In the Clearing (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 3)

by Robert Dugoni

  “What?” Hastey whined. “We got three beers left untapped. It’s not even midnight.”

  “Leave ’em,” Eric said.

  “I cannot do that.” Hastey snapped to attention, his belly falling out the bottom of his shirt and hanging over his pants. He gave a mock salute. “A United States Marine will leave no soldier behind.”

  “Leave them,” Eric said. “I don’t want them in my car if we get pulled over.”

  “Shit, nobody’s going to do anything to us. We rule this town.” Hastey howled loud and long.

  “Just get in the truck,” Eric said.

  “Shotgun.” Hastey knocked into Archie, who had emerged from the brush, pushing him nearly to the ground, and grabbed the passenger-door handle. “You ride in the back.”

  “Need a crane to lift your fat ass into the bed, anyway,” Archie said.

  “You want us to get you a stepladder so you can climb in?” Hastey said.

  Darren killed the lantern, plunging them into darkness, and climbed into the open bed of the Bronco. He and Archie sat with their backs to the cab, and Darren could now feel the cold through the seat of his jeans. When he flexed his fingers, they felt thick as sausages, and the joints were tight. He thought it good preparation for the game, which the weathermen were forecasting would be even colder. He hoped it didn’t snow. He hated playing in the snow. Every hit felt like your bones were cracking.

  “Got to get me a chew,” Archie said, dipping into a bag from his back pocket and packing his cheek with a wad of chewing tobacco.

  “Don’t spit that shit on me,” Darren said.

  “And don’t get any on the truck,” Eric said, starting the engine. “My dad will kick my ass.”

  The headlights and running lights atop the roll bar lit up the area like powerful searchlights. Eric slammed the car into reverse, backed up quickly, threw it into drive and gunned the engine, whipping the steering wheel hard in the other direction, causing the big back tires to fishtail and spit gravel. It sent Archie flopping over into Darren, who had been smart enough to anticipate Eric’s move and had grabbed hold of the roll bar. Eric did the same thing each time he drove, but Archie never did seem to figure it out. Then again, he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed.

  Hastey let out another rebel yell and cranked the volume on the eight-track player, blasting AC/DC’s “It’s a Long Way to the Top” as the Bronco pitched and bounced, the winch and grille on the front mowing down brush and vines. A moment later the truck blew from the brush onto 141 without Eric ever taking his foot off the gas. He called it “going naked.” So far this season, they’d only had one close call, crossing in front of a semitruck driving in the opposite direction, close enough that Darren heard the truck’s air brakes hiss as it went past.

  The wind whipped around the bed of the truck, dropping the temperature another ten degrees or so. Darren kept a grip on the roll bar where it was bolted to the bed and shoved his other hand beneath his armpit. Archie sat beside him, hunched over, knees to his chest, chin and hands tucked. He looked like a turtle trying to retreat inside his shell.

  “Slow down,” Darren yelled, though he knew Eric couldn’t hear him over the music and the wind. Not that Eric would have slowed anyway. Eric was a hothead with a massive ego. He didn’t even care about Cheryl Neal. He’d told Darren as much. He was just using her.

  But then the truck slowed, and for a moment Darren thought maybe Eric had not only heard him but was actually listening for a change. Just as quickly, however, he thought maybe their luck had finally run out and a cop was ahead. He turned to look. In the truck’s headlights, someone was walking the shoulder of the road, a girl in a coat with her back to them.

  Eric turned down the music. “Well, look what we have here,” he said, pulling alongside the girl. Kimi Kanasket. Darren swore under his breath, sensing that this was not good.

  Kimi wore a wool coat that extended to her knees; her legs were bare to her shoes.

  “Hey, Kimi,” Eric said, elbow out the window.

  Kimi turned her head but didn’t otherwise acknowledge them. She kept walking.

  “Where’re you heading?”

  “Home.”

  “You want a ride?”

  Darren knew what Eric was doing. If he got the chance, he’d screw Kimi just to screw Cheryl Neal and Tommy Moore. But that wasn’t going to happen. No way Kimi would fall for it, which would only make Eric angry.

  “No, thanks. I’ll walk.”

  “That’s crazy. It’s a long way, and it’s freezing out. Come on, we’ll give you a ride.”

