In the Clearing (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 3)

by Robert Dugoni

  Buzz wished he hadn’t made that promise about finding Kimi and bringing her home. It haunted him.

  His sergeant had told Buzz to give his reports to Jerry Ostertag, the detective assigned to the case, and put it behind him; his job was done. Buzz was to move on to the next call. But the more he told himself that’s what he’d do, the more uncertain he felt about the way he’d left things. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but something just wasn’t sitting right with him. The night he’d arrived at their home, Nettie Kanasket had said Kimi would never cause them any problems, and all indications were she hadn’t. Left unsaid was that it had been Élan who’d given them trouble, like setting their daughter up with Tommy Moore.

  Kimi was a good student and a responsible daughter. According to the article in the Sentinel she’d earned a partial scholarship to UW, where she would run track. She was athletic, bright, beautiful, and, by all accounts, well-adjusted. Would she really throw herself in the river over a boy? Over Tommy Moore? Buzz supposed it possible, but he didn’t think so. For one, he wasn’t convinced the breakup had been mutual, as Moore insisted. People who said such things were usually protecting their egos. He thought it much more likely Moore had been the dumpee rather than the dumper.

  And he couldn’t ignore the damage to Moore’s truck.

  Buzz came out of his reverie when he drove past the Columbia Diner. He checked his rearview mirror, determined it was safe to make a U-turn, and drove back to the diner’s gravel parking lot. He sat a minute, debating with himself, then shut off the engine and got out. The temperature had warmed a few degrees, though it remained cold enough to see his breath.

  Buzz walked up the wooden stairs and stepped inside to the smell of deep-fried food. The whole place couldn’t have been more than eight hundred square feet, with just five booths and half a dozen barstools at the Formica counter, where a lone man sat working at a piece of fried chicken with a fork and knife, and nursing a mug of coffee.

  A waitress greeted Buzz from behind the counter. “Just seat yourself,” she said, despite the sign that instructed customers to wait to be seated. “Be with you in a minute.”

  Buzz took a booth near the picture window with a view of the parking lot and the road. The waitress approached with a pot of coffee, turned over his mug, and filled it. “Get you a menu?”

  “Just a cup of coffee,” he said.

  “You’re new,” she said, looking at his uniform.

  “I am. Just a few months.”

  “Welcome.” She was an attractive middle-aged woman, tall and thin, with hair pure silver and cut short as a man’s, revealing hoop earrings. Blue shadow brought out the blue of her eyes. “Where’re you from?”

  “Most recently? Vietnam.”

  “Sorry to hear that. Army?”

  “Marines, by way of Orange County in Southern California.”

  “Orange County? Disneyland’s down there, isn’t it?”

  “Not far. Anaheim.”

  “Took the kids one summer. Hotter than blazes. And the smog? I don’t know how people can breathe that all day, especially kids.”

  “Those are two of the reasons we didn’t go back.”

  “How many you got?”

  “Two girls. One on the way.”

  “Good for you. Got some apple pie to go with that coffee.”

  “Homemade?”

  “Don’t insult me. I wouldn’t serve it if it wasn’t.” She stuck out a hand. “I’m Lorraine.” Her name was also on the copper name tag pinned to her uniform.

  Buzz looked at the four pies in the glass case near the cash register. “I’d love a piece of apple pie, Lorraine.”

  Lorraine departed and returned with a thick slice and a fork. She stood waiting for Buzz to take a bite. His taste buds exploded when the apples and cinnamon hit his tongue. “Wow,” he said. “I’ll deny ever saying it, but this is better than my mother’s.”

  Lorraine gave him a smile, but it had a sad quality to it. The entire diner, nearly empty, had a sad quality to it. Buzz saw no reason to hide his intent for coming in. “I was the officer who responded to the call when Kimi Kanasket went missing.”

  Lorraine grimaced as if stabbed in the chest, but what she said surprised Buzz. “Then you know it doesn’t make any sense.”

  “What doesn’t make any sense?”

  “That Kimi would do such a thing.”

  “How’d she seem to you that night?”

