In the Clearing

by Robert Dugoni

  “Do you give a discount for Triple A members?” Dan asked.

  “No, but we do for AARP members.”

  “Ouch.”

  “I think we can negotiate something.”

  “Then I’ll see you when I see you.”

  Tracy hung up and grabbed her coat, in a hurry to go shopping, when her desk phone rang. She contemplated not answering but saw it was her private line.

  “I’m thirsty,” Kelly Rosa said, “And it’s been a hell of a week. My husband has the girls at a soccer practice and is taking them out to dinner, so I have a couple hours’ reprieve. Buy me a beer, and I’ll spill my guts about Kimi Kanasket.”

  Rosa chose a Capitol Hill bar called the Elysian. Tracy found her at a table in the back by interior floor-to-ceiling windows that allowed patrons to see the brewery’s large metal beer tanks. Tracy never could quite reconcile Rosa’s physical appearance with what she did for a living. Only five feet tall and dressed in comfortable clothes, Rosa looked more like a PTA parent or a soccer mom than someone who spent her workdays trudging up mountains and navigating forests and swamps to recover and examine the remains of bodies often in advanced and horrific stages of decay. Rosa had once explained to Tracy that she thought of her job as a forensic anthropologist for the King County Medical Examiner’s Office to be as much historian as scientist. She said she looked at each new case as a puzzle that required her to journey back in time, and it was her job to solve the puzzle.

  Rosa sipped a beer with one hand while texting with the other. With two teenage daughters, she had to be a model of efficiency.

  “Those things will be the death of society,” Tracy said, reaching the table and pointing to Rosa’s phone.

  Rosa stood, phone still in hand, and gave Tracy a hug.

  “How’re you doing?” Tracy asked.

  “Still living the dream. Hang on. I’m actually texting my husband to confirm he’s taking the girls out to dinner after their soccer practice.”

  “I’m sorry you’re missing out,” Tracy said.

  Rosa scoffed. “Ha. If I wasn’t here having a beer, I’d be standing in the cold and rain watching a ball get kicked all over the field. You’ve saved me from a nasty cold.” Rosa hit “Send” and set the phone down. “Okay. The ringer is off and so am I. How are you?”

  “Can’t complain.” The legs of Tracy’s chair scraped the terrazzo tile floor as she sat.

  “It’s been a while,” Rosa said. “That’s a good thing.”

  Tracy took a moment to look around and smell the rich aroma of hops. “Interesting place. I like it.”

  “Paul and I used to come here after I got off work,” she said. “BK.”

  “BK?”

  “Before kids—though my kids still think the two of us have never been to a bar in our lives. I told my oldest about a Rolling Stones concert we went to in college, and I don’t know what shocked me more—that she didn’t know who the Rolling Stones were or that she refused to believe we ever went to a concert. Wait until the day I tell them I once died my hair purple.”

  A waitress approached. “What are you drinking?” Tracy asked.

  “The Immortal.”

  “It’s an IPA,” the waitress said, handing Tracy a menu with beers named Loser Pale Ale, Men’s Room Red, and the Wise. “I could use a little wisdom,” Tracy said, “but who can pass up immortality?”

  Rosa sipped her beer. “I see way too much mortality at work.”

  If the demands of Rosa’s job ever wore her down, she didn’t show it. At least Tracy had never seen it. Rosa packed a lot of positive energy into her small frame.

  “How’s that boyfriend of yours?” Rosa asked.

  “Good,” Tracy said. “But right now neither of us seems to be able to get out from under work.”

  “Screw that.” Rosa slapped the table loud enough to draw the attention of a woman seated at the next table. “The work will always be here. People are always going to die. Take him someplace exotic, where you don’t have to worry about anything except what cocktail to drink and how many times a day you can have sex.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Tracy said. “Help me solve this one and I might find that time.”

  “I think I can help with that,” Rosa said, “but I’m waiting for someone.” She glanced over Tracy’s shoulder to the door.

