Third Watch

  Third Watch

  * * *

  A Tracy Crosswhite Short Story

  By Robert Dugoni

  Copyright © 2015 by Robert Dugoni

  CONTENTS

  Third Watch: A Tracy Crosswhite Short Story

  Excerpt from Her Final Breath

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Belltown

  Seattle, Washington

  August 17, 2002

  Something changed when the temperature touched the 90s, almost as if the heat turned Seattle into a different city altogether. The heavy air seemed charged with an electric current that could spark with just the slightest provocation. If you listened, you could actually hear the air buzzing, like the beating wings of millions of unseen insects. The heat did something to the residents, particularly those who ventured out to the clubs, especially on a Friday night. People had less tolerance for each other, were more irritable and more easily provoked. It made for an explosive combination.

  That’s what Seattle Police Officer Tracy Crosswhite had been thinking when she left the station earlier that night to start her watch. She couldn’t attribute her theory to any scientific study, but after six years working patrol, she had a sizable test pool on which to base her analysis and support her conclusion. She’d found a similar phenomenon when the moon was full. Veteran officers had told her that the crazies came out with the full moon, that it possessed some of them to behave in a manner they otherwise wouldn’t. It wasn’t a full werewolf transformation, but personalities changed just the same.

  Tonight she was contending with both. Nearing midnight, the temperature continued to hover in the mid-80s after reaching a high of 92, and the moon shone full and bright over the Seattle skyline and cast the narrow alley behind the Belltown restaurants and clubs in a pale blue light.

  Tracy inched her patrol car down the alley, stopping to pivot the arm extension bolted to the side of her patrol car and rotate the high-powered beam of light across the brick-and-stucco walls, blue garbage bins, discarded pallets and cardboard boxes. An orange tabby startled, eyes momentarily aglow before it darted farther down the alley, seeking refuge in the shadows.

  Belltown was a mix of pool halls, cafes, chic boutiques, and thrift shops, as well as home to some of the city’s hottest new restaurants and trendiest nightclubs. It attracted the young business crowd from the increasing number of downtown high-rise condominiums and apartments, as well as local prostitutes and drug dealers looking to exploit that crowd’s nasty habits and too readily available funds.

  “We’ve stepped up patrols here after the stabbing two weeks ago,” Tracy said, directing the light over the alley a second time.

  Tevia Cushman sat in the passenger seat scribbling in her notebook, seeming to take down every word Tracy uttered. A freelance journalist, Cushman had arranged a ride-along as part of an article she was writing on women in the Seattle Police Department for Seattle Magazine. Tracy had initially declined the assignment when notified she’d been selected to serve as Cushman’s guide, but her precinct captain, George Decker, told her “no” was not an option.

  “The brass downtown wants you to do this,” Decker had said, and with good reason.

  SPD had taken a recent PR beating when a local television reporter, Maria Vanpelt, did an investigative piece “exposing” the department as a “good-old-boys network” in which female officers were routinely harassed, teased, and passed over for promotions. Tracy had declined Vanpelt’s request to be interviewed for that program, but other female officers had spoken to her on condition of anonymity. Nothing like a hack reporter quoting “anonymous sources” calling out their brethren to foster goodwill among the troops. Since the program had aired, the chill in the North Precinct toward female officers had been glacial.

  “I read about that. The computer programmer,” Cushman said. “He got jumped leaving a restaurant, didn’t he?”

  “Uh-huh.” Tracy inched the car further down the alley until the beam of light reached the exit to the street at the opposite end. “So he says.”

  “You don’t believe him,” Cushman said.

  Tracy shut off the light, folded in the arm extension, and looked over her shoulder to back out of the alley. “Not my place to believe him or not.”

