My Sister's Grave (21 page)

Dan leaned the baseball bat against the side of the reception desk. Thirty years earlier, Edmund House had been convicted on a charge of sex with a minor and served a six-year sentence. George Bovine had testified during the sentencing phase of House’s trial, after his conviction for the murder of Sarah Crosswhite. “What are you doing here at this time of night?”

“I drove from Eureka.”

“California?”

Bovine nodded. Soft-spoken, he looked to be in his late sixties, with a gray, close-cropped beard and studious tortoiseshell glasses. He wore a maroon golf cap and a V-neck sweater beneath a jacket.

“Why?”

“Because this is a matter to be handled in person. I intended to try to see you tomorrow morning. I only stopped by to make sure I had the correct address, and saw the lights in the window. The door to the building was unlocked, and when I came upstairs, I noticed the lights that I’d seen from the street were coming from your suite.”

“Fair enough, but it doesn’t answer my question. Why did you drive all this way, Mr. Bovine?”

“Sheriff Calloway called me. He says you’re attempting to secure a new trial for Edmund House.”

Dan began to understand where this was headed, though he was surprised Bovine had been so forthright. “How do you know the Sheriff?”

“I testified at Edmund House’s sentencing.”

“I know. I’ve read the transcript. Did Sheriff Calloway ask you to convince me not to represent Mr. House?”

“No. He simply told me you were seeking a new trial. I’ve come on my own.”

“You understand why I have trouble believing that.”

“All I ask is for a chance to speak with you. I’ll say my piece. I won’t say it twice. Then I’ll leave you be.”

Dan considered the request. He was skeptical, but Bovine sounded sincere. He’d also just driven eight hours and not tried to hide the purpose for his visit. “You understand I have a confidential relationship with my client.”

“I understand, Mr. O’Leary. I’m not interested in what Edmund House has to say.”

O’Leary nodded. “My office is in the back.” He snapped his fingers and the two dogs turned and sped down the hall. Inside Dan’s office, they retook their spots on the throw rug but remained upright and alert, ears perked.

Bovine removed his jacket, still glistening with drops of rain, and hung it on the rarely used coatrack near the door. “They’re awfully large, aren’t they?”

“You should see my food bill,” Dan said. “Can I offer you a cup of stale coffee?”

“Yes, please. It’s been a long drive.”

“How do you take it?”

“Black,” Bovine said.

Dan poured a cup and handed him a mug and the two men settled into chairs at the table beneath the window overlooking Market Street. When Bovine raised his mug to take a sip of coffee, Dan noticed a tremor in his hand. Outside the window, the rain sheeted across the sky and beat hard on the flat roof, pinging as it funneled through the gutters and downspouts. Bovine lowered his mug and reached into his back pocket to remove his wallet. His hands shook even more as he struggled to pull photographs from their plastic slips, and Dan wondered if perhaps he had Parkinson’s disease. Bovine set one of the photographs on the table. “This is Annabelle.”

His daughter looked to be in her early twenties, with straight dark hair and skin lighter than her father’s. Her blue eyes also indicated a mixed-race heritage. But it was not the color of Annabelle Bovine’s skin or her eyes that caught Dan’s attention. It was her utterly flat expression. She looked like a cardboard cutout.

“You’ll notice the scar descending from her eyebrow.”

A thin line, barely detectable, curved from Annabelle’s eyebrow to her jaw in the shape of a sickle.

“Edmund House told the police he and my daughter had consensual sex.” Bovine placed a second photograph beside the first. The young girl in it was almost unrecognizable, her left eye swollen shut, the cut on her face caked in blood. Dan knew from Tracy’s file that House had raped Bovine when she was sixteen. Bovine started to lift his mug but his shakes had become more pronounced and he lowered it back to the table. Then he closed his eyes and took several measured breaths.

Dan gave the man a moment before he said, “I don’t know what to say, Mr. Bovine.”

