My Sister's Grave (Tracy Crosswhite, #1)(48)

Her initial search using the key words “motel room” had reduced the 22,000 cases to 1511. She’d added the word “rope,” but not “strangulation,” because she wanted to keep the search broad enough to capture cases in which the victim had been bound, though maybe not strangled. That further reduced the field of cases to 224. Of those 224, 43 of the victims had not been sexually assaulted—Nicole Hansen’s autopsy had revealed no semen in her body cavities. That anomaly could be explained by the fact that it would have been a near physical impossibility to have intercourse with Hansen with her body hideously contorted and bound. Hansen had also not been robbed. Her wallet, flush with cash, had been left untouched on the motel dresser. That ruled out the second most logical motive, again assuming Hansen had been murdered.

Tracy had been focused on those forty-three cases, reviewing the HITS forms on file. After an hour, she’d considered three more of the cases. None seemed promising. She closed the laptop and leaned back against the pillows. “Like searching for a needle in a haystack, Roger.” The cat was already purring.

Tracy envied him.





[page]CHAPTER 33





Friday afternoon, Tracy’s phone vibrated as she and Kins drove west across Lake Washington on the 520 floating bridge. Traffic was heavy with people trying to get downtown. Tall cranes jutted high above the darkened water on floating platforms, helping construct a badly needed second bridge parallel to the first one, but screwups in the concrete pontoons that would keep the second bridge afloat had delayed completion until sometime in 2015.

Tracy checked her most recent calls and saw that she’d missed two previous calls from Dan. She called him back.

“Hey,” she said. “Sorry I missed your calls. We’ve been running around today tracking down witnesses and talking with experts about the rope in that murder in North Seattle.”

“I got a surprise this afternoon.”

“A good surprise or a bad surprise?”

“I’m not sure. I was in court most of the day, and when I got back to the office I found a copy of Vance Clark’s Opposition to the Petition for Post-Conviction Relief in my fax machine.”

“They filed early?”

“Apparently.”

“What do you make of it?”

“Haven’t read it yet. Thought I’d call you first and let you know.”

“Why would he file early?”

“It could be he decided to keep it simple, make the Court of Appeals think the petition lacks merit. I won’t know until I read it. Anyway, it sounds like you’ve got your hands full.”

“Email it to me and we can talk more about it tonight at dinner.”

“Yeah, about that,” Dan said. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to cancel.”

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah, just some things to take care of. Okay if I call you later?”

“Sure,” Tracy said. “We’ll talk tonight.” She hung up, uncertain what to make of Dan breaking their date. Though initially concerned about it, she’d begun to look forward to it and where it might lead. She’d planned to buy a couple of Dick’s hamburgers—the $1.39 variety—and serve them at her apartment just to tweak him.

“New development?” Kins asked.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I said, new development?”

“They filed the opposition to the petition. We weren’t expecting it for another two weeks.”

“What’s it mean?”

“Don’t know yet,” she said, still hearing the uncertainty in Dan’s voice.





[page]CHAPTER 34





Dan O’Leary tilted back his head to apply eyedrops. His contact lenses felt glued to his corneas. Outside his bay window, rain fell in the shafts of yellow light from the street lamp. He had the window open so he could listen to the storm as it rolled in from the north, bringing the sodden, earthy smell of rain. As a boy, he used to sit at his bedroom window watching for lightning strikes over the North Cascades, counting the seconds between the strike and the clap of thunder exploding across the mountain peaks. He’d wanted to be a weatherman. Sunnie had said that she thought that would be the most boring job on the planet, but Tracy had said Dan would be good on television. Tracy had always been that way, even when other kids had treated him as the dork he’d sometimes been. She’d always stood up for him.

When he’d seen her at Sarah’s memorial service, alone, his heart had bled for her. He’d always envied her family, so close and loving and caring. His house had not always been that way. Then, in a relatively short period of time, Tracy had lost everything she’d loved. When he’d stepped to her side at the service, it had been as her childhood friend, but he also could not deny he had been physically attracted to her. He had given her his card in hope that she might call him, and come to see him not as the boy she’d known, but as the man he’d become. That hope had faded when she had come to his office and asked him to review her file. Strictly a business meeting.

Later, he’d invited her to his home out of concern for her safety, but seeing her again, he hadn’t been able to help hoping that something might spark between them. When he’d wrapped his arms around her to putt the golf ball, something had stirred inside that he had not felt in a very long time. He’d spent the past month tempering those feelings with the realization that Tracy remained deeply wounded and was not only vulnerable, but distrustful—about Cedar Grove and everything and everyone she associated with it. Dan had suggested the Chihuly glass exhibit and dinner to remove her from that environment, then realized that he’d placed her in an awkward dilemma. Did she invite him to spend the night or did he get a hotel? He’d sensed that he was rushing her, that she wasn’t ready for a relationship, and that she had enough on her plate with the recent discovery of Sarah’s remains and now the potential for another emotionally draining hearing.