“But you said you didn’t find any prepaid credit cards or cell phone,” Del said to Tracy and Kins.
“Didn’t even find a wallet,” Kins said. “She paid cash for the surgery and a month’s rent. Close to seven grand.”
“Where’s she getting that kind of money?” Del asked.
“Don’t know yet.”
“Someone could have whacked her and cleaned up the motel room,” Faz said. “They certainly didn’t intend for her body to ever be found.”
“Whacked her?” Del said to Kins while jabbing a thumb toward Faz. “He thinks he’s Michael Corleone.”
Tracy turned to Kins. “What about running her photograph through facial recognition software, see if we find a license under a different name?”
“How’re you going to get the DOL to authorize that?” Kins said.
After a $1.6 million investment, SPD had the facial recognition software and staff trained to use it, but the Seattle City Council had only approved its use to go through jail-booking mug shots. The DOL had the most comprehensive database of photographs of Washington residents, but the powers that be would not allow SPD to use that database to hunt down criminals because an ACLU lawyer had argued it could invade John Q. Citizen’s personal privacy rights. Yeah, better to let the criminal kill John Q. Citizen than learn how tall he was, or how overweight. And God forbid they determine the identity of a dead person so they could advise their next of kin.
“Maybe they’ll make an exception,” Tracy said. “She’s dead.”
“A government bureaucrat willing to think outside the box for the greater cause,” Del said. “Good luck with that! While you’re waiting for them to say no, I’ll do things the old-fashioned way and take a look through the missing persons database.”
“Let’s at least take the photo back to the condominiums and show it around the marinas,” Tracy said.
“We can do that,” Faz said.
“CSI is processing the motel room, so there could be another list of names to go through when we get the report from Latents,” Tracy said, growing more frustrated. “Screw this. I’m going to ask Nolasco to push the DOL on the facial recognition. The woman is dead. Whose privacy are we invading?”
“Can I get an amen?” Faz said, shaking his hands in the air.
Del obliged him without looking up.
“You want me to come with?” Kins asked.
Tracy only briefly considered his offer. If Nolasco was going to turn her down, it wouldn’t matter if Kins was with her or not. Kins’s offer had more to do with chivalry, like Sherlock walking her to the door in the morning. Tracy and Nolasco’s volatile history dated to the police academy, when she’d stood up for a female recruit during a pat-down demonstration. Nolasco had ended up with a broken nose and singing soprano from a well-placed elbow and knee. More recently, Tracy had inadvertently exposed Nolasco and his former homicide partner, Floyd Hattie, for their somewhat questionable investigation techniques when she discovered one of their cold cases in her search for other possible victims of the Cowboy. That had sparked a full-blown investigation by the Office of Professional Accountability. Hattie, long retired, fell on his sword, and Nolasco, snake that he was, had managed to slither away with only a written reprimand.
“No,” she said. “If he’s going to turn me down, it won’t matter whether you’re there to see him do it or not.”
“Maybe we get lucky and somebody recognizes her,” Kins said. “She had to come from somewhere, right?”
“Unless she hatched,” Faz said.
Tracy left the bull pen and walked the hallway between the inner offices and the outer glass walls that provided glimpses of Elliott Bay between the high-rise buildings. A haze hovered over Seattle and a thin red line extended across the horizon. Smog. It seemed as unfathomable as a drought in the Emerald City, but there it hung, where it couldn’t be ignored. She stepped into Nolasco’s office with a short rap on his open door.