“Could this be her?” he asked.
“No. These are people I called to come and help.”
Three vehicles came around the bend into the dirt yard. They parked beside Buzz’s patrol car. Men and women emerged, doors slamming shut. The women went to Nettie, consoling her. The men looked to Earl, who turned to his son. “Go with them.”
Buzz raised a hand. “Hang on, Earl. Who are all these people?”
“Friends,” Earl said. “They’re going to look for Kimi.”
“Okay,” Buzz said, “but I want everyone to just hold on a second.”
“Something has happened to her,” Earl said. “Go,” he said to élan.
élan grabbed a pair of boots from the steps and followed the men to their cars, which quickly departed.
“Why do you think something could have happened to her?” Buzz asked.
“Because of the protests.”
“The protests at the football games?”
The Stoneridge Sentinel and the more widely circulated Oregonian had covered the Yakama tribes’ protests against Stoneridge High School’s use of the name “Red Raiders” and its mascot—a white student wearing war paint and a feathered headdress, riding onto the field on a painted horse and burying a spear in the turf.
“Has somebody threatened you?” Buzz asked. “Or her?”
“It has been a source of unrest in the community. Kimi is my daughter. As an elder, I am a symbol of the protest.”
Buzz rubbed at the stubble of his chin. “I’m going to need a recent photograph and a physical description of Kimi, as well as a list of her closest friends.”
Earl nodded to the women, who went quickly into the double-wide. “My wife will provide you names and start calling Kimi’s friends.”
“You know the path your daughter walks home?” Buzz asked.
“Yes.”
“Let’s go back over it before the snow starts falling.”
They hurried to his patrol car and slid inside. Sensing Earl’s unease and thinking of his own children, Buzz said, “We’re going to find your daughter, Mr. Kanasket.”
Earl didn’t respond; he just stared out the windshield, into the darkness.
CHAPTER 1
Thursday, October 27, 2016
Seattle, Washington
Tracy Crosswhite had just emptied the bullets that remained in her Glock .40’s magazine, six shots at fifteen yards in less than ten seconds, when her cell phone buzzed. She holstered her weapon, slid off her ear protection, and checked caller ID. Her three students stared slack-jawed at the target. Each shot had been a center-mass hit within the target’s smallest-diameter circle.
“I have to take this,” she said, stepping away and speaking into the phone. “Tell me you’re calling because you miss me.”
“You must be a magnet for murders,” her sergeant, Billy Williams, said.
Lately it’d felt that way. Seemed every time Tracy and her partner, Kinsington Rowe, were the homicide team on call, someone got killed.
Billy explained that dispatch had received a 911 call about a shooting at a home in Greenwood at 5:39 that evening. Tracy checked her watch. Twenty-one minutes earlier. She’d house hunted in Greenwood, a middle-class neighborhood in north-central Seattle with a decidedly suburban feel.
“Single-family residence. One fatality,” Billy said.
“Domestic dispute?”
“Looks that way. The medical examiner and CSI are en route.”
“You reach Kins?”
“Not yet. But Faz and Del are both on their way.”
Vic Fazzio and Delmo Castigliano were the other two members of the Violent Crimes Section’s “A Team.” In this instance, they were also the next-up team for a homicide, which meant they’d be assisting with the legwork, if there was any. Most domestic disputes were grounders—easy plays. The wife killed the husband, or the husband killed the wife.
Tracy cut short the shooting lesson and jumped in the cab of her 1973 Ford F-150. The commute north on I-5 was even heavier than usual for a Thursday evening. It took her almost forty-five minutes to travel the roughly fifteen miles from the combat range.
When she approached the address, the emergency lights of multiple patrol units from the North Precinct lit up a single-story clapboard house. Two vans were parked at the curb—the medical examiner’s and the CSI’s—along with an ambulance. A large press contingent with their own trucks and vans had also descended; shootings in predominantly white middle-class neighborhoods always made the news. Thankfully, no helicopter hovered overhead, likely because a heavy cloud layer hinting at snow would have prevented much in the way of aerial footage. The cold temperatures hadn’t deterred the neighbors, however. They’d waded onto the sidewalk and into the street, mingling with the press behind black-and-yellow crime scene tape.
Tracy didn’t see Kins’s BMW yet, though he lived in Seattle, several miles closer to Greenwood than the combat range.
“Hail, hail, the gang’s all here,” Tracy said as she lowered her window and showed her badge to an officer on traffic control.
“Welcome to the party,” he said, letting her through.
She parked beside the CSI van. Chatter spilled from the police radios. She couldn’t count the number of uniformed and plainclothes officers on the lawn, mingling with investigators in black cargo pants and shirts with “CSI” across the back. The medical examiner was still inside with the body. Nobody could do anything until the ME finished.
Tracy greeted a female uniformed officer holding a clipboard with a scene log.
“This zoo belong to you, Tracy?” the officer asked.
Tracy had trained many of the female officers to shoot, but she didn’t recognize this one. Then again, she’d recently captured a serial killer known as “the Cowboy,” receiving the Seattle Police Department’s Medal of Valor for the second time in her career and making her a bit of a celebrity, especially to the younger officers.
“That’s what they’re telling me.” She scribbled her name and time of arrival on the log. “Are you the responding officer?”
The officer looked to a fire-engine-red front door. “No. He’s inside with your sergeant.”
Tracy considered the house. It appeared well kept, recently painted, and likely north of $350,000 in a seller’s market. The lawn smelled like newly laid sod, and the glow from landscape and porch lights revealed recently spread beauty bark in flower beds with hearty rosebushes and well-established rhododendrons. Divorce, Tracy thought. They were fixing up the property to sell. The dead body inside won’t help the asking price.