In the Clearing (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 3)

by Robert Dugoni

  “I know how that is,” she said.

  “Where’re you from?”

  “Cedar Grove. It’s in the North Cascades—a thousand people on a good day.”

  “So you do know what it’s like.”

  Feeling as though she’d made a connection, Tracy turned to the reason for her visit. “So I’m wondering—what impact, if any, did Kimi Kanasket’s death have on the celebrations?”

  Goldman smiled, and the glint returned to his eyes. Tracy could almost see the wheels spinning inside his head. He pointed a finger at her. “I figured you’d get around to her eventually.”

  “How come?”

  “I figured a cop who didn’t know what ‘both ways’ meant wasn’t here to relive the glory days of the local football team.”

  Tracy smiled. “Do you remember the story?”

  “Kimi? It was my story.”

  “What do you remember?”

  “A tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.”

  “How well did you know her?”

  “Everyone knew Kimi. She was a track star. In the fall she ran cross-country, and in the spring she ran the high hurdles and the one hundred—back then it was still called the hundred-yard dash. She finished second in the state her junior year and was the odds-on favorite to win both races senior year.”

  “What kind of kid was she off the track?”

  This time Goldman didn’t hesitate. “Great kid. ‘A’ student. Polite. She worked at a diner just outside of town to earn money for college.”

  “The Columbia Diner.”

  “That’s the one. The family didn’t have much. Kimi was going to be the first to graduate high school and go to college. I intended to do a feature on her.” Goldman sighed. “Like I said, a real tragedy.”

  “I noticed the diner is closed—”

  “It went the way of the dinosaur long before I closed the Sentinel.”

  “What about the people who owned the diner—are they still around?”

  “Lorraine and Charlie Topeka, spelled like the city in Kansas. Charlie was the cook. Lorraine was the boss. They made a go of it for many years.”

  “You know where I might find them?”

  “Charlie’s playing pinochle with the worms. Lorraine, I’m not sure. Heard she moved south somewhere with a daughter. She’d be pushing eighty.”

  “Mr. Goldman, you strike me as a pretty intuitive guy.”

  “I’ve fooled a few people in my day. And call me Sam. I’m old enough. I don’t need to be reminded.”

  Tracy smiled. “Fair enough, Sam. Let me ask you straight up. When you heard the news that Kimi Kanasket killed herself, what was your first thought?”

  “First thought?” He paused, eyes closed.

  “We couldn’t get anyone to talk to us,” Adele said.

  “She’s right,” Goldman said, opening his eyes. “Facts were tucked away as tight as a pound in Churchill’s knickers.”

  “Why do you think that was?”

  “People didn’t talk about those types of things back then.”

  “They didn’t want to spoil the mood,” Adele said before catching herself. “But I’ll let you two talk.” She went back to sipping her tea.

  “So what did you think, Sam? What was your first thought?”

  “I guess my first thought was the same as everyone else’s,” Goldman said. “I was shocked. Kimi didn’t strike any of us as a kid who would do that. The brother maybe, but not Kimi.”

  “Her brother had some issues?”

  “Élan was his name. He clashed with the white kids at school and got himself expelled.”

  “What was he fighting about?” she asked, though she suspected she knew the answer.

  “The local tribes were protesting the school’s use of the name ‘Red Raiders’ and the Indian mascot—a white kid wearing war paint would ride onto the field and bury a spear in the grass. The tribes said it was historically inaccurate and degrading. Looking back, they were ahead of their time.”

  “How big a deal was it?”

  “At first, not very. The tribal elders brought their concerns to the school administrators and to the city council. It was all very respectful until they got no response and felt they were being ignored. They changed tactics and started to protest outside the football games. That’s what got feathers ruffled.”

  “I understand Earl Kanasket was a tribal elder and one of the leaders of the protest. Any of that fallout ever hit Kimi?”

