In the Clearing (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 3)

by Robert Dugoni

  Tracy and Kins followed Cerrabone out of the courtroom and into the hall. “I have another hearing. I’ll call you later,” Cerrabone said.

  As the prosecutor departed, Tracy made her way outside the courthouse with Kins. On a Friday afternoon, Third Avenue was already congested. The commute home was likely going to be a bitch. She and Dan O’Leary, the man she’d been dating a year, had no chance of easily getting out of Seattle on their drive south to Stoneridge, a small town on the Columbia River.

  “I’m sorry to be bailing on you,” Tracy said to Kins as they walked up the hill to the Justice Center. She and Dan were attending a funeral—for the father of Jenny Almond. Jenny had been the only other woman in Tracy’s Academy class.

  “Don’t sweat it,” Kins said. “Faz says you promised him a lunch if he helped out. You should have just bought him a car. It would have been cheaper.”

  CHAPTER 3

  By the time Tracy and Dan rolled their suitcases into the lobby of the Inn at Stoneridge, the sun had already set. The restaurant and garden patio had closed, and rather than the “awe-inspiring images of the mighty Columbia carving its path through canyon walls,” as the inn’s website proclaimed, the river looked like the world’s largest blacktop highway.

  At least the room was as romantic as advertised. The soft light of the bedside lamp colored the cedarwood walls gold, and soft jazz played from the nightstand stereo. Dan pulled back the curtain covering a sliding glass door. “Can’t see the mountain,” he said. It was too dark and overcast to see the snowcapped peak of Mount Adams to the north.

  “I’m sorry we didn’t make our dinner reservation,” Tracy said. Dan had gone to considerable effort to get them a table at the inn’s four-star restaurant. They’d had to cancel when it became apparent they wouldn’t get there in time. Instead, they stopped and ate fast food.

  “But consider the carbo-loading we did for our morning run,” he said, smiling but not able to completely mask his disappointment.

  “We’re running in the morning?” she said.

  “We are now.”

  “Ugh. I’m going to take a shower,” Tracy said. “Care to join me?”

  Dan had picked up the remote control. He gave her a sheepish smile. “I’m really beat,” he said. “I know you are too. I vote we veg—watch some TV, and crash. That okay?”

  She knew he was tired; Los Angeles lawyers were wearing him out in a contentious personal injury lawsuit, but she was concerned Dan was becoming frustrated at their inability to find quality time together. They’d grown up childhood friends but had lost touch until Tracy returned to their hometown of Cedar Grove for answers about her little sister’s disappearance twenty years before. Hunters had found Sarah’s remains buried in a shallow grave, and Tracy wanted a new trial for the man accused of killing her, because she’d believed he was innocent. She’d hired Dan, the best attorney in town, and they developed a romantic relationship. But Tracy lived in Seattle, two hours away, and no sooner had she returned home when she became embroiled in the hunt for the Cowboy.

  She wrapped her arms around Dan’s neck. “Are you upset?”

  He set down the remote. “If I was upset, I’d be upset at you, which I’m not. I’m disappointed at the situation—that we didn’t get to enjoy the evening we’d planned.”

  “We can still have part of the weekend we had in mind,” she said.

  “Sort of a ‘you wash my back and I’ll wash yours’?” he said.

  She smiled. “That assumes you’re taking me up on my offer, and one of us is turning around in the shower.”

  They didn’t make it to the shower, and Dan didn’t seem too disappointed he had to postpone watching ESPN. They made love on the bed until, exhausted, they fell asleep wrapped in the Egyptian cotton sheets.

  CHAPTER 4

  Buzz Almond’s funeral included all the pomp and circumstance befitting a man who’d served more than half his life as the sheriff. An honor guard of Marines and Klickitat County deputies stood stone-faced in crisp dress uniforms, white-gloved hands gripping the handles of a flag-draped casket. Jenny Almond, who’d succeeded her father as sheriff, stood with her two older sisters, their mother pinched tight between them, arms interlocked. Three spouses and seven grandchildren took their places behind the women.

  Tracy had colleagues whose spouses worried each time they left the house, but in the end, it wasn’t bullets or bad guys that killed the large majority of cops. It was the same insidious diseases that befell all humanity. For Theodore Michael “Buzz” Almond Jr., it had been colon cancer. He was sixty-seven.

