The Trapped Girl (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 4) Read online

  Praise for In The Clearing

  “Tracy displays ingenuity and bravery as she strives to figure out who killed Kimi.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Dugoni’s third ‘Tracy Crosswhite’ novel (after Her Final Breath) continues his series’s standard of excellence with superb plotting and skillful balancing of the two story lines.”

  —Library Journal, starred review

  “Dugoni has become one of the best crime novelists in the business, and his latest featuring Seattle homicide detective Tracy Crosswhite will only draw more accolades.”

  —Romantic Times, Top Pick

  “Robert Dugoni tops himself in the darkly brilliant and mesmerizing In the Clearing, an ironically apt title for a tale in which nothing at all is clear.”

  —Providence Journal

  Praise for Her Final Breath

  “A stunningly suspenseful exercise in terror that hits every note at the perfect pitch.”

  —Providence Journal

  “Absorbing . . . Dugoni expertly ratchets up the suspense as Crosswhite becomes a target herself.”

  —Seattle Times

  “Dugoni does a masterful job with this entertaining novel, as he has done in all his prior works. If you are not already reading his books, you should be!”

  —Bookreporter

  “Takes the stock items and reinvents them with crafty plotting and high energy . . . The revelations come in a wild finale.”

  —Booklist

  “Another stellar story featuring homicide detective Tracy Crosswhite . . . Crosswhite is a sympathetic, well-drawn protagonist, and her next adventure can’t come fast enough.”

  —Library Journal, starred review

  Praise for My Sister’s Grave

  “One of the best books I’ll read this year.”

  —Lisa Gardner, bestselling author of Touch & Go

  “Dugoni does a superior job of positioning [the plot elements] for maximum impact, especially in a climactic scene set in an abandoned mine during a blizzard.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Yes, a conspiracy is revealed, but it’s an unexpected one, as moving as it is startling . . . The ending is violent, suspenseful, even touching. A nice surprise for thriller fans.”

  —Booklist

  “Combines the best of a police procedural with a legal thriller, and the end result is outstanding . . . Dugoni continues to deliver emotional and gut-wrenching, character-driven suspense stories that will resonate with any fan of the thriller genre.”

  —Library Journal, starred review

  “Well written, and its classic premise is sure to absorb legal-thriller fans . . . The characters are richly detailed and true to life, and the ending is sure to please fans.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “My Sister’s Grave is a chilling portrait shaded in neo-noir, as if someone had taken a knife to a Norman Rockwell painting by casting small-town America as the place where bad guys blend into the landscape, establishing Dugoni as a force to be reckoned with outside the courtroom as well as in.”

  —Providence Journal

  “What starts out as a sturdy police procedural morphs into a gripping legal thriller . . . Dugoni is a superb storyteller, and his courtroom drama shines . . . This ‘Grave’ is one to get lost in.”

  —Boston Globe

  ALSO BY ROBERT DUGONI

  Damage Control

  The 7th Canon

  The Tracy Crosswhite Series

  My Sister’s Grave

  Her Final Breath

  In the Clearing

  The Academy (a short story)

  Third Watch (a short story)

  The David Sloane Series

  The Jury Master

  Wrongful Death

  Bodily Harm

  Murder One

  The Conviction

  Nonfiction with Joseph Hilldorfer

  The Cyanide Canary

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2017 by Robert Dugoni

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503940406

  ISBN-10: 1503940403

  Cover design by David Drummond

  First edition

  To Dr. Joe Doucette.

  Words can’t describe how grateful I am for your time, expertise, and guidance. See you at ninety.

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Even a dog knows the difference between being stumbled over and being kicked.

  Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  CHAPTER 1

  Seattle, Washington

  Saturday, June 24, 2017

  Kurt Schill dragged his fourteen-foot aluminum boat across the beach logs he’d set to minimize the scraping of the hull against the rocks. He wanted to protect his recent investment, but he really wanted to avoid a confrontation with the residents living in the condominiums and apartments bordering the narrow access to Puget Sound. At four thirty in the morning, they would not take kindly to having their peace disrupted. If they bitched to the police about Schill launching his boat from what was strictly a walking path, he would have little to say in his defense. The posted signs were frequent and explicit.

  Schill entered the water to steady the boat and felt the chill of the forty-six-degree Puget Sound through his rubber boots. He gave the boat a shove and leapt in, banging his knee hard, the boat rocking and rolling until he’d adjusted his weight on the center seat. The V-shaped hull felt more stable than his fiberglass boat, which was difficult to maneuver when the water got rough. He’d have to wait until he got a bit farther away, though, before he fired up the six-horsepower Honda engine and got the real feel.

