In the Clearing (2 page)

“Élan didn’t graduate,” Nettie said.

Buzz got a strong sense that Earl and Nettie had not approved of their daughter’s relationship. “How long did Kimi and Tommy Moore date?” Buzz asked.

Nettie gave a dismissive wave. “It wasn’t serious. I told you, Kimi is going to college.”

Buzz looked to Élan. “Six months,” he said. “They started dating end of last year.”

Buzz put a star next to the name “Tommy Moore” in his notepad. “Do you know where he lives?”

Élan gestured toward the trees. “Husum.”

Buzz would call it in and get an address. “What does he do?”

“He’s a mechanic. And he boxes. He’s a Golden Gloves champ.”

“Why’d they break up?”

Élan shook his head and hunched his shoulders against the cold. “Don’t know.”

“Did your sister ever tell you they were having problems?”

“We don’t talk.”

That caused Buzz to make another mental note. “You and your sister don’t talk?”

“No. Tommy said things weren’t all that great. Kimi can be a bitch.”

“Élan,” Earl said, clearly upset.

“Hang on,” Buzz said. “Did Tommy say why things weren’t great?”

“Just that Kimi got kind of full of herself.”

Earl intervened. “It wasn’t serious.”

Élan rolled his eyes and turned away.

Before Buzz could ask another question, Earl and Nettie looked past him, and he turned and saw a procession of headlights through the trees.

“Could this be her?” he asked.

“No. These are people I called to come and help.”

Three vehicles came around the bend into the dirt yard. They parked beside Buzz’s patrol car. Men and women emerged, doors slamming shut. The women went to Nettie, consoling her. The men looked to Earl, who turned to his son. “Go with them.”

Buzz raised a hand. “Hang on, Earl. Who are all these people?”

“Friends,” Earl said. “They’re going to look for Kimi.”

“Okay,” Buzz said, “but I want everyone to just hold on a second.”

“Something has happened to her,” Earl said. “Go,” he said to Élan.

Élan grabbed a pair of boots from the steps and followed the men to their cars, which quickly departed.

“Why do you think something could have happened to her?” Buzz asked.

“Because of the protests.”

“The protests at the football games?”

The
Stoneridge Sentinel
and the more widely circulated
Oregonian
had covered the Yakama tribes’ protests against Stoneridge High School’s use of the name “Red Raiders” and its mascot—a white student wearing war paint and a feathered headdress, riding onto the field on a painted horse and burying a spear in the turf.

“Has somebody threatened you?” Buzz asked. “Or her?”

“It has been a source of unrest in the community. Kimi is my daughter. As an elder, I am a symbol of the protest.”

Buzz rubbed at the stubble of his chin. “I’m going to need a recent photograph and a physical description of Kimi, as well as a list of her closest friends.”

Earl nodded to the women, who went quickly into the double-wide. “My wife will provide you names and start calling Kimi’s friends.”

“You know the path your daughter walks home?” Buzz asked.

“Yes.”

“Let’s go back over it before the snow starts falling.”

They hurried to his patrol car and slid inside. Sensing Earl’s unease and thinking of his own children, Buzz said, “We’re going to find your daughter, Mr. Kanasket.”

Earl didn’t respond; he just stared out the windshield, into the darkness.

CHAPTER 1

Thursday, October 27, 2016

Seattle, Washington

T
racy Crosswhite had just emptied the bullets that remained in her Glock .40’s magazine, six shots at fifteen yards in less than ten seconds, when her cell phone buzzed. She holstered her weapon, slid off her ear protection, and checked caller ID. Her three students stared slack-jawed at the target. Each shot had been a center-mass hit within the target’s smallest-diameter circle.

“I have to take this,” she said, stepping away and speaking into the phone. “Tell me you’re calling because you miss me.”

“You must be a magnet for murders,” her sergeant, Billy Williams, said.

Lately it’d felt that way. Seemed every time Tracy and her partner, Kinsington Rowe, were the homicide team on call, someone got killed.

Billy explained that dispatch had received a 911 call about a shooting at a home in Greenwood at 5:39 that evening. Tracy checked her watch. Twenty-one minutes earlier. She’d house hunted in Greenwood, a middle-class neighborhood in north-central Seattle with a decidedly suburban feel.