  “Not that I ever heard,” Goldman said. “Kimi wasn’t like Élan. Like I said, she was a quiet kid, polite. She kept more to her studies.” Goldman leaned forward, looking at Tracy over the top of his glasses. “Are you saying otherwise?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Tracy said. “But something about what happened back then didn’t sit right with a young deputy sheriff—”

  “Buzz Almond.”

  Tracy nodded. “You really do have a computer up there, don’t you?”

  “Use it or lose it, friend; that’s what my doctor says. I intend to use it.” Goldman sat back again. “Buzz was a good man and a great sheriff. If Buzz thought something was up, it likely was.”

  “So tell me, what was a great kid like Kimi doing with someone like Tommy Moore?”

  “Tommy got all the girls back then. He was our James Dean—smoldering good looks. He could charm a rattlesnake into not biting him.”

  “How well did you know him?”

  “Not well. Never spoke to him. I covered his fights when he fought Golden Gloves. He could have been a good boxer; he had a heck of a left hook.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He drank too much, and the town more or less ran him out after the story broke about Kimi. They blamed him for her death. I heard he moved back home to the reservation. Hasn’t been seen or heard from since, far as I know.”

  Tracy switched gears to the two receipts in Buzz Almond’s file. “How about Hastey Devoe? I understand he owned a windshield repair company and an auto repair shop.”

  “That’s right, just off 141 on Lincoln Road, I believe.”

  “What kind of guy was he?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Tracy struggled to rephrase her question. “I don’t know. Was he honest? Did he go to church? You know what I mean?”

  “I never had any direct business with him, but I never heard anything to indicate he wasn’t a stand-up guy.”

  “Any connection to Tommy Moore you’re aware of?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “Sounds like it was an interesting time around here, Sam.”

  “It was like Dickens wrote in A Tale of Two Cities, ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.’”

  “You wouldn’t know of any place else that carries copies of old newspapers I could go through, would you? Evelyn thought I might try the library in Goldendale.”

  Goldman smiled again. “Friend, I know the best library around, and it’s a lot closer than Goldendale.”

  Tracy followed Goldman through a spotless kitchen that held the faint odor of lemon-scented bleach.

  “Where’re you going now, Sam?” Adele asked.

  “Back to the future,” he said, leading Tracy into a tiny mudroom off the kitchen and turning the deadbolt on a curtained back door.

  “You’re not taking her out to that awful shed are you?” Adele looked at Tracy like Sam was taking her to a horror film. “He’s got more stuff in there than the thrift store in town. You’ll get dust all over your nice clothes.”

  Tracy smiled. “I’m not wearing anything that can’t get dirty,” she said, though she’d thrown on her blue cashmere sweater that morning.

  Goldman led Tracy down wooden steps into a sun-drenched patch of grass enclosed by a six-foot redwood fence. The yard looked to have been buttoned down for the winter, benches stacked upon a picnic table and stored beneath a lean-to extending off the roof of the freestanding shed. The shed doors were secured with a sturdy padlock. Goldman
removed it, swung the door open, and used a five-gallon bucket to keep it propped. Inside, he flipped a switch, and two bare bulbs hanging from overhead rafters shone golden light upon Sam Goldman’s treasures—bicycles, garden tools, baseball bats, a bucket of tennis balls, tennis rackets, file cabinets, and dozens of ties adorned with Disney and Peanuts characters and other trinkets. Adele hadn’t exaggerated; a thrift-store owner would have been duly impressed.

  Goldman slid aside and rearranged his treasures as he made his way to the back of the shed. With each movement, more dust motes danced in the shafts of light, spinning and swirling. At the back of the garage stood a wall of Bekins boxes, six or seven high and extending the width of the building. Each box had been neatly labeled with the month and the year in black marker and stacked in chronological order, starting with “7/1969” and ending with “12/2000.” Goldman moved a few boxes until he reached the box labeled “6/1975–1/1977.”

  “This would be it.” He removed the lid, revealing neatly folded newspapers.