  Tracy noticed a third chair at the table and recalled Rosa mentioning she might ask for help. “So who is he?”

  “Trust me. He’s worth the wait.” She glanced again to the door. “And there he is.” Rosa stood and waved at a ruggedly handsome man scanning the crowd. When he saw Rosa, he returned her wave and flashed a mouthful of white teeth.

  Rosa spoke under her breath. “Is it sexual harassment if I just think about grabbing his butt?” She stuck out her hand and gave the man a one-armed hug, then made the introductions. “Tracy, meet Peter Gabriel.”

  Tan, lean-muscled, and dressed in a pair of loose-fitting khakis, an open-collared shirt, and a lightweight raincoat, Gabriel looked like he’d just walked off the pages of a J.Crew catalog. His curly brown hair fell nearly to his shoulders. Tracy was guessing he was a rock climber or an extreme skier—definitely something outdoorsy.

  “Peter Gabriel, like the singer?” she asked.

  “Spelled the same,” he said, offering a firm handshake. His other hand held a single manila file. “Good taste in music.”

  He set the file on the table, took off his raincoat, and pulled out a chair.

  “About a year back, Peter and I worked another river-drowning case together,” Rosa said. She paused to let the wailing sound of a siren pass before continuing. “I thought he might be of help with this one.”

  “Okay,” Tracy said, turning to face him. “What do you do, Peter?”

  Gabriel was unbuttoning his cuffs and rolling up his shirtsleeves. He wore two colorful woven rope bracelets on his left wrist. A hefty sport watch adorned his right. “I work as a consultant for REI, but my passion has always been white-water river rafting and canoeing.”

  The waitress returned with Tracy’s beer and offered Gabriel a bright smile. Gabriel surveyed the beer menu for a moment, then said, “Okay, I cannot pass up the opportunity to try a beer called ‘Loser Pale Ale.’”

  Tracy liked him already.

  “Peter has guided white-water excursions on just about every major river in the state,” Rosa said. “Everything from Class Two to Class Five rapids. Did I get that right?”

  “You did,” Gabriel said before turning to Tracy. “My dad owned a white-water rafting company on the Rogue River in Oregon. It was a family business. My brothers and sisters and I could navigate a river about the same time we could walk. I guided my first white-water trip when I was twelve.”

  “About a year ago, I needed some help with a body pulled from the Skykomish,” Rosa said, referring to a river about an hour northeast of Seattle. “We were trying to determine whether or not the injuries were inflicted by the river. Peter was recommended to me.”

  “I appreciate the help,” Tracy said.

  Rosa flipped open her manila folder, and Gabriel mimicked her, opening his. “Let’s start with the coroner’s finding that the deceased was alive when she entered the water,” Rosa said. “First, drowning is one of the most difficult causes of death to get a handle on, because there is no true definitive sign of drowning. A drowning person actually dies from a lack of oxygen. Having said that, I concur with the pathologist who prepared this report that the person was likely alive when she hit the water.”

  “You do?” Tracy asked, surprised and disappointed by the conclusion.

  “Based on what’s in the coroner’s report, yes. The coroner found water in her air passages, including the lungs and stomach. Now, a person can get water in both locations passively if there is a strong current, but in this instance I believe the intake of water is consistent with a person still breathing upon impact.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m going to let Peter
answer that.”

  “The White Salmon in November runs just around forty-two degrees,” Gabriel offered. “A person hitting water that cold, if alive, will have a gasp reflex. I know. I’ve done it. If the victim wasn’t wearing a life jacket or wet suit, she’d go under and take that gasp, ingesting a large volume of water.”

  “Which is what we have here,” Rosa said. “The bruising on her body is another indicator she was alive when she went into the water—that is, that her blood was still circulating to those areas,” Rosa said. “When you have antemortem bruising, you expect swelling, damage to the skin, coagulation at the site of impact, and infiltration of the tissues with blood, resulting in color changes, which is what the coroner noted in his report and documented in photographs. You don’t find that in postmortem bruising.”

