Close to Home (Tracy Crosswhite #5)



Tracy typed up an affidavit on her laptop to support the search warrant and e-mailed it to Ron Mayweather after speaking with him on the phone. Then she drove back to the Bremerton Police Station. She would have preferred to talk to Battles someplace else, someplace more private, but that wasn’t going to happen. She compromised and met with Owens. After some discussion, he agreed to let Tracy talk to Battles alone in one of their conference rooms, since they’d already established a rapport.

Tracy opened the door and stepped inside the room. Battles sat at a round table with her feet propped on an adjacent plastic chair, though she didn’t look comfortable or relaxed. She wore her blueberries, as if it were just another workday. Battles was not under arrest. Nor was she being detained, not yet anyway, but being a lawyer, she had to know she hadn’t been called in to the police station just to say hello.

Battles gave Tracy a sly grin. “‘Intriguing. Arousing one’s curiosity or interest. Fascinating.’”

Tracy gave her an inquisitive look, uncertain what Battles meant.

Battles took her legs off the chair and sat up. “The dictionary at Zeitgeist Coffee—I told you it was prophetic.”

“Ah.” Tracy readjusted the chair and sat. “You have a photographic memory?”

“No. Just very good. It’s why I’m so good at chess. I can remember my opponents’ moves and draw upon that the next time we play. It’s judgment that has always been my Achilles’ heel. How am I doing so far? People think I stole a video to get my client off of a murder charge. Now they think I shot him.”

“Did you?” Tracy asked. What the hell? Battles had opened the door.

“No. But would that be enough to convince you?”

“You want coffee?” Tracy asked.

“I’m having enough trouble sleeping,” Battles said.

“You don’t seem like the type who’d have trouble sleeping.”

“I usually don’t.” Battles sat forward. “So what are you doing here? And what am I doing here?”

“Trejo’s my case,” Tracy said, not wanting to offer anything more.

“I saw the press conference. It was convincing, but we both know King County wasn’t going after Trejo.”

“No?”

“Not without the tape,” Battles said. “Same problem the prosecution here would have had. Trejo would argue that without the tape he could not effectively cross-examine witnesses. That being the case, why would Seattle’s DA want to interject himself into that mess?”

Battles was sharp, perhaps too sharp to give away anything. Tracy felt, at the moment, like she was in a chess match, and she wasn’t the better player. “Has the Navy made any decision about going forward?” Tracy asked.

“Against me?”

“Yes.”

“There’s an ethics investigation under way. Whether there will be a court-martial, I don’t know. The best I might do is a plea to an honorable discharge in lieu of a court-martial and I get to keep my dignity and my pay. Most people in my shoes might be happy with that.”

“Not you?”

“No.”

“Why not?” Tracy asked.

“Because someone set me up to take this fall, Detective, and I don’t like being set up. And I really hate losing.”

Battles sounded sincere, but then Tracy had interviewed others who’d sounded sincere about their innocence and hadn’t been. “Some people would argue that’s the reason you took the tape.”

“They already have,” Battles said.

Tracy knew she meant Cho. “So where were you last night?”

She smiled softly. “Do I have an alibi?”

“Do you?”

“I was at home. I went to work, sat there twiddling my thumbs, then realized that I was likely going to be court-martialed and assigned an attorney to defend me. Well, I’m not exactly great at listening to others—it was a real problem in grammar school—so I decided I’d better start defending myself. I left at four o’clock, took the ferry back to Seattle, went to a workout class, and went back home and did some research.”

“How late were you up?”

“Midnight.”

“Anyone who can verify that?”

“I wish.” She shook her head. “I live alone. But my computer won’t lie.”

“Did you make any phone calls?”

Battles smiled. “Okay. You play detective and I’ll play suspect.”

“Actually, I’m intrigued,” Tracy said.

Battles smiled softly. “Do you play chess, Detective?”

Is that what this was? Tracy wondered. “Like golf. Poorly. But I still think I should be better every time I go out.”

“I used to be a junior champion. Now I go into the Seattle parks looking for games. I’m good. I rarely lose. I think it makes me a better lawyer because it forces me to think several moves ahead of my opponent.”

“Who are you playing against now?”

“I don’t know. But I’m convinced Trejo knew, and that’s why he’s dead.”

“Tell me your analysis.”

“You already know it. You were in court. You saw Trejo’s reaction—or lack of reaction when he heard the tape went missing. You think, like I do, that he expected the video to go missing. He expected to get off.”

“So the tape wasn’t just randomly misplaced.”

“What are the odds of a critical piece of evidence being misplaced, Detective?”

“You were the last person to have the evidence box. All indications are the security tape was in it when you returned it.”

“True, but the real question isn’t who took the tape. It’s why. And I’m pretty sure why has something to do with what Trejo was doing over in Seattle that evening.”

“He didn’t tell you?”

“He never even admitted being there, not even after I showed him the convenience store tape.” Battles shrugged. “And before anyone accuses me of violating an attorney-client privilege, it expired when Trejo died. He said it wasn’t him. He said it was someone who looked like him. I couldn’t understand it then, why he wouldn’t take the plea. But now I do.”

“The video was never coming into evidence,” Tracy said.

“And Trejo knew it,” Battles agreed.

“You said you saw the tape from inside the DSO building.”

“It shows Cho leaving for the night, and it shows me putting back the evidence box and then leaving. Nobody else but the janitor came in or out before six o’clock the next morning.”

“Is there an alternate entrance into the building?”

“Not after hours. Not easily anyway.”

“Let me ask you,” Tracy said. “Trejo worked as a logistics specialist?”

“That’s right.”

“How would I find out where he’d been deployed?”

Battles’s gaze narrowed. “His service record would show every destination where he was deployed. Why?”

“How hard would it be for him to smuggle a package onto and off of a ship?”

Battles gave the question some thought. Finally she said, “Not that hard.” Tracy could see the wheels spinning inside her head.