One Last Kill (Tracy Crosswhite), page 8
“You’re both saying I should cut Nolasco some slack.”
“That’s between the two of you. I’m just letting you know what it was like, so you can imagine how he feels to go back again,” Faz said. “Gives me the shivers just thinking about it.”
“How much did you focus on the victims as opposed to suspects?”
Faz dipped his bread in the oil and vinegar and took another bite, then sipped his water. “We ran down the victims and the suspects pretty good, Tracy. Me? I thought it was McDonnel. He liked to pick up the ladies along the strip. We spoke to a couple who knew him. Said he was into rough sex, but he never strangled them. I don’t know.”
“Seemed the closer you got, the farther you got, as I remember you telling me,” Del said.
“We thought we had this guy dialed in on the Aurora strip. Next thing we know he’s killing housewives,” Faz said.
She told him about Amanda Santos’s analysis.
“The first nine were what, then, practice?” Faz asked.
“I don’t buy that,” Del said. “Never have.”
Tracy grabbed a piece of bread and joined Faz in the oil and vinegar. Del refrained, watching his carbs. “Santos thinks his real targets were the final four victims,” she said. “She thinks he was sending a message.”
“What kind of a message?” Faz said.
“She didn’t buy the Angel of Death reference. She believed the wings were intended to be the Angel of Justice.”
“What’s the difference?” Del asked.
“The Angel of Justice’s purpose is to bring justice to the wicked and to the sinners.”
“And these women were sinners?” Faz said.
“She doesn’t know, which is why I asked how much time you spent on the victims.”
“If he was sending a message, why’d he quit killing?” Del asked.
She told them what else Santos had said and also about her own notoriety possibly reawakening the killer.
“It’s a terrible thing, what happened, but I couldn’t help but think the same thing watching the press conference this morning, that some things are better left alone,” Faz said.
“Felt the same way,” Del said.
“Unfortunately we’re beyond that,” Tracy said. “And the families of the victims deserve closure.”
“Hey, I hear you,” Faz said.
“But at what expense?” Del asked.
“Your task force also had a leak. You know anything about that?”
“I remember you saying something like that a few months back; we were having a drink in the Columbia Tower. Never heard anything about it before then. My first guess would be Moss,” Faz said. “He always liked to run his mouth, be a big shot. The center of attention. If I had to choose anyone, I’d pick him.”
“I can’t see what Moss would have got out of it,” Del said. “And Moss didn’t do anything unless he could get something out of it, like Last Line money.”
The waiter appeared and took their orders and their menus. After he’d stepped away, Faz said, “I got to admit, Tracy. I was more than a little surprised to find out you were working with Nolasco.”
“‘Shocked’ would be the word,” Del said.
“He wasn’t my first choice, Faz. You were my first choice. Weber paired me with Nolasco,” Tracy said.
“She knows your history and she’s screwing you because you and Del went public with the task force story.” Faz shook his head like shaking a bad thought. “Sorry to say, but I’m glad Weber didn’t choose me. That’s a time period I’d just as soon forget.”
“I don’t have that luxury. At the moment the past is my present. Where would you go if you were me?”
“Melton,” Del and Faz both said without hesitation.
“If I remember correctly, we had DNA from one of the victims,” Faz said.
“You filled out a HITS sheet on the fourth victim and noted DNA.”
Faz pointed to his temple. “Got a memory like an elephant. With the advances in forensics now, you might get lucky.”
“You have any other advice?”
Faz thought for a moment. “We turned over every stone, seemingly anyway. Maybe we missed something. Or maybe you do something outside the box, something not on the detective checklist.”
“Think like a serial killer,” Del said. “Sick and depraved.”
“Are you calling me sick and depraved, Del?” she asked, smiling.
“Hey, you’re hanging around with me and Faz; so, who knows?”
CHAPTER 10
Friday, July 10, Present Day
Monroe, Washington
Tracy spent the night considering what Faz and Del had said, about thinking outside the box and doing something not on the detective’s traditional checklist. Something to make her think like a serial killer. Sick and depraved.
Her final analysis had come down to one question: What did she have to lose?
The task force had done everything by the book and come up empty. And she didn’t have any other bright ideas, other than creating the social media platform and consulting Santos—a long shot, as Nolasco had so eagerly pointed out.
Maybe.
Finding Lisa Childress had also been a long shot, but that long shot had paid off.
And she had science on her side this time. Tracy would consult Melton and determine whether advances in forensics would allow them to do now what they couldn’t twenty-five years ago, assuming they had DNA to run. If Melton could get a DNA profile of the killer, it could be the break they sought, even if CODIS didn’t spit out a match. They’d have something to compare to known suspects.
Match, track, confirm, confront, arrest.
Besides, what Tracy currently had in mind would keep her out of the office and away from Nolasco for a few hours. That alone was well worth taking this unlikely shot.