  Tracy sat back from the table, feeling deflated, though she also knew as well as anyone that most cases were exactly what they seemed. The “whodunits” were a lot rarer than the grounders. “So she committed suicide.”

  Rosa started to answer, but the waitress had returned with Gabriel’s beer, setting it on a coaster.

  “Can I get you anything else?”

  “I think we’re good,” Tracy said.

  After the waitress departed, Rosa sipped her beer and set the glass back down on the coaster. “Actually,” she said calmly, “I don’t believe she committed suicide.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “Three things.” Rosa held up a finger as she raised each point. “First, pattern recognition with respect to the bruising. Second, the nature of the recorded injuries. And third, river dynamics. I’m going to let Peter start with the river dynamics.”

  Gabriel handed Tracy and Rosa each a document. “Let’s start with terminology. The flow of a river is measured in cubic feet per second. That flow is going to vary based on the particular river, the month, and seasonal factors, such as the depth of the snowpack in the mountains that year, and the number of inches and the severity of spring rains—those sorts of things. What I just gave you is a document from the USGS website, which records water flow on just about every river. NOAA provides similar information—historical data on things like inches of rain, temperature, and river flow. For fishermen and river guides, this is our bible. It’s no different than people commuting to work checking traffic cameras to determine the traffic flow before going to work or driving home. River guides and fishermen check river flow.”

  “How far back do these records go?” Tracy asked while trying to decipher the document on her own.

  “About eighty years,” Gabriel said. “Your body was found in November 1976. November and February are wild-card months in my business. The water flow can be highly unpredictable. It can be at its absolute peak one day and at its absolute low just days later. We refer to them as transition months. In September and October, the water level is traditionally at its lowest flow because the spring and summer runoff from the snowmelt in the mountains has ordinarily ebbed by then, but if we’ve had a particularly good snowpack, the river can run high all the way into December. If we’ve had a poor snowpack, like the past two years, or we’ve had an Indian summer and the warmer temperatures extend into October, the water levels will be low. But even then, if we get early November rains or maybe a light snow in the foothills that melts, the water flow can go from superlow to superhigh extremely quickly, a matter of days.”

  “Okay. So you’re saying you really have to look at it day to day,” Tracy said. “But when you say the river has a high flow rate, how fast are we talking? Can you put it in layman’s terms?”

  “In November?”

  “Right.”

  “In November the water flow in the White Salmon can peak at two hundred twenty cubic feet per second, which is the equivalent of about eight to twelve miles an hour. Doesn’t sound like much for a car, but on a river it’s really, really fast, and the water is really high,” Gabriel said. “When the water is that high, the boulders are covered; a river guide can literally just point the raft downstream and steer it into and over big waves.”

  “And a body would go over them also?”

  “A body in the river with a life jacket would go over them. A body without a life jacket or wet suit is likely to get pulled under, especially if the person is already hurt or inexperienced in that type of survival situation. I’ve been there, though I always wear a life jacket and a helmet and I’m experienced. It isn’t a lot of fun. You don’t see the rocks and boulders coming, so you don’t have time to brace for a hit or the chance to try to avoid it. It’s like getting hit with a baseball bat. The pain is excruciating.”

  Tracy looked to Rosa. “So, swift enough to cause the type of impact injuries the coroner noted on his report?”

  “Maybe,” Rosa said, nodding again to Gabriel and taking another sip of her beer.

  “If the river is low, the flow is maybe five hundred to six hundred cubic feet per second, which equates to four to five miles an hour. The water flow isn’t as intense, but then the water isn’t as high, and there are more exposed boulders and rocks to navigate. A person in the water at low flow won’t absorb the same impact, but she’ll hit more rocks and boulders. It’s more a rat-a-tat-tat,” he said tapping on the table, “instead of thwack.” He slapped his palm for emphasis, causing Tracy to reach for her glass.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “No worries.” Tracy reconsidered the document Gabriel had handed her, which included a graph with data points. “Help me out here. It looks like from this document that the water flow for the first week of November 1976 was a little over five hundred cubic feet per second. Am I reading that correctly?”