  “You kept every newspaper?” Tracy asked.

  “From the day we opened our door until the day we closed. I was like the milkman. I delivered regularly.”

  Goldman thumbed through the papers. “August, September, October . . .” When he got to November, he pulled out four of the papers and set the lid back on the box, using it as a table. “These are the issues leading up to and following the game,” he said. “This is where you’ll find the articles on Kimi Kanasket, and they’ll give you a feel for what it was like around here.”

  “Front-page news,” Tracy said, reading the headline of the first paper.

  Stoneridge Wins Region!

  State Championship Saturday

  “Like I said, they’d have lynched me if I hadn’t covered it.”

  The half-column article on Kimi Kanasket’s death was pushed to the bottom of the front page.

  Local Girl’s Body Pulled

  from White Salmon River

  The article did not mention the word “suicide.”

  “I take it there weren’t any follow-up articles?” Tracy asked.

  “Nothing to follow up. She was cremated in a private service on the reservation. The detective told me the coroner concluded she’d jumped in because Tommy Moore broke up with her. I had a copy of his report at one time, though I don’t believe I kept it. Didn’t see any reason to make that public, though everyone knew soon enough.”

  “You spoke to the detective?”

  “Jerry Ostertag.”

  “Is he still around?”

  “I wouldn’t know, chief. Last I heard he’d retired and moved someplace in the Midwest to fish. Montana, maybe.”

  Jenny had said that Ostertag had died, but even if Ostertag was still around, Tracy doubted he would recall many of the details of Kimi Kanasket’s death. Kimi Kanasket was a black mark on an otherwise joyous occasion, like the drunk uncle who causes a scene at a family wedding. You didn’t acknowledge or talk about the incident. You quietly escorted him from the building so others could focus on the celebration, and when the family got together to remember that day, the blemish was never discussed, until, as the years passed, the incident was forgotten completely.

  CHAPTER 16

  Tracy and Sam Goldman made copies of the relevant pages of the newspaper at the copy machine in the drugstore in town, a task that took longer than it otherwise should have. Goldman stopped to talk to just about everyone, calling each person “chief,” “friend,” or “hero.”

  Tracy sensed Goldman was enjoying the break from a daily routine likely forced on him by the Internet and twenty-four-hour news programs, which had rendered so many small-town newspapers obsolete. Goldman was a perpetual ball of motion; though retired, his blood still ran black with newspaper ink, and his nose could still sniff out a news story. He was on the trail of one now.

  After dropping Goldman back at home, Tracy called and gave Jenny an update, thanked her again for allowing her to stay at her mother’s home, and said she’d be in touch when she got back the forensics. She decided to make one more stop on her way out of town, and as she drove along State Route 141, her cell phone rang. She put the caller on speakerphone.

  “Detective Crosswhite? It’s Sam Goldman.”

  “Yes, Sam.”

  “I thought you should know that after you left I had another visitor.”

  “A Stoneridge Police officer?”

  “You got that right, friend. He came by asking what we discussed. I told him you were interested in the parade.”

  Tracy chuckled. “How’d he take that?”

  “He puffed up his chest a bit, asked a few more questions, and moved on. I just thought you’d like to know.”

  Tracy could hear the excitement in Goldman’s voice. “I appreciate it, Sam. It’s probably just a jurisdictional thing. The sheriff let them know I’d be in town. Next time down I’ll stop by and introduce myself, but I appreciate the heads-up.”

  “Not a problem, friend.”

  Tracy was about to disconnect when she passed the small turnout and the path leading to the clearing. “Sam?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know anything about the clearing that’s just off 141? The big open field a few miles out of town?”

  “You want the local legend?”

  “I’ve heard that story. I’m more interested in recent news.”

  “High school kids used to go out there at night, usually on the weekends.”

  “Not anymore?”

  “Police cracked down a few years back, after a couple of alcohol-related accidents.”

