My Sister's Grave (Tracy Crosswhite, #1)(34)

Tracy said, “I spoke to every bartender in Silver Spurs. No one remembered Edmund House, and no one remembered Calloway coming in and asking any questions.”

“Another reason to suspect Calloway lied about the confession,” Dan said.

“Something else. Finn never cross-examined Calloway about it at trial,” Tracy said.

“A mistake, for sure,” Dan agreed, “but that’s not what got House convicted. What got him convicted was what they found at the property.”



Late in the afternoon, the storm intensified, causing the lights hanging from the courthouse’s ornate box-beam ceiling to flicker. The wind had also kicked up, the trees outside the courtroom windows now swaying violently, their limbs shimmering.

“Detective Giesa,” Vance Clark continued, “with respect to the truck, would you tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury what you found?”

Detective Margaret Giesa looked more like a runway model than a detective, with long, light-brown hair and blonde highlights. Perhaps five foot four, she looked considerably taller in four-inch heels and wore well a gray, pinstriped pants suit. “We located multiple strands of blonde hair varying in lengths from eighteen to thirty-two inches.”

“Would you show the jurors exactly where your team found these strands of hair?”

Giesa left her chair and used a pointer to direct the jury’s attention to a blown-up photograph of the interior of the red Chevy stepside that Clark had set on an easel. “On the passenger side, between the seat and the door.”

“Did the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab run tests on those strands of hair?”

Giesa considered her report. “We examined each strand under a microscope and determined that some had been pulled out by the root. Others had broken off.”

Finn stood. “Objection. The officer is speculating that the hairs had been pulled out by the roots.”

Lawrence sustained it.

Clark looked glad to have the phrase repeated. “Do we humans shed hair, Detective?”

“Shedding hair is a natural process. We shed hair every day.”

He patted his bald spot. “Some of us more than others?”

The jurors smiled.

Clark continued. “But you also mentioned that your team found some hair that had been broken off. What did you mean by that?”

“I mean that we did not find a root ball. Under a microscope, one expects to find a white bulb at the base. Breakage is usually the result of damage to the hair follicle by external factors.”

“Such as?”

“Chemical treatments, heat from styling tools, or rough handling come to mind.”

“Can someone tear out another person’s hair by the root, say, during a struggle?”

“They can.”

Clark acted as if he was reviewing his notes. “Did your team locate anything else of interest in the truck cab?”

“Trace amounts of blood,” she said.

Tracy noticed several jurors turn their attention from Giesa to Edmund House.

Again using the photograph, Giesa explained where her team had located the blood inside the truck cab. Clark then placed a blown-up aerial photograph of Parker House’s property in the mountains on the easel. It showed the metal roofs of several structures and the shells of cars and farm equipment amid a grove of trees. Giesa pointed to a narrow building at the end of a footpath leading from Parker House’s one-story home.

“We found woodworking tools and several pieces of furniture in various stages of completion.”

“A table saw?”

“Yes, there was a table saw.”

“Did you find any blood inside that shed?”

“We did not,” Giesa said.

“Did you find any blonde strands of hair?”

“No.”

“Did you find anything of interest?”

“We found jewelry inside a sock in a coffee can.”

Clark handed Giesa a plastic evidence bag and asked her to unseal it.

The courtroom grew silent as Giesa reached inside the bag and held up two silver pistol-shaped earrings.



Dan stopped pacing. “That’s when you really began to suspect something was wrong.”

“She wasn’t wearing the pistol earrings, Dan. I know she wasn’t, and I tried to tell my father that afternoon,” Tracy said. “But he said he was tired and wanted to get my mother home. She wasn’t doing well. She was an emotional wreck, physically weak, and becoming more and more reclusive. After that, every time I tried to bring up the subject, my father would tell me to let it alone. Calloway and Clark told me the same thing.”

“They never heard you out?”

She shook her head. “No. So I decided to keep the information I had to myself until I could prove them wrong.”

“But you couldn’t leave it alone.”

“Could you have, if it had been your sister, and you’d been the one who left her?”

Dan sat on the coffee table facing her. Their knees nearly touched. “What happened wasn’t your fault, Tracy.”

“I had to know. When no one else was going to do anything about it, I decided to do it myself.”

“So that’s why you quit teaching and became a cop.”

She nodded. “After ten years of using all my free time to read transcripts and hunt for witnesses and documents, I sat down one evening, opened up the boxes, and realized that I’d gone over all the records and interviewed all the witnesses. I’d reached a dead end. Unless they found Sarah’s body, I had nowhere to go. It was a horrible feeling. I felt like I’d failed her all over again, but it’s like you said, the world doesn’t stop so you can grieve. One day you wake up and realize you have to move on because . . . well, what are you going to do? So I put the boxes in a closet and tried to move on.”