A Cold Trail - Characters

 SPOILERS!!!

Regular characters or reference characters:

• Tracy Crosswhite (43) is the main character. Tracy used to be a chemistry teacher in high school but when her sister disappeared, she retrained and became a policeman. Tracy married her boyfriend, Ben, but they divorced when Tracy became obsessed with her sister’s disappearance. In the first book of the series after Sarah’s grave was found, Tracy thought that the man convicted for the crime was not the real culprit and a procedure started with new evidence about the irregularities of the first trial. Tracy finally learnt that she was wrong and the man was actually guilty and she almost got killed. Tracy started a relationship with Dan O’Leary, her childhood friend, when they got reacquainted in the first book. Now Tracy is married to Dan, and they have a daughter called Daniella Sarah.
• Dan O’Leary (43) is Tracy’s childhood friend and now husband. Dan moved out of Cedar Grove before Sarah’s kidnapping. After that, he became a lawyer and got married. When his wife cheated on him with his partner, Dan returned to his childhood town to look after his mother and start a new life. Dan’s mother died, and he made life in Cedar Grove. Dan took the case of Edmund House after Tracy told him about the irregularities in the trial. After that, Dan and Tracy started a relationship. Now they are married and have a baby daughter.
• Daniella Sarah O’Leary (2 months old) is Tracy and Dan’s daughter.
• Roger is Tracy’s cat.
• Rex and Sherlock are Dan’s dogs.
• Therese is Tracy's Irish nanny.
• Roy Calloway (62) 2as the sheriff of Cedar Grove. He knew that Edmund was the culprit, but he had no evidence, so he, the prosecutor and Sarah’s father decided to fabricate the evidence. Twenty years later when Edmund was released thanks to Tracy and Dan, Roy almost diedwhen the man attacked him. Roy is now retired but after the new chief of the police, Finlay, lost his wife, he replaced him while he was on compassionate leave.
• Vic Fazzio (Faz) is one of the men in Tracy’s A-team. He is Italian and boasts about it. He is married to Vera and has a grown-up son, Antonio. Faz was very upset  when his wife is diagnosed with breast cancer, but she recovered. Faz and his wife are Daniella's godparents, and when Tracy needs them in Cedar Grove, they do not hesitate to travel there to be with her and Daniella.
• Vera Fazzio is Faz’s wife. She and Vic are Daniella's godparents
• Finlay Armstrong is the new chief of the police in Cedar Grove. When his wife is murdered, Roy and Tracy suspect him as he was also a suspect in the murder of Heather Johansen. He almost dies at the end of the book when the murderer shoots him.
• Leah Battles is Dan's associate.
• Kinsington (Kins) Rowe (41) is Tracy’s partner, and the detective Tracy trusts the most. He is married and has three children, and in a previous book his marriage went through a bad patch and he even considered having an affair, but nothing happened, and he decided to fight for his marriage.
• Delmo Castigliano (Del) is another of Tracy’s men. He is divorced, and he and Faz are partners. In a previous book Del went through a terrible ordeal when his young niece died of an overdose, and he was determined to find the person who supplied the drugs and caused her death. Del is now dating the prosecutor, Celia McDaniels.
• Johnny Nolasco is the captain of the Violent Crimes Section and Tracy’s boss. He is not very nice to her because years ago when she was training to be a cop, he was instructed to search her, and Nolasco grabbed her breasts and Tracy slapped him and broke his nose. Now Nolasco is her boss, and he is continuously putting her down. Johnny thinks that Tracy is trying a way to humiliate him, and he goes against her all the time. In a previous book Tracy discovered that ten years ago Nolasco and his partner manipulated an investigation and an innocent man was convicted, so he and the cases where he was involved were thoroughly investigated.
• Antonio Fazzio is Faz’s son. He has a restaurant who he has named after his father, and recently he proposed to his girlfriend. They are getting married soon. 
• Kelly Rose is a forensic anthropologist
• Kaylee Wright is a crime-scene analyst.
• Celia McDaniel (41) is a prosecutor who helped Del in the investigation of his niece’s death. Celia lost her son to drugs as well. Now she and Del are in a relationship.
• Rick Cerrabone is the senior King County prosecuting attorney.
• Detective Sergeant Billy Williams is the sergeant in charge of the A-team.
• Mike Melton (Grizzly Adams) is the director of the Washington State Patrol crime lab. He is married and has six daughters.
• Stuart Funk is a medical examiner.
• Chief Sandy Clarridges is Tracy and Nolasco’s superior.
• Ron Mayweather is the fifth wheel in the A-team. In the last book Nolasco told him to apply for the vacant position in the C-team
• Bennett Lee is the public information officer.
• Maria Vanpelt is a reporter who is always after morbid news. Tracy doesn’t like her, and Nolasco leaks information to her when he wants to damage Tracy in her work or personally.
• Shannah Rowe is Kins’s wife.
• Maggie Marcello is Del’s sister. She is divorced and recently lost her daughter to drugs. She also has two twin sons.
• Stevie Marcello (9) is Del’s nephew.
• Mark Marcello (9) is Del’s nephew
• Santino (Sonny) is Del’s dog
• Donald Frick is the pathologist.
• Amanda Santos is an FBI profiler. In a previous book Tracy discovered her and Fins having lunch when he was supposed to be having a meeting with his child’s teacher. Fins confessed that he felt attracted to Amanda and liked her, but nothing happened between them.
• Andrew Laub is the lieutenant in Tracy’s unit.
• Stephen Martinez is the assistant chief of criminal investigation.
• Floyd Hattie used to be Nolasco’s partner.
• Edmund House is the man who kidnapped and killed Sarah.
• Sarah Crosswhite was Tracy’s sister, who disappeared at the age of eighteen when she was driving home after a shooting competition. Her car broke down (Edmund had tampered with it) and she started to walk home, and Edmund then kidnapped her. Sarah was kept captive for seven weeks, but Edmund killed her when he found himself against the ropes when the sheriff pinned the blame on her. Sarah’s body was found twenty years later
• James Crosswhite was Tracy and Sarah’s father. He was a doctor and an honest citizen. When Roy told him about having no evidence to send House to prison, he eventually agreed to be involved in the fabrication of evidence. Roy killed himself when the pain of losing his daughter was too much.
• Amy Crosswhite was Tracy and Sarah’s mother
• Ben is Tracy’s ex-husband.

