In the Clearing (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 3)

by Robert Dugoni

  “I was standing on a desk to get that shot,” Goldman said with some pride.

  “The mother didn’t get to join in the fun?”

  “The mother died before they moved from Southern California. It was just the two of them.”

  “No siblings?”

  “Nope. Eric was the golden boy. Led the basketball team to state also that year. And he pitched well enough he would have been drafted, but Ron made it clear that football was king and young Eric intended to play quarterback and then go on to the NFL.”

  The article continued on the next page, accompanied by another photograph of Eric, this time wearing a letterman jacket adorned with more patches than a Boy Scout uniform, and reclining easily against the side of what was likely the precursor to the SUV—a Jeep maybe—with a cloth canopy.

  Tracy held the paper up and angled it to better catch the yellow light. She realized that it was actually a Bronco with off-road tires. But her initial euphoria quickly dissipated. She could make out some of the tire tread but not much, and she could see very little of the sidewall, where she knew the make and model number were placed. “Damn,” she said.

  “What are you looking for, chief?”

  “The tire. I need to know the make and model number of that tire.”

  “Let me see it.” Goldman took the paper, raised his glasses onto his forehead, and studied the photograph. “We cropped this,” he said.

  “You cropped it?” Tracy asked.

  “Sure. Had to crop it to get it to fit.”

  “Would you still have the original photo?” Tracy asked, cautious but optimistic, given Goldman’s seeming penchant to keep everything.

  Goldman gave her a knowing smile. “You underestimate me, hero.” He started toward a row of file cabinets lining a side wall. Each drawer contained a white card in the front slot, the ink faded and in some instances barely visible. Goldman again raised his glasses to the ridge of his forehead, bending to read the cards in the muted light. “This one,” he said, flipping the button with his thumb and pulling the drawer open. “We kept the photographs for each issue. Never knew when you might need a canned shot.”

  Like the boxes of newspapers, the drawer was neatly organized, with tabbed hanging green files. Goldman went through them front to back, his pace slowing as he neared the last files. “Nope,” he said.

  “You don’t have it?” Tracy asked.

  “Wrong drawer.”

  Goldman slid the drawer closed and pulled open the drawer beneath it, repeating the process, slowing, and pulling out one of the hanging files near the front. “This is it.” He took the file back to the makeshift Bekins box table. Inside the file were loose black-and-white photos. Goldman went through them as fast as a card dealer, setting aside the photographs that had nothing to do with Eric Reynolds or his father.

  “Here they are.” He flipped through shots of Eric leaning against a stucco building, some with his letterman jacket on, some with it off. “It was Adele who suggested we take the picture of Eric leaning against the car, to give us better contrast.” Goldman held up one of the photographs. “She said these looked too much like mug shots.”

  Goldman handed Tracy the shot of Eric leaning against the Bronco. Someone, likely Goldman, had used a red grease pen to draw a rectangle to delineate the area of the photo that would be used in the paper. Outside that rectangle, below the Bronco’s front fender, the camera had captured more of the oversize tire than had been published in the newspaper. Tracy could see the tread, as well as a portion of the sidewall, but she couldn’t see the make or model number, at least not with the naked eye.

  “Sam, I’m going to have to take this picture and this negative. Copies won’t work. You have my word I’ll scan the photo and bring it back. The negative I have to send to the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab in Seattle.”

  Goldman’s eyes were blazing with excitement. “Now, that’s a story to tell the grandkids,” he said.

  Another thought came to her. “Can I see the issue covering the parade—the one with the collage?”

  “That’d be the issue—Tuesday, November 9, 1976,” Goldman said.

  After finding the box, Goldman found the issue and opened it as if it were a centuries-old relic, carefully laying it on the box lids. Tracy studied the photographs capturing the parade. The residents of Stoneridge lined the streets, smiling and yelling, and cheerleaders carried a hand-painted “State Champions” banner at the head of a procession that included the band. Players and coaches filled trucks and convertibles. Several of the photographs were taken at angles that captured the vehicles carrying the team members in their jerseys—a station wagon, a Mustang, a pickup truck with several players standing in the bed, and a flatbed truck carrying another two dozen or so, seated with their feet dangling over the side while they waved to the crowd.

