In the Clearing (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 3)

by Robert Dugoni

  Jenny filled the tea kettle at the faucet. “I wonder if that’s why the system indicates the file was destroyed—if my father wanted whoever did go looking for it to believe the file no longer existed. He puts ‘Destroyed’ into the system and takes the file home and locks it in his desk.” Jenny set the kettle on the stove atop a blue flame. “Why wouldn’t he have just duplicated the report?”

  “Maybe because it wasn’t something that he could duplicate.”

  “Like what?”

  “Photographs. He could have taken photographs of Eric Reynolds’s car—or, more specifically, the tires.”

  “He was interested in whether they matched the treads he’d photographed in the field.”

  Jenny handed Tracy a box of assorted teas. She chose chamomile, not wanting caffeine. She was amped enough and knew she’d have difficulty sleeping.

  “Can we go after Eric with what we have?” Jenny asked.

  “Unfortunately, the crime lab said there isn’t enough in the photograph we sent to be definitive about whether the tire treads match the treads made in the clearing. The medical examiner said the same thing about the bruising on Kimi’s back and shoulder. Without more, I seriously doubt we could get a charge to stick. After forty years, there’s just too much uncertainty.”

  “So where do we go from here?” Jenny asked, opening another cabinet and pulling out a sugar container and bottle of honey.

  “That’s what I’ve been thinking about. My focus has been on the mechanics of what happened. Maybe I need to change focus and consider why it happened.”

  “What about the animosity over the mascot?” Jenny said.

  “There were a few articles about it in the newspaper,” Tracy said, “but it didn’t seem to be that controversial, and I don’t see high school kids getting too worked up about it. That’s one thing Eric Reynolds said that I do believe. He said the parents were more concerned about it than the students. I taught high school. Some of the students couldn’t even tell you the school mascot, and those who could really didn’t care. They’re more concerned about who they’re taking to the formal, where they’re going after the game on Saturday night, and how they’re going to get alcohol and get laid.” Tracy leaned back against the counter, thinking. “Something else had to have happened that night.”

  The kettle whistled. Jenny poured hot water into two mugs and handed one to Tracy. “If Eric Reynolds is orchestrating this, maybe there’s something on his computer or his cell phone—a text message with Lionel or Hastey. We have enough to get a judge to issue a subpoena, which would allow us to take a look.”

  Tracy had considered that course of action. “I don’t see Reynolds being that careless. Again, if we’re right, we’re talking about someone who’s not only managed to keep a forty-year secret but also got the others to keep it.”

  “Agreed, but Hastey’s a drunk and Lionel’s no rocket scientist. One of them could have sent Reynolds an e-mail or a text.”

  “Maybe,” Tracy said. “But if we do look and we’re wrong, we’ve alerted Eric that he’s a suspect.”

  “He already knows he’s a suspect, Tracy.”

  “True.”

  “What other option do we have?” Jenny asked. “He’s had forty years to cover his tracks. And unless we can come up with something else, it feels like we’ve hit a dead end.”

  CHAPTER 29

  The rooster did not crow in the morning, and Tracy wondered if the bird had met its doom in the jaws of a coyote or a raccoon. That was the problem with crowing too loudly. You gave away your position and made yourself vulnerable. It made her think of Eric Reynolds and his proactive decision to invite her to interview him. She’d love to find a way to use it to make him vulnerable.

  She put on her running clothes and laced up her shoes, hoping the cool air would invigorate her and the endorphins would help her to think of something she hadn’t yet considered.

  She took the longer run to the clearing, starting to feel a connection to it. Far from being scared of ghosts there, Tracy found the place peaceful. When she arrived, she noted that the leaves of the shrub Archibald Coe had most recently planted had already started to turn brown and now were looking wilted, and not for a lack of rain.

  “I can’t help you without something more,” she said to the spot where Kimi Kanasket had lain. “I wish I could. You don’t know how much I wish I could—for your father and for so many others like you. But I need something more.”

  She looked up the hill, half expecting the leaves to begin to shake and the branches to sway and the wind to sweep down the hill and hit her in the face as it had that first night. But the wind didn’t come, and neither did any inspiration.

  When Tracy got back to the farmhouse, she sat down at the table and wrote out her thoughts on possible motives, including romantic relationships, petty jealousies, some conflict between the Ironmen and Élan and his crew, or with Tommy Moore. She hoped that getting the possibilities on paper and out of her head would give her a new direction, but like the wind that morning, inspiration did not come.

  She unplugged her phone from the charger, started up the stairs checking messages, and noticed that she’d missed a call.