  He slid the wooden oars into the rowlocks and rowed from shore, silent but for the splash of the blades and the click of the oarlock with each stroke. The aluminum hull glided across the pitch-black waters. One more thing he was digging about the new rig. He’d saved his money and bought it off a guy on craigslist for two grand—boat and trailer. It was more than the $1,500 he
’d budgeted—his father had helped him out, though he’d have to pay back that money. He figured he could save by avoiding boat launch fees at the local marinas and by hauling in more crab. Fish and Game put a limit of five Dungeness per person, but Schill wasn’t about to throw any keepers back, not with his restaurant contacts paying cash under the table.

  He rowed in the direction of Blake Island, a black hump rising out of the water, though dwarfed by the shadowy presence of the significantly larger islands behind it—Bainbridge and Vashon. To the north, the lights of the eastbound Bremerton ferry inching toward Seattle made it look like an illuminated water bug. Perspiration trickled down his chest and back beneath his waders and life vest, and Schill was thankful for the light breeze blowing cool on his neck.

  Several hundred yards offshore, he shipped the oars and moved to the rear of the boat. He hooked the kill-switch to his life vest, squeezed the ball on the fuel line three times to pump gas to the engine, adjusted the choke, and pulled the rip cord. The engine cranked, sputtered, and died. He made sure the gear was in neutral and the throttle on the tiller twisted to the turtle, and pulled again. The engine chugged and sputtered. Then it kicked to life.

  Legally, only the Native American tribes could crab this early in the season, and the fine if you got caught was steep, but Schill had found a sweet honey hole at the end of last year’s run, and he was eager to find out if it was still producing. To avoid detection, he set his pots after sundown and retrieved them before sunrise. Still, there were risks. Running without a light increased his chance of being hit by another boat or hitting a log floating on the water. Either would ruin your day, big time.

  Schill turned the tiller hard to the right, and the bow swung sharply. In no time, the hull was cutting across the surface, leaving a V-shaped wake. Sweet!

  As he neared his honey hole, he eased back on the throttle, slowing, and searched the shoreline for the split tree, his landmark. Spotting it, he flipped the engine into neutral and scanned the surface of the water for a conical-shaped shadow, his red-and-white buoy. He felt anxious when he didn’t see it; tribal members took gear that infringed on their fishing rights.

  Retrieving the flashlight from beneath his seat, he skimmed the light across the surface. On the third pass, he spotted his buoy, bobbing up and down in the waves. Relieved, he motored to it, grabbed the ring, and took up the slack in the rope until he felt the weight of the crab pot. He looped the rope onto the block wheel at the end of the davit pole—another perk he didn’t have on his smaller, fiberglass boat—and continued pulling in line, coiling it at his feet.

  “Crab time,” he said.

  He’d become pretty good at estimating his haul from the weight of the pot. It wasn’t foolproof; he’d brought up heavy pots only to find them filled with sunflower stars, flounder, and rockfish. This pot felt heavier than any he’d ever pulled up, and his shoulders soon burned. He had to tie off the rope to give his arms a break.

  “Damn,” he said, feeling that familiar flutter of anticipation in his stomach.

  He braced the soles of his rubber boots against the side of the hull, untied the rope, and immediately felt the weight of the cage. The boat listed, starboard side, the davit pole tipping down toward the water. Schill estimated he’d pulled in sixty feet of line, which still left about twenty feet to go. Something didn’t seem right though; the rope was not perpendicular to the water, but angled at forty-five degrees, which usually indicated a snag.

  Whatever it was, it was coming up first, his basket somewhere beneath it. That worried him. If he’d snagged a big bed of seaweed, or a lost boat anchor, and had to cut it free, he could end up cutting his rope and losing his pot. Good-bye, profit margins.

  He gave another pull, the muscles of his thighs, arms, and shoulders now all burning. Sweat trickled down his forehead into his eyes and he shook it away. Finally, a crab pot broke the water’s surface. Though hard to see, it appeared rectangular. His pot was an octagon. Either his line had become entangled with the line of a pot set close by, or he’d snagged a rogue pot.

  He tied off the rope and carefully slid across the bench seat. The davit pole lowered another six inches. Reaching carefully for the rope, afraid he might tip the boat over, he grabbed it and dragged the pot close enough to reach the cage, holding it close. With his free hand, he retrieved the flashlight and directed the beam over the contents.

  The pot looked full, but with what?

  He saw seaweed and starfish, but also a few crabs scurrying about, feeding.

  Then he saw the hand.

  CHAPTER 2

  Tracy Crosswhite parked her Ford F-150 facing north on Beach Drive SW, pulled her blonde hair into a ponytail, and quickly wrapped it in a hair tie. She didn’t wear a ponytail often anymore. At forty-three, she didn’t want to come off as one of those women still trying to look a perky twenty-three, but at this hour of the morning, she didn’t feel perky and didn’t much care what she looked like. She hadn’t showered, and she hadn’t bothered to put on any makeup.