She left the house early for the roughly forty-minute drive to the Monroe Correctional Complex. MCC, like all prisons and jails, did not allow visitors to bring in cell phones, keys, pens or pencils, or anything else that could be used as a weapon. Tracy entered the prison and secured her Glock handgun, phone, and other articles in a locker in the lobby. She signed the necessary paperwork and stepped through metal detectors. A Department of Corrections officer took her through a series of gates to the Special Offender, Maximum Security Unit that housed, among others, mentally ill offenders. The level of noise—men shouting incoherently and talking at a high decibel—reverberated as if inside a metal drum. The officer led Tracy into a private room with a table and two chairs bolted to the floor.
“You sure you don’t want me to sit in on this one, Detective?” the DOC officer asked. “This guy is loony tunes.”
Tracy nearly laughed. The officer had no idea how accurate his comment was. “I think he’ll be more inclined to talk if he perceives no one is eavesdropping on our conversation.”
“I’ll be right outside the door.” He took a step, then turned back. “You got him; didn’t you? You talked him out of that motel room and brought him in.”
Tracy nodded.
“That was a nice piece of work. Ballsy. Sorry. Gutsy.”
“Nice of you to remember.”
The officer shook his head. “Wish that were true but . . . actually he still talks about you.”
“He does?” That was unnerving.
“Something about a movie he’s going to make. Said you’ll be a consultant to make sure Hollywood gets all the police work accurate.”
Nabil Kotar’s sordid upbringing had doomed him to mental illness, killing, and a solitary jail cell for the rest of his life. She had no sympathy for a man who’d hog-tied young women and watched them strangle themselves, but others also shared the blame.
“I’ll go get him,” the DOC officer said.
Minutes later, Kotar, aka the Cowboy, shuffled into the room in prison-issued khaki slacks, white socks, and flip-flops. He held a thick stack of documents in his cuffed hands, clutching it against his white T-shirt like a holy relic. In 2015, Kotar had been found mentally competent to stand trial and convicted of the murder of five adult dancers. He had been given the death sentence, commuted to five successive life sentences when the Washington State Supreme Court abolished the death penalty in 2018, ruling it unconstitutional as applied. In prison, psychiatrists had found Kotar to be mentally ill and had him moved to the Special Offender Unit at Monroe.
“Detective,” Kotar said with a radiant smile. “I didn’t expect to ever see you here. Wow. This is a surprise. I wish you had let me know ahead of time. I have a lot to tell you.”
Tracy hadn’t seen Kotar since his conviction and sentencing. He had been an avid weightlifter when he worked as the Pink Palace strip club’s floor manager in Seattle, but he looked to have lost much of his bulk. The serpent tattoo on his right bicep no longer stretched the fabric of his shirtsleeve or looked nearly as menacing as it once had. It looked more like a garden snake with fangs. Tracy had suspected Kotar to be a steroid abuser, drugs not exactly difficult to obtain in prison if you had the proper connections.
“I didn’t know I was coming until the last minute, Nabil. You’ve lost weight and cut your hair.” His hair was now a tight buzz cut along the sides with two inches on top.
“You like it?”
“It looks professional,” she said.
“I’m watching what I eat and I’m not lifting heavy weights anymore. I took to heart what you said to me when we talked.”
Tracy had no idea what Kotar was referring to. “What in particular?”
Kotar sat in a chair across from her and put the documents on the table. He looked up at the DOC officer with distrust.
“Officer, can you give us some privacy?” Tracy said.
“I’ll be right outside.”
Kotar watched until the officer left the room. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “You can’t be too careful. I’ve heard horror stories about people stealing manuscripts and screenplays and pawning them off as their own.”
Tracy motioned to the stack of papers. “Is that what you have there?”
Kotar put his hand atop the pages. “I’ve been working on a book and a screenplay about the two of us . . . The Cop and the Cowboy Killer. That’s just a working title. Hollywood has people to take care of those things. Remember you asked me who I thought would play me in the movie?”
“You said Rami Malek.” Tracy recalled the conversation.
“Right.” He beamed. “But I figure he probably priced himself out of the running after winning the Academy Award as Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody.”
Kotar was an enigma. He could act like an adult when he worked at the Pink Palace, but when Tracy caught up to him in the motel room on Aurora Avenue where he had bound another dancer, Kotar had been watching a Looney Tunes cartoon and become childlike. The psychiatrist who evaluated him to stand trial said Kotar’s mental development had been stunted in his formative years. His mother had been a stripper and a prostitute, and she would sit him in front of the television to watch cartoons while she entertained men. If Kotar didn’t behave, she’d beat him with a cord and tie him to a chair, a pattern that continued until one of her customers hog-tied and strangled her. The man was never found. Kotar now seemed to be stuck in his youth.
“You might be right,” Tracy said, a thought dawning. “You lost weight and cut your hair to look like Rami Malek.”
“Who better to play the role of the Cowboy?” Kotar said. “I look like him, don’t I?” He inched forward, like he was about to climb across the table. “Remember what I told you as we left the motel room that evening?”
“You said you were born to play the role.”
Kotar looked amazed Tracy had remembered. “That’s right. That’s what I said. And I think you should play the detective.”
“I think consultant is a better role for me.”