  Lorraine sat across from him, her knees angled so they were in the aisle. “She seemed fine. She seemed just fine.”

  “I heard her boyfriend came in.”

  “Tommy Moore,” she said, nearly spitting his name. “Jackass brought a girl in here with him.”

  “What was Kimi’s reaction?”

  “Honestly? She seemed fine with it. I asked her if she was okay, and she said she was. She said she’d ended it. She was going to UW next year anyway. Besides, her parents didn’t like Tommy.” It confirmed Buzz’s suspicion that Kimi had broken up with Moore.

  “She ever say why not?”

  “Dead-end kid going nowhere fast; they wanted better for Kimi.”

  “Heard her brother introduced them.”

  “Élan? I don’t know about that.”

  “What’s his story?”

  Lorraine rolled her eyes. “Another dead-end kid. Dropped out of high school. Lives at home. Not sure he does much of anything except cause his parents grief.”

  “Kimi ever talk about her relationship with him?”

  “Not really, but I didn’t get the impression they were close.”

  “So Kimi didn’t seem sad or angry about Tommy coming in with another girl?”

  “Nope. She waited on the table, cheerful as ever. Maybe a little more cheerful. She was no dummy. She knew what Tommy was doing, and that irritated him. He got up and left without even ordering.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “Nope, just grabbed his date by the hand and bolted. Drove off in a huff. Back tires spitting up gravel.”

  “Kimi finish her shift?”

  “Yep.” Lorraine pointed to a phone mounted on the wall near the cash register. “She used that phone to call home and let them know she was on her way. Did it every night she worked.” Lorraine picked up the napkin from beneath the table setting and blotted the tears pooling in the corners of her eyes.

  “So, no indication she was upset or depressed?”

  “She hugged me and said she’d see me Saturday night.” She took a moment to compose herself before continuing. “I told her not to bother, not with the football game that night, not with the whole town clearing out. This place was going to be a graveyard anyway.”

  “She wasn’t going to the big game?”

  Lorraine shook her head. “No. Some of the Indians were planning a big protest about the ‘Red Raiders’ name.”

  “I heard about that.”

  “Kimi’s father is one of the tribal elders. He didn’t want Kimi too involved, since she goes to school there, which made it hard enough.”

  “Kimi ever indicate she received any threats or harassment because of the protests?”

  “Nothing serious. She said some of the students would make an occasional derogatory comment, but she just ignored them. She was more mature than most kids her age. Kimi had her own way of protesting. When she ran cross-country and track, she covered the word ‘Red’ on her tank top.”

  “Hmm,” Buzz said, thinking that pretty smart. “Let me ask you straight up, Lorraine—”

  “Do I believe Kimi jumped in the river because of Tommy Moore?” She shook her head and dabbed again at her tears. “I know that’s what they’re saying, but I’m having a hard time believing it. She was always so levelheaded, and like I said, Tommy coming in didn’t seem to bother her none. Maybe it did. Maybe she just hid it so I wouldn’t see it.”

  “Tommy ever pick her up after a shift and drive her home?”

  “Couple times, yeah.”

  Buzz looked
at his watch. “Thanks, Lorraine. I appreciate the conversation—and the pie. I better get going. Could I box up the rest of this so I can eat it later?”

  “You’d have hurt my feelings if you hadn’t asked.” She stood and started for the counter, then turned back. “You don’t think Kimi did it, do you? You don’t think she jumped in the river?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Buzz said, not wanting word to get back to the detective, Jerry Ostertag, that he was conducting an investigation. “I just make the reports.”

  “So is anyone going to pursue this?”

  “I’ll let the detectives know,” he said.

  “Seems like somebody should.”

  Buzz Almond placed the Styrofoam pie box on the passenger seat. Lorraine had slid in a fresh slice of pie to go with the one he’d partially eaten. “For your wife and girls to share,” she’d said.

