Ron Mayweather had busted his hump to get the warrant signed by a King County judge and have it properly served on Kitsap’s commanding officer, Peter Lopresti. The warrant had apparently then been transferred to the security officer, also located in the DSO building. He advised Mayweather that he’d made a copy of the security video for the night in question and provided it to Stanley, which Leah Battles had also confirmed. After a phone call, Tracy had a meeting.
Stanley begged off shaking Tracy’s hand. “I’m feeling a cold coming on,” she said. She had an officious demeanor emphasized by piercing brown eyes. She folded her dark hair, cut short, behind her ears, revealing gold stud earrings. The haircut framed narrow features, but Stanley was not small. In her boots she stood perhaps five foot six or five foot seven, and though it was difficult to tell from her baggy uniform, she didn’t appear petite. She sat behind a gunmetal-gray desk. Tracy took one of the two chairs across from her.
“I understand Laszlo Trejo shot himself last night at Old Mill Park,” Stanley said, subtlety apparently not part of her repertoire.
“Where did you hear that?” Tracy asked.
Stanley sat erect, hands folded on her desk pad. She maintained a serious, no-nonsense demeanor. “Word travels fast on a military base, Detective.”
“Yes, Laszlo Trejo was shot.”
Stanley’s eyebrows, well groomed, inched together. “You seem to doubt it was self-inflicted.”
“I don’t know that it was or wasn’t,” Tracy said. “That’s Bremerton’s jurisdiction, and the results of an autopsy will take time.”
“And what’s your jurisdiction?” Stanley pulled open a drawer, unwrapped a cough drop, and put it in her mouth.
“D’Andre Miller,” Tracy said. She didn’t like Stanley’s attitude. Didn’t like the way she treated Tracy like a subordinate. Tracy had never been in the military, but she knew the officers, in particular, could be rank conscious.
“Does SPD plan to pursue D’Andre Miller’s death?”
“I’m just a worker bee. That decision is well above my pay grade. I’m sure you can appreciate that,” Tracy said.
Stanley’s lip curled slightly as she worked the cough drop, but she didn’t verbally respond. She picked up the search warrant from her desk pad, the only visible piece of paper in the room, and considered it as if seeing it for the first time. Somewhere down the hall an unanswered telephone rang. Voices called out. After a minute, roughly, Stanley set the warrant down.
“You’re interested in the security video taken inside this building the night before Petty Officer Trejo’s Article 32 hearing.”
“I understand from your security officer that you asked to have the tape copied and he provided it.”
“I secured a copy the day after the hearing,” Stanley said. “I thought it prudent.”
“Why was that?” Tracy asked.
Stanley gave a small shrug. “Leah Battles works for me and the allegations being made are serious. It has been suggested that she had something to do with the cassette tape being missing. I wanted to confirm who was in the building after her departure.”
“What did you find?”
She shook her head. “Just the janitors.”
“No one else entered or exited?”
“No.” Stanley pulled open a desk drawer and removed what looked to be a multipage document. “Your warrant also asked for the list of persons who entered the building that evening and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers.” She handed the document across the desk. Tracy took it and considered the names.
Stanley said, “Between approximately eleven p.m. and six a.m. the following morning, no one entered the building . . . other than the janitors.”
Tracy would review the document in more detail later. She set it on her lap. “Do you know how the video system works?”
Stanley smiled. “I’m not very computer literate, Detective. I was a poli-sci major in college. What I can tell you is what the security officer told me when he provided the tape.”
“Please,” Tracy said.
“It’s an IP system. The video footage for the day and night feeds into a computer in the security office, and sits on the network until the tape rolls over and it gets recorded over.”
“How long is it on the system before it’s recorded over?”
“I don’t know.”
“You asked for a disc?”
“I didn’t have a choice. From what the security officer told me, the cameras are of high quality, which means the footage takes up a lot of storage space. To upload more than six hours of high-quality camera footage would require multiple gigabytes, which I’m told, in unscientific terms, is a lot—enough to crash my computer. So they burned me a disc. I asked them to burn you one as well.”
She reached again into the drawer and handed Tracy a five-by-eight manila envelope. “You’ve watched it?” Tracy asked.
Stanley nodded. “Several times. I also showed it to Lieutenant Battles. You see anything I might have missed, I’d welcome knowing. Leah is a good person and an excellent lawyer. I’d hate to lose her.”
With that, Stanley stood, their meeting over.
On the ferry crossing back to Seattle, Tracy quickly slid into a booth near the big plate-glass windows, opened her laptop, inserted the DVD disc, and waited for the computer to load the video. Rain spotted the glass as the ferry crossed into the wind, and she smelled theater popcorn and hot dogs from the cafeteria. It reminded her that she hadn’t eaten since the prior evening, but she put off food for the moment.
An image popped onto the screen—a camera angle looking down on the interior of what she recognized from her earlier visit to be the DSO office lobby. She noted a date and time stamp in the lower right-hand corner and scribbled it on a legal pad.
March 18 2016 10:00 p.m.
She hit “Play.” The seconds on the time stamp ticked forward. She kept the pen and notepad close at hand.
Her cell phone vibrated and rattled on the table. Habit caused her to answer it, though she let the tape continue to play. She expected the caller to be Dan, but the 360 area code indicated the caller was from Bremerton.
“I’m assuming you’re long gone?” John Owens said.
“I am,” Tracy said, not elaborating. “What can I do for you?”
“We didn’t find the slug that killed Trejo,” he said. “However, the medical examiner indicates it was likely .40 caliber.”
“The caliber of Trejo’s weapon, which we know had been discharged.”
“Correct. I thought you should also know that Battles owns a Glock .40 and we’ve secured it.”
“And?”
“It hasn’t been fired anytime recently. We also spoke to Trejo’s wife. She confirmed Trejo was right-handed.”
“So it’s unlikely Trejo shot himself.”
“Seems that way, but here’s the problem I was having with that theory—Trejo brought the gun out there with him for a reason, right?”
“Seems logical.”
“So we can assume he wasn’t exactly comfortable with the situation, whatever it was, and likely would have been on guard. Assuming that to have been the case, I’m wondering, how would someone get ahold of his gun?”
It made sense, but Tracy heard something in the tone of Owens’s voice, a lilt indicating he had something else, another piece of information. “You have something more you can share?” she asked.
For a moment Tracy thought they’d been disconnected. Then Owens spoke. “I got a video I want you to take a look at. I found it today online. I’ll send the link to your e-mail.”