One Last Kill (Tracy Crosswhite), page 20
Nolasco almost smiled, but he caught himself. “So you and Weber really don’t get along.”
“Let’s just say we’re both working under a highly volatile truce.”
He nodded as if he understood. “Okay. What do we tell her then if we don’t mention the possible Edwards connection?”
Tracy had given this some thought on the drive in to headquarters. “We tell her we don’t know anything with certainty, but we’re investigating, and we will get to the bottom of it. We don’t mention any suspicion of a connection to Edwards.”
“That’s not going to satisfy her.”
“She doesn’t have a choice. She jumped the gun on the news conference and got sprayed with skunk stink. She won’t want to get sprayed again.”
“‘Sprayed with skunk stink’?”
“A Fazism.”
Nolasco gave a small growl, clearing his throat. He didn’t like it, but he also realized Tracy was right, which he might have liked even less.
Tracy and Nolasco once again waited outside Chief Weber’s office. Once again, the captain did not sit. He’d tried for a moment, but his leg jackhammered like his foot was trying to bust through the floor. He paced. The fingers of his right hand, the one that now held the seemingly always-present cigarette, quivered for a nicotine fix.
The receptionist hung up the phone and told Tracy and Nolasco to go in. When they stepped through the door, Weber’s stare looked sharp enough to cut diamonds. She spoke in a clipped tone, as if measuring her words and struggling to hold back a flurry of expletives that wouldn’t do anyone any good.
“I just hung up the phone with the mayor,” she said, letting Tracy and Nolasco know the shit was already tumbling downhill. “Do you want to tell me what the hell is going on? The phone is ringing off the hook, and I’m being told Dwight McDonnel might not be the Route 99 Killer.”
“I’m not certain what’s going on,” Nolasco said, sticking to the script.
“You’re not certain? What about you?” Weber shifted her diamond-cutting gaze to Tracy. “Do you know what’s going on?”
“Not with certainty,” Tracy said, trying not to sound insolent, which only got Weber’s goat all the more.
“Well, somebody in this room better get some certainty, because I just stood in front of the families of those victims last Friday and told them the killer of their loved ones had been identified. Were you wrong?”
The shit pail tumbled farther down the hill.
“McDonnel’s DNA was a positive match with DNA left at one of the Route 99 serial killer crime scenes. No doubt about it. No mistake,” Nolasco said. “We reconfirmed with Mike Melton this morning.”
“Then why am I hearing about a murder on Queen Anne that may be related to the Route 99 killings?”
“The woman murdered this morning was strangled, like the others,” Nolasco said. “About the same age as the four prior victims would have been, had they lived. She also had angel’s wings carved in her left shoulder, just below the shoulder blade. The ME is going to look microscopically and confirm whether it matches the others.”
Weber swore, turned, and paced the carpeted room, shaking her head. “Copycat?”
“Not sure how they would have known about the markings,” Nolasco said.
“You said there was a leak,” Weber said to Tracy.
“I said someone had told Lisa Childress, the reporter. I have no information that fact was disseminated to anyone else, or to the general public.”
“We stood at a press conference and told the world we had our guy,” Weber said.
“The killer might be playing games with us,” Tracy said.
Weber grabbed hold of the lifeline. “What kind of games?”
“The killer, if this most recent killing is legit, might have been upset we held the press conference and told everyone we’d caught him. This most recent killing could be intended as a message that we haven’t.”
Weber pointed to Nolasco. “He just told me the DNA was solid.”
“It is solid. But he also told you the DNA was fragmented. That there existed two different DNA profiles.”
“What are you saying? That the killer killed a prostitute McDonnel had sex with? How the hell could he do that? What are the odds?”
“Too high to have been coincidence.”
Weber gave Tracy a wide-eyed stare. “You’re saying he did it on purpose?”
“That would be the logical conclusion,” she said. “The killer knew McDonnel was a suspect, and this was an opportunity to deflect any potential attention in McDonnel’s direction.”
“How could he have known McDonnel was a suspect?” When neither Nolasco nor Tracy immediately answered, Weber deduced the ramifications herself. “Are you intimating the killer might have been someone within the police department?”
“Anything is possible,” Tracy said. “The Golden State Killer was a former police officer. Lisa Childress’s notes identified five suspects, including McDonnel, so someone leaked McDonnel’s name,” Tracy said.
“It was your task force,” Weber said to Nolasco. “Do you have any idea who might have been the leak?”
“I warned every team member that nothing was to leave the task force room,” Nolasco said.
Weber said, “What do you suggest I do about all the phone calls I’m receiving asking me to confirm or deny this latest killing relates to the Route 99 killings?”
“Ignore them,” Tracy said.
“I can’t very well ignore the mayor.”
“If you can’t ignore them, tell them your detectives are taking all steps to properly investigate the most recent murder, and a statement will be made at a later date, after we have more information. So far, the press hasn’t mentioned the angel’s wings. Let’s assume they don’t know about them,” Tracy said.
“Until when?”
“Until we have more information?” Tracy said.
“And how are you going to get more information?”
Tracy looked to Nolasco. “We’ll start with the fragmented DNA sample.”