  “I’m good. I walk it all the time. My parents are waiting for me.”

  “What—you don’t like us?”

  Kimi didn’t answer. Darren could see and sense her discomfort. She wasn’t afraid. He doubted much scared Kimi, but she was clearly uncomfortable. “Let’s just go, Eric,” he yelled into the cab.

  “Shut up. We’re having a conversation,” Eric said. “What is it, Kimi? You don’t like us? Is it because we’re the Red Raiders?”

  Hastey leaned across the cab and let out an Indian war cry.

  Idiot.

  Kimi rolled her eyes.

  “Eric,” Darren said, “let’s just go home.”

  “Where’s your boyfriend tonight, Kimi? I heard he dumped you because you weren’t a good enough lay. Or maybe you Indian girls don’t put out.”

  Kimi stopped walking, turned, and faced the car. “You know where he is. And you know who he’s screwing. Maybe you weren’t good enough, Eric.”

  “Fucking bitch,” Eric said, jerking the Bronco to a stop and reaching for the driver’s door, but struggling to free his seat belt.

  The delay gave Darren time to get up and jump down out of the bed. “Run,” he said to Kimi. She looked at him, eyes wide. “Just run. Get the hell out of here.”

  Kimi ran.

  Eric, delayed by the seat belt, stumbled out of the cab, swearing and yelling at Kimi, who’d bolted into the woods.

  Darren wrapped him in a bear hug. “Let her go, Eric. Just let her go.”

  “Get off me.”

  Darren tightened his grip. “No. Not until you calm down.”

  After a few more seconds, Darren felt Eric weakening. “Fine. I’m calm. Okay. I’m calm.”

  “Let’s just go home,” Darren said. “Okay? Let’s go home, and let’s play tomorrow night and focus on what we set out to accomplish.”

  “I said, ‘Fine.’”

  Darren released his grip and Eric shoved him in the chest, but Darren ignored it, not wanting to escalate the situation. Eric was snorting like a bull. He got back in the car and slammed the door, brooding. Darren looked at Archie, who was half standing in the bed like he might jump out, eyes wide. He contemplated grabbing him and the two of them just walking home, but it was more than three miles in the freaking cold, and it was already late. “Sit down,” he said. He pulled himself up and into the bed, but at that moment he knew he was done with Eric Reynolds and Hastey Devoe. Maybe he and Archie could remain friends, but after Saturday night he was through with both those idiots. He had plans beyond football. He wanted to become an engineer and design planes for Boeing, and he wasn’t about to let either of them screw that up for him.

  Eric hit the gas, and the Bronco jerked forward, engine roaring, picking up speed. Just as suddenly, the front bumper took a nosedive, tires burning as they caught the asphalt. Darren and Archie were slammed against the cab. Darren’s head whipped backward, striking something solid. The Bronco started to spin, Eric doing a donut in the middle of the road, rubber burning. He punched it, and the Bronco shot down the road in the direction Kimi had run.

  “Goddamn it,” Darren shouted over the sound of the heavy-metal music and the wind. He pushed Archie off him and felt the back of his head, which was pounding. He was seeing stars.

  The Bronco left the asphalt and plunged into the underbrush, pitching and bouncing. Darren had one hand gripping the roll bar and another holding Arch
ie by the collar of his jacket, struggling to keep from being tossed out of the bed. Hastey was hooting and hollering, shouting out his dumbass war cry.

  “Eric,” Darren yelled, his voice a whisper compared to the wind and the radio. “Eric. Stop.”

  They plowed down the narrow path. The Bronco started up an incline. Darren was struggling to keep himself and Archie from sliding to the back of the bed, the muscles of his arms straining as he fought to hang on. Tree branches whipped against the bed. He ducked his head. The incline steepened, the engine straining.

  Eric yelled, “Shit!” and the next instant, Darren was weightless. His butt came up off the bed of the truck, and he lost his grip on the roll bar and on Archie. It all happened so fast, and yet it seemed so slow. He was airborne, he and Archie flying out of the bed, floating for a second before he slammed down hard against the ground. A shock wave of pain passed through him. He rolled multiple times, striking rocks in a seemingly endless cycle before finally skidding to a stop. He lay there, his body and mind processing what had just happened, trying to assess whether or not he was injured, and if so, how badly. Slowly, he struggled to his feet, sore, but as far as he could tell, not seriously injured. Archie was close by, moaning and mumbling in the dark. Darren walked over to him.

