What She Found (Tracy Crosswhite #9)(98)

“Did you hear what happened at the Diamond Marina?”

“Not in any detail. Not like what was printed in the paper yesterday and today.”

Tracy gave what Jones told her some thought. “How do I prove this, Henderson? How do I prove what you’re telling me?”

“There’s still some people around here who remember Marcella who might talk. A few. I can arrange it. Too bad Tombs is dead. You could have threatened him with some prison time. I suspect he would have sung like a canary. I can still get people together for you to talk to, but they won’t have specifics.”

Tracy gave this just as much thought. It would all be hearsay— what they had heard and suspected. Drug dealers and former drug dealers. There was no hard evidence. They would not be considered credible.

After a beat she asked, “Why are you doing this? Why now, Henderson?”

He gave a small shrug. “Because you cared.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Because you cared enough to do what you did. Most of these officers, I told you, they come out here and ask a lot of questions, but they never do anything. You did. You earned this information.”

Tracy looked at Dan on the dance floor. He had Daniella in one arm and spun and twirled the other two little girls. She knew Cerrabone would tell her that the word of aging drug dealers would not be enough. She didn’t doubt a word Henderson Jones had told her, but in a court of law, the rules of evidence would likely preclude much of his testimony as speculation and hearsay. She was, again, back to the court of public opinion.

Maybe that was for the best. Tombs was dead, perhaps a form of justice, as Dan had suggested.

She looked back to Henderson Jones and smiled. She didn’t want to tell him her thoughts, didn’t want to dampen his spirits this night. “Would you be willing to talk to a reporter, get others to talk to her as well?”

“Absolutely.”

Tracy thanked him for inviting them. “This has been a special night.”

“A lot of good people lived here and still do. You do right by them, and they’ll do right by you.” He looked to the concrete patio as a Smokey Robinson song filtered across the yard. “What I wouldn’t do to dance one more dance with my wife,” he said.

Tracy smiled. It might have been Jones’s best advice of the evening. She stood. “I’m going to go dance with my husband, then get my daughter home to bed.”





C H A P T E R 3 9

Tuesday morning, Tracy drove to Police Headquarters and parked in the secure parking garage on Sixth Avenue. Since her suspension, she no longer had a pass to get through the turnstiles in the lobby to the elevators. She called Faz ahead of time, and he arranged for a pass at the front desk. Tracy rode the elevator to the eighth floor. The office was in full swing, no doubt in part because of the Seattle Times articles continuing to run. Before arriving downtown, Tracy had called Bill Jorgensen, who told her he spoke to the Times’s attorneys that morning. There had been a delay in the court proceeding to get the Last Line task force names because certain members had confessed to ripping off drug dealers in order for their attorneys to argue that the possibility existed drug dealers might seek retribution. “The names might be confidential, but not the corroboration of what you were told,” Jorgensen said.

Still, it seemed a hollow victory. They would not get the remaining members, and they would not get Moss Gunderson.

Tracy knocked on the outer door to Chief Weber’s office, which was open. Inside, staff members talked with Weber. She held the morning newspaper in hand and glared at Tracy.

“You should not be in the building. I suspended you.”

“Like a minute of your time, Chief.”

Weber didn’t immediately throw Tracy out of the office. Was it curiosity? Did Weber want to know how much Tracy knew? Or was it just hubris, excessive pride, and confidence that she remained above the law? In Tracy’s experience, politicians—and Weber was a politician, despite professing to be and dressing as an everyday police officer—always liked to know what they were up against.

Whatever her reasons, Weber dismissed her staff. “Hold my calls unless it’s city hall.” She walked toward her interior office, waiting at the door. Tracy stepped in and moved to a leather chair at a round conference table but did not sit. Weber closed the door and also did not sit.

Weber gave Tracy an almost imperceptible shoulder shrug.

“You’ve read the articles in the Times,” Tracy said.

“More than once,” Weber said. “It’s disconcerting to know what happened, but it didn’t happen on my watch. I’ve contacted the union and legal counsel. If what you and Castigliano are saying is true, there will be an investigation by the Justice Department. But again, that was twenty-five years ago. Water under the bridge.”

She was waiting for Tracy to play her cards.

“I spoke to the Times this morning,” Tracy said. “The members of the Last Line still alive admitted to what the Times printed about rolling drug dealers and taking their money and their drugs.”

“We’re in damage control, as you might imagine. City hall wants to spin this. They want transparency so they can say that was twenty-five years ago. This is now. We aren’t that police agency any longer. The prosecutors will have to decide if they can bring any legal action against any of the remaining members of the task force, those still alive. I’m not an attorney, but I’m told the statute of limitations prevents it.”