Tracy and Nolasco returned to the Park 90/5 complex. This time, they called on the drive over, so Melton expected them and was prepared for their questions.
“What happened, Mike?” Tracy slumped into one of the two chairs across from Melton’s desk and felt for the first time that morning that she could relax and speak plainly. “Did we make a mistake?”
“No mistake,” Melton said matter-of-factly. “I’ve gone over the findings. We determined the allele profile of the thirteen core STRs for both the sample retrieved at the crime scene and the suspect’s sample. They matched with Dwight McDonnel. No ambiguity.”
When it came to DNA evidence, Tracy was like a person who relied on Google for information. She knew just enough to be dangerous. Her time working CSI had included working in the Latent Print Unit and the DNA Unit. She knew a DNA sequence was like a fingerprint, and for two fingerprints to match, there needed to be a certain number of matching “points” between the fingerprint collected at the crime scene and the print obtained from a suspect, or a fingerprint already in the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. Criminal courts generally accepted eight to twelve points of similarity as a match. She knew DNA profile matching, on its most basic level, involved attempting to match the DNA markers obtained at a crime scene with markers for DNA samples previously entered into the combined DNA Index, or CODIS, system.
“We just came from a crime scene that makes it highly unlikely Dwight McDonnel is the Route 99 Killer,” Nolasco said.
“I’ve heard. Bad news travels fast.”
“Any thoughts?” Nolasco asked.
“Likely the same ones you’re having and the reason you are here,” Melton said. “The killer had to be the second DNA sample in the fragmented sample we obtained from the victim.”
“Which you’ve run for me before and did not find a match in the CODIS software,” Nolasco said.
“No direct match,” Melton said.
“What do you mean, ‘no direct match’?” Tracy asked.
“I mean, the last DNA analysis run was for a direct match, not a partial match.”
“Educate me, Mike. What would a partial match show? A maybe?” Tracy asked.
“Not a maybe. A relation.”
“A family member?” Tracy said. She’d read about the rapid advances in DNA technology and how they’d been used to build family trees that eventually led to relations of the killer.
“The CODIS software we now have can be set to search at different stringency levels: high, medium, and low. High-stringency searches require the two DNA samples to match exactly. Moderate- and low-stringency levels allow for the identification of partial matches—meaning we can identify familial relationships due to the inherited nature of DNA and the fact that family members have more genetic similarities than nonrelated individuals.”
At times, Melton could not help but sound like a scientist. “But I understood CODIS was not designed for familial matches,” Tracy said.
“It isn’t, but jurisdictions, including this one, have obtained separate software and genetic algorithms to specifically identify family relationships. It’s a technique called FDS, and it greatly reduces false positives.”
“I thought there was a move to ban the use of familial DNA by law enforcement, arguments that it was racist profiling,” Nolasco said.
“The use of CODIS set at high stringency levels does not code for any known genetic traits or observable characteristics such as race, gender, or health,” Melton said. “Medium- and low-level searches do. The controversy you’re referring to is Washington House Bill 2485, which sought to ban medium- and low-level searches, but which has not passed.”
“Because of the controversy?” Tracy said.
“There will always be controversy,” Melton said. “But the controversy to which you’re referring relates to law enforcement’s use of biological data held by a genealogy website like GEDmatch. Law enforcement creates a fake profile, uploads the unknown DNA gathered at a crime scene, and an expert in genetic genealogy takes months to build a family tree of distant ancestors and, from the genetic data, a profile of the suspect—hair and eye coloring, for instance. You, meaning you detectives, then spend months tracking down relatives to narrow the list of suspects. Probably the most infamous case was the 2018 arrest of Joseph DeAngelo, aka the Golden State Killer, who was subsequently convicted of more than a dozen murders, rapes, and a hundred robberies across California. Here in Washington, investigators have used it to make breakthroughs in several unsolved murder cases, including the Tacoma Police Department’s arrest and conviction of the person responsible for the 1986 rape and murder of a twelve-year-old girl outside her home.”
“You sound like you know a lot about it,” Tracy said.
“Yours truly testified before the Washington State Legislature. I argued we, meaning law enforcement, can use the DNA to make society a safer place and possibly deter people from committing crimes. We can also use it to resolve cold cases and exonerate the wrongfully convicted.”
“And the opposition?”
“Argued it’s a violation of the Fourth and/or Fourteenth Amendments. A ‘genetic stop and frisk,’ if you will.”
Melton explained that opponents argued police, in their search for an unknown criminal, could gather information on hundreds of innocent family members who did not provide their DNA to a genealogical site, and thus the search violated their right against unreasonable searches and seizures. “As for the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law, opponents argue the DNA search targets people of color because a high percentage of the samples in the CODIS system are from people of color. They also argue it subjects those relatives to being investigated and harassed by the police.”
“So are we SOL?” Tracy asked.
“No. You asked for an explanation, and I gave it, but nothing prevents us from running the fragmented sample in the Combined DNA Index System at a low stringency level to look for a close relative like a parent, child, or sibling. Maybe we get lucky.”
Tracy looked to Nolasco. “Seems unlikely but more hopeful than anything we currently have.”