  The number was not associated with a name, and Tracy didn’t recognize it, though it had a Seattle area code. The caller had left a message, so Tracy played the voice mail. When the caller identified herself, Tracy stopped climbing the stairs. The voice was tentative and unsure, nothing like the strong businesswoman Tracy had spoken with days earlier. Tracy didn’t wait for the message to finish. Halfway through, she pressed “Call Back” and hurried up the remainder of the stairs and into the bathroom.

  Sixty minutes later, Tracy was back in her truck driving north on I-5, a trip she felt like she could now make blindfolded. Her hair remained damp and felt greasy. In her rush, she’d failed to thoroughly rinse out the shampoo. She called Jenny on the drive and explained what had happened, letting her know that she would not be going into the sheriff’s office to prepare the affidavit in support of the subpoena to search Eric Reynolds’s home.

  “Why don’t you take a stab at drafting it and leave a couple paragraphs at the end. I can dictate those on the drive back, depending on what I find out, if anything. This could be a wild-goose chase.”

  Nearly four hours into her drive, Tracy neared Seattle’s baseball and football stadiums south of the downtown skyscrapers. She took I-90 east and fifteen minutes later exited for the Highlands. Following the GPS’s directions, she made the first right at the top of the hill and drove through a newly constructed shopping area, coming to a roundabout with a grass park surrounded by a waist-high wrought-iron fence. Old-fashioned street lamps and quaint two-story English colonial townhomes rimmed the perimeter. Despite the clear fall weather, the park and sidewalk were empty but for a lone man walking a chocolate lab on a leash.

  Tracy found the address and parked in the street at the foot of stairs leading up to the small front porch. She was early, but she wasn’t about to wait in the car. She pushed out, quickly climbed the steps, and knocked.

  “Mom, she’s here,” a female voice inside said, followed by the sound of a deadbolt disengaging.

  Tiffany Martin pulled open the door with a look of resignation and said, “Please, come in.”

  Two adult women in their thirties, remarkably similar in appearance, waited in the small marble entry. Like their mother, the two sisters were well put together, hair and makeup done and nicely dressed, but also like their mother, they each looked on edge. Tracy knew they were all reliving those horrible moments fifteen years ago, and she regretted having to put them through it again.

  “These are my daughters, Rachel and Rebecca,” Tiffany Martin said.

  Tracy greeted each, and Martin motioned for them to step down into a spotless living room with white leather furniture. A sprawling palm in the corner near a game table and a large oil-based painting provided color. The room held the smell of a vanilla air freshener.

&n
bsp; “That’s it,” Martin said, her voice catching as she nodded to a brown file on the glass coffee table. None of the women moved to touch it. Rachel, standing closest to her mother, wrapped an arm around her shoulder.

  “We talked about it as a family,” Rachel said. “We didn’t want another family to suffer if they didn’t have to.”

  Tracy said, “That’s very kind of you.”

  “At the same time, we decided we didn’t want to read it,” Rachel said. “We don’t want to know the details of whatever it was that led my father to do what he did. We don’t see the point.”

  “I understand,” Tracy said.

  “My father . . .” Rachel had to take a moment to compose herself. She looked to her sister. “Our father was a good man. He was a good father. He was troubled. We recognized that as we got older, but he never let us see how much. He shielded us from it. We have very fond memories, which made this decision so difficult. We don’t want to relive that pain.”

  “I know how you feel.”

  “Mom told us you did,” Rachel said. “That’s another reason we decided to do this; we thought you would be sensitive to what we went through.”

  “I am, and I will be,” Tracy said. “What do you want me to do with the file after I’ve reviewed it?”

  The three women looked to each other, and Tiffany Martin nodded to her youngest daughter to continue. “We were hoping you could review it someplace close by,” Rachel said. “Someplace discreet. And we’ll wait here.”

  “We’re not prepared to read it,” Tiffany Martin said, “but we thought maybe if you reviewed it and found that . . . I don’t know . . . it isn’t too bad, you could come back and let us know?”

  “Of course,” Tracy said.

  “If you don’t come back,” Martin said, “well, we’ll know. And then we’d like you to keep the file. We don’t want it.”

  They stood in awkward silence, taking furtive glances at the file. When Tracy realized no one was about to pick it up, she stepped to the table and tucked it under her arm.

  They moved collectively to the front door. Tiffany Martin pulled it open. “We’ll be here until two o’clock,” she said. “If we don’t hear from you by then, we’re going to go out together and try to eat lunch and get our mind off of it.”

  Without another word, Tracy stepped out onto the porch, and the door closed behind her.