“Single-family residence. One fatality,” Billy said.

“Domestic dispute?”

“Looks that way. The medical examiner and CSI are en route.”

“You reach Kins?”

“Not yet. But Faz and Del are both on their way.”

Vic Fazzio and Delmo Castigliano were the other two members of the Violent Crimes Section’s “A Team.” In this instance, they were also the next-up team for a homicide, which meant they’d be assisting with the legwork, if there was any. Most domestic disputes were grounders—easy plays. The wife killed the husband, or the husband killed the wife.

Tracy cut short the shooting lesson and jumped in the cab of her 1973 Ford F-150. The commute north on I-5 was even heavier than usual for a Thursday evening. It took her almost forty-five minutes to travel the roughly fifteen miles from the combat range.

When she approached the address, the emergency lights of multiple patrol units from the North Precinct lit up a single-story clapboard house. Two vans were parked at the curb—the medical examiner’s and the CSI’s—along with an ambulance. A large press contingent with their own trucks and vans had also descended; shootings in predominantly white middle-class neighborhoods always made the news. Thankfully, no helicopter hovered overhead, likely because a heavy cloud layer hinting at snow would have prevented much in the way of aerial footage. The cold temperatures hadn’t deterred the neighbors, however. They’d waded onto the sidewalk and into the street, mingling with the press behind black-and-yellow crime scene tape.

Tracy didn’t see Kins’s BMW yet, though he lived in Seattle, several miles closer to Greenwood than the combat range.

“Hail, hail, the gang’s all here,” Tracy said as she lowered her window and showed her badge to an officer on traffic control.

“Welcome to the party,” he said, letting her through.

She parked beside the CSI van. Chatter spilled from the police radios. She couldn’t count the number of uniformed and plainclothes officers on the lawn, mingling with investigators in black cargo pants and shirts with “CSI” across the back. The medical examiner was still inside with the body. Nobody could do anything until the ME finished.

Tracy greeted a female uniformed officer holding a clipboard with a scene log.

“This zoo belong to you, Tracy?” the officer asked.

Tracy had trained many of the female officers to shoot, but she didn’t recognize this one. Then again, she’d recently captured a serial killer known as “the Cowboy,” receiving the Seattle Police Department’s Medal of Valor for the second time in her career and making her a bit of a celebrity, especially to the younger officers.

“That’s what they’re telling me.” She scribbled her name and time of arrival on the log. “Are you the responding officer?”

The officer looked to a fire-engine-red front door. “No. He’s inside with your sergeant.”

Tracy considered the house. It appeared well kept, recently painted, and likely north of $350,000 in a seller’s market. The lawn smelled like newly laid sod, and the glow from landscape and porch lights revealed recently spread beauty bark in flower beds with hearty rosebushes and well-established rhododendrons.
Divorce,
Tracy thought.
They were fixing up the property to sell. The dead body inside won’t help the asking price
.

She ascended three steps and ducked under red crime scene tape stretched taut across the entry. Inside, Billy Williams talked with a uniformed officer in a simple but well-maintained front room. A conical crystal sculpture lay on the dark bamboo flooring that flowed between two square pillars meant to differentiate the living room from the dining area and open kitchen. The walls looked freshly painted, the color choices—soft blues and hunter greens—something out of a home-improvement magazine.

Paramedics were attending to a brunette woman seated on a dark-blue leather couch. She was grimacing and pointing to her ribs. She also had a bandage wrapped around her head, and the left side of her face appeared swollen, with a small cut near the corner of her mouth. Tracy estimated her to be midforties to early fifties. Beside her sat a young man in the awkward throes of puberty—hair unkempt, lanky arms protruding from a size-too-small T-shirt, and pipe-cleaner-thin legs poking out from baggy cargo shorts. He had his head down, staring at the floor, but Tracy could see the left side of his face was a splotchy red. Both the woman and the young man were barefoot.

“That’s Angela Collins and her son, Connor,” Billy said, keeping his voice low. Billy resembled the actor Samuel L. Jackson, right down to the soul patch just beneath his lower lip and the knit driving caps he favored, this one plaid. “Her estranged husband is in a bedroom down the hall with a bullet in his back.”