  The computer programmer, Vincent Appalachio, had claimed two men jumped him as he walked from a restaurant to his car, but the restaurant Appalachio claimed to have visited that evening had no reservation in his name and no record of a credit card transaction. Appalachio later said he’d walked in without a reservation and paid cash for his meal, but he’d also claimed to have eaten a hamburger, which wasn’t on that evening’s menu, and nobody in the restaurant recalled seeing him. More likely, Appalachio had been jumped when he ventured into the alley with a wad of cash in search of his regular dealer. It happened all the time, just not as often to a seemingly upstanding resident of one of Seattle’s new downtown condominiums that City Hall had a vested interest in seeing fully occupied. Thus, the stepped-up police presence.

  Tonight the alley was clear, and it was likely to remain that way for a few more nights; the word of increased patrols had spread.

  Tracy backed out of the alley and drove west down Bell Street toward Seattle’s waterfront.

  “How many times will you come back?” Cushman asked. Slats of orange light from the overhead streetlamps flickered across her face and clothes. Tracy hadn’t asked but she guessed Cushman to be early-20s and of some Middle Eastern descent. She’d dressed for walking, which maybe was what she’d understood “patrol” to mean—jeans, sturdy ankle-high boots, her long dark hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. Multiple earrings dangled from both earlobes, and rings adorned each finger and both thumbs, though none was a wedding ring, as far as Tracy could tell.

  “Tonight, because it’s a Friday, I’ll come back two or three times. I try to keep it random so they can’t figure out a pattern.”

  “They do that?”

  “They know our routes and schedules as well as we do. Sometimes I’ll go back in 10 minutes. Sometimes I won’t go back until the end of my watch.”

  At 11:30, Tracy was four hours into her nine-hour shift. She’d get off at 4 a.m., unless she had paperwork to complete, like the night Appalachio had been stabbed. She’d been at the station until 7:30 a.m. and missed her workout, which she did routinely after her shift before drinking a protein shake and heading home to crash.

  “Do you know the drug dealers and prostitutes?” Cushman asked.

  “After six years, I better.”

  Cushman checked her notes. “You’ve worked your entire career on graveyard?”

  “It’s called Third Watch,” Tracy said, knowing what was coming next.

  “Do you think it has anything to do with the fact that you’re a woman?”

  Tracy smiled. Cushman was young. In time she’d learn to be more subtle, or devious. She wasn’t offended by the question, but she hadn’t taken the bait when Vanpelt dangled it in front of her, and she wasn’t about to take it now. Most of the public didn’t realize that the majority of female officers hated it when programs such as Vanpelt’s aired or when one of their fellow female officers filed a sexual harassment lawsuit. For one, not all the suits were legitimate, which only diminished the validity of those that were. The inherent problem was the suits were a tacit admission that men and women couldn’t work together on the force. It left everyone feeling uncomfortable, like freshmen at their first high school dance, uncertain how to approach the opposite sex.

  Tracy preferred to fight her own battles. One of her mentors when she joined the North Precinct had been a thick-skinned female sergeant who told Tracy of an incident in which an overweight male colleague asked her how she was going to wear
her utility belt when she was eight months pregnant. The sergeant looked at the man’s sizable gut and said, “The same way you do.”

  “I think it’s because I requested Third Watch,” Tracy said.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “There’s more going on at night. Day shift is boring. I like to keep busy. It makes the time go faster. Besides, other officers have families and the other watches are easier for them.”

  Cushman smiled. “Are you an adrenaline junkie?”

  Tracy held up her white Starbucks cup. “I wouldn’t be nursing this if I was.” She drank two, sometimes three cups during a shift. It could be hell on her stomach, but the breaks were a chance to catch up with other officers on Third Watch, though since Vanpelt’s story aired, Tracy had been frozen out of those get-togethers.

  “Does it impact your personal life?”

  Tracy made a left and drove down another side street. “What personal life?”

  “Do you think that’s because you work the night shift?”

  “Third Watch,” she corrected. “And no. I think it’s because I’m not out there looking for a relationship.”

  “I’d think you’d have guys hitting on you all the time.”

