In Her Tracks (Tracy Crosswhite #8)(97)

“Is this seat taken?” Tracy asked.

Kins smiled. He gripped a glass of what was most likely Johnnie Walker Black. “Crosswhite, are you hitting on me? I’m a married man.”

Tracy chuckled and slid onto the barstool. This late, the place was quiet. When the bartender caught her eye, she said, “What he’s having. A double.” She turned to Kins. “Did you call home?”

“Told Shannah I’d be late. You?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re lucky,” Kins said.

“Why’s that?”

“You have a kid to go home to.”

“You miss your boys,” she said.

“Every day. Every night when I get home. I keep asking myself where the years went. Don’t get me wrong, I love the time with Shannah, but those years with the boys . . .” He chuckled and shook his head. “As frustrated as I could get by all the things they did, those were the best years of my life.” He paused, thinking. “It wasn’t the sporting events or stuff like that I remember.”

“What was it?”

“It was Christmas mornings, birthdays, special occasions—those quiet times when their eyes lit up and they believed that anything in the world was possible. Magical. Beautiful.”

“You gave them those memories, Kins. You and Shannah. You were a good father to them. You still are.” She thought of Nunzio. “You know why?”

Kins looked at her.

“Because you give a shit.”

Kins chuckled.

In the darkness, the evil, and the horrors they often experienced, it was important to be reminded that there were still beautiful things in the world. There was still goodness. Still joy. Light.

Like Shannah and Kins’s boys.

Like Dan and Daniella.

The bartender put her drink on a coaster. Kins motioned for another. The whiskey was smooth and warmed her body.

“Kelly make it out to the house?” Kelly Rosa, the forensic anthropologist, had been the one to exhume and identify Sarah’s remains. She’d be the one to dig up the bodies buried in the basement, however many there were.

“We’ll start again in the morning,” Kins said. “I suspect we’ll end up tearing the whole house down to find out how many bodies are there. It’s a cemetery.”

“I think the cabin might be also,” she said, and she told him about what had happened, about Franklin and Bibby and about Evan. “She’s alive, Kins. We found Cole alive, and the two other women, Angel Jackson and Donna Jones. Cole will go home to her family. That’s something, Kins. Something to be proud of.”

The bartender brought Kins’s second drink. He lifted his glass. Tracy reciprocated, but neither made a toast. Nothing seemed appropriate. No words could put it all in perspective, no pearls of wisdom, no joke to make them smile.





CHAPTER 42

As the weeks passed, the body count grew. By the time Kelly Rosa had finished at the house, she’d identified seven bodies, female, buried in the basement. She estimated the oldest had been there for decades. It would take months to identify them, all young women, long forgotten but for the people who had loved them most. When spring came and the ground in the canyon thawed, Tracy was certain they would find still more bodies. But that would wait. Seven bodies. Three women still alive. One active case and, hopefully, nine cold cases solved. Nine tombstones she would be able to remove from Nunzio’s shelves. She’d remove more in the spring. She was, unfortunately, sure of it.

She’d been back to the neighborhood and spoke to the neighbors. No one knew anything about what had transpired in the house. Even Lorraine Bibby looked sickened. She told Tracy that Bibby had always told her he was going hunting with Ed when he’d left the house. She’d never suspected there had been anything more to it. Either she was telling the truth—or telling herself what she wanted to believe.

Marcella Weber, Seattle’s recently hired chief of police, quickly got out press releases of the solid police investigation in Tracy’s first week on the job that was expected to solve multiple cases. She made Tracy available for media interviews. One morning she called Tracy into her office and advised that Tracy would receive the department’s Medal of Valor, its highest honor, for a third time.

“I’m honored,” Tracy said, though medals weren’t really her thing. “But I won’t accept it, unless Kins receives it also.” She thought it would be the perfect remedy for Kins—who remained depressed—to have his sons see their father honored.

Weber agreed.

The medals were presented at a Seattle Police Department awards ceremony in the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Center’s auditorium in Burien. Tracy had one other request of Weber, and again the chief of police agreed.

As Tracy and Kins stood onstage in their dress blue uniforms, the auditorium filled with their colleagues, family and friends, and news media. Weber stood at the podium, speaking to the assembled crowd.

“The Medal of Valor is awarded to any officer who distinguishes him or herself by an act of bravery or heroism, at risk of his or her own personal safety, or in the face of great danger, above and beyond the call of duty. Today we honor Violent Crimes detectives Tracy Crosswhite and Kinsington Rowe for acts of heroism and bravery that led to the solving of at least two cold cases, more pending forensics review, and one active file. Because of their heroism and unrelenting investigative work, families have been reunited, and others will finally obtain closure.