My Sister's Grave (Tracy Crosswhite, #1)(43)

Jerry Butterman was Cedar Grove High’s principal. Tracy fumed at the fact that Calloway would threaten her this way. At the same time, she wanted to laugh. He had no idea the threat was hollow, no idea that Tracy did not intend to play “junior detective.” She’d decided to jump in with both feet. At the end of the school year, she’d leave Cedar Grove and move to Seattle to join the police academy. “Do you know why I became a chemistry teacher, Roy?”

“Why?”

“It’s because I could never just accept the way things were. I needed to know why they were that way. It used to drive my parents crazy, me always asking ‘why.’?”

“House is in prison. That’s all you need to know.”

“I tell my students it’s not the result that’s important. It’s the evidence. If the evidence is circumspect, so is the result.”

“And if you want to continue teaching your students, I’d suggest you take my advice and focus on being a teacher.”

“That’s the thing, Roy. I’ve already made that decision too.” The bell rang and the door to the classroom was pulled open. Tracy’s fourth-period students hesitated at the sight of Cedar Grove’s sheriff standing in their classroom. “Come on in,” Tracy said, stepping out from behind her table. “Take your seats. Chief Calloway was just leaving.”





[page]CHAPTER 30





Late in the afternoon, Tracy and Kins returned from Kent. They’d interviewed an accountant whose fingerprint had matched a latent print that CSI had recently pulled from the motel room where Nicole Hansen had suffocated. “Did he confess?” Faz asked.

“Praise the Lord and hallelujah,” Kins said. “He’s a regular Bible-toting, psalm-spewing churchgoer who just happens to also have a proclivity for young prostitutes. He also has a rock-solid alibi for the night Hansen strangled herself.”

“So why the print?” Faz asked.

“He’d been in that room the week before with a different young lady.”

Tracy dumped her purse inside her cabinet. “You should have seen the look on his face when I said we’d need to talk to his wife to confirm he was really asleep beside her the night Hansen died.”

“Looked like he’d seen the Lord himself,” Kins said.

“That’s our job,” Faz said. “Solving murders and helping people find religion.”

“Praise the Lord.” Kins waved his hands over his head.

“You thinking of a career change?” Billy Williams stood just outside their bull pen. Williams had been promoted to Detective Sergeant of the A Team when Andrew Laub had made Lieutenant. “Because if you are, let me tell you as someone raised Baptist in the south, you’re going to need to be a lot more convincing than that to get people to open up their wallets.”

“We were just talking about another witness in the Hansen case,” Kins said.

“Anything we can work with?”

“Wasn’t there that night. Doesn’t know Hansen. Feels awful and will go forth and sin no more.”

“Praise the Lord,” Faz said.

Williams looked to Tracy. “Got a minute?”

“Yeah, what’s up?”

He turned and nodded over his shoulder for her to follow him.

“Ooh, the Professor is in trouble,” Faz said.

Tracy gave them a shrug, made a face, and followed Williams to the soft interrogation room around the corner and down the hall. Williams closed the door behind her.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“Your phone’s going to ring. The brass have been meeting.”

“What about?”

“Are you helping some lawyer get the guy who killed your sister a new trial?”

She and Williams had a good relationship. As a black man, Williams could relate to the subtle and not-so-subtle discrimination Tracy had encountered as a woman in a predominantly male occupation. “It’s complicated, Billy.”

“No shit. So it’s true?”

“It’s also personal.”

“The brass are concerned about how it reflects on the department.”

“By ‘brass,’ do you mean Nolasco?”

“He’s in on it.”

“What a surprise. Vanpelt called me this morning to advise that she’s doing a story on the same subject and asking me to comment. She seemed to have a lot of details for someone who ordinarily doesn’t concern herself with facts.”

“Look, I’m not going there.”

“I’m not asking you to. I’m just telling you that Nolasco’s not concerned about how it reflects on the department; he sees it as another opportunity to bust my ass. So if I tell him ‘f*ck how it reflects on the department,’ I’d appreciate a little support. Unless he’s got a problem with how I’m doing my job, this isn’t his problem or his business.”

“Don’t shoot the messenger, Tracy.”

She took a moment to check her temper. “Sorry, Billy. I just don’t need this right now.”

“Where’s the information coming from?”

“I got a hunch it’s a sheriff in Cedar Grove who’s had a twenty-year hard-on for me and doesn’t want me anywhere near this.”