“He hit her with a shovel, Mr. O’Leary.” He paused again and took another breath, but this time it was sharp and rattled in his chest. “You see, Edmund House was not content to just rape my daughter. He wanted to hurt her, and he would have continued to hurt her had she not found the will to escape.”

Bovine’s face inched into a resigned grimace. He removed his glasses, wiping the lenses with a red handkerchief. “Six years. Six years for ruining a young woman’s life because someone made a mistake gathering the evidence. Annabelle was a bright, outgoing young woman. We had to move; the memories were too horrific. Annabelle never returned to school. She cannot work. We live on a quiet street not far from the water in a quiet town with little crime. It’s peaceful there. And every night we deadbolt our doors and check every window. It’s our routine. Then we climb in bed and we wait. My wife and I wait for her screams. They call it Rape Trauma Syndrome. Edmund House served six years. We’ve served nearly thirty.”

Dan recalled similar testimony from the sentencing transcript, but hearing a father’s anguish brought the impact home. “I’m sorry. No one should have to live that way.”

Bovine’s mouth pinched. “But someone will, Mr. O’Leary, if you do what they say you’re attempting to do.”

“Sheriff Calloway shouldn’t have called you, Mr. Bovine. It isn’t fair to either of us. I don’t mean to in any way diminish what happened to your daughter or your family
—
”

Bovine raised a hand but did so in the same understated manner that he spoke. “You’re going to tell me that Edmund House was a young man when he raped my daughter, that it occurred nearly thirty years ago, that people can change.” The thin-lipped, ironic smile returned. “Let me save you the trouble.” Bovine looked to Sherlock and Rex. “Edmund House is not like your dogs. He cannot be trained. And he cannot be called off.”

“But he does deserve a fair trial, just like everyone else.”

“But he’s not like everyone else, Mr. O’Leary. Prison is the only place for violent men like Edmund House. And make no mistake. Edmund House is a very violent man.” Bovine quietly picked up the photographs and slipped them back in his wallet. “I said my piece. I won’t take up any more of your time.” He stood and retrieved his jacket. “Thank you for the coffee.”

“You have a place to stay?” Dan asked.

“I’ve made arrangements.”

Dan walked George Bovine back to the reception area. Bovine pulled open the door but looked back again at Rex and Sherlock. “Tell me, would they have bitten me if you hadn’t called them off?”

Dan petted them about their heads. “Their size is intimidating, but their bark is worse than their bite.”

“But still very much capable of causing damage, I’d imagine,” Bovine said, stepping into the hall, the door swinging shut behind him.

CHAPTER 36

T
racy was running on fumes, unable to recall the last time she’d slept through the night. She felt the fatigue in her limbs and heard it in her voice as she and Kins sat in the conference room with Faz and Del, updating Billy Williams and Andrew Laub on the A Team’s active files.

During the weeks since Dan had filed his reply brief to Vance Clark’s Opposition to the Petition for Post-Conviction Relief, Tracy and Kins had retraced many of their steps in the Nicole Hansen investigation without success. They’d re-interviewed the motel owner and motel guests. They’d run latent fingerprints lifted from the motel room through King County’s Automated Fingerprint Identification System and run down hits, crossing off persons with lock-tight alibis as potential suspects. They’d spoken again to the dancers at the Dancing Bare, to Nicole Hansen’s family, to her friends, to a couple of ex-boyfriends. Tracy had created a timeline of the last few days of Hansen’s life and had identified any person with whom she’d come into contact. They’d also executed search warrants that had been spectacularly unproductive.

“What about the employee files?” Laub asked.

“They came in late yesterday afternoon,” Tracy said, referring to the files they’d subpoenaed of current and past Dancing Bare employees. “I got Ron getting a head start on them,” she said, meaning the A Team’s fifth wheel, Ron Mayweather. Each of the four Homicide teams had a fifth detective assigned to them for carrying out some of the more mundane tasks of investigative work.

Laub turned to Faz. ”Where are we on the cars in the parking lots?”

