was open the same amount each morning. Second, I didn’t hear her get up yesterday or today. And her clothes weren’t on her bedroom floor or in the bathroom.”
“Do you always hear her get up?”
“Tuesdays and Thursdays I do. I don’t have classes until ten, so I try to sleep in, but Stephanie is pretty noisy. She turns the radio on in the bathroom. I can hear the music and the shower and the hair dryer. I would have heard her yesterday for sure if she had been there.”
“And she didn’t come home last night either?” Kins asked.
“This morning I got up and she wasn’t there.”
“You said something about her clothes being on the floor?”
“She runs when she gets home from work, which is right around four, four fifteen. She leaves everything on the floor in her room or the bathroom.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“Wednesday morning before she went to work.”
“Did she have any plans Wednesday night?” Tracy asked. She walked behind them to accommodate the joggers and walkers coming from the opposite direction. She flexed the fingers of her hands against the cold and regripped the pen she used to take notes.
Barnes spoke over his shoulder. “She said she’d been invited to a party by someone at work Wednesday night, and that she was thinking about going, but she hadn’t made up her mind yet.”
“Do you know if she went to the party Wednesday night?” Tracy asked.
“I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think she did.”
“Why not?” Kins asked.
“She was making a costume. She’d cut up a skirt and a shirt she’d bought at a thrift store, so she’d have something to wear if she decided to go. She didn’t have a lot of money; she had to put down a first and last month’s rent on her share of the apartment.”
“I’m not following,” Kins said. “So why don’t you think she went to the party?”
“Because the skirt and the shirt are still on her bed. Seemed weird given the effort she went to.”
It did seem odd, Tracy thought.
“Oh, and she also didn’t go to work yesterday or today.”
“How do you know that?”
“Her mother called the trucking company where she worked.”
“And it wasn’t like her to miss work?” Tracy asked.
“I’ve only known her a few weeks, so I wouldn’t really know, but from what she’d told me, she needed the money. She said she and her mother didn’t really get along, so Stephanie was paying for everything herself. She took the first job she could find.” That information had also been in Katie Pryor’s report, and was part of the reason Pryor had called Violent Crimes. “I think they’re going to fire her. Sounded that way.”
“Do you know the name of the employee who had the party Wednesday night?” Kins asked.
“No. No idea.”
“What did you do Wednesday night?”
“Me? I was out with friends in the University District.”
Again, Tracy wrote down the specifics—the friends Barnes had been with and their phone numbers. “What time did you get home?”
“Around one in the morning. We took an Uber.”
“Did you call the Uber?”
“Yeah.”
“The receipt for the ride is on your phone?” Kins asked. Barnes said it was, and Kins provided his email at Seattle PD for Barnes to send the receipt. “What did you do when you got home?”
“Wednesday? I went to bed.”
“Had you been drinking?”
“Some.”
“Drugs?”
“No.”
“Any of your friends spend the night?”
“No. We all had class Thursday morning.”
“What time did you get up Thursday?”
“Around nine. I had class at ten.”
Barnes detailed the classes he’d attended that day and the people he’d had lunch with.
“What time did you get home?”
“I worked at Starbucks that afternoon, so not until around six thirty.”