  Buzz backed from the parking lot onto 141, drove around a bend in the road, and slowed when he saw a turnout he’d missed the night he and Earl Kanasket walked the road. He pulled in and got out, keeping to the shoulder. A few steps in, he noticed an undefined dirt path partially covered by foliage, ferns, and thimbleberry and blackberry vines. He pushed the brush aside and saw where tire tracks had left the road. Some of the foliage also looked to have been freshly broken, the stems still green. He started down the path, following the ruts in the road, the frozen ground crunching beneath the soles of his boots.

  A few feet in, he stopped and crouched for a closer look. The tire tread looked to have been made by oversize truck tires, the kind he associated with off-road vehicles, the kind he’d noted on Tommy Moore’s truck. He also noticed something else: impressions where it looked like the heel of a shoe had struck the ground.

  He stood and continued, walking along the side of the tire tracks so he didn’t step on them or the shoe impressions. The shrubs and branches clawed at him, snagging the fabric of his uniform as the path narrowed and wound its way east a couple hundred yards before widening again and angling up a rise. Buzz climbed the hill, feeling the exertion in his thighs and calves and hearing his labored breathing. He continued to notice broken tree limbs and branches scattered on the ground, and shrubbery that looked to have been trampled and crushed. By the time he crested the hill, each breath marked the air in white bursts, and he needed a moment to catch his wind. In the Marines he’d have charged up and down hills like this a hundred times and not broken a sweat. Now he was huffing and puffing . . . and lasting fifteen minutes in the bedroom.

  He found himself looking down on an oval-shaped clearing, an amphitheater of green and brown. It looked like something man-made, but he was certain it was natural. For one, no stumps littered the sight to indicate that it had been logged. And two, who would have bothered?

  The tire treads stopped at the top of the hill, with nothing on the downhill side until the flat area at the bottom, where the ground looked like it had been torn up good. Buzz’s heart started to pound with a rush of adrenaline, which had nothing to do with the exertion from climbing the hill. He turned and hurried back down the way he’d come, using his forearms to push the foliage aside where the path narrowed.

  When he reached his patrol unit, he opened the passenger-side door and hit the button on the glove box. It sprang open, ejecting the Instamatic camera and the extra rolls of film.

  CHAPTER 8

  Tracy made two detours on her way to the Justice Center on Monday morning. First, she drove to the King County Medical Examiner’s Office on Jefferson Street, in an area of Seattle referred to as Pill Hill because of the abundant number of hospitals and doctor’s offices, and the blood bank. She met Kelly Rosa in the building lobby. Rosa had been the forensic anthropologist in charge of exhuming Sarah’s body from its shallow hillside grave and performing an analysis of the remains. She and Tracy had known one another for several years and had become close working cases together.

  “Is that it?” Rosa asked, meeting Tracy in the lobby.

  Tracy handed Rosa an envelope containing a copy of the coroner’s report on Kimi Kanasket, which included the photographs.

  Rosa opened the package and slid out the report, holding it at arm’s length. “Lord, is this some kind of eye exam? What year is this?”

  “1976.”

  “You said it was old. Klickitat County? No medical examiner. It was likely farmed out to a local pathologist.”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  Rosa took out the photographs, considering them a moment before sliding them back into the envelope. “It’s going to be a while,” she said. “I’m testifying in that Carnation matter, and we’re pretty backed up here.”

  Everyone in Seattle knew what Rosa meant by “the Carnation matter.” After years of legal delays, a woman and her boyfriend were on trial for the brutal murder of the woman’s entire family on Christmas Eve. And while Rosa worked for the King County medical examiner, she was also available to all thirty-nine counties in Washington State.

  “I understand,” Tracy said. “I don’t need it tomorrow.”

  “You said she was swept away in a river?”

  “That’s the scenario.”

  “I know a guy,” Rosa said. “Worked with him once on another case where a body was found in a river. Let me take a look, and then I’ll decide if we should bring him in or not.”

  “Sounds good,” Tracy said.

  “He’s not bad to look at either,” she said, smiling. Then the smile faded. “Maybe one of these days we’ll work an easy one together.”

  “You wouldn’t be involved if it was an easy one.”

  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.