  Tracy considered more closely a photograph capturing three of the Four Ironmen—Eric Reynolds, Hastey Devoe, and Archibald Coe sitting atop the backseat of a convertible Cadillac. Reynolds held a trophy aloft over his head, and Devoe had his index finger raised and a broad smile. Coe stood beside them with a blank stare, looking as impassive as he’d been at the nursery. Tracy noted Darren Gallentine’s absence and scanned the other photographs, but she didn’t see his face or his jersey number in any of the pictures. She also didn’t see Eric Reynolds’s Bronco, and she wondered why, since with its removable soft top, it would have seemed a natural for the parade.

  Tracy’s cell phone rang. She recognized the number.

  “They just pulled over Hastey,” Jenny said.

  CHAPTER 25

  The Klickitat County sheriff’s main office remained located in Goldendale, a fifty-minute drive, but Buzz Almond had opened a “West End” office in Stoneridge to better serve that portion of the county and, if he was honest, probably to shorten his commute. When she arrived at the sheriff’s office, Tracy decided to let Hastey Devoe cook for a few minutes while she and Jenny scanned and sent the photograph of Eric Reynolds leaning against the Bronco’s bumper to Kelly Rosa and Michael Melton. Tracy asked Rosa to consider whether the bruising pattern on Kimi Kanasket’s back and shoulder matched the tire tread in the photograph. She advised Melton that she was having the negatives driven up to him in Seattle by a deputy sheriff and asked that he compare the tread with the tread in the photographs from the clearing.

  The deputies who brought Hastey Devoe in told Jenny that he had refused a Breathalyzer test in the field, didn’t respond to their questions, and asked to make a phone call. Being brought in for suspicion of driving under the influence may have seemed like nothing but a minor inconvenience to Devoe, since he probably figured that his brother, Lionel, chief of police, would iron everything out.

  Tracy knew she would need to knock Hastey Devoe out of his comfort zone if she hoped to get him to talk. She would have preferred to question him after she knew what Melton and Rosa had determined, but that wasn’t going to happen. She sensed they didn’t have much time before Lionel found out about the arrest, and she knew they wouldn’t likely get another opportunity to get Hastey alone anytime soon.

  She was encouraged to see Devoe’s smirk evaporate when she entered the room with Jenny. Lionel may have warned him that a detective from Seattle was in town asking questions about Kimi. But beyond that, Devoe had to know that when the sheriff showed up to interview you personally, it was a bigger deal than just another DUI arrest.

  “This is getting to be an old habit, Hastey,” Jenny said, sliding back a chair and sitting. Tracy took the other open chair in the room. No table separated them from Devoe, nothing to provide him a comfort zone. He smelled like a fraternity house the morning after a party.

  Tracy recalled that in the photographs of Devoe as a younger man, the extra weight had given him an innocent, boyish appearance. Tracy suspected he had been the kid everyone laughed with when he took off his shirt and did cannonballs into the rivers and lakes, or belly danced as he chugged a beer. He’d likely been the
class clown, one of the John Belushis, Chris Farleys, and John Candys of the world. But things didn’t end well for those men—drugs eventually killed Belushi and Farley; Candy had struggled with his weight and died of a heart attack. Those men had also been trained actors, and it was possible that they created their public personas to cover their insecurities and their demons.

  From the look of Devoe, things weren’t going to end well for him either. Excess alcohol and overconsumption had turned his baby fat into sagging folds that overwhelmed the chair he sat in, and his boyish features had become pale and fleshy. His dress was slovenly, his khakis and blue polo shirt wrinkled and unkempt, with half-moon perspiration stains beneath each armpit and ringing his collar. His thinning gray hair was also disheveled and damp with perspiration.