  She opened the notepad app on her cell phone and scrolled to just below her first entry. She’d dictated the time she’d received the call from Billy Williams, her detective sergeant at the Seattle Police Department’s Violent Crimes Section. She hit the microphone button and said, “Time: 5:45 a.m. Parked on Beach Drive SW near Cormorant Cove.”

  Williams had called roughly twenty minutes earlier. Dispatch had received a 911 call about a body in Puget Sound, and the skull of death hung from Tracy’s cubicle—literally a fake skull the detectives hung on the cubicle of the homicide team on call, in this case, Tracy and her partner, Kinsington Rowe.

  Williams had said he was still gathering facts, but someone had reported finding the body near Cormorant Cove, which was just a few miles from Tracy’s rented home in West Seattle’s Admiral District. She’d beat everyone to the scene except the responding officers. Their patrol cars sat parked across the street facing the opposite direction.

  Tracy stepped down from the truck’s cab. A slice of the fading moon in a pale-blue sky grinned at her. The temperature, already pleasant, meant another day of unpleasant heat. With six days above ninety degrees, this June was shaping up to be the hottest on record.

  Tracy dictated another note. “Weather is clear, no appreciable wind.” She checked the weather app on her phone and said, “Fifty-three degrees in West Seattle.”

  A Saturday morning, the beaches and elevated sidewalk would soon be teeming with dog walkers, joggers, and families out for a stroll. Encountering a dead body on the beach would put a real damper on the start to their weekend.

  She grabbed her SPD ball cap, threaded her ponytail through the gap for adjusting the size, and tugged the bill low on her forehead. Next came the 50-SPF sunscreen, which she rubbed on her arms, neck, chest, and face. She’d had a scare two months earlier when her doctor noticed a discoloration near her collarbone during a routine exam. A subsequent trip to the dermatologist revealed skin damage, but no cancer. The joys of getting older—crow’s-feet, belly fat, and applying sunscreen before going outside.

  She jaywalked to the three black-and-whites—two sedans and an SUV—parked in front of the Harbor West apartment complex. Built on pilings and piers pounded deep into the mud, the complex extended out over the Sound and gave new meaning to the term “living on the water.” No thanks. One sizable earthquake could snap one of those wood beams. Then again, her home was perched on a two-hundred-foot hillside. When you chose view over practicalities, you picked your poison, though this view was spectacular. Vashon and Bainbridge Islands, and the much smaller Blake Island, created the picturesque backdrop that warranted the exorbitant rents and condominium prices along Beach Drive SW.

  Three uniformed officers on a footpath watched Tracy’s approach from behind black-and-yellow crime scene tape. Tracy didn’t bother showing them her shield. Even without the branding on her windbreaker and ball cap, after more than twenty years, she knew she’d acquired a cop’s self-as
sured gait and demeanor.

  “Tracy,” a female officer said.

  She also remained Seattle’s only female homicide detective, and she’d recently received her second Medal of Valor for a high-profile investigation and capture of a serial killer known as “the Cowboy.” Frankly, she could have done without the attention. She and her partner, Kins, had heard the whispers around Police Headquarters about how they always seemed to be the team on call when the department got a “whodunit.” The insinuation that their captain, Johnny Nolasco, was feeding them cases was more than absurd. Tracy and Nolasco got along worse than those women on the Housewives of Wherever television shows.

  “Katie,” Tracy said.

  Katie Pryor worked out of the Southwest Precinct. She was one of many officers Tracy had trained to shoot to pass her qualifying exam.

  “How are you?” Pryor asked.

  “I could use more sleep,” Tracy said. Instinctively, she was already considering the area as a whole. She noted beach logs leading to the water, and a young man standing beside a beached aluminum fishing boat. A taut rope extended eight to ten feet off the back of the boat, then plunged into the blue-gray water. Tracy questioned why a beached boat would need an anchor.

  “I take it that’s the guy who reported finding the body?”

  Pryor looked over her shoulder. “His name’s Kurt Schill.”

  Tracy shifted her gaze up and down the rocky beach, which was strewn with bleached-white logs. “So where is it?”

  Pryor said, “I’ll walk you in.”

  Tracy scribbled her name on the sign-in sheet and ducked beneath the tape. Pryor handed the clipboard to one of the two remaining officers.

  Tracy noticed people starting to linger on the beach and turned to the other officers. “Move everyone off the beach and onto the elevated sidewalk. Tell them the beach is going to be closed most of the day. And find out if anybody saw anything or knows anything.” She surveyed Beach Drive, spotting a blue truck with a boat trailer. “After you move them, write down the license plate numbers of every car parked along Beach Drive to Sixty-First Avenue and back down Spokane Street.” She knew the three streets intersected, creating a scalene triangle with Beach Drive SW making up the longest side. It was not unheard of for a killer, if they were dealing with a murder, to come back to the crime scene and watch the investigation unfold.