Tracy watched Faz spike his fork in the Tupperware bowl on his desk and struggle out of his desk chair as soon as he spotted her and Kins returning. Ordinarily, Faz was like a dog with a bone when it came to Vera’s leftovers. He did not forsake them without good reason. It meant he had something of interest to tell them.
“You speak to the bank?” she said over the sound of indeterminable voices from the other three bull pens. She set her purse on her chair, smelling the garlic from Vera’s cooking, knowing the smell would linger all day.
“Lynn Hoff told the branch manager she worked for an outdoor apparel company and would be making regular cash deposits,” Faz said. “She also opened a personal account and deposited over $500,000. Said it was an injury settlement. For the next several weeks she made daily deposits into and withdrawals out of the business account that correspond with the withdrawals from her personal account.”
Kins smiled at Tracy. “Looks like we found her trust funds.”
“She was washing them,” Faz said. “Probably moving the money out of the country.”
“I assume the hubby knew about the trust?” Del said from his cubicle. “Makes for a hell of a motive if he did.”
“No doubt,” Kins said.
“But that’s not the news,” Faz said, looking and sounding like a man with a secret. “The news is someone emptied the accounts first thing Monday morning—after Schill pulled her body up in the pot.”
Kins glanced at Tracy before turning back to Faz. “How could someone even do that?”
“You have to be physically present to open an account,” Faz explained. “Not to close it. Whoever did it, they did it online. But that means they had to know the bank, the names on the accounts, and the passwords.”
Tracy looked to Kins. Everything was coming together, and it was all pointing to Graham Strickland. “The husband?”
“Devin Chambers?” Kins said.
“Who’s Devin Chambers?” Faz asked.
“Andrea Strickland’s friend,” Tracy said. “We’re going to need to run her down.”
“Can we find the money, where it went?” Kins asked.
“I got the fraud unit looking into it,” Faz said, “but I’m betting the person immediately routed the money out of the country to a quaint little bank that doesn’t ask a lot of information.”
“If the person knew what they were doing,” Tracy said, wondering how they could prove that person was Graham Strickland. Computer records? Phone records?
“Based on what I’ve seen so far, they did,” Faz said. “At least she did when she was still alive. If it hadn’t been for the timing of the withdrawals, I would have said it was her, that she’d thought this whole thing through.”
“Except the part about her getting killed,” Del said.
“Yeah, well,” Faz said.
Johnny Nolasco walked into their bull pen. His appearance had the same effect as a parent walking into a room full of teenagers. Everyone stopped talking. He looked to Tracy. “I didn’t get a statement for the brass or the PIO,” he said.
“We had interviews early this morning down in Portland.”
“I could have saved you the drive,” Nolasco said. “Pierce County Prosecutor is reasserting jurisdiction.”
“What?” Tracy said, thinking they were just making progress and now Pierce County was going to pull the case back?
“Call came in about an hour ago.”
“Who made that decision?” Tracy asked.
“Someone higher up the food chain than me.”
“What was their rationale?” Kins asked.
“They have an open investigation and they’re farther down the path.”
“They had a missing persons case,” Tracy said. “This is a homicide—in our jurisdiction.”
“That’s not how they see it. The way they see it, the husband was the prime suspect and remains the prime suspect.”
“And they did virtually nothing to prove it. The body was found in our jurisdiction,” Tracy said. “Why the hell should we give it back to them?”
“The body was found with a bullet in the back of her head, which means it could have been a body dump,” Nolasco said, referring to cases in which the person is killed in one jurisdiction but the body dumped and found in another.
Tracy seethed, suspecting that SPD—Nolasco—had not fought for jurisdiction. The police department in the jurisdiction where a body was dumped was often more than happy to give it up, especially if it appeared that the case would be difficult to solve and would go on the department’s books as an unsolved homicide. “Who cares? It was dumped in our jurisdiction. We have it and we’re working it.”
“At the very least it should be a joint investigation,” Kins said.
“Come on, Sparrow,” Nolasco said. “She was a resident of Portland and she disappeared in Pierce County. Whatever information exists on the victim is going to most likely be in their jurisdiction.”
“This is such bullshit,” Tracy said. “She didn’t disappear in Pierce County. She was pulled up in a crab pot in King County.”