  “You are,” Gabriel said, using a pen to circle the information on Tracy’s document.

  “So,” Rosa said, “some of the injuries identified in the coroner’s report would be consistent with what you would expect to see on a body being forced down a river with a four- to five-mile-per-hour-flow—bruising, cuts and scrapes, some abrasions.”

  “But not all of them?” Tracy said.

  “In my opinion, your victim suffered what are called ‘crushing injuries,’ injuries more consistent with blunt-force trauma. What I would expect to see as a result of a high-speed impact.”

  “Like if the river was at a high water flow,” Tracy said.

  “Not necessarily,” Rosa said, “but possibly. If she was slammed into a boulder and then crushed by, say, a log or other debris, yes.”

  “Which we did not have,” Tracy said, looking to Gabriel.

  “Not according to the USGS report,” he confirmed.

  “So how did she sustain her injuries?” she asked Rosa.

  Rosa picked up her copy of the coroner’s report. She’d scribbled all over the margins, circled words, and drawn arrows. “In my opinion, the fractured pelvis, bilateral rib fractures, and the fractures to the pubic rami, as well as the cracked sternum, are consistent with the type of injuries I’ve seen when a person is crushed by a car traveling at a high rate of speed.”

  Tracy’s adrenaline pulsed. She thought of Tommy Moore and the damage to his truck. “She was run over,” she said, needing to hear the words spoken out loud.

  “Which brings us to the third factor, pattern bruising.” Rosa handed Tracy one of the photos from the coroner’s report. It took Tracy a moment to determine that she was looking at bruising on Kimi Kanasket’s back and right shoulder. Gabriel picked up his beer and looked away.

  “Intradermal bruises occur where the blood accumulates in the subepidermal area,” Rosa said, “and a pattern emerges when the skin is distorted by being forced between ridges or grooves, like you’d find on a car tire.” Rosa used her finger to outline some of the bruises. “The more pronounced the ridges and grooves, the easier it is to discern a pattern from the bruising. It is highly unlikely that your hospital pathologist in 1976 would have recognized this, but we are much more attuned to it now. In my opinion, this is a classic example of pattern bruising from a tire. I�
�d have Mike Melton take a look and see if he can match the bruising to a particular tread from the State Patrol Crime Lab.”

  Tracy had already made a mental note to do just that. “Okay, what else?”

  “Her face and chest suffered lacerations and abrasions, indicating the body was impacted, forced down, and shoved forward by the blow.”

  “Wait a minute,” Tracy said. “Are you saying you believe she was knocked down and dragged, or that she was already on the ground?”

  “If she had been hit and dragged, say on pavement, I would have expected to see a lot more abrasions, skin and muscle torn from bone, those sorts of injuries.”

  Tracy thought of the clearing. “What if she was standing on grass and dirt at the time of the impact?”

  “Maybe, but I think it more likely she was already on the ground because of the nature of the injuries and the location of the most prominent bruising.”

  Tracy thought of her visit to the clearing. The weather conditions and temperature had been, according to Buzz Almond’s report, similar to the night Kimi disappeared. The ground had been soft from a recent rain, but the back side of the hill leading down to the clearing had been slick from the moisture and drop in temperature. Tracy had nearly fallen.

  “So . . . you’re saying what . . . ?” Tracy leaned over the table to demonstrate as she spoke. “She was on the ground, facedown, and a car came down on top of her, then went over her?”

  “I’d say she was on the ground,” Rosa said, “and she tried to cover up to protect herself, which is why the bruising is on the right side of her back and shoulder. That would be the natural instinct.”

  “So the bruising on her forearms isn’t necessarily from impacts with rocks and boulders. It could have been from the impact with a car.”

  “Could have been,” Rosa said.

  Tracy sat back. “How sure are you?”

  Rosa gave it a moment of thought. “That she was hit by a car? Ninety to ninety-five percent. That all the injuries are attributable to a car and not the river? Not as certain.”