  The procession stopped at the foot of brick steps leading to the entrance of Saint Peter’s Catholic Church. A priest and two altar boys, their robes rippling in the breeze, descended the steps and greeted the family. Tracy knew they would remember little of this day, as she remembered little of her father’s funeral. She took Dan’s hand as the members of the honor guard lifted the casket onto their shoulders and two bagpipers blew the mournful wail of the Highland pipes that had carried her father and now would carry Buzz Almond home.

  They held the public reception at the Stoneridge High School gymnasium, the only building in town large enough to accommodate the crowd who’d come to pay their respects. A private reception followed at the family home, and Jenny had invited Tracy and Dan. As she and Dan drove there, they passed orchards of fruit trees and rolling fields. The only disruption to the open space was a construction site for an impressive athletic complex rising above a manicured football field. A billboard-size sign staked in the lawn identified the contractor as Reynolds Construction.

  State Route 141 wound farther into the foothills, and after another five minutes they left the pavement altogether for a dirt-and-gravel road that led to an expanse of lawn and a scene out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Young boys in khakis and barefoot girls in Sunday dresses ran around cradling a football and swinging on a rope swing in the yard of a two-story white clapboard farmhouse partially shaded by the limbs of cottonwood and birch trees. The home had a pitched roof, black shutters, and a wraparound porch with ornate pillars and a spindle railing, where several adults stood watching the children.

  Dan parked the Tahoe alongside half a dozen other vehicles, and Jenny descended the porch steps to greet them.

  “You found it,” she said.

  “It’s beautiful,” Tracy said.

  “Come on inside.”

  Jenny led Tracy and Dan through a blur of introductions, mostly for Dan’s benefit; Tracy had met the family at Jenny’s wedding and had visited after the birth of each of her two children. She and Dan again offered their condolences to Jenny’s mother, who sat in a chair in the living room holding Jenny’s little girl, Sarah, named in honor of Tracy’s sister.

  “Look who’s here, Sarah,” Jenny said.

  Tracy hadn’t seen the little girl recently. Her golden curls extended to her shoulders, and she had a gap between her two front baby teeth. Tracy held out her arms, but Sarah buried her chin in her grandmother’s shoulder, sneaking cautious glances.

  “Are you going to be shy now?” Jenny said, lifting her. “Go see your auntie Tracy. Go on.”

  Tracy smiled and held out her arms again. “Can I have a hug?”

  Sarah looked to Jenny, who nodded. Then the little girl leaned out, and Tracy pulled her close, taking in the beautiful scent of childhood.

  Sarah held up three stubby fingers. “I’m free,” she said.

  “I know.”

  Jenny’s husband, Neil, emerged from the kitchen holding two beers. “Dan, the men are about to take on that horde of boys and girls out there in a game of flag football. I don’t suppose we could interest you in helping us out. I have a cooler of cold beers if that helps influence your decision.”

  Dan took the beer. “Just point me in the right direction.”

  “Don’t hurt yourself,” Tracy said.

  “Momma, can you watch Sarah a while longer?” Jenny said. “I want to talk to Tracy for
a minute.”

  “Of course I can,” Anne Almond said. “Come give Gramma some lovin’, honey.”

  Tracy handed Sarah back to her grandmother and followed Jenny. The house was dark hardwood floors, antique light fixtures, and modest but well-cared-for furniture. Framed family portraits and photographs adorned the walls and the fireplace mantel. Jenny led Tracy to a study at the back of the house. A bay window looked out over the lawn, where the flag football game was getting under way.

  “This house is incredible,” Tracy said.

  “The dollar goes a lot further here than in Seattle, especially back in the seventies. Plus, my parents got some help from my mom’s parents,” Jenny said. “They bought the house and the apple orchard, then sold most of the orchard to the neighbor. It was a great place to grow up, but now we’re worried my mom’s going to be lonely out here by herself.”

  “She won’t move?” Tracy’s mother had been unwilling to leave their huge home in Cedar Grove after her husband’s death.

