Rick Mofina - Perfect Grave

They had ruled out Cooper. And after talking with Roberto Martell, Grace and Perelli canvassed the bar where Martell said the suspect had encountered Sharla May. Martell’s story held up, according to a waitress and a bartender.

Grace and Perelli then went back to the shelter to interview John Cooper again. A picture was emerging. The suspect was a white male in his forties with a muscular build and a tattoo on his neck. And considering the knife used to kill Sister Anne came from the shelter, where Cooper had witnessed him upsetting her, the killer had to have had some connection to the nun.

Was he someone she’d counseled in prison? Or a nut job out of control?

The answer was somewhere with the Department of Corrections. How long had it been since she’d requested the DOC’s help?

Too long.

Grace checked the time before her meeting. Perelli was in the records room gathering summaries of cold cases to support a theory he was developing. Grace stared at her phone, hoping against the odds that the DOC had some way of helping them zero in on her guy, or develop a suspect list.

Why haven’t they called back yet? This was not good.

She jabbed another tomato and grappled with another problem.

Jason Wade.

His messages seemed almost desperate. Where had he been? They hadn’t spoken in a long time. She had to take some of the blame. She had to admit that she liked him. A lot. They were both loners. They both felt like outcasts. They were right for each other. But she’d hurt him and in the process got hurt herself. What goes around, comes around, kiddo, she told herself. Maybe when all this was over she would talk to him. Really talk to him. Maybe they could give it another shot? For now she focused on her case.

Grace finished her salad and started making notes when her line rang.

“Homicide, Garner.”

“Steve Scannell, with the DOC in Olympia.”

“Did you get anything?”

“You’re asking us to find a needle in a haystack. I’ve had my people go at your request five ways to Sunday and we can’t pinpoint things the way you’d like.” Scannell was high up the command chain of the DOC’s Prisons Division.

“What can you tell us so far?”

“Sister Anne’s order has been very active with our religious and spiritual programs for years.”

“That should help.”

“It helps complicate things.”

“Well, can you give us a list of all the prisoners she’s visited?”

Scannell sighed.

“It doesn’t work that way. In some cases she had one- on-ones, in others she was with a spiritual group providing services to a prisoner group.”

“Well, can I get a list of names?”

“Detective Garner, we have fifteen institutions and fifteen work releases. We’re talking a prison population of some seventeen thousand statewide. Over the years the Order has visited every facility. In some cases, several times. In some cases, there are sign-up logs, in some cases, like when they addressed groups, no sign-up was required.”

Grace tapped her pen and thought.

“Let’s try this, Steve. We know we’re looking for someone who’s been out for at least three months. He’s a male, white, has a tattoo on his neck, and wears a size- 11 tennis shoe, approximately six feet tall, muscular build.”

“That’s too general. Do you have a specific release date?”

“No.”

“Type of release?”

“No.”

“Do you know his offense, or length of sentence?”

“No.”

“Do you by chance have an offender classification, or institution?”

“No.”

“Then, I’m afraid that’s way too general.”

“Couldn’t you run a program or search?”

“Grace, listen to what I’m telling you. Every month we average anywhere from fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred releases of all types. Across the state we have nearly forty-three thousand offenders under field supervision, nearly eleven thousand in King County alone.”

“I get it. Needle in a haystack.”

“Give us something specific and we can lock onto this guy in a heartbeat. Meanwhile, I’ve got all of my senior custody staff going full bore on this, getting my captains to check with their lieutenants, their CCOs, and Correctional Unit Supervisors.”

“I appreciate that.”

“If we find something, you’ll be the first to know.”

I n the side mirror of his rented Ford Taurus, Ethan Quinn watched Henry Wade’s pickup pull out of the West Pacific Trust Bank half a block down Yesler.

Quinn set his video recorder down, started his sedan, and wheeled round into traffic, careful to keep several cars between him and Wade’s truck.

As he gathered speed, Quinn’s heart rate picked up and he exhaled slowly. This was the biggest psychological gamble he’d ever taken on a case. And, at the outset, he was certain that he’d blown it.

But now, some forty-eight hours since he’d rolled the dice and began his surveillance of Henry Wade, Quinn was convinced that he was on the right track-convinced that his instincts were right.

Henry Wade was a wise old fox.

Contacting him cold was a calculated risk.

But it yielded the result Quinn needed. He’d caught Henry unawares. Quinn saw it in the old guy’s face. As expected, Henry played his grief card, telling him that the case had taken a toll. That he couldn’t help, that sort of thing.

That was fine.

That was expected.

All that really mattered were Henry’s actions after the meeting.

Quinn had done his homework. He’d studied the files of the case exhaustively for months. Months. Because this old case fascinated him.

Things just did not add up.

The armored-car company was owned by ex-cops. There were a lot of cops there the day it went down and $3.3 million in cash vanished. An innocent bystander died in a botched hostage bid. Leon Sperbeck, the one suspect caught, the only suspect caught, was convicted without breathing a word about the other suspects.

Were there other suspects?

There were witness statements with descriptions so general-two other suspects in ski masks-one was thin, the other heavyset-they were useless.

All of it was very unusual.

The case fades.

As Sperbeck does his time, years roll by. People die. The case grows cold.

None of the money surfaced. No word on the street of it being circulated. And contrary to popular belief, Quinn knew from criminology studies of convicted armed robbers that often those who commit big heists are condemned to live in fear, to always look over their shoulder. Man, in many cases, they’re so paranoid, they live modestly because they’re afraid to spend the money. They fear that spending the cash would draw attention. It was common to find most of the stolen cash in their possession, even years after the crime.

That was exactly what Quinn believed was at play here.

A textbook case.

Sperbeck and Wade were the only two survivors linked to the heist. No way did Sperbeck do all that hard time only to walk out and commit suicide. Quinn didn’t buy that for a second. Sperbeck likely staged his death so that he could start a new life after he collected his share of the heist.

Henry Wade had to be involved.

Quinn was convinced of it. That’s why he’d taken a gamble by contacting Henry, tipping his hand while feeding Henry that line about sharing any recovered portion of the cash. It was a strategic move designed to draw him out, to gauge what he knew about the case-hoping that maybe Henry would lead him to the cash.

And now, Quinn’s gamble was paying off.

What was he doing at Sperbeck’s bank, talking to a bank manager? No private detective was that fast. That good. No way. Henry Wade played the recovering drunk ex-cop thing like a B-movie actor. For him to move this fast, he had to be working with Sperbeck. Had to know something.