My Sister's Grave (Tracy Crosswhite, #1)(13)

Calloway sat at his desk beneath the sign his staff had given him the year he had become Sheriff.

Rule #1: The Chief is always right.

Rule #2: See Rule #1.

He wondered.

Clark’s shadow passed the smoked-glass panes leading to Calloway’s office door. He knocked once and entered with a limp. Years of running had taken their toll on Clark’s knees.

Calloway rocked back in his chair and put his boots up on the corner of his desk. “Knee bothering you?”

“Aches when the weather starts to get cold.” Clark shut the door. He had a hangdog look about him but that was not unusual. A monk’s ring of hair displayed a full brow that seemed perpetually furrowed.

“Maybe it’s time to give up the running,” Calloway said, though he knew Clark wouldn’t stop running for the same reason he wouldn’t stop being Sheriff. What else would he do?

“Maybe.” Clark sat. The fluorescent tubes hummed overhead. One had an annoying tick and occasionally flickered, as if about to go out. “I heard the news.”

“Yeah, it’s Sarah.”

“So what do we do now?”

“We don’t do anything.”

Clark’s brow creased. “And if they find something in the grave that contradicts the evidence?”

Calloway lowered his boots to the floor. “It’s been twenty years, Vance. I’ll convince her that, now that we’ve found Sarah, it’s time to let the dead bury the dead.”

“What if you can’t?”

“I will.”

“You couldn’t before.”

Calloway flicked the head of the Félix Hernández bobblehead doll his grandson had given him for Christmas and watched it bob and twitch. “Well, this time I’ll just have to do a better job of it.”

After a moment of seemingly deep thought, Clark said, “Are you driving down for the autopsy?”

“I sent Finlay. He found the body.”

Clark exhaled and swore under his breath.

“We were all in agreement, Vance. What’s done is done. Sitting here worrying about something that may never happen isn’t going to change anything.”

“Things have already changed, Roy.”





[page]CHAPTER 11





Tracy kept her head down as she stepped from the elevator and made her way to her cubicle. She’d meant to get in early, but traffic had turned the two-hour drive back to Seattle from Cedar Grove into three and a half, she’d drunk Scotch for dinner, and had forgotten to set her alarm. Or she’d slept through it. She didn’t know.

She draped her Gore-Tex jacket over the back of her chair, dropped her purse inside her cubicle cabinet, and waited for her computer screen to come to life. Her head felt like someone was drumming inside her skull, and a handful of Tums had not extinguished the small brushfire in her stomach. Kins’s chair creaked and rotated, but when she did not turn to acknowledge him, she heard him rotate back to his computer. Faz and Delmo were not yet at their desks.

Tracy started going through her e-mails. Rick Cerrabone had sent her several that morning. The King County prosecutor wanted copies of the witness statements and Tracy’s affidavit to complete the search warrant Tracy was seeking for Nicole Hansen’s apartment. He’d sent a second e-mail half an hour after the first.

Where are witness statements and affidavit? Can’t go to judge without.

Tracy picked up the phone, about to call Cerrabone, when she saw an e-mail above his second message. Kins had copied her on his reply. She opened it. Kins had provided the witness statements and sworn out an affidavit. She swiveled her chair toward him, annoyed that he’d responded for her, even more annoyed that he’d done the affidavit when she was the lead detective. Kins glanced over his shoulder, caught her glare, and rotated to face her.

“He called me, Tracy. I figured you had enough on your plate and took care of it.”

She swung back to her keyboard, hit “Reply All” and started to type a nasty response. After a minute she sat back, read what she’d written, and deleted it. She took a breath and pushed back from the keyboard. “Kins?”

He faced her.

“Thanks,” she said. “What did Cerrabone say about the search warrant?”

Kins walked over, hands thrust in his pants pockets. “Should have it later this morning. You all right?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m feeling. My head hurts.”

“Andy came by,” he said, referring to their lieutenant, Andrew Laub. “He wants to see you.”

She laughed, rubbed her eyes, and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Great.”

“Why don’t we go get some breakfast? We can take a drive and talk to that witness down in Kent in that felony assault case.”

Tracy pushed back her chair. “Thanks, Kins, but the sooner I get this out of the way . . .” She gave him a resigned shrug. “I don’t know.” She made her way around the perimeter of the cubicles and down the hall.

Andrew Laub had been the A Team’s sergeant for two years before his promotion to lieutenant. That had earned him a small interior office with no window and a removable nameplate in the slot beside his door. Laub sat sideways at his desk, eyes focused on the computer screen, fingers pecking at the keyboard. Tracy knocked on the door frame.