  Tracy did. At 5'10" with blonde hair and blue eyes, she’d inherited the best of her mother and father’s genes, and working out regularly helped her keep toned. Unfortunately, the guys who hit on her were either fellow cops (she was not about to bring her work home with her), prosecutors (ditto), or guys looking for a good lay but not much beyond that. She didn’t mind occasionally having some fun, but at 31 she wasn’t interested in being some guy’s morning water cooler story.

  “I’m holding out for a vampire,” she said.

  Cushman laughed and it had the sound of a young girl’s giggle. Tracy liked her. She hadn’t wanted to, but Cushman was down-to-earth and didn’t seem to have an ax to grind. Then again, you never knew until you read the article.

  “So is it hard to meet guys when you’re a cop?”

  Tracy drove south on Second Avenue. She had the window down, enjoying the warm air flowing into the car. Second Avenue was traditionally Belltown’s busiest block, with 10 bars crammed close together and another six within walking distance on the adjacent streets. Tonight the club revelers had spilled out onto the sidewalk, an eclectic mix of men and women varying in age from “fake-ID” to “get-a-life.” They wore equally varied wardrobes from business attire to baggy shorts and tennis shoes, or skimpy skirts, skimpier tops, and four-inch pumps that would make a prostitute envious. It had the look and feel of New Orleans during Mardi Gras. At least the bars didn’t stay open all night.

  Tracy looked for signs of the electric current about to spark—young men hyped on alcohol and fueled by raging testosterone, squaring up over something someone said, was perceived to have said, or didn’t say but should have said. Everyone appeared relaxed, content to smoke—ironic since they were likely giving their lungs a break from the perspiration-, cologne- and perfume-laden air—and check out the respective talent. They bobbed their heads to the heavy bass thumping from the open nightclub doors and windows. If this was the alternative to Tracy staying home with her cat, a good movie, and microwave popcorn, no thanks.

  “I’m not much for the whole bar-and-nightclub scene,” she said.

  “How do you spend your free time?”

  “Sleeping.”

  “Your captain indicated you were a high school chemistry teacher before you became a cop. He said you had a younger sister who was murdered. I did a little research, I hope you don’t mind.”

  Tracy had been expecting the subject to come up and no longer dreaded talking about it. She now saw it as an opportunity to educate others on the impact of a violent crime on a family and a community. “I’d have been disappointed in your journalistic skills if you hadn’t.”

  “Did that influence your decision to become a police officer?”

  Tracy took note of a group of men walking on the sidewalk and instinctively looked to see if any held car keys. She turned the corner, her intent to go around the block and make a second pass. “Have you ever known anyone who was the victim of a violent crime?”

  Cushman shook her head. “No one close to me.”

  “It changes things,” Tracy said. “It changes you.”

  “How?”

  Tracy sipped on her coffee while thinking about how best to explain what happened after she lost her sister, Sarah, on August 21, 1993. Tracy had been 22 at the time, Sarah just 18. They’d just finished a shooting competition in OIympia, and Ben, Tracy’s boyfriend and soon-to-be fiancé, picked her up with plans to take her to dinner and put a ring on her finger. Tracy let Sarah drive home alone. Sarah never arrived.

  “It’s like living in a bubble in which all your senses have been dulled. The world loses color; you see things in black and white and shades of gray. Food loses its taste and its smell. You don’t trust other people or their motives. And you begin to question everything about your own life and think you’re not doing enough, that you’re supposed to be doing something more, though you have no idea what that is.”

  “Did you become an officer because you wanted to do more?”

  Tracy thought of Sarah, and the man convicted of killing her, Edmund House. “Something like that.”

  “But you were teaching kids. Wasn’t that a noble enough calling?”

  “Absolutely. I still admire teachers a great deal.”

  “But it wasn’t enough?”

  “Like I said, you don’t know what you want. Nothing makes sense.”

  Cushman scribbled some additional notes, then flipped through her notebook. “So, do you want to do something besides patrol?”

