What She Found (Tracy Crosswhite #9)(21)

and felt a chill. She read the articles but did not find an instance that indicated the task force had disseminated the name to the general public or to the media. Task forces were paranoid about the release of information to ensure the police arrested the right person and not a copycat killer. To get information that had not been released to the general public or, from what Tracy could decipher, to the media, Childress either had a source within the task force, a source with intimate knowledge of its workings, or possibly someone inside the medical examiner’s office. Tracy clicked the keyboard and entered SPD’s cold case files, pulling up the Route 99 serial killer file. The investigation had never been closed, but when the killer went dormant, and remained dormant, the task force had disbanded, and the victims’ files became cold cases. The task force concluded the killer had either died or possibly been picked up and incarcerated for a different crime and would spend the rest of his days in prison.

Maybe, but that kind of speculation didn’t sit well with Tracy.

Just like the families of the victims in Curry Canyon, the thirteen families of the Route 99 victims had lived for decades without closure. She’d mark the file and keep it at the top of her stack.

She considered the names of the members of the task force and recognized two besides Nolasco. Moss Gunderson and Vic Fazzio. Tracy pulled up three of the victims’ files on her computer and found their autopsies. As Tracy suspected, in each of the three cases, the medical examiner had noted, and photographed, the angel’s wings just above each woman’s left shoulder blade.

Tracy flipped again to the last page and considered the five names Childress had scribbled. Were these suspect names? If so, Tracy had a hunch as to why Childress had crossed out three of the five names. The task force, or Childress, had likely eliminated the three as the killer.

At her computer she typed the three men’s names into four federal databases: the National Crime Information Center—NCIC; the Combined DNA Index System—CODIS; the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System—IAFIS; and the Violent Crime Apprehension Program—ViCAP.

Within minutes, she had confirmed two of the three men had spent time incarcerated in Washington state prisons. She didn’t bother to read their profiles. She checked the dates of their incarcerations and compared those dates to those of the most recent Route 99 killings. Both men had been incarcerated at the time of the thirteenth victim’s killing—one had also been incarcerated when the eleventh and twelfth victims were killed. Neither could have been the Route 99 Killer.

She searched for the third name and found a copy of a Georgia state driver’s license with an address in Pierce County, Georgia. The license had been obtained shortly before the dates of the twelfth and thirteenth killings, making it unlikely the man had been the Route 99

Killer.

Could Childress have tried to lure one of the two remaining suspects to a meeting? Jorgensen had described Childress as an odd duck, but not reckless. Could she have believed bear spray would protect her? Tracy ran the two remaining names through the same federal databases. She did not receive a hit for Dwight McDonnel, meaning he had never been arrested for a crime, but didn’t rule him out as the killer. The second man, Levi Bishop, had been incarcerated in Washington State for domestic abuse, a felony, not long after the thirteenth victim was killed. He spent six years at the Monroe Correctional Complex, received parole in 1999, and, after probation, moved to Idaho. Tracy would check the National Crime Information Center but doubted the Angel of Death Task Force would have remained disbanded if Idaho suddenly had a rash of killings of young women with their left shoulders carved with angel’s wings.

She ran the name Dwight Thomas McDonnel through a general Google database but did not get a hit. She’d also run McDonnel’s name through other databases to try to find out where he had lived the past thirty years, then determine if there had been any unsolved abductions or murders of young women in those areas.

Tracy set the file aside and was about to reach for the final file on Mayor Edwards when she noted the time in the lower right corner of her computer screen. It neared the end of the day and she wanted to get home at a reasonable hour. With one more thing on her to-do list, she picked up the phone and called an extension she knew well.

Faz answered on the second ring. “Violent Crimes. You bag ’em, we tag ’em.”

“Funny,” she said.

“To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”

“You got a minute?”

Faz didn’t immediately answer, and Tracy mentally pictured him checking his wristwatch.

“I could spare a few. Wouldn’t mind getting out of here a little early though. What are you thinking?”

“High Bar?”

Another pause. Faz’s prime factors in his choice of bars and restaurants were walking distance and price. The High Bar was one thousand feet atop the Columbia Center, the building kitty-corner to Police Headquarters. Tracy and Dan were members; Dan used the bar to schmooze clients, which he could write off. Tracy got the membership benefit by virtue of the wedding ring. “I’m buying,” she said.

“I’m drinking. I’ll be by in a minute.”





C H A P T E R 8

On the walk from Police Headquarters to the Columbia Center, Tracy and Faz caught up on things at home and recent cases, including Kinsington Rowe’s marathon in a King County courtroom. She missed this aspect of working on the A Team, the camaraderie she had with the other three members, and the chance to talk about things other than work. They rode one of the multiple elevator banks to reach the High Bar atop the seventy-six-story black monolith. The view and weather remained heavenly; the sky free of all but a few cirrus clouds hovering over the Emerald City. Veteran Seattleites never questioned good weather. They just enjoyed it. The rain would return soon enough.