My Sister's Grave (Tracy Crosswhite, #1)(6)

A horn honked. Tracy glanced in the rearview mirror and saw a man in the cab of a weathered truck pointing at the overhead signal. The light had turned green.

She drove past the movie theater, but the marquee was now pocked with rock holes and the windows that had advertised the feature attraction and upcoming movies boarded over with plywood. A breeze swirled newspaper and debris in the recessed area behind the ticket booth. The rest of the one- and two-story brick and stone buildings of downtown Cedar Grove were in similar distress. “For Lease” signs filled half the windows. In another, a Chinese buffet, which had replaced the Five ‘n’ Dime, advertised a $6.00 lunch special on a piece of cardboard. A thrift store had replaced Fred Digasparro’s barbershop, though the red-and-white spiral pole remained fixed to the wall. A café advertised espresso drinks beneath faded letters whitewashed across the brick fa?ade of what had been Kaufman’s Mercantile Store.

Tracy turned right onto Second Avenue. Halfway up the block, she pulled into the parking lot. The black stenciled letters on the glass door to the Cedar Grove Sheriff’s Office had not changed or faded, but she had no illusions about this homecoming.





[page]CHAPTER 5





Tracy showed her badge to the deputy seated at the desk inside the glass doors and told him she was with the group from Seattle. He did not hesitate to direct her to the conference room down the hall.

“I know the way,” she said.

When she opened the door to the windowless room, the conversation abruptly stopped. A uniformed deputy stood at the head of the wooden table, marker in hand, topographical map pinned to a cork board behind him. Roy Calloway sat closest to the door, eyebrows inched together and looking worried. On the opposite side of the table, Kelly Rosa, a forensic anthropologist from Seattle, sat along with Bert Stanley and Anna Coles, volunteers from the Washington State Patrol’s Crime Scene Response Team. Tracy had worked multiple homicides with them.

Tracy didn’t wait for an invitation to enter, knowing it wouldn’t come. “Chief,” she said, which was what everyone in Cedar Grove called Calloway, though technically he was the sheriff.

Calloway stood from the table as Tracy stepped past his chair and slipped off her corduroy jacket, revealing her shoulder holster and the badge clipped to her belt. “What do you think you’re doing?”

She draped her jacket over the back of a chair. “Let’s not do this dance, Roy.”

He stepped toward her, straightening to his full height. Intimidation had always been his staple. To a young girl, Roy Calloway could be terrifying, but Tracy was no longer young or easily intimidated.

“I agree, let’s not do this. So, if you’re here on police business, you’re out of your jurisdiction. If—”

“I’m not here as a police officer,” she said. “But I’d appreciate a professional courtesy.”

“Can’t do it.”

“Roy, you know I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize the integrity of a crime scene.”

Calloway shook his head. “You’re not going to get that chance.”

The others looked on, uncertainty etched on their faces.

“Then I’m asking you for a favor . . . as a friend of my father’s.”

Calloway’s blue eyes narrowed. His brow furrowed. Tracy knew she’d struck a deep wound, one that had never healed. Calloway and her father had hunted and fished together, and her father had cared for Calloway’s aging parents before they died. The two men had also borne the guilt and the burden of being unable to find Sarah.

Calloway pointed a finger at her like he’d done when she was a kid riding her bike on the sidewalk. “You’ll stay out of the way. If I tell you to leave, you will leave. Do we understand one another?”

Tracy was in no position to tell him she’d investigated more murders in a year than he’d investigated his entire career. “We do.”

Calloway gave her a lingering glare before returning his attention to his deputy. “Go on, Finlay,” he said, and retook his seat.

The deputy, whose badge read “Armstrong,” took a moment to regain his train of thought before returning his attention to the topographical map. “This is where they found the body.” He drew an X where the two hunters had apparently stumbled across the remains.

“That can’t be,” Tracy said.

Armstrong turned from the map, looking uncertain. He glanced at Calloway.

“I said, go on, Finlay.”

“There’s an access road here,” Armstrong continued. “It was cut for a development.”

Tracy said, “That’s the old Cascadia property.”

Calloway’s jaw muscles tensed. “Continue, Finlay.”

“The site is about half a mile from the access road,” Finlay said, sounding less certain. “We’ve set a perimeter here.” He drew another small X. “The grave itself is shallow, maybe a couple feet. Now—”

“Wait,” Rosa said, lifting her head from taking notes. “Hold on. Did you say the grave was shallow?”

“Well, the foot wasn’t very deep.”

“And the grave looked to you otherwise undisturbed?” Rosa asked. “I mean other than where the dog had dug.”

“Looked that way; I suppose it could just be a leg and foot.”