  “You ever hear anything about anyone trying to plant things there?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Someone trying to grow plants or shrubs. Anything.”

  “Nothing grows there.”

  “That’s what I hear, but do you know of anyone trying?”

  “I don’t. I did a story on it years back and looked into its history. Nothing definitive, but there used to be a phosphorous mine in the foothills not far from there. The suspicion is, that’s where the mining company illegally dumped its mining sludge, and the ground is contaminated.”

  “I take it nobody has ever tested the soil?”

  “Nah. Nobody cares enough to find out.”

  “Okay. Thanks again for your time.”

  “Not a problem, chief. Keep me posted. You have me interested.”

  Tracy disconnected and drove another mile, slowing at the wooden sign for Northwest Park. She turned right, descending the tree-lined road for about a mile and slowing at a narrow concrete bridge that spanned the river. She stopped on the bridge. To her right, the river was an iron gray with hundreds of white ribbons where the water flowed over submerged rocks. To her left, the river continued its path to the Columbia.

  Just after crossing the bridge, she turned left into a parking lot. The park next to it was nothing more than a tiny patch of lawn with a few picnic tables along the river’s edge. She got out and considered a kiosk of concrete and metal that provided a pictorial and written history of the White Salmon River. Apparently, it had been dammed for hydroelectric energy for decades, until the recent push to restore the natural runs of the Chinook salmon and steelhead migrating from the Pacific Ocean to their spawning grounds.

  Tracy stepped onto the lawn and approached the river. The water flowed gently here, lapping over the rocks along the shore. Her eyes were again drawn upstream to where the water flowed more forcefully, water that had carried Kimi Kanasket’s body downstream until the outstretched limb of a sunken tree caught her somewhere near this spot.

  A car engine and the sound of tires hitting speed bumps drew Tracy’s attention back to the bridge, and she watched a white-and-blue Stoneridge Police SUV slow as it crossed, not the same patrol vehicle that had been following her trail. The driver peered down at her from behind sunglasses. Seemed the officer really was interested in what Tracy was doing.

  She didn’t follow the SU
V’s progress, turning her gaze back to the river, but she heard the gravel crunching as the car entered the parking lot and came to a stop. The engine shut off, and a car door opened and shut.

  “Excuse me?” This officer looked more seasoned than the officer at the library. He was older and heavier, with a head of gray hair and the stern expression of someone officious. The sun glinted off his sunglasses and the gold badge attached to the grommet just above the breast pocket of his beige short-sleeve shirt. “I’m chief of police here in Stoneridge,” he said. “Lionel Devoe.”

  There was that name again.

  Devoe hooked his thumbs in the belt of his pants, which hung below his gut. “You must be that detective from Seattle who Sheriff Almond said would be in town. I would have appreciated the courtesy of a call to let me know you’d made it.”

  “The officer checking up on me in town never gave me the chance to introduce myself,” Tracy said. “I was intending to stop in and visit, but the day got away from me.”

  Devoe removed his sunglasses, slid them into his shirt pocket, and stepped to the side so he wasn’t looking directly into the sun. “So what’s of interest to a Seattle police detective here in Stoneridge?”

  Tracy knew Jenny had already informed Devoe of her interest. She figured the other officer hadn’t followed her on his own, but likely had been told to do so when he pulled to the curb after he first encountered Tracy in Stoneridge that morning. Through experience she’d learned that sometimes if she stirred the pot, something unexpected bubbled to the surface. “Devoe?” she said. “Where have I heard that name before?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  She snapped her fingers. “Hastey Devoe. Didn’t he have an auto repair shop back in the day?”

  “That was my father,” Devoe said, clearly surprised by the question. “That’s a long time ago. Why would you want to know about that?”

  “Name just popped up in conversation. I understand that was a special time around here in Stoneridge. I read about a big forty-year celebration coming up.”

  “Sheriff said you’re interested in Kimi Kanasket.”