In the Clearing (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 3)

by Robert Dugoni

  “Reunion activities start this week, don’t they?” Tracy said.

  “They do.”

  “I have something to take care of this afternoon, then I’m going to come back down. Is your mother’s house still available?”

  “Yeah. She doesn’t get back until next week. You want to get together and talk about what you’ve found?”

  “I’ll likely be late tonight. Why don’t I fill you in tomorrow?”

  CHAPTER 23

  The following morning, despite getting to the Almond farmhouse late and having a difficult time falling asleep, Tracy was out of bed before the rooster started crowing. She’d been unable to quiet the swirling thoughts she’d taken to bed with her, and when she awoke, they started again.

  Running often helped clear her mind. When she stepped outside in her winter running gear, it was 5:15, dark, and according to the thermometer mounted near the front door, a brisk thirty-seven degrees. She set out on what had become her regular path, along the ridge of the foothills, intending to complete what she estimated to be a six-mile loop. It was disorienting running in the dark, but she had a headlamp, and the footing was solid.

  When she reached the top of the ridge, she stopped to get her bearings. The state route was to the west, Stoneridge to the south. Her usual course was to follow the foothills east, then loop back north and west to the farmhouse. But a thought came to her, and instead she ran due south, following a less worn path and keeping 141, her point of reference, on her left. The foliage grew denser as she continued, and several times she considered stopping and turning back, but she pushed on, sensing she was heading in the right direction. She ran down an incline, feeling the impact on her knees and shins, continued on flat ground for another half a mile or so, and came to another grade, this one steeper. She powered up it, her breathing labored, arms and legs pumping. When she reached the top, she intertwined her fingers behind her head, pacing as she struggled to catch her breath. Below her was the clearing.

  She always did have a strong sense of direction.

  She walked down the hill, each breath marking the air. The first signs of dawn, a pink sky, inched just above the foothills, shedding shadowy light on the clearing and the surrounding trees.

  Tracy walked to the spot where Kaylee Wright said Kimi had fallen, the spot where someone had planted a bush—the tips of the leaves already looked to be turning brown. She took a moment there, saying a silent prayer for Kimi, for her sister, Sarah, and for other young women like them. When she’d finished, a thought came to her, and she turned to consider the location where she’d seen the man the night she’d first come to the clearing. She crossed to the tree line and entered. In the daylight it was easier to pick her steps.

  Farther in, she noted what looked to be a dead plant on the forest floor, its root ball still intact. She bent to pick it up and noticed several more similarly discarded, each also with a root ball. She followed the trail and found a pile—dozens of different kinds of plants in various stages of decomposition.

  Nothing grows in the clearing.

  That hadn’t stopped someone from trying.

  She continued through the forest until she emerged onto the easement beneath the electrical lines. Her curiosity now piqued, she walked up the hill in the same direction as the tire tracks to the ridge of the foothills. From there she surveyed her surroundings but didn’t see anything that stood out. She ran along the ridgeline for another mile and was about to turn back when she found herself looking down upon a sprawling plot of land with a large redwood storefront, multiple glass hothouses the size of warehouses, and what appeared to be acres of rows of potted plants, vines, shrubs, and juvenile trees.

  A nursery.

  She looked at her watch and started quickly back to the house.

  At the farmhouse, Tracy called the Central Point Nursery and confirmed that Archibald Coe worked there, though the woman she spoke with said Coe wouldn’t be in until eleven. Coe had to be the man Tracy saw the night she’d visited the clearing, which meant he must be the person planting different plants and shrubs in the place where Kimi Kanasket had been run over, and judging by the pile of plants Tracy had found, he’d been doing so for years.

  She called Jenny, filling her in on what she’d recently learned and telling her she was going out to Central Point to speak to Archibald Coe. She’d also like to speak to Hastey Devoe, but she suspected that might be difficult unless they could catch him alone. Jenny suggested they put a loose tail on Hastey and said she’d let Tracy know if anything came of it.