  “Right now the home gives her comfort. We’ve lined up a ten-day cruise up the Rhine River with her sister. We’ll talk about it more when she gets back. Until then, we’ll all take turns looking in on her.”

  “She’s lucky to have so much family.” Tracy still felt guilt for leaving her mother in Cedar Grove when she moved to Seattle, though she knew she had to go, for her own mental well-being. “Sarah’s getting so big.”

  “We survived the terrible twos, barely.” Jenny smiled. “You did so much for me, Tracy. If it weren’t for you, I’d probably still be working at Costco, I never would have met Neil, and I never would have had Trey or Sarah.”

  When Tracy and Jenny met at the Academy, Jenny had been barely twenty, an eager young woman who wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps but who had little chance of graduating. Homesick and overwhelmed by the workload, Jenny had been living in a depressing motel room. Tracy insisted Jenny move into Tracy’s two-bedroom apartment and join Tracy’s study group and training team. Jenny’s scores improved dramatically, and Tracy taught her to shoot well enough to pass her qualifying exam.

  “You would have found your way. You have found your way.”

  Jenny leaned against the desk, clearly emotionally spent after a long couple of days. “I’m going to miss my dad. Maria and Sophia lost their father too, but I also lost a mentor and a friend. The first few days in the office without him were tough.”

  “You’ll do fine, Jenny.”

  “Dan seems nice. Do you think he might be the one?”

  Tracy shrugged. “I’d like to think so,” she said, “but it’s been a crazy year. At least he hasn’t dumped me.”

  “Are you kidding? He’s in love with you. He came to a funeral for a friend of yours he’s never met. That’s love.”

  “I hope so,” she said.

  Jenny walked behind the desk. “So, I have an ulterior motive for bringing you back here. There’s something I was hoping to discuss with you. The timing could be better, I know, but I thought I should do it now or I might not ever get around to it.” She pulled out a six-inch-thick brown legal file from the desk drawer and set it on top.

  “What is it?” Tracy asked.

  “It’s a cold case,” Jenny said before catching herself. “Well, not exactly. It’s complicated. It’s the first case my father ever investigated as a deputy sheriff. Nineteen seventy-six. I wasn’t born yet, but most people who grew up here are familiar with Kimi Kanasket.”

  “Who is she?” Tracy said.

  “Local high school girl who disappeared walking home one night. My dad got the call.”

  Saturday, November 6, 1976

  Buzz Almond and Earl Kanasket had retraced on foot Kimi’s usual walk home from the diner. It hadn’t been easy. Buzz couldn’t remember a night that dark. And then it had started to snow—big heavy flakes that clung to the tree limbs and covered the ground. Even with flashlights, they’d found no visible signs of Kimi—no footprints, no discarded bag, no article of clothing. And as each minute passed without any sign of the young woman, Buzz regretted having told Earl they’d find her.

  After an hour he dropped Earl back at the double-wide, which remained teeming with people wanting to help. Phone calls to Kimi’s friends had been equally unfruitful. Buzz drove to Husum, a small compound of homes and industrial buildings situated on both sides of a bend in the White Salmon River, to talk to Tommy Moore, Kimi’s ex-boyfriend. Moore’s roommate, William Cox, answered the door in shorts and a T-shirt. Despite the late hour, he did not appear to have been sleeping. Cox said Moore had come home around midnight but left when he found out that Élan Kanasket and a group of men, some armed, had come looking for him. Cox said he didn’t know where Moore went but that he had been on a date earlier that evening. If Kimi Kanasket had recently broken up with Tommy Moore, it didn’t sound as though Moore was too upset about it.

  Just after four, with the first light of day still several hours off and the snow continuing to fall, Buzz returned to the sheriff’s office in Goldendale to fill out the necessary missing-person paperwork and to bring his sergeant up to speed so he could apprise the day shift of the situation. When he’d finished, Buzz reluctantly drove home to relieve Anne, who, despite being very pregnant, was still working the morning shift at the hospital. They needed the money with the new baby coming.

