The captain sat at his desk, talking on the phone. He didn’t wave her in. He didn’t even acknowledge her. He just kept her standing in the doorway, like smog on his horizon. Nolasco said something about having the best outfield with both Mike Trout and Bryce Harper, and she deduced that he was discussing his fantasy baseball team. Fantasy football, March Madness, fantasy baseball—Nolasco played them all. Divorced twice, how else was he going to spend his time? God forbid he should let the murder of a young woman interrupt his make-believe life.
While waiting, Tracy checked her messages on her cell phone. Dan had texted to let her know he’d arrived at LAX and would be home by six. Tracy had never had anyone check in with her just to check in, and it felt comforting to know that Dan cared enough to do so. In the two years since they’d reconnected, Dan—a childhood friend—had never made her feel like an afterthought. She was always on his radar. She had typed a partial response that she would be late getting home when she heard Nolasco say, “Gotta go.” He hung up his phone and said, “What is it?” presumably to Tracy. She didn’t immediately acknowledge him. Instead, she finished texting Dan.
“Hey, I got things to do,” Nolasco said.
Tracy lowered her phone and stepped into the office. “Need to talk to you about the woman in the crab pot.”
Nolasco’s brow furrowed. “We got an ID?”
“We do and we don’t.”
“What does that mean?”
“We have a name, Lynn Hoff, but we think it’s an alias. We think she’s a ghost. We’re not finding anything on her in any of the systems. Kins and I took a drive out to her last known address—a motel in Kent. She was either getting ready to run or already on the run. We think someone cleaned up the place. No wallet. No cell. No computer.”
“So she was into something illegal.”
“Don’t know.”
Nolasco scowled. “How else would you explain it?”
“I can’t yet,” she said.
He leaned back from his desk. “Sometimes things are as they appear, and it appears she was either a hooker, a druggie, or had pissed off the wrong people.”
“Initial autopsy examination doesn’t indicate druggie, and why would someone go to the effort to stuff a hooker or druggie in a crab pot and dump her in Puget Sound?”
“Don’t get all crusader on me, Crosswhite. We get Jane Does all the time.”
“Not in crab pots.”
“Like I said, sounds like she pissed off the wrong people. She doesn’t come up in missing persons or nobody comes to identify her, the city will cremate her and six months from now she’ll get a decent burial out at Olivet. We have more pressing matters.”
Like fantasy baseball? Tracy wanted to say but refrained. “Fingerprints didn’t come up in the system,” she said, further evidence Lynn Hoff wasn’t a hooker or a druggie.
“Run her through missing persons. I’m betting she shows up.”
“Del’s doing it now. She also had surgery to alter her appearance.”
“A lot of women do. It’s called vanity.”
“Men too,” Tracy said. Rumor had it Nolasco’s two-week vacation to Maui had actually been a trip to a plastic surgeon. He had the wide-eyed look of the perpetually surprised. “This wasn’t cosmetic. This was reconstruction. She was changing her appearance.”
“How do you know that?”
“Funk found implants. That’s how we got a name. Her doctor said she provided little in the way of personal information and no family history, but she insisted that she get back all the before and after photographs. Del ran her through DOL and came up with a photograph, but no prior licenses, which seems odd given she’s twenty-three. I want to use the facial recognition software on DOL’s database and see if we can find any other matches. I need you to make it happen.”
Nolasco shook his head. “DOL won’t do it.”
“I know that’s the party line, but I’m hoping you can convince them. The woman is dead. It’s not like we’re invading her privacy.”
“ACLU says we can’t use it unless we suspect criminal activity.”
“We do suspect criminal activity. Someone killed her and stuffed her in a crab pot.”
“Let’s wait and see what Del finds before we go running off spending the budget.”
“Del’s not going to find her in missing persons. She wasn’t missing. She was hiding.”
“From who?”
“Whoever killed her.”
“Send the photo to vice. Have them show it around downtown and see if anyone on the street recognizes her. Sometimes good police work is about pounding the pavement, not just the keyboards.”
Tracy bit her tongue. “Thank you, Captain.” She turned for the door, got an idea, and turned back. “By the way, I heard Trout has a bad hamstring that could bother him most of the year.”
Nolasco looked up, initially puzzled by her comment and clearly not expecting it. Then his perpetually wide eyes widened further. “What would you know about it?”
“Me? Nothing. But Dan knows a guy on the Angels’ medical staff.”
As Tracy departed, Nolasco picked up his desk phone. She hoped Mike Trout hit three home runs that night.