  Just before eleven, Tracy jumped in the truck and headed out into a heavy mist. When she arrived at the nursery, a woman behind a counter inside the sprawling redwood building advised her that Archibald Coe managed the nursery’s garden center, which consisted of annuals, perennials, and foliage. Tracy would likely find him in one of the large glass hothouses out back. The woman offered to call Coe over the nursery’s intercom system, but Tracy declined the offer and said she’d find him on her own. The woman suggested that Tracy try the farthest glass warehouse on the lot.

  Crossing to it, Tracy raised the hood on her Gore-Tex jacket against the increasingly steady rain and stepped around puddles so as not to spend the rest of the day in wet shoes and socks. An ominous dark sky was the harbinger of a quickly worsening weather system, and Tracy hurried to get inside before what felt like an imminent deluge.

  Inside, she lowered her hood and shook off the rain. Overhead fluorescent tubes shone above tables of perennials in various stages of gestation, and rows of potted plants and small trees. The warehouse was significantly warmer than outside, the air muggy and infused with the tart smell of fertilizer.

  It wasn’t hard to find Archibald Coe. He was the only other person in the hothouse and closely resembled his most recent driver’s license photo—balding with just wisps of gray hair. Coe was sickly thin, gaunt through the cheekbones, with dark circles under sunken eyes. Dressed in knee-high rubber boots and a weathered Army-green rain slicker, Coe was working his way down a row of saplings sprouting in orange ceramic pots, watering them with what looked like a showerhead at the end of a metal pole. As Tracy neared, he lowered the wand and considered her with a flat expression and an almost vacuous gaze.

  “Archibald Coe?”

  The wand stopped spraying, though the water dribbled for a moment longer before stopping all together.

  “I’m Tracy Crosswhite. I’m a detective from Seattle.” She showed him her shield, which did nothing to change his impassive gaze. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  “I’m busy,” he said softly, sounding apologetic and looking like he’d already put in a full day. “I have to work.”

  “I won’t take up much of your time, Mr. Coe. We can talk while you work, if you like.”

  Coe looked momentarily uncertain, then raised the wand and watered the next tree in the row, dragging the hose behind him.

  “Did someone tell you to expect me?” Tracy asked, puzzled at Coe’s seeming lack of interest.

  Coe shook his head. “No.”

  “Some people would be concerned if a detective showed up unannounced and wanted to ask questions.”

  Coe looked up at the glass roof as a hard rain began to peck the panes, making a sound like bird beaks trying to shatter the glass.

  “Are you curious what this is about?” Tracy asked.

  Coe lowered his gaze. “What is it about?”

  “Kimi Kanasket.”

  The pecking increased in intensity, hail now hitting the glass and sliding to the corners of the metal frames. Coe again lifted his gaze, and Tracy took a moment to study him. What she’d thought to be indifference she now saw as fragility. Coe, the young running back Sam Goldman had described as shifty and fast, shuffled about with the tenuousness of an old man uncertain of his balance and afraid of falling. Each movement was so deliberate and methodical it made her wonder if Coe was sedated.

  “Do you remember Kimi Kanasket?” she asked.


  Coe nodded. “We went to school together. We ran track. She was very fast.” Coe put down the wand and shuffled back to the beginning of the row. He picked up a box and shook out sticks the color and shape of cigarettes and began pressing them into the rich soil of each pot.

  Tracy decided to try a different approach. “What types of trees are these?”

  “Lemon,” he said.

  “Here in the Northwest?”

  “We have a buyer in Southern California, but you can grow them here. You just have to know how to take care of them.”

  “How did you get started with plants?”

  “My dad owned a nursery.” Coe continued pressing the fertilizer spikes into the soil. “He used to say that plants are like children.”

  “Really? How so?”

  “They come from a seed, sprout limbs, grow taller, stronger—but you have to nourish them.”

  “Do you have children?” Tracy asked.

  Coe nodded.

  “A boy? Girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “One of each?”

  “Yes.”

  “How old are they?”

  Coe paused, staring at the ground. “I don’t know anymore.”

  “You don’t see them?”

