From the medical examiner’s office, Tracy made her second detour, to the King County Courthouse on Third Avenue. The sheriff’s office was located in room W-116. Kaylee Wright, a senior crime-scene analyst—known in the profession as a “sign-cutter” or “man-tracker”—was at her desk, which was rare. Ordinarily, Wright spent much of her time out looking for bodies in remote locations, or teaching classes around the world on the science behind sign-cutting and its relevance in modern forensics. Tracy didn’t have to be convinced. She’d witnessed Wright’s work firsthand. Wright could tell not only the types of shoes the victim and perpetrators were wearing, but where each had stepped and who’d stepped there first. She could even tell from analyzing blades of grass if the person had been standing or sitting or lying on the ground.
At five eleven, Wright was one of the few women in law enforcement taller than Tracy, and she maintained the build that had made her a college volleyball player. When she and Tracy worked cases together, like the shooting of a Russian drug dealer in Laurelhurst several years back, they were referred to as “Salt and Pepper” because of Tracy’s light complexion and blonde hair and Wright’s darker complexion and black hair.
Tracy handed her the envelope. “These are the originals. The negatives are in the front of each pack.”
“I’ll keep them safe,” Wright said, opening one of the envelopes and flipping through a few of the photos. “1976. I was two then.”
“So was I,” Tracy said.
“They look like good shots, given what the photographer was working with back then. I’m guessing from the quality and the date stamp that whoever took these used an Instamatic of some sort. You sure you don’t want to give me a hint about what I’m looking at?”
Tracy wanted Kelly Rosa’s and Kaylee Wright’s analyses to be completely independent and not influenced by anything Tracy told them, though admittedly she didn’t know much at this point.
“I’m not certain what’s depicted or why,” Tracy said. “I’m hoping you can tell me.”
Wright slid the pack of photographs back into the envelope. “All right. I like a challenge. How soon do you need it? I’m leaving for a conference in Germany tomorrow.”
“Must be rough,” Tracy said. “Berlin?”
“Hamburg. It’s not as glamorous as it sounds—meetings and panels every day. I intend to sample several German beers.”
“Barry going with you?”
“Did I mention there will be German beer?”
“So it’s working out?”
“We’ll find out. They say it’s a good test if you can stand each other while traveling in a foreign country. How are you and Dan getting along?”
“So far, so good.” Tracy checked her watch. “I better get in. Kins and I pulled that murder in Greenwood, and he carried the burden while I was away this weekend. Enjoy Germany. Hoist a beer or two for me.”
The city had recently begun calling the Justice Center building “Police Headquarters.” “Justice Center” apparently now referred to the adjacent building on Fifth Avenue that housed King County’s municipal court. To Tracy and the veterans, though, the SPD building would always be the Justice Center. Whatever the name, one thing that hadn’t changed was the volume of Vic Fazzio’s gravelly voice and New Jersey accent when Tracy stepped off the elevator onto the seventh floor. She heard Faz well before she entered the A Team’s square-shaped bull pen.
“You got a hot date, Sparrow?” Faz was saying. He liked to use the nickname bestowed on Kins when he’d worked undercover narcotics and he had grown out his hair and a wispy goatee like the Johnny Depp character in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.
“You’re wearing enough aftershave, you could become an honorary Italian,” Del said.
“I’d have to put on a hundred pounds to join ‘your’ club,” Kins said.
“Like I’d be in a club that would have Fazzio,” Del said.
Faz and Del looked to have been plucked straight from central casting as bodyguards in a mafia movie like The Godfather. At the moment, they sat at their cubicles but with their chairs swiveled to face Kins, who was at his desk across the center workstation.
“Hey, Professor, check out our boy Joe Friday,” Faz said when Tracy entered the bull pen, referring to the suit-wearing detective from the TV series Dragnet.
Kins stood up from his chair holding his coffee mug. “If I had known wearing a suit was going to make the news, I would have dressed like a bum like you two.” Kins nodded to Tracy to follow him. “Brother of Tim Collins called. Wants to talk. I got a lot to fill you in on.”
Tracy turned to follow.
“Hey, Professor,” Faz called out. “I got a gas mask you could borrow for the elevator ride.”
Kins brought Tracy up to date on what had transpired over the weekend, including Angela Collins and Atticus Berkshire coming in and giving a statement. Tracy was as surprised as Kins that Berkshire had allowed it.
“There must be a reason,” she said. “Berkshire doesn’t do anything unless it helps his client or stirs the pot.”
Mark Collins lived in an upper-class section of Madrona, a neighborhood fifteen minutes east of downtown Seattle that extended from the top of the hill to the shores of Lake Washington. Collins’s stately Georgian-style red brick home was likely worth a couple million dollars in the current hot market. He answered the door in khakis and a button-down. He looked like his younger brother, though taller and thinner, and while his brother was blond, Mark had red hair.
“Thanks for coming,” he said, sounding and looking grim. He led them into a den with an impressive flat-screen TV that nearly took up an entire wall. “Can I offer you anything to drink? Coffee? Water?”
“We’re good,” Kins said. “Our condolences to you and your family.”
Kins and Faz had spoken to the other members of Tim Collins’s family the night he was shot and the following day, but Mark had been traveling. Kins got the impression that, as the oldest, Mark was the patriarch, and the others were waiting for his guidance.
Mark Collins nodded. “I heard her father is arguing self-defense.”
“That appears likely,” Kins said.
Collins shook his head. “If anyone needed some self-defense, it was Timmy.”
Other members of the family had made similar statements. “How so?” Kins asked. He’d made the contact. Tracy sat taking notes.
“Angela is incredibly manipulative when she wants something. Over the years she wore Timmy down. She wore us all down.”
“How’d she do that?”
“She picked fights with each of us until none of us could stand being around her. One time, she’d start something with me; at another, it’d be my sister or my wife or my brother-in-law. Pretty soon, Timmy would say he couldn’t come for Sunday dinners because Angela didn’t feel comfortable. What we didn’t realize is she had done the same thing with all his friends. It was her way of isolating him.”
“For what purpose?”
“To manipulate him, get him to do what she wanted. Tim became very codependent.”
“Can you give me an example?”
Collins didn’t hesitate. He’d either thought about this, or he’d told others what he was about to tell them. “Tim made a good living, Detectives. He was an engineer at Boeing, but he nearly had to file for bankruptcy because of Angela’s spending. Either he bought her a new car or a boat, or the house she wanted, or the vacation they couldn’t afford, or she’d divorce him. Tim wouldn’t say no.”
“But she filed for divorce anyway?” Tracy said.
“And we were happy she did. We’d been working on Tim to leave her for years, but he wouldn’t because of Connor. Have you met him?”