Characters in this book:

• Heather Johansen is the young woman who was murdered in 1993, months before Sarah Crosswhite was also killed. 
• Kimberly Robison was Heather's friend, and she married Finlay, the new sheriff. Finlay used to date Heather, and it didn't sit well with him when she broke up with her. That's why Finlay was suspected of her murder. Kimberly was killed when she started to investigate the murder of her best friend. 
• Sunny Witherspoon was Sarah's best friend when she was growing up. Sunny is married ot the mayor, but their marriage has never been happy. When she discovered in 1993 that her husband had got Heather Johansen pregnant, she went to find the woman and when Heather refused to have an abortion, she killed her. Sunny felt safe because the town thought that Edmund House, Sarah Crosswhite's murderer, had also killed Heather. Yet, when Tracy came back and questioned House's guilt, the Johansens hired a lawyer to investigate, and Sunny killed him, and she also killed Kimberley, Finlay's wife and a reporter, when she started to investigate. Sunny was also involved in some fraudulent business in town. When she realised that the police were going to arrest her, she killed herself. 
• Gary Witherspoon is Sunny's husband and the mayor of Cedar Grove. In 1992 after the Christmas party his father had, he drove Heather in his car. She was drunk, and they had sex. Heather went to him when she discovered that she was pregnant. Gary, who was already married and had a child, todl her that she had to have an abortion and drove her to the clinic. Yet, she refused to abort her child and walked back to the town. Then Gary confessed everything to Sunny, and when Sunny killed Heather, she threatened with accusing him of killing Heather. So all these years he has been under his wife's thumb.
• Jason Matthews is the lawyer that Heather's parents hired to investigate their daughter's murder. He was a drunk who took advantage of the Johansens adn tried to blackmail Ed Witherspoon. He was murdered.
• Ed Witherspoon is Gary's father. He used to be the mayor before his son.
  
• Eric and Ingrid Johansen are Heather's parents.
• Judge Dough Harvey is the judge that presides over the hearing in which Dan tries to defend Kauffman's interests.
• Rav Pattel is the city attorney that works for the Witherspoon.
• Barbara Witherspoon is Ed's wife.
• Nora Calloway is Roy Calloway's wife.
• Larry Kauffman is Dan's client. He didn't want to sell his business to the town, and he hired Dan to defend his interests. 
• ATticus Pelham is the editor of the local paper and Kimberly's boss.
• Pete Adams is the former owner of the bar which Matthews frequented. He retired and went to live in Arizona. Faz goes there to question him. 
• Zack Metzger is the lawyer who Sunny hired for her sham development.