  Coe shook his head. Then he picked up the watering wand and started down the next row of saplings.

  Recalling Tiffany Gallentine’s statement that Darren took his own life when his daughter turned seventeen, Tracy asked, “How old were your kids when you and your wife divorced?”

  This time Coe answered without hesitation. “Fifteen and ten.”

  “Who’s older?”

  “My daughter.”

  “So you know what it’s like to be a parent, Mr. Coe.”

  Coe stepped to the next plant without responding.

  “You know that sometimes kids don’t always do the right thing.” The watering wand hovered over the same tree before Coe directed it to the next tree in the row. “But we forgive them. If they come to us and tell us they’ve done something wrong, we forgive them. We all make mistakes.” It was a speech Tracy had given to many suspects.

  “I don’t see them,” Coe said. “They’re grown now. We don’t talk.”

  “Kimi Kanasket didn’t jump in the river, did she, Mr. Coe?”

  Coe didn’t respond. He looked momentarily paralyzed, the water beginning to puddle in a pot. “What happened in the clearing in the woods, Mr. Coe?”

  “I don’t know,” he said as if coming out of a trance. He pulled the hose behind him to the next plant.

  “Who would?”

  “I don’t know.” Coe again tugged at the hose, but it had become wedged along the bottom of one of the ceramic pots and he had to go back to free it. Rain cascaded down the glass panels, blurring the view outside.

  “Earl Kanasket has gone forty years not knowing what happened to his daughter,” Tracy said. “You have children. You have to know how that would feel—to lose one of your children and never understand why.”

  Coe began to shift from his heels to the balls of his feet, rocking. “I don’t see them,” he said. “I don’t see my kids.”

  “I can help you, Mr. Coe,” Tracy said. “If you tell me what happened, I can help you.”

  Coe shuffled to the next plant, dragging the hose behind him. “I have to work,” he said. “I have to water the plants.”

  “Why do you put plants in the clearing, Mr. Coe?”

  Coe didn’t answer.

  “I saw you that night, in the clearing, didn’t I? You’re the one who brings plants there, aren’t you?”

  “Nothing grows in the clearing. Everything dies.”

  “But you’ve planted things there, at the spot where Kimi was run over. You’ve tried many times. Why do you put plants there, Mr. Coe?”

  Coe’s complexion, already sickly, had become ghostly pale. He looked on the verge of tears.

  “Kimi was still alive,” Tracy said. “She didn’t die in the clearing.”

  Coe looked up, and for the first time met and held Tracy’s gaze.

  “Whoever hit her with the truck didn’t kill her, Mr. Coe. She was still alive when she was thrown into the river. Tell me what happened. You’ve been a solid citizen for forty years. You’ve never committed a crime. People are forgiving, Mr. Coe, but they want accountability. I get a sense you do too. You’ve been carrying this around for forty years. It’s time you unburdened yourself and got it off your chest. Tell me what happened in the clearing that night.”

  “Nothing grows in the clearing. Everything dies,” he said, and he turned and directed the wand to the next tree in the row.

  CHAPTER 24

  As Tracy left the nursery, Jenny called.

  “Looks like Hastey Devoe is getting a head start on celebrating the reunion. He’s drinking his lunch at a restaurant bar near Vancouver. I suspect he’ll be getting back in his car soon enough to drive home.”

  “Jail is as isolated as it gets,” Tracy said.

  “That was my thought exactly. I’ll tell my guys to pull him in before he reaches Stoneridge and give you a call when they do.”

  “Stall him if he asks to make a call.”

  “Will do. What did Coe have to say?”

  “Not much, unfortunately.” She summarized her conversation with Archibald Coe as well as her impressions of the man and what she thought it could mean in light of Darren Gallentine’s own emotional fragility and suicide. “I’m sure he was the person I saw in the clearing that night and that he’s been planting things in that spot for years. I found dozens of dead plants discarded in the woods.”

  “A memorial,” Jenny said.

