She ascended three steps and ducked under red crime scene tape stretched taut across the entry. Inside, Billy Williams talked with a uniformed officer in a simple but well-maintained front room. A conical crystal sculpture lay on the dark bamboo flooring that flowed between two square pillars meant to differentiate the living room from the dining area and open kitchen. The walls looked freshly painted, the color choices—soft blues and hunter greens—something out of a home-improvement magazine.
Paramedics were attending to a brunette woman seated on a dark-blue leather couch. She was grimacing and pointing to her ribs. She also had a bandage wrapped around her head, and the left side of her face appeared swollen, with a small cut near the corner of her mouth. Tracy estimated her to be midforties to early fifties. Beside her sat a young man in the awkward throes of puberty—hair unkempt, lanky arms protruding from a size-too-small T-shirt, and pipe-cleaner-thin legs poking out from baggy cargo shorts. He had his head down, staring at the floor, but Tracy could see the left side of his face was a splotchy red. Both the woman and the young man were barefoot.
“That’s Angela Collins and her son, Connor,” Billy said, keeping his voice low. Billy resembled the actor Samuel L. Jackson, right down to the soul patch just beneath his lower lip and the knit driving caps he favored, this one plaid. “Her estranged husband is in a bedroom down the hall with a bullet in his back.”
Tracy looked down a narrow hall to a room at the end where several members of the medical examiner’s office milled about. A pair of black dress shoes and suit pants were visible to midthigh. The rest of the body was hidden behind the door fame and wall.
Tracy tilted her head toward Angela Collins. “What’s she saying?”
“She said she shot him,” Billy said, giving a nod to the officer.
Tracy turned to the officer. “She confessed?”
“To me and my partner,” the officer said. “Then she asked for the words and sat down. Her lawyer is apparently on the way.”
“She called her lawyer?” Tracy asked.
“Apparently,” the officer said. “I heard her talking to the paramedics. She said her husband hit her with that thing.” He pointed to the sculpture on the floor.
“But did she specifically say she shot him?”
“Absolutely. To me and my partner.”
“And you read her Miranda rights to her?”
“She signed the card.”
“Where’s the gun?” Tracy asked.
The officer pointed down the hall. “On the bed. A .38 Colt Defender.”
“You didn’t secure it?”
“No need. She was just sitting right there, waiting for us with the door open.”
“What’s the kid saying?” Tracy asked.
“Not a word.”
Kins ducked under the tape, slightly out of breath. “Hey.”
“Where were you?” Billy asked, eyeing Kins’s suit and dress shirt, absent a tie.
“Sorry. Didn’t hear my phone. What do we got?”
“Looks like a grounder,” Tracy said.
“That’d be nice,” Kins said.
Billy explained the situation to Kins. Then he said, “I’ll have Faz and Del start with the neighbors, find out if anyone saw or heard anything tonight or in the past. And let’s make sure we fingerprint that thing.” He pointed to the sculpture.
“Detectives?” The female police officer who’d greeted Tracy on the sidewalk spoke from behind the red tape. “There’s a man at the curb, says he’s the woman’s lawyer. He’s asking to speak to her.”
“I’ll handle it,” Tracy said. She ducked under the tape and stepped back onto the porch but stopped when she saw Atticus Berkshire, counselor at law, standing at the curb. “Damn.”
Many of the cops and prosecutors in King County had had the unpleasant experience of encountering Atticus Berkshire. Those who hadn’t certainly knew of him. A notorious defense attorney, when Berkshire wasn’t fighting to get his clients off criminal charges, he was suing the police department for violations of those clients’ civil rights, or for police brutality. He’d hit the city for several large and well-publicized verdicts. Urban myth among SPD was that Berkshire’s mother had named him after the lawyer in To Kill a Mockingbird, thereby condemning him to become a criminal defense lawyer the same way parents condemned their sons named Storm to become weathermen.
“Detective Crosswhite,” Berkshire said before Tracy had made it halfway down the sidewalk. “I want to speak to my daughter.”
That bit of information gave Tracy pause. Recovering, she said, “That’s not going to happen for a while, Counselor. You know that.”
“I’ve instructed her not to say a word.”
Tracy raised her hands, palms up. “For the most part, she’s listening.”
“What do you mean, ‘for the most part’?”
“She said she shot him. Then she asked for her Miranda rights.”
“That’s not admissible.”
“We’ll let the judge decide that.” Tracy couldn’t see how a judge would exclude the statement, since Angela Collins had said it while still under stress from a startling event, making it an “excited utterance,” but she’d let the lawyers fight that battle.
“What about Connor?” Berkshire said.
“The boy? He’s not saying anything either.”
“I meant, may I see him?”
“Not until after we speak to him,” Tracy said.
In court, Berkshire was easy to dislike, with his expensive Italian suits, tasseled loafers, and obnoxious demeanor. He wore down prosecutors and judges with tactics that straddled the line between unethical and dirtbag, but he was even more infamous for his bombastic rants against injustice and prejudice. They worked more often than they should have, but Berkshire had the benefit of preaching his nonsense to liberal Seattleites. Tonight, however, there was a thin glimmer of vulnerability to him—dressed in jeans, his hair not perfectly coiffed, his daughter and grandson part of a crime scene. Tracy almost felt sympathy for him.
“I’ve instructed him not to speak with you either,” he said.
And then it was gone. “Then it will be a short conversation.”
Berkshire grimaced, a facial expression not ordinarily in his trial lawyer’s repertoire. “What would you do if it was your daughter and grandson?”
“What would you do if it was your investigation, and you were a homicide detective?”
Berkshire nodded.
“I assume your daughter and son-in-law are divorced?” she said.
“In the process.”
“And it’s gotten ugly?”
“I won’t answer that.”
“It’s going to be a long night. You might want to wait at home.”
“I’ll wait right here.”
Tracy left him on the sidewalk. A senior prosecutor from the county’s Most Dangerous Offender Project would be coming, since MDOP responded to every homicide scene in King County. He or she could deal with Berkshire.
Inside, Kins was walking back from the bedroom. “You talk to the lawyer?”
“Atticus Berkshire,” she said.
“Shit.”
“It gets worse. Angela Collins is his daughter.”
“No,” Billy said.
“I think our grounder just took a bad hop,” Kins said.
CHAPTER 2