“Pessimism, my dear lady, never won any battle,” Melton said. “Dwight Eisenhower. The police used a low-level search in Arizona after they lost all hope of ever solving the murder of a thirty-one-year-old woman in her home. The unknown DNA was entered on low stringency and partially matched to a fifty-four-year-old man convicted of child molestation and serving forty years in prison. Police learned the convicted man’s brother had been living in the same area as the murder and, years earlier, had a DUI arrest and had given a blood sample. A high-stringency DNA analysis matched him as the murderer.”
“How long will it take to run a medium- or low-stringency search?” Nolasco asked.
“I know the brass is breathing down your necks. But we already have the DNA. We just need to run it. You could have an answer by the end of the day.”
“Thanks, Mike,” Nolasco said. “We both appreciate it.”
Tracy did a double take. Had Nolasco just made a statement for both of them? Unity?
“And just so we’re clear,” Melton said, looking and sounding serious. “This has nothing to do with you bringing me, or in this instance, not bringing me, a Salumi sandwich, though I will say such gestures certainly don’t hurt.”
Tracy and Nolasco left the Park 90/5 complex and drove to the Seattle Times building in an area undergoing rapid redevelopment. Tracy wanted to speak to Anita Childress about her mother’s investigative files. She called from the car and told the reporter they needed a moment of her time.
They met Childress in the third-floor conference room where a few months earlier Tracy had met Anita to discuss her mother Lisa’s missing person case. Childress’s editor, Bill Jorgensen, approached like a magnet pulled to metal. Reporters had a sixth sense for news, and Jorgensen smelled a story.
“Getting word you guys made a mistake, that McDonnel is not the Route 99 Killer,” Jorgensen said. “How does something like that happen in today’s day and age with the advances made in forensic sciences?”
“Sorry, Bill,” Tracy said, deflecting the question. “But we won’t confirm or deny McDonnel is or is not the Route 99 Killer.”
Jorgensen had enough experience to know he wasn’t going to get an answer to his questions, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try. “Friday, the mayor and the chief of police said McDonnel was the killer. If you’re telling me you won’t confirm or deny it, it’s a denial, isn’t it?”
Tracy was giving Jorgensen something because she couldn’t give him the story he wanted. Not yet.
“The fact that you’re here is also indicative a mistake was made,” Jorgensen said.
“Or we’re just tying up some loose ends,” Tracy said. “If you want to run that story, without any evidence or quotes to substantiate it, that’s your prerogative. If you want to wait . . .”
Jorgensen knew they’d reached a stalemate. “Do me a favor?” he said, because he had to, not because Tracy would. “When you obtain more definitive information and conclude your investigation, let Anita know? Because I have a series of articles waiting to be run about the failed investigation, and a story about the present investigation also failing would fit nicely. If you have something to tell me I’m wrong, I’ll listen. Otherwise . . .”
Jorgensen was issuing a tit for tat. Tracy respected him for it, but she could sense Nolasco tensing and quickly said, “Anita will be the first to know, Bill.”
Jorgensen left the conference room.
Tracy turned to Childress. “We need to know if anyone other than you and I has seen your mother’s investigative files.”
“Jorgensen,” Childress said. “When I first went to him and told him I wanted to find my mother, we pulled the files and found her spiral notebooks. And, I guess my father, back when my mother disappeared.”
“Do you know for certain your father saw those files?”
“No. Not really. Not unless he saw the file at home.”
“Anyone other than you and Bill who had access to your mother’s files?”
“I’m not aware of anyone else, Tracy, but I also don’t know who he would have told or why.”
“You ever get a sense, Anita, that your mother’s files weren’t four separate files but were all related?” Tracy was testing the waters, wondering if Anita had determined the link between what was now five victims who had worked on Edwards’s staff.
Childress shifted her attention between Tracy and Nolasco. “Not all of them, but I did wonder about the Last Line and Peter Rivers’s investigation. Do you think there’s some relationship between Edwards and the serial killer?”
“I’m just trying to fit together a lot of pieces from a long time ago,” Tracy said. “Your mother never mentioned anything to you, a memory that came back to her?”
“No, nothing.”
Tracy and Nolasco returned to Police Headquarters, but not to the seventh floor. They stepped off the elevator on the fourth floor and went immediately to the HR Department, finding Cesare.
“I expected I’d hear from you. Word’s going around that a murder on Queen Anne was the work of the Route 99 Killer.”
“Who did you hear that from?” Nolasco asked.
“It’s all over headquarters, Captain. People are saying McDonnel isn’t the guy. That the press conference on Friday jumped the gun.”
Tracy wanted to get down to the reason they’d come back to Cesare. “Who did you share the information on the tip sheet with, other than Moss?”
Cesare looked to Nolasco. “Every member of the task force got a copy of the tip sheet. We divided the responsibility of follow-through among the team, after the calls were initially culled and color coded.”
“What do you mean ‘initially culled’?” Tracy said. “I thought you told me you culled the calls?”
“I didn’t man the tip line. That was done by a patrol officer. He weeded out the crazies and forwarded me the ones he deemed most viable, and I made calls to determine if the tip was worthy of follow-up by a task force member.”