  “A would-be memorial. Nothing grows there. Everything dies. That’s what he said. We’re on the right track now, Jenny. I know it. And I got a very strong sense Coe knows what happened and that it still bothers him. I just have to find a way to get him to talk to me. If I can get him to tell me what happened, then all the circumstantial evidence becomes not just relevant, it becomes corroborating, and possibly damning.”

  “I can speak to the DA about it; maybe we can offer Coe some sort of deal in exchange for his testifying.”

  “I don’t think that’s the issue,” Tracy said. “He’s not being recalcitrant. He’s emotionally fragile. It’s like going back to what happened is a door he can’t open or talk about. I’m going to have to think about this and be cautious about how I approach him. We can discuss it more when your deputies bring Devoe in.”

  “Where are you going now?”

  “To look at some more old newspapers.”

  Sam Goldman greeted Tracy with a smile. “You must have been driving the Batmobile,” he said.

  “I might have broken a speed limit or two,” Tracy said.

  “Perk of the job, right?”

  “It isn’t the pay, the hours, or the praise.”

  Goldman roared. “You said it, friend. Teachers, newspaper reporters, and police officers—the most underpaid professions on the planet.”

  Goldman stepped aside to let Tracy in.

  “You said you wanted to see the newspapers again?”

  “If it isn’t too much trouble.”

  “No trouble at all, chief.” Goldman was already moving through the kitchen to the mudroom. Adele sat at a small table positioned beneath the window, a pencil and a Sudoku book in hand and the same half-troubled, half-curious expression, as if she were uncertain about this continued break in their retirement routine.

  “Back to the Future two, Adele,” Goldman said.

  “Nice to see you again,” Adele said to Tracy. “Can I get you a cup of tea?”

  “Not today, but thank you. I promise not to take much of Sam’s time.”

  Goldman was on a roll. “Places to go and people to see, Adele. She’s a woman on a mission.”

  They stepped out the back door, and Goldman repeated the ritual of unlocking the padlock that was securing the shed doors, then placing the five-gallon bucket at th
e corner to keep the door from swinging shut. Inside, he turned on the light and weaved his way to the stacks of boxes containing his life’s work.

  He found the box Tracy had looked at previously and pulled out the issues. Tracy opened the first paper.

  Reynolds’ Arm, Legs Take

  Stoneridge to the Brink

  The front-page article carried over to an inside page containing additional articles and photographs. One photo depicted Eric Reynolds jogging off the field after the game with his helmet raised overhead and the broad smile of a kid with a bright future beckoning. Having taught high school in a small town, Tracy knew that wasn’t the case for everyone. Behind Reynolds the football field was filled with teammates celebrating, girls in cheerleading outfits, and parents and students in knit hats and coats, holding pennants and handmade signs.

  “That’s the game that really put him on the map,” Goldman said, adjusting his glasses and looking over Tracy’s shoulder. “Up until then, only the smaller schools had been recruiting him, but everyone came calling after that game. He threw for more than two hundred yards and two touchdowns and ran for two more scores. When UW came knocking, that was all she wrote. The old man wanted Eric to go there, and that was it. They didn’t have the big circuses back then like they do now, but we wrote a story on his decision. He signed his letter of intent at the newspaper and used our machine to fax it over to the U.” Goldman thought for a moment. “That would have been February.” He set the box aside and lifted the lid on the box beneath it, thumbing the papers again until he found the edition he was looking for.

  “February 17, 1977,” Goldman said, unfolding the newspaper. “A day that will not live in infamy.”

  The photograph was on the front page, Eric Reynolds seated at a desk, pen in hand. Ron Reynolds stood at his son’s side, one hand braced on the desk, the other clasping Eric’s shoulder. Both men looked up at the camera with broad smiles. They shared a passing resemblance. Eric had inherited the strong jawline and the smile that inched just slightly higher on the left side. Unlike Ron, who wore a crew cut and had the hard features of a drill sergeant, Eric had shoulder-length blond hair and softer features. His eyes were likely blue, though the photograph was black and white, and unlike his father’s, which burned with intensity, Eric’s sparkled. This was a high school kid who melted girls’ hearts with just a passing glance.