In Her Tracks (Tracy Crosswhite #8)(21)

“You ever have any complaints about either of them?” Tracy asked.

“Had a couple complaints about him and his prior roommate playing loud music, but nothing since Cole moved in.”

Tracy noted cameras in the parking lot, but the manager told her the cameras were mainly just a deterrent. “They haven’t been operational in more than a year.” He then showed them Cole’s designated parking spot, which was empty, and confirmed Cole had listed a Prius with a California license plate on her rental application.

After speaking to the manager, Tracy and Kins walked to the second floor of the building. Barnes was not yet home. They knocked on the apartment next door. A midthirties woman answered. She didn’t know Barnes or Cole, other than in passing. She said Cole was quiet and largely kept to herself.

“You ever hear any arguing? Yelling or screaming?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Any indication they were more than roommates?” Kins asked.

“You mean romantically involved?” She shrugged. “I never got that impression. But I was never in their apartment either, so I don’t really know.”

“Never saw them holding hands, kissing, anything like that?” Kins asked.

“No.” She shook her head. “This generation is not like your generation. Young people now don’t have a problem living as roommates with members of the opposite sex.”

Tracy and Kins glanced at one another. Tracy hadn’t felt old before, but she did now. They thanked the woman and went back to the car to wait for Barnes.

“The last statement about our generation got to you, didn’t it?” Kins said.

“How old does she think we are?”

“Old enough,” Kins said. “Get used to it now that you have a kid.”

Tracy had. She’d tried a PEPS class for mothers and their newborns but felt like a dinosaur.

When Barnes got home, he let Tracy and Kins into the apartment. Things inside looked exactly as Barnes had described. Cole’s bedroom door was open, a mattress and box spring on the floor covered beneath a light-blue down quilt. On the quilt lay the cut-up white T-shirt and red skirt, and an unopened package of black fishnet stockings.

“Looks like she intended to go to the party,” Tracy said.

“Like Barnes said, a lot of effort if she was going to just blow it off.”

Tracy noted a laptop—a MacBook—also on the bed. She made a note to have CSI—if they needed CSI—grab it, and have the Technical and Electronic Support Unit find out if there were any emails or if Cole had conducted any searches of interest.

Cole’s closet door was also open. Though it was a mess, they didn’t see anything disconcerting. Tracy noted several pairs of running shoes. All New Balance. They checked the bathroom Barnes and Cole shared, but they did not find any prescription medications, or anything suspicious or of particular interest. They looked for bloodstains in the tile cracks and on the carpet but could not detect anything with the naked eye. They didn’t smell bleach. They photographed Cole’s bedroom and the bathroom, then shut the bedroom door and sealed it with yellow-and-black crime scene tape.

“Why are you doing that?” Barnes looked and sounded concerned.

“We’re going to get a court order and have a CSI unit come by and take a closer look. Are you all right with that?” Kins asked.

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll be here.”

As they left the apartment, Kins said, “He’s way too calm and open for someone who’s guilty.”

“Let’s wait and see if they find anything in the apartment before we exonerate him.”

“We need to find her car,” Kins said.

“Let’s have Katie get out a news release with photographs of Cole and her car. We’re too late for the six o’clock news tonight, but maybe the ten o’clock news and the news tomorrow. Maybe somebody saw her or her car.”

Darkness had descended, and they returned to a parking lot cast in pools of light. Tracy recalled from Elle Chin’s file that Bobby and his ex-wife had lived in Green Lake. There being no time like the present, while Kins made his phone calls, Tracy pulled up what had been the address to the Chins’ home and plugged it into the map on her phone. It was nine minutes away.





CHAPTER 11

Tracy parked across the street from what once had been Bobby Chin’s home on Latona Avenue near Northeast Sixty-Second Street. A one-story house with dark-green wood siding that Tracy estimated to be no more than 1,000 square feet. A white picket fence with a trellis enclosed the front yard, a dormant and gnarled wisteria vine growing over the wood slats. With the property lots so small, no more than fifteen feet separated Chin’s home from his adjacent neighbors.

Tracy left Kins making phone calls in the car and approached the house to the right. The man who answered told her his family bought the home just two years ago, and he never knew the Chins. She tried the house to the left, a light-blue stucco home with an arched doorway atop three brick steps. Blinds covered the two front windows, but the porch light burned bright. A woman answered Tracy’s knock. Mid to late seventies, she looked tentative. A television—what sounded like the news—played inside the house.

Tracy held up her identification and told the woman the nature of her visit.