  The call came as Buzz was cleaning up after lunch and starting the process of bundling Maria and Sophia in their winter gear. He’d promised to take them out in the snow, which had accumulated enough to make a decent snowman. That was going to have to wait—much to his daughters’ disappointment. Buzz buckled his girls into the backseat of his Suburban and drove them a stone’s throw down the road to Margaret O’Malley’s home. O’Malley had retired after thirty-five years teaching first grade and couldn’t get enough of Buzz’s girls.

  “What about the snowman, Daddy?” Sophia asked.

  “We’ll make one later, honey,” Buzz said, though the knot in his stomach was telling him that was another promise he’d likely not be able to keep.

  “Come on, girls,” Margaret O’Malley said, ushering them inside. “I need a couple of helpers to make chocolate chip cookies.”

  That did the trick. Snowman forgotten.

  After dropping the girls at Mrs. O’Malley’s, Buzz drove quickly into Stoneridge. It looked like a ghost town. No one walked the sidewalks, and the parking spots in front of the stores were nearly empty of cars. The Stoneridge Café was closed. So was the pizza-and-beer pub, the flower store, the barbershop, and the hardware store. Almost all had homemade signs in the windows that said things like “Go, Red Raiders!” and “State Bound!” Buzz had read something in the local paper about the high school football team playing in its first-ever state championship, and he grew worried the drugstore might also be closed, but it remained open. He hurried inside and bought a Kodak Instamatic and four rolls of film before driving out of town on State Route 141.

  He turned left on Northwestern Lake Road and went down the hill, slowing to a stop atop the narrow concrete bridge spanning the White Salmon River. Search and Rescue vehicles filled Northwest Park’s dirt-and-gravel parking area, along with two fire trucks, a Klickitat County Sheriff’s Office vehicle, and a blue-and-white Stoneridge Police car. Men wearing waders and rubber boots with their winter clothing worked along the river’s edge.

  Buzz parked beside the two fire trucks. It had stopped snowing, but several inches covered the ground and the picnic tables and benches, and had flocked the trees along the riverbank as well as the larger boulders protruding from the gray waters. Buzz put on his aviators to deflect the bright stream of sunlight that had burst through the cloud layer. Deputy Andrew Johns stood talking with a Stoneridge Police officer Buzz didn’t recognize, their breath white ribbons. Buzz had become familiar with most, though not all, of the other deputies, but he wasn’t as familiar with the Stoneridge officers—of which there were four.

  “Heard this was your call, Buzz
.” Johns clapped his gloved hands then tucked them under his armpits. “Damn, it got cold fast.”

  “What’s Search and Rescue said?” Buzz asked.

  Johns pointed to two men dressed in fishing gear standing near one of the picnic tables. “Those two guys were fishing the banks. Thought they saw something in the water hung up in the branches of that fallen tree. Worked their way downstream for a closer look, but whatever it is, it’s submerged by the current. They think it’s a body.”

  Buzz’s stomach dropped. “Do you know them?”

  Johns shook his head. “Two guys from Portland.”

  “You get a statement?”

  “Just gave it to you. Search and Rescue’s stringing a cable across the river to give themselves something to hook on to. River’s not flowing that strong, but the rocks are slippery. They might know more by now.”

  Search and Rescue had cleared off a picnic table to stage its equipment. Two of its men, in rubber waders and boots, were tightening a bolt that would lock a cable they’d looped around the trunk of a fir tree. The cable extended across the river, where two of their colleagues were securing the cable in a similar fashion.

  “All right?” one of the men shouted across the river.

  “We’re good,” his colleague shouted back.

  The two men on Buzz’s side of the river cranked a hand winch and began to cinch the cable until it was suspended like a tightrope a foot above the gray water. The men would clip on to it as they entered the water and made their way across to the sunken tree.

  “You guys know anything more?” Buzz asked someone on the Search and Rescue team preparing to enter the current. Not in uniform and not familiar with the men—he hadn’t yet worked a case with Search and Rescue—he showed them his badge. “I got the call last night about a missing girl.”

  He hoped they didn’t hear the quiver in his voice or would at least attribute it to the biting cold; hoped they’d tell him it wasn’t a body, just a backpack or piece of clothing from a summer rafting trip that had remained submerged; hoped he wouldn’t have to make the drive out to Earl and Nettie Kanasket’s double-wide and tell them he’d found their daughter, wishing again that he’d never promised them anything.