  Vanpelt’s story included female officers’ complaints they’d been stuck on patrol for years with little hope of advancing their careers. There was some truth to the complaints, but Tracy knew male officers who’d worked patrol for just as long and were just as qualified. Still, after six years Tracy had to admit she hadn’t gotten far toward her own goal of becoming SPD’s first female homicide detective. In fact, if she was being honest, she hadn’t progressed at all. She’d been assigned to the North Precinct fresh out of the academy and had patrolled each of its sectors and beats on foot, on a bike, and in a car. Much as she hated to admit it, one of her academy instructor’s admonitions was turning out to be more prophetic than she’d hoped. Upon graduation, Johnny Nolasco told Tracy that the brass might have bent to pressure to recruit more female officers to work at the department, but that didn’t mean they’d be welcomed. Nolasco had predicted Tracy would be buried walking a beat, nothing more than a token to satisfy the watchdogs counting quotas. After three years, Tracy had applied for several detective positions—Burglary and Theft, the Anti-Crime team, Criminal Intelligence, Domestic Violence, Drug Enforcement—but so far she hadn’t even been interviewed. Maria Vanpelt’s story had been the perfect opportunity for Tracy to voice her complaints, but her father had warned her about airing dirty laundry in public. Tracy knew the repercussions of being a part of Vanpelt’s program far outweighed anything to be gained.

  Police officers had a way of policing their own.

  “I like being on the street,” she said. “I’ve never been much for a desk.”

  “Are you ever afraid out here?”

  “All the time. When you’re afraid you’re alert. When you’re alert you’re less likely to make a stupid mistake. The day I stop being afraid is the day I stop doing patrol.” The radio crackled. “Hang on.” She listened to central dispatch, pulled the mic from the clip, and said, “Ten-four. Three-S-3 responding.”

  The first charge of the evening had ignited.

  “Tighten your seatbelt,” she said to Cushman, making a right instead of a left. “You might get a good story tonight after all.”

  Chapter Two

  The woman stepped from the sidewalk into the street, waving her arms in the glow of the patrol car’s headlights. Heavy-set, s
he wore a white tank top with Oklahoma Sooners emblazoned in red across an ample chest; cutoff jean shorts; and flip-flops. Others stood in the apartment building parking lot, looking up at a unit on the second floor.

  When Tracy pulled to a stop, the woman raced around the hood to the driver’s window and bent down, rushing her words. “There was shouting and then it just went silent. It just got quiet. I’m afraid. I’m so afraid for her and her girls.”

  Tracy had requested further information from dispatch while en route to the Northgate Place Apartments. Dispatch indicated two prior reports of loud arguments from inside the same unit within the past month. The apartment was occupied by Alexey and Helene Gorshkov, recent immigrants from Russia, and their two daughters, ages six and four. On both occasions responding officers had been able to persuade the husband, Alexey, to leave the apartment and sleep somewhere other than a Seattle jail cell. There had been no indication of physical abuse or violence—none, at least, that Helene Gorshkov had been willing to admit.

  “Are you the person who called 9-1-1?” Tracy asked, adjusting her utility vest as she stepped out of the car.

  “I live in the apartment next door.”

  “How long ago did they stop arguing?” Tracy asked, speaking slow and calm.

  “Five minutes, maybe. Not even that. I don’t know. It was just before I came out here to wait for you. I heard him banging on the door. He came back.”

  “You’re talking about the husband?”

  “Alexey, but he goes by Alex.” The woman looked and sounded shaken.

  “What do you mean he came back? Came back from where?”

  “They separated. About a week ago. Helene told me. They’ve been fighting. He has a terrible temper, especially when he drinks. I’ve called before but you never arrest him. You just tell him to sleep somewhere else and he comes back in the morning. He finally moved out about a week ago but he goes to a bar, gets drunk, and comes back yelling and screaming. That’s his van over there.” She pointed to a white commercial van parked on the asphalt in front of the building. “I heard him pounding on the door and yelling.”