In the Clearing (12 page)

“What is it?” Nolasco asked.

“Wanted to run a case by you.”

“Angela Collins?”

“No. A cold case down in Klickitat County.”

His eyebrows knitted together. “What’s that got to do with us?”

She explained the circumstances, leaving out Jenny Almond’s name, with whom Nolasco also had a history from their days at the police academy.

“We got somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred fifty open and unsolved cases in the cold unit,” he said. “You couldn’t pick one of those?”

“The sheriff wants an outside inquiry to avoid any appearance of impropriety, and because there’s some indication that if things aren’t as they seem, it could implicate members of the community, including law enforcement.”

“Any potential DNA for analysis?” Nolasco asked, focusing on the single most important factor in deciding whether to reopen an old case. Advances in DNA analysis and other technology made it now possible to solve cold cases detectives never could have solved with technology available at the time of the crime. But in the case of Kimi Kanasket, there was no DNA.

Tracy didn’t lie. “No.”

“And your witness pool has aged forty years. How many are even still alive?”

“I’m working on that.”

“What about Angela Collins?”

“Faz and Del are looking for something to do,” she said. “That kid pled in the drive-by they were working. Faz testified at the sentencing today.”

“Faz and Del have their own files.”

“Faz is looking to work a homicide.”

Nolasco sat back. “What about Kins?”

“I’d work this one alone. Kins is taking the lead on Collins.”

Nolasco rocked backward in his chair. “If I say no, then what? You going to take it to Clarridge?”

Sandy Clarridge had been police chief both times that Tracy received the department’s Medal of Valor. In both instances she’d made Clarridge look good at a time when he and the department had been under scrutiny. She didn’t want to play that card. It would only make her life with Nolasco more miserable.

“I think the upside could look good for the department,” she said, subtly answering Nolasco’s question without directly challenging his authority or bruising his already fragile ego.

“Sounds like a hobby to me,” he said. “You want to use some of your personal days, go ahead. Otherwise, we got enough here to keep us all busy.”

What Nolasco failed to consider was all the overtime Tracy had accumulated working the Cowboy investigation. She’d built up a boatload of personal days that she’d lose if she didn’t use them by the end of the year. With Dan in Los Angeles and Kins on a path to becoming a full-blown member of the idiot club, Tracy was happy to use those personal days to get out of the office.

She grabbed her coat and purse and started from her cubicle, intending to call Jenny on the drive home, but stopped when her desk phone rang. The small window on the console indicated an inside line. She hoped it wasn’t Nolasco calling to rescind his backhanded consent, just screwing with her, which used to be his full-time hobby.

“Detective Crosswhite,” the duty officer at the desk in the building lobby said. “I got somebody here says he needs to speak to you or Detective Rowe.”

“I don’t have anybody scheduled to meet with me. I’m not sure about Kins. He’s gone for the day.”

“He doesn’t have an appointment, but he says it’s urgent.”

“Who is it? What’s his name?”

“Connor Collins.”

CHAPTER 10

T
he officer behind the bulletproof partition nodded in the direction of Connor Collins. The young man stood in the lobby looking very much like a high school kid on his way home from school, a ball cap propped backward on his head, backpack dangling from his shoulder, skateboard tucked under his arm.

“I have something to tell you,” he said as Tracy approached.

Tracy raised a hand, stopping him. “I can’t speak to you. You’re represented by an attorney.”

She’d contemplated not even coming down the elevator, telling the officer to send Connor away. She’d tried calling Cerrabone, but he wasn’t picking up his office phone, and his cell phone went straight to voice mail. The receptionist said he’d left for the day. She’d also tried Kins, but he also didn’t answer. She immediately wondered if he was with Santos.

Connor shifted on the balls of his feet. “I don’t have an attorney. I never did. My grandfather just said that.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “You’re seventeen.”

“I turned eighteen yesterday.” He reached for his back pocket. “You can check my driver’s license. So I’m an adult, right? I can decide for myself. I wanted to talk to you about what happened that night, when my dad came to the house.”

Connor was holding out his license like an underage kid with a fake ID hoping to buy beer. He wore blue jeans and a black hooded sweatshirt with a gothic design—wings of some sort. Tracy studied his pupils and the whites of his eyes. He didn’t appear to be under the influence of any drug. She didn’t smell pot, just the faint scent of teenage body odor.

“Let’s go upstairs. I don’t want you to say anything to me until I say you can speak. Understood?”

Connor nodded.

They rode the elevator in silence to the seventh floor. Tracy deposited Connor in one of the hard interrogation rooms, then went into the adjacent room and turned on the video recorder. She returned to her cubicle and tried Cerrabone and Kins again, without success. She walked to the back of the floor, where the administrative staff sat, and found Ron Mayweather, the A Team’s “fifth wheel,” still at his desk. The fifth wheel was a detective assigned to assist one of the Violent Crimes Section’s four units.

“You have time to sit in on an interview with me?” she asked. “Something unexpected in the Collins case.”

“Yeah, no problem,” Mayweather said, rising from his chair.

When they entered the interrogation room, Connor sat up straight. He’d propped his skateboard against the wall and put his backpack on the floor beside it. He didn’t stand when Tracy introduced Mayweather, nor did he offer his hand. He just gave a nearly imperceptible nod and a soft “Hey.”

