In Her Tracks (Tracy Crosswhite #8)(25)
She ran her finger along the typed words, flipped the page, and ran her finger down the second page. She stopped and read the summary more closely. Angel Jackson, age thirty-two, disappeared from Aurora Avenue, a known prostitution area. Tracy continued down the page past several additional summaries. Three months after Jackson’s disappearance, Donna Jones, age twenty-nine, vanished from roughly the same area. Jones was a known heroin user with multiple arrests for prostitution, narcotics, and, in one instance, for stabbing a john in the leg.
The same detectives who had worked Elle Chin’s file also worked the missing prostitutes. When the detectives left the department, all three files were transferred to the Cold Case Unit.
Tracy left her office and made her way to the stairwell leading down to the room just off the sixth-floor landing, what was now a storage room, but what had once been the room for the Cowboy task force. The metal staircase thrummed as she descended. She pulled open the door and flipped on the light. Case files rested on high-density movable racks several rows deep. Tracy walked to the back of the room and retrieved the map she’d mounted on the wall that she and her team had used to mark the locations of each Cowboy killing. She hurried back to her office and removed Nunzio’s now empty corkboard and taped the map to the office wall.
She wrote “AJ” on a sticky note and placed it on the map where Angel Jackson had last been seen. She marked a second note “DJ” for Donna Jones and put it on the map to mark her last-known whereabouts. Both were within a block of each other on Aurora Avenue North, or State Route 99, which ran north to south and was a straight shot to Green Lake and Woodland Park, the two places where Stephanie Cole routinely ran. She put a third sticky note with “SC” in that area, since they didn’t know specifically where Cole had gone missing.
The facts of the two cold cases were certainly different than the information Tracy and Kins had so far uncovered regarding Stephanie Cole’s disappearance, which wasn’t much, but the location and the circumstances certainly were of interest. Women seemingly abducted without witnesses. No bodies found. No video, no DNA, no blood or other evidence of substance to follow up on. Through the years, Seattle had more than its fair share of serial killers, which was likely why the two prostitute cases had been assigned to the same detective team.
Someone knocked on her door. “What are you doing?” Kins asked.
Tracy explained her middle-of-the-night epiphany.
Kins didn’t look impressed. “I could have saved you the trouble. Patrol officers from the North Precinct found Cole’s car early this morning. CSI is heading out there.”
“Out where?”
“A parking lot in Ravenna.”
“Anyone report finding a body?”
“Nope. Just the car.”
Tracy placed the sticky note roughly in the area of Ravenna Park—north of the University District and the University of Washington, and less than two miles east of Green Lake—grabbed her purse and jacket, and hurried from the office.
As Kins drove the SPD pool car, Tracy called the Public Affairs Office and provided an updated news release on Cole’s Prius. She requested that anyone who might have seen Cole or her car in or near Ravenna Park phone the dedicated tip line. She then spoke with the weekend patrol sergeant, advised him of the change in the case, and asked that North Precinct patrol officers, armed with Cole’s photograph, canvass the homes near Ravenna Park and the park itself to determine if anyone recalled the young woman. After, she called Scott Barnes, waking him, and asked whether Cole ever ran in Ravenna Park. Barnes wasn’t certain but said he’d never heard her say that she had.
Tracy disconnected and turned to Kins. “Do we know if there are cameras in the Ravenna parking lot?”
“Not yet. What did Barnes say?”
“He didn’t know. He said Cole asked him about other places to run besides Green Lake and Woodland Park, but he isn’t one for exercise and told her to Google it. What about Cole’s cell phone? Did you hear from the carrier?”
After obtaining Cole’s cell number from the roommate, Kins had called the carrier, Verizon, told them they had exigent circumstances, and asked them to track the phone.
“Late yesterday. Verizon said the cell phone has been turned off since Wednesday night.”
“Turned off? How many kids her age ever turn off their cell phone?”
“None. Including my boys and all their friends.”
Tracy gave it further thought. “Cole would have listened to music while running, wouldn’t she?”
“Again, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t,” Kins said. “At least not her age.”
“Was Verizon able to track her phone before it was shut off?”
Kins nodded. “Wednesday afternoon it pinged in Green Lake and in Fremont, then again in the North Park neighborhood to the north. That’s where they lost the signal.”
“Green Lake is where she lives. Fremont is where she works. What was she doing in North Park?”
“Don’t know.”
“If the phone shut off there, that has to be where she went missing.”
“Then how did the car get to Ravenna?” Kins asked, the question rhetorical. “The trucking company sent over the video for Wednesday afternoon. Cole left the building alone, dressed in running clothes and carrying a gym bag. She drove from the lot at 3:56 p.m. No car appeared to follow her from the lot.”