  Devoe’s gaze flicked to Jenny. “I’d like to make a phone call.”

  “Just as soon as we’ve had a chance to talk and get you booked,” Jenny said.

  “I’m not saying anything.” Devoe shifted his gaze to an empty corner of the room.

  “Then you can listen.” Tracy inched her chair closer, forcing him to look at her.

  “Who are you?”

  “You know who I am, Mr. Devoe. I’m the detective from Seattle your brother told you about.”

  “What do you want?” Devoe folded his arms across his chest.

  “I want to talk to you about Kimi Kanasket.”

  Devoe’s forehead wrinkled. “Who?” he said. It was not convincing.

  Tracy slid closer, leaving less than a foot between their knees. “I want you to tell me about the night Kimi Kanasket disappeared.”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about.” Devoe had the damaged, gravelly voice of a man who abused his alcohol and his cigarettes.

  “Sure you do. You went to school with her your senior year, and this weekend is all about that year. Beyond that, you were there that night. You were in the clearing. You, Eric Reynolds, Archibald Coe, and Darren Gallentine were inseparable. You were the Four Ironmen. Tell me what happened.”

  Devoe wouldn’t look at her, but his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, and he shifted and fidgeted in his chair. Though the room was air-conditioned, beads of perspiration began to trickle down the side of his face, following the contours of his sideburns. The feral odor in the room intensified.

  “I don’t . . .” Hastey cleared his throat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “What size shoe do you wear, Hastey?”

  “Why do you want to know that?”

  “Thirteen, right?”

  “Wrong,” he said. “Twelve.”

  “You favored Converse in high school, like your buddy Eric.”

  “I don’t—”

  Tracy leaned forward. “Yes, you do, Hastey, and I’m going to prove it. I’m going to prove that you were in the Bronco when Eric ran Kimi over, and I’m going to prove that you and your brother Lionel, and maybe even your father, fixed the Bronco’s windshield and front fender. So don’t tell me you weren’t there or you don’t know anything about it.”

  “I want to talk to my brother.”

  “Your brother? I was betting that you’d ask to call Eric Reynolds,” Tracy said. “He’s been covering for you for forty years, hasn’t he? Of course he’s had little choice. The two of you share a common secret, don’t you? That’s why he put you on the company payroll, and that’s why he keeps you there. He even helped fund Lionel’s campaign to become chief of police for the same reason—to keep you quiet.”

  Hastey looked like a man with heartburn after eating a spicy meal. The perspiration was dripping off of him.

  “Stop me anytime I’m wrong, Hastey.”

  Devoe didn’t speak.

  “The thing about a lie, Hastey, is it’s never just one, is it? You think if everyone agrees to say nothing, then nothing can happen to anyone. But soon you have to tell another lie, then another, and pretty soon, you’ve told so many lies you don’t know what the truth is anymore.” Tracy tapped her sternum. “But deep inside, the truth lingers, and that soft, nagging conscience just keeps pecking away, fighting to get out. It just keeps pecking and pecking and pecking, until you just can’t stand it. You can’t sleep. You can’t function. You’re drinking too much, eating too much. You’re self-destructing. You’re wondering if you’re going to have a heart attack, or maybe lose it entirely, the way Darren Gallentine lost it.”

  Devoe looked white as a sheet.

  “And then that secret that seemed so simple has suddenly become a huge anchor around your neck, and it starts to pull you under because you no longer have the strength to keep your head above water. You start to drown. You’re going under, Hastey, and you know it. You’re drowning. Don’t you want to shake free of that anchor? Don’t you want to free your conscience? You didn’t kill Kimi Kanasket. You weren’t driving. You were just there. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time. It happens to every kid in high school. Tell me what happened. Tell me what happened, and I’ll do my best to help you.”