Tracy and Mayweather took the two seats across the small metal table. “I’m videotaping and recording everything being said,” Tracy said. “You understand that?”

Connor nodded.

“You have to answer out loud,” Tracy said.

“Oh. Yes,” he said.

“You can sit back. Relax.”

Connor sat back. After getting him to state his name, address, and date of birth, Tracy introduced herself and Ron Mayweather, gave the date and time, and briefly summarized the situation. Then she said, “Let’s back up and start over, Connor. You came to the police department this afternoon, correct?”

“Yes.”

“How did you get here?”

“I took the bus and rode my skateboard.”

“No one came with you?”

“No.”

“You said you do not have an attorney representing you?”

“No. I mean, right. I said that. I don’t.”

“Your grandfather, Atticus Berkshire, is not your attorney?”

“No. He’s not my attorney. He’s my mom’s attorney.”

“Does he know you’re here?”

“No.”

“Does your mom know you’re here?”

“No.”

“Why didn’t you tell them you were coming here?”

“They would have tried to stop me. But I’m eighteen. I’m an adult. So I can do this.”

He dug a hand into the front pocket of his jeans. “Here’s my license again. In case you don’t believe me. My birthday was yesterday.”

“Happy birthday,” Mayweather said.

Connor glanced at Mayweather, looking uncertain.

“You’ve handed me your driver’s license.” Tracy took a moment to consider it before handing it to Mayweather. “It confirms that you turned eighteen yesterday. And you’re here of your own volition? No one forced you or coerced you to come here?”

“I came because I wanted to.”

“Okay. When we met in the lobby, you said you had something you wanted to tell me. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

Tracy looked to Mayweather, who nodded his consent. “Okay, Connor. What do you want to tell me?”

Connor sat up and glanced at the camera again. “Okay. Well, what I wanted to tell you was that my mother . . . she didn’t shoot my father.”

“She didn’t?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I did.”

“Stop talking.”

Tracy played the video. Rick Cerrabone stood with one hand covering his mouth. Kins sat near the one-way glass, largely ignoring the video and watching Connor Collins, who remained in the hard interrogation room.

After Connor’s confession, Tracy and Mayweather had stepped out of the room to discuss the situation. Both agreed that Tracy had followed established protocol but that Connor’s confession now mandated that he be read his Miranda rights. After Tracy did so, Connor described again how his father had come to pick him up and forced his way into the house. He confirmed that his father and mother had quarreled, and further confirmed Angela Collins’s statement that his father had picked up the sculpture and used it to hit his mother, knocking her to the ground. He said his father then kicked her in the stomach.

From that point, however, his and his mother’s stories diverged. Whereas Angela Collins said she sent her son out of the room, Connor said he intervened and his father slapped him hard across the face. Connor said the distraction, however, had allowed his mother enough time to get to her feet and run down the hall, locking herself in the bedroom. His father followed her and was threatening to kick in the door, and that’s when Connor remembered the gun in the closet. He said he got the gun and went down the hall, but by then his father was in the room with his mother, threatening to hit her. Connor pulled the trigger, shooting his father in the back.

“What did you do with the gun after you shot your father?” Tracy asked.

“I put it on the bed,” Connor replied.

“Then what did you do?”

“Nothing. My mother was pretty hysterical. She said we needed to call my grandfather. She told me to go into the living room and sit on the couch.”

“Did you do that?”

“Yes.”

“Did you touch your father?”

“Touch him? No.”

“Did you touch the sculpture?”

“No.”

“How long was it from the time you shot your father until the time your mother called your grandfather?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who called 911?”

“She did.”

Tracy shut off the video, and the room was silent for several moments.

“I thought he was going to tell me what Angela told you and Faz,” she said to Kins. “I figured he’d back up her story and say it was self-defense.”

Cerrabone lowered his hand. “Where’s Mayweather now?”

“Typing out a statement for Connor to sign,” Tracy said. She turned to Kins. “This could explain the twenty-one-minute gap between when the neighbor heard the shots and when Angela Collins called 911. She was cleaning up after the kid’s mess.”

“Or the kid’s lying, and they were covering up her mess,” Kins said, standing from his chair and turning away from the window. “The brother said Angela’s a master manipulator and that she’s been working the kid for years. She could have put him up to it.”

“Up to what?” Tracy said.

“Taking the blame.”

“For murdering his own father?” Tracy shook her head, not buying it. “What kind of person would do that? What kind of mother would do that?”

“A very, very sick one,” Kins said.

“They each have a motive to lie,” Cerrabone said. “That’s the problem. Both their fingerprints are on the gun. They’re also the same height, so the trajectory of the bullet won’t tell us anything. They each have a story that fits with the evidence.”

“Not all the evidence,” Kins said. “There’s still the problem of the lack of fingerprints on the sculpture, and the kid’s prints on his father’s shoe, which doesn’t fit with either story.” He looked to Cerrabone. “Can we charge them both and see if one of them blinks?”

“Not with what we currently have. Not without risking having the charges against both of them dismissed.” Cerrabone massaged the back of his neck, a habit when he got frustrated. “Besides, Berkshire would see through it and use one against the other to raise reasonable doubt as to both. This seems calculated to me.”