Faz shook his head. “We got bubkes,” he said. “We’re still running down an out-of-state plate in California and one up in British Columbia. We’re making nice to our buddies across the border.”

“Anything on HITS?” Laub asked.

Tracy shook her head. “No.”

When the meeting broke up, Tracy was craving caffeine, but Williams met her at the door. “Hang out a minute,” he said, and she suspected she knew why.

When they were alone, Williams said, “Vanpelt’s show last night created a shit storm. You can expect another phone call.”

Vanpelt’s early Christmas present had been an hour-long report profiling Edmund House, Cedar Grove, and Tracy on her show,
KRIX Undercover
. Vanpelt had spliced historical photographs of the town with photographs of Tracy, Sarah, their parents, and Edmund House. She’d used interviews of Cedar Grove residents discussing how Sarah’s disappearance had shattered the town’s bucolic existence, the emotional impact the trial had had on the town, and how they felt about the possibility of going through it all over again. No one was happy about having their lives dragged back through the media mud.

Tracy leaned against the conference room table. “I thought it might,” she said to Williams. “How bad is it?”

“Media fielded two dozen requests for interviews from the local and national media, and that was before the
Seattle Times
ran the story on the front page this morning. They want an interview. So do CNN, MSNBC, and half a dozen others.”

“I’m not doing it, Billy. It won’t end the inquiries. It will only heighten the attention.”

“Laub and I agree,” Williams said. “And we’ve told Nolasco as much.”

“Yeah? What did he say?”

“He said, ‘what do we do if House gets a new hearing?’ ”

Nolasco rarely looked happy, but that afternoon when Tracy entered the conference room he was scowling like he’d received Botox injections while constipated. Lee again sat beside him, his chin resting on the palm of his hand and his eyes locked on a single sheet of paper on the table, no doubt another statement they’d ask Tracy to sign. She just couldn’t seem to keep from disappointing them.

“What’s the status of the Hansen investigation?” Nolasco asked, before Tracy had the chance to sit. Tracy didn’t think for a minute Nolasco had called the meeting to discuss the Hansen case.

“Not much different from when we spoke last night,” she said, pulling out a chair.

“And what are you doing to change that?”

“At the moment I’m sitting in here, so not much.”

“Maybe it’s time we brought in the FBI.”

“I’d rather work with a Boy Scout troop.” In Homicide, FBI stood for “Famous But Idiots.”

“Then I suggest you get me something to take upstairs.”

Tracy bit her tongue as Nolasco gave a nod to Lee, who reached below the table and retrieved a half-inch-thick stack of paper.

“We started getting these just after Ms. Vanpelt signed off last night,” Nolasco said, sliding the stack to her. Tracy flipped through copies of e-mails and transcribed phone messages. They weren’t pretty. Some called her unfit to wear the uniform. Others asked for her head on a platter.

“They want to know why a Seattle homicide detective sworn to serve and protect the public is working to free a piece of shit like Edmund House,” Nolasco said.

“These are the haters,” Tracy said. “They live for this. Are we going to start making decisions to appease the fringe now?”

“The
Seattle Times
, NBC, CBS, are they also the fringe?”

“We’ve been through this. They’re interested in sound bites and ratings.”

“Maybe,” Nolasco said, “but in light of recent events, we believe it prudent the department issue a statement on your behalf.”

“We’ve prepared something for your consideration,” Lee said.

“Consideration,” Nolasco said. “Not approval.”

Tracy motioned for Lee to slide the single sheet of paper across the table, though she had no intention of signing anything. They could issue what they wanted. They couldn’t make her attach her name to it.

Detective Crosswhite has had no official role in the investigation or in the proceedings to obtain Post-Conviction Relief for Edmund House. Should Detective Crosswhite be called upon to participate in these proceedings, it will be as a member of the victim’s family. She has not, and will not, officially or unofficially use her position as a Seattle homicide detective to influence the proceedings in any manner. She will have no comment on the proceedings or the results of those proceedings now or in the future.