Tracy looked down a narrow hall to a room at the end where several members of the medical examiner’s office milled about. A pair of black dress shoes and suit pants were visible to midthigh. The rest of the body was hidden behind the door fame and wall.

Tracy tilted her head toward Angela Collins. “What’s she saying?”

“She said she shot him,” Billy said, giving a nod to the officer.

Tracy turned to the officer. “She confessed?”

“To me and my partner,” the officer said. “Then she asked for the words and sat down. Her lawyer is apparently on the way.”

“She called her lawyer?” Tracy asked.

“Apparently,” the officer said. “I heard her talking to the paramedics. She said her husband hit her with that thing.” He pointed to the sculpture on the floor.

“But did she specifically say she shot him?”

“Absolutely. To me and my partner.”

“And you read her Miranda rights to her?”

“She signed the card.”

“Where’s the gun?” Tracy asked.

The officer pointed down the hall. “On the bed. A .38 Colt Defender.”

“You didn’t secure it?”

“No need. She was just sitting right there, waiting for us with the door open.”

“What’s the kid saying?” Tracy asked.

“Not a word.”

Kins ducked under the tape, slightly out of breath. “Hey.”

“Where were you?” Billy asked, eyeing Kins’s suit and dress shirt, absent a tie.

“Sorry. Didn’t hear my phone. What do we got?”

“Looks like a grounder,” Tracy said.

“That’d be nice,” Kins said.

Billy explained the situation to Kins. Then he said, “I’ll have Faz and Del start with the neighbors, find out if anyone saw or heard anything tonight or in the past. And let’s make sure we fingerprint that thing.” He pointed to the sculpture.

“Detectives?” The female police officer who’d greeted Tracy on the sidewalk spoke from behind the red tape. “There’s a man at the curb, says he’s the woman’s lawyer. He’s asking to speak to her.”

“I’ll handle it,” Tracy said. She ducked under the tape and stepped back onto the porch but stopped when she saw Atticus Berkshire, counselor at law, standing at the curb. “Damn.”

Many of the cops and prosecutors in King County had had the unpleasant experience of encountering Atticus Berkshire. Those who hadn’t certainly knew of him. A notorious defense attorney, when Berkshire wasn’t fighting to get his clients off criminal charges, he was suing the police department for violations of those clients’ civil rights, or for police brutality. He’d hit the city for several large and well-publicized verdicts. Urban myth among SPD was that Berkshire’s mother had named him after the lawyer in
To Kill a Mockingbird
, thereby condemning him to become a criminal defense lawyer the same way parents condemned their sons named Storm to become weathermen.

“Detective Crosswhite,” Berkshire said before Tracy had made it halfway down the sidewalk. “I want to speak to my daughter.”

That bit of information gave Tracy pause. Recovering, she said, “That’s not going to happen for a while, Counselor. You know that.”

“I’ve instructed her not to say a word.”

Tracy raised her hands, palms up. “For the most part, she’s listening.”

“What do you mean, ‘for the most part’?”

“She said she shot him. Then she asked for her Miranda rights.”

“That’s not admissible.”

“We’ll let the judge decide that.” Tracy couldn’t see how a judge would exclude the statement, since Angela Collins had said it while still under stress from a startling event, making it an “excited utterance,” but she’d let the lawyers fight that battle.

“What about Connor?” Berkshire said.

“The boy? He’s not saying anything either.”

“I meant, may I see him?”

“Not until after we speak to him,” Tracy said.

In court, Berkshire was easy to dislike, with his expensive Italian suits, tasseled loafers, and obnoxious demeanor. He wore down prosecutors and judges with tactics that straddled the line between unethical and dirtbag, but he was even more infamous for his bombastic rants against injustice and prejudice. They worked more often than they should have, but Berkshire had the benefit of preaching his nonsense to liberal Seattleites. Tonight, however, there was a thin glimmer of vulnerability to him—dressed in jeans, his hair not perfectly coiffed, his daughter and grandson part of a crime scene. Tracy almost felt sympathy for him.

“I’ve instructed him not to speak with you either,” he said.

And then it was gone. “Then it will be a short conversation.”

Berkshire grimaced, a facial expression not ordinarily in his trial lawyer’s repertoire. “What would you do if it was your daughter and grandson?”

“What would you do if it was your investigation, and you were a homicide detective?”