  Devoe looked to be struggling to catch his breath, as if about to hyperventilate. Tracy could picture him doing something similar in a football huddle. Tired and exhausted, not believing he could play another down, but unwilling to let his teammates down. Unlike Eric Reynolds, who was the good-looking all-American, or Darren Gallentine, who was physically fit and smart, or even Archibald Coe, who had a plan to become an Army officer, football was all Hastey had. It was how he fit in—because being the class clown necessarily meant that while people were laughing with you, they were also laughing at you, and that could be painful. So Hastey would suck it up and go back to the line and slam his body into his opponents over and over again, beyond exhaustion, because that was how he fit in, how he was accepted. And being accepted was what he wanted, which is why Tracy knew, even before he opened his mouth, that Hastey Devoe would never say anything to implicate anyone, especially not the hand that had fed him all those years. He wouldn’t implicate Eric Reynolds.

  “I want to talk to my brother,” he said.

  Lionel Devoe arrived at the sheriff’s office within minutes of Hastey’s phone call. Of course, he didn’t have far to travel. He stalked into the conference room looking and sounding upset. He became more upset when Hastey wasn’t in the room.

  “He’s being booked, Lionel,” Jenny said. “And he’s going to spend the night in jail and be arraigned in the morning. You can post bail then and take him home.”

  “I’m going to call Dale,” Lionel said, referring to the county prosecutor, “and let him know what this is really about.”

  “If I were you, I’d start calling around for a good lawyer,” Jenny countered. “I’ve already spoken to Dale. He intends to bring felony charges against Hastey as a repeat offender, and he’s not going to be offering him any type of prevention program without a suspension of his driver’s license and jail time.”

  Hastey looked like he could spit nails. “What exactly are you doing, Sheriff?”

  “My job, Lionel. You want to get angry at someone, get angry at your brother. Then get him some help before he kills himself or someone else.”

  “Don’t preach to me, and don’t tell me your deputies just happened to stumble upon Hastey, today of all days, with her in town.” Lionel jabbed a finger in Tracy’s direction. “That’s just too Goddamn convenient. You had him watched, and you pulled him over so she could talk to him about Kimi Kanasket.”

  “Whose side are you on, Lionel?” Jenny said, looking and sounding completely innocent. “I know he’s your brother, but he was clearly intoxicated, and he needs help.”

  “My concern is you facilitating a witch hunt based on some unsupported allegations from forty years ago and dragging my brother into it. This is supposed to be a celebratory weekend. This is supposed to be a celebration of a past achievement and a dedication to the future.”

  “Just like forty years ago,” Tracy said.

  “What?” Hastey said.

&n
bsp; “Forty years ago nobody wanted a dead Indian girl to spoil their championship weekend. So Kimi Kanasket got tossed in the river and forgotten.”

  Lionel Devoe raised a finger and stepped closer. “Let me tell you something, Detective—”

  “No,” Tracy said raising her own finger. “Let me tell you something. Forty years ago those four boys conspired to keep hidden what they did to Kimi Kanasket, and I don’t believe they acted alone. That windshield and front fender didn’t get fixed on their own. Would you happen to know anything about that?”

  Lionel shook his head, scoffing.

  “You were running your father’s business at that time. You know anything about two cash receipts for bodywork and replacement of a windshield?”

  Lionel smiled, but it looked pained. “You’re fishing, Detective. Problem is you’ve got a line in the water, but you got no bait on your hook.” He straightened. “You think you can prove anything, then do it. Otherwise, leave my brother and me out of this witch hunt of yours.”

  “Oh, I’ll prove it. You can count on that. I learned from fishing with my dad that you don’t always need bait to catch fish. I’ve caught them with a fly, a lure, a net, and a spear. I’ve even caught them with my bare hands.”

  “Well then, good luck with that.” Lionel started for the door.

  “And when you call Eric Reynolds to report in, let him know I’m coming to talk to him next,” Tracy said. Her comment caused Lionel to stop. He looked back with a searing gaze, but when he opened his mouth he apparently couldn’t articulate what he wanted to say.

  Jenny filled the pause. “I’d suggest you get your brother a lawyer before tomorrow, Lionel.”