  “You okay? Archie, you okay?”

  Archie swore and got to his knees. He looked stunned but also not seriously hurt.

  Orienting himself, Darren realized he and Archie had been thrown from the bed when it went over the top of the incline. They’d landed on the back side of the hill, about halfway up from the clearing. Below them, the Bronco, with its bar of bright lights, looked like an alien spaceship that had crashed. It had spun in a circle and was now facing up the hill, though pitched off-kilter at almost a forty-five-degree angle. Darren raised his hand to block the glare of the lights and started down the hill.

  He heard Hastey shouting, his voice echoing up to them. “I’m bleeding, man. I’m bleeding, Eric. Shit. Goddamn it. I’m bleeding.”

  Darren stumbled to the bottom of the hill. Hastey was pacing in circles, his hand pressed to his forehead, blood oozing between his fingers and down the sleeve of his jacket. At first, Darren didn’t see Eric. Then Hastey moved, and he saw Eric standing over what looked like a log on the ground but what he quickly realized to be Kimi.

  “Oh God.” He dropped to a knee. She lay on her side, eyes shut, not moving. “What did you do? What the hell did you do, Eric?”

  Eric didn’t move. He didn’t speak. He stood staring down at Kimi. Behind them, Hastey continued to moan, “I’m bleeding, man. I’m bleeding.”

  “Shut up,” Darren yelled at him. “Shut up!”

  Archie finally made it down the hill, and when he saw Kimi on the ground he too started to wail. “Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.” Then he turned, bent over, and threw up.

  “What did you do, Eric? What did you do?” Darren repeated.

  Archie continued to vomit and to swear. “Damn it. Goddamn it.”

  “I’m bleeding, Eric. I’m bleeding.”

  “Shut up,” Darren said. “Everyone shut up!”

  Archie straightened, stifling another wretch. Hastey stopped wailing. Darren knelt beside Kimi. She looked bent and broken.

  “I didn’t see her,” Eric finally said. “I never saw her.”

  “You ran her down,” Darren said. “You landed on top of her.”

  “Is she dead?” Archie said, crying now. “Is she dead?”

  “She was on the ground. Why was she on the ground?” Eric said. “It wasn’t my fault.”

  “Of course it was your fault,” Darren said. “Whose fault is it if it isn’t your fault?”

  Eric lunged at him, but Darren sprung from his crouch and drove his shoulder hard into Eric’s rib cage, his legs driving Eric backward and slamming him onto his back. Darren balled his fist, poised to unleash a vicious punch. He wanted to. He wanted to hit him. He wanted to beat the shit out of him, but Hastey and Archie grabbed his arm before he could take Eric’s head off, pulling him off and dragging him away.

  “You killed her, man,” Darren said, tears streaming down his face. “You killed her.”

  Eric, breathing hard, got to his feet, white bursts escaping his mouth and nostrils. He had his hands entwined in his hair, as if he were trying to pull it out.

  “What are we going to do, Eric?” Hastey said, sounding scared, his face a mask of blood from the cut on his forehead. “What are we going to do?”

  “We need to get out of here,” Eric said.

  “What?” Darren said.

  “We need to get out of here. Now. Right now.” Eric paced. Though it was dark, he looked pale and his eyes were black pinpoints.

  “We can’t just leave her here, Eric,” Darren said.

  “What are we going to do then, huh, Darren? What are we going to do?”

  “We should find a phone and call someone.”

  “She’s dead, Darren. Who are we going to call? The police? What are we going to tell them? That we ran her over?”

  “I didn’t run her over. You did.”

  “You were in the car. We were all in the car. We all ran her over.”

  “No,” Darren said. “No way, Eric.”

  “I’m supposed to go in the Army,” Archie stammered. “I’m supposed to go in the Army when I graduate.”

  “Listen to me,” Eric said. “They’ll go after all of us because we were all in the car. They’ll test our blood, and they’ll know we were drinking and smoking. We’ll all go to jail, and not just for the night or a week. Shit, this is murder. You get the chair for murder. They kill you.”

