In the Clearing (Tracy Crosswhite #3)(27)

The emergency room doctor had also returned Kins’s call, and Kins relayed the substance of their conversation. The doctor didn’t specifically remember Angela Collins, but he’d pulled her chart, which confirmed that Angela had minor bruising along the right side of her torso and near her ribs. Angela had told the doctor that her estranged husband had shoved her into the door frame and she fell over a table, but X-rays didn’t reveal any fractures. He’d sent her home and told her to take an anti-inflammatory for the pain. He said he’d never questioned whether or not Angela was telling the truth about how she’d been injured, or if her injuries were consistent with her explanation.

Early evening, Kins grabbed his suit coat, draping it over his shoulder. “I’m going to hit it. Will has a soccer game.”

“You don’t want to miss that,” Tracy said.

“Shannah will have my head.”

“Before you go, there’s something I need to talk with you about,” Tracy said. “My friend, Jenny Almond—”

“The one who became sheriff?”

“Right. She’s asked me to take a look at a 1976 case her father worked.”

“Cold case?”

“Not exactly. The facts are complicated. I don’t want to keep you from the soccer game. Just wanted you to know I’m going to ask Nolasco to let me work it, and I wanted to make sure you’re all right with it.”

“You want my help?”

She shook her head. “Nolasco would never allow both of us to work it. He may not even allow me to.”

“He’s been pretty quiet around here with OPA on his ass,” Kins said. “You want to do it, go for it. Collins isn’t going anywhere fast, and Faz is itching to stay involved.”

“I just didn’t want you to think I was doing something behind your back.”

“No worries,” Kins said, departing.

“Subtle,” Tracy said to herself. “Real subtle.”

She checked the time on her computer. She’d put off talking to Nolasco about Kimi Kanasket until the end of the shift, because a day not dealing with Nolasco was always better than a day dealing with him. Time, however, had run out. She walked along the outer glass wall to Nolasco’s office, thinking, again, that the man would have a killer view of downtown Seattle and Elliott Bay if he ever opened his blinds. He didn’t.

Nolasco sat at his desk, head down. Tracy knocked on the open door. “Captain?”

Nolasco looked annoyed. He always looked annoyed. “Yeah.”

“Got a minute?”

Nolasco very deliberately set down paperwork on one of many piles on his desk and motioned to one of two empty chairs. Tracy entered and sat. She could see files on the carpet behind Nolasco’s desk and pieced it together. Nolasco had his old case files pulled and was going through them, likely preparing for OPA’s inquiry of possible improprieties in those investigations, an inquiry he no doubt blamed on Tracy. They said timing in life was everything, and Tracy couldn’t have picked a worse time to want something.

“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.