Kotar stopped, as if remembering something else. “You said you were thinking about quitting being a detective and going back to teach. Chemistry, right?”
“You have a good memory too,” Tracy said.
“I said, ‘You quit and the assholes win.’” He tapped the top page. “It’s all here in the manuscript. I wrote it all down. I’m so glad you convinced me to walk out of that motel room so I could tell my story. I put in the first line we talked about. You remember?”
“I don’t.”
“‘The Cowboy had time to kill,’” Kotar said. “It’s a double entendre.”
Tracy let him savor that thought. After a moment she said, “I actually came out here on business, Nabil.”
“Business?”
“That’s right. I’m looking for some help.”
“Okay,” he said, his tone and his body posture becoming tentative.
“Back in the midnineties, Seattle had a serial killer called the Route 99 Killer. He killed nine prostitutes in motel rooms, then killed four other women. Then he stopped.”
“Never been caught?”
“No.”
“When did he stop?”
“Back in 1995.”
“Did they have a task force?”
“They did.”
“You weren’t on it, though.”
“That was before my time. These are cold cases I’m working. I’m trying to catch the guy who did it. Wondering if maybe you had insight into the killer or why he killed those women.”
Kotar’s eyes narrowed. Tracy could see the paranoia set in. “How could I help?”
“You never told me why you killed those women, Nabil.”
Kotar looked wounded. Then he spoke in rushed sentences. “I didn’t kill them. They killed themselves.”
Amanda Santos said Kotar had fashioned the elaborate choking mechanism to absolve himself of any crime. But Tracy had never directly asked Kotar.
“What do you mean, Nabil?”
Kotar gathered his manuscript. “Why are you doing this? This was a good meeting. I wanted to get your approval of my manuscript.”
“I have to do this, Nabil. It’s my job.” Tracy got an idea and hoped it would keep him from leaving. “Think of this as another scene in The Cowboy and the Cop.”
Kotar stopped moving and looked up at her.
“The cop comes to the Cowboy in prison and asks for his help catching an—” Tracy caught herself before she could say another serial killer. “A killer.”
Kotar paused. He looked to be giving her idea some thought. “That could be good,” he said, though he did not sound convinced.
“Absolutely,” she said. “Maybe it’s a whole new movie. A sequel. Redemption. People love stories about redemption, Nabil.”
“‘Redemption’?” Kotar said, as if trying out the word for the first time.
“The Cowboy can’t change what was done, but he can change the future.”
Kotar’s eyes glittered, a hint of a smile forming at the edges of his lips. He said the words slowly, softly. “‘The Cowboy can’t change what was done, but he can change the future.’”
“I can see the cop character consulting with the Cowboy on her other cold cases as well. Maybe this isn’t a movie, Nabil.”
“No?”
“Maybe it’s a series. Series are popular now with all the streaming services out there. People like to watch series in their homes.”
“It could continue for years,” he said, getting excited again. “I could write each episode.”
She waited. Kotar lowered his gaze to the table, chewing on his lower lip. He looked up at Tracy as if expecting a question. She didn’t ask one. “What did you ask me?” he said.
“Why did those women kill themselves?” she asked, careful in her phraseology.
“Because they had to die.”
“Why did they have to die?”
“So the police would find the man who killed my mother.”
“Your mother? So the police would search for the man who killed your mother?”
“He tied her up so if she moved, the cord around her throat would strangle her.”
“You watched him do it?”
Kotar nodded. “I didn’t want to tell you I wasn’t really the Cowboy. He was.”
“It’s just background, Nabil. It’s what makes your character the Cowboy. What do they call that in acting?”
“My motivation.”
“It was part of your motivation.”
“It didn’t work. They never caught the man who killed my mother. They didn’t care because she was a prostitute,” he said, his tone something close to, but not quite, anger. “I wanted people to pay attention to my mother’s murder. I wanted them to find the connection to the others who killed themselves so they would search for the man responsible for killing her.”
So he had re-created the killing mechanism.
The corrections officer in the doorway turned his head and looked at Tracy. She gave him a nod everything was all right.
“You tied them up just like he tied up your mother because you thought the police would figure out that your mother was killed the same way, and they would then search for the man responsible, thinking he killed the other women.”
“Isn’t that what you’re doing? Trying to find the man responsible for killing those women.”
“I’m trying, Nabil.”
Amanda Santos had told Tracy to focus not on the suspects but on the last four victims—the middle-class women. Kotar was saying the same thing—focus on the victims to find the killer.
“Can I ask you a question?” Kotar said. “Were they all killed the same way?”
“They were all strangled.”
Kotar sat back. “He’s angry.”
“At the women?”
“Maybe. Or maybe he’s angry at someone else and killing the women is his way of getting back at that person.”
“Getting back at that person how?”
“I don’t know. Maybe that person killed someone—like the man who killed my mother. And he wants you to find him.”
Tracy gave this some thought, uncertain if there was anything of substance to it or, like the manuscript, it was just the ramblings of a demented mind. “Let me ask you this. Why might the person who killed these women leave a mark in the same place on each of their bodies?”