  “I can’t go to jail,” Hastey said. “I can’t go to jail.”

  “We need to leave,” Eric said again. “Now.”

  “We can’t just leave her, Eric,” Darren said.

  “Nobody knows we’re out here. Nobody. We have the game tomorrow. Everyone is going to think we were at home, in bed, getting ready. Our parents don’t know we snuck out, so they’ll say we were home in bed.”

  “We can’t leave her,” Darren said again.

  “I don’t want to, Darren. Goddamn it, I don’t want to. But we have to. Don’t you understand? We have to.”

  Darren couldn’t stop crying.

  “I’ll drive you home,” Eric said. “I’ll drive you home and then I’ll use the pay phone at the gas station and call it in anonymous, okay?”

  “What about my head?” Hastey said. “What am I going to tell them happened to my head?”

  “I got a first-aid kit in the truck. My dad keeps it there for when he goes hunting. We’ll clean you up and put a bandage on your head. Tomorrow you wear a ball cap. The cut is high enough that no one will see it. At the game you’ll have a helmet on. You can say you cut your head during the game.” Eric rubbed his forehead as if fighting a massive headache. Then he wiped away tears. “Nobody will know.” He looked at all of them, speaking quickly. “Nobody needs to know, okay? Nothing needs to change. Tomorrow we win a championship and we go on with our lives, just like we planned. We go on with our lives. Archie, you’ll go in the Army, and Darren and I will go to UW. And Hastey, you’ll go to community college and get your grades up, then you can come join us. We can’t help Kimi now. She’s dead. It was an accident, but she’s dead. If we say anything, then we might as well all be dead too, because then our lives will be over.”

  Darren heard the words, but now they sounded as if they were coming from some far-off place, as if they weren’t real, as if none of this were real. White stars continued to flicker in front of his eyes, concussion stars that he’d played through so many times. That’s what this was—a concussion. He wasn’t thinking straight. He was imagining this. He had to be imagining this. It wasn’t real. Couldn’t be real.

  None of this was real.

  Tracy set down the last page of the counselor’s report. From the rest of the file, she’d gleaned that Darren had initially gone to the clinic for anxiety, though he didn’
t know the cause. He’d told his counselor that he’d awake early in the morning, his mind racing, unable to get back to sleep. He said that soon thereafter he became anxious at night, and he’d started having trouble falling asleep. The lack of sleep was making him a zombie at work, so he started taking sleeping pills and washing them down with Scotch. He told his counselor he had nightmares. In them he saw a teenage girl, her body broken and battered. He said the nightmare started when Rebecca turned fifteen, and soon thereafter the girl in his dreams began to haunt him every night, no matter how many pills he took or how much Scotch he drank. She always came.

  In his nightmare he stood over her, thinking her dead, but then she’d open her eyes and look up at him from the ground and whisper, “Help me. Please, help me.”

  The counselor thought the girl was Rebecca, and that Darren was suffering an irrational fear of losing his daughter. It had been a lengthy two-year process before Darren was able to identify the girl and recall what had happened to Kimi Kanasket. In her final report in the file, after Darren had recounted the incident in great detail, the counselor wrote that Darren had “a major breakthrough” and acknowledged that his dream was not a dream—it was recollection. He remembered that night as vividly as if it were yesterday. She wrote that when he left the office that afternoon, Darren had expressed relief and said he felt lighter than he had in years, unburdened.

  Then he drove home and shot himself.

  Tracy closed the file and stood, but she didn’t leave right away. After a long moment, she picked up her pen and her notepad. She hadn’t taken a single note.

  On the drive back to Tiffany Martin’s house, she thought about what she’d say, ultimately deciding she’d keep it simple. She felt anxious as she climbed the porch steps, and her heart raced when she knocked on the front door. Tiffany opened it, Rachel and Rebecca standing behind her, the three looking worn-out.

  “Your husband,” Tracy said to Tiffany, then looking to Rachel and Rebecca, “and your father, was a very good man. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But he was a very good, decent man.”

  The three women started to weep, tears streaming from the corners of their eyes, hands covering their sobs. They turned to one another and grasped hold in a fierce embrace.