  CHAPTER 30

  Tracy had to resist the urge to open the file and read it in the cab of her truck. Instead, she drove quickly to the Issaquah Library, which was nearby. Downtown Issaquah was buzzing. The area had seen a recent revival with the influx of young families, and the city managers had kept the downtown quaint, with mature oak and plum trees, a repertory theater with a marquee announcing the winter run of the musical Oklahoma, restaurants with sidewalk seating, though not on this cold November day, and a vintage 1940s Shell gas station.

  Tracy hurried inside the library, anxious to find out what Darren Gallentine had told his counselor. She asked the reference librarian for a private room and was told she could reserve one for an hour. The room was the size of the hard interrogation rooms at the Justice Center, just big enough for a small desk mounted to the front wall and two chairs. Tracy set the file on the table and retrieved a pen and notepad from her briefcase. Before opening the file, she took a moment to run her hand over the cover. It reminded her of that moment when she’d learned that Sarah’s remains had been discovered after twenty years of uncertainty and she’d rushed home to retrieve Sarah’s files from her bedroom closet, then found herself hesitant to open them. She had the same unsure feeling now, like stepping onto a roller coaster, excited to get started but anxious about what was to come.

  She opened Darren Gallentine’s file and read.

  Friday, November 5, 1976

  Hastey Devoe popped the top on another beer can. “Come to Papa,” he said, touching the rim to his lips, tilting his head back and taking a long slug.

  “You might want to go a little easy on the beer,” Eric Reynolds said. He was reclined on the hood of the Bronco, which was at the edge of the ring of light produced by Darren’s camping lantern. Eric took the final hit on a joint, held his breath a moment, and exhaled. “We do have a fairly significant game tomorrow night.”

  “I’m hydrating,” Hastey said. “It helps keep me warm in this freaking cold.”

  “Just saying you might want to show a little self-control tonight,” Eric said.

  “It hasn’t hurt me in any game this season, has it?”

  “No,” Archie said, “but you keep drinking a six-pack a night and you’re not going to fit your fat ass into your uniform pants much longer.” He laughed the dullard’s laugh, clearly stoned.

  “If it wasn’t for my fat ass,” Hastey said, “none of y’all would have been reading your names in the paper every week.”

  “Shit, why do you think I run off-tackle and get outside all the time?”

  “Because you’re a big pussy and don’t like to get hit,” Hastey said.

  “No, because your fat ass is stuck in the gap I’m supposed to run through,” Archie said.

  “Doesn’t stop Darren,” Hastey said. “Does it, Darren?”

  Darren Gallentine sat a few feet away, on a boulder. He was neither stoned nor drunk. He’d had two beers and wasn’t interested in drinking more. These nights were getting to be old. He reached out and turned the dial on the lantern, the light brightening, the propane hissing. He estimated the canister to still be half-full. He was amused by the banter and commentary, but he never participated much and, after a full season, the jibes were getting repetitious. Hastey’s brother Lionel had bought them a case of beer and a couple of joints, and they’d snuck out of their respective homes and driven into the woods. It had become their Friday night routine—and some Saturday nights after games, though they usually went to the clearing after games because by the time they arrived a party was under way and half the girls were drunk. They’d make an entrance in the Bronco, Hastey blowing that stupid foghorn, and everyone would cheer as they circled the clearing. They could do no wrong those nights, especially with the girls. Eric said it was like “shooting fish in a barrel” and that he’d been laid more often that football season than a Las Vegas whore.

  “Why do you think they call Darren ‘the Dozer’?” Hastey said to Archie.

  “Because he has to bulldoze your ass out of the way just to find the hole,” Archie said.

  Darren smiled but didn’t respond.

  “Maybe I’ll just lie down next time they hand you the ball,” Hastey said, tossing the empty can at Archie and missing. “Let those D-linemen pancake your ass.”

  “Nobody’s lying down,” Eric said. He flicked the butt of the joint into the underbrush and threw his beer can against the trunk of the tree not far from where Hastey and Archie stood exchanging insults. The can ricocheted and spun like a helicopter blade, spraying beer out the top.

  “Shit,” Hastey said, wiping the beer from his shirt. “What bug crawled up your ass? You just wasted a perfectly good beer.”

  “I’m going to crawl up both your asses if you two don’t shut the fuck up,” Eric said.

  “I’m just saying I don’t need to smell like beer when I walk in the house.”

  “Hell, beer is your family cologne,” Archie said.

  “Better than roses,” Hastey said, bending his wrist effeminately. “Your dad still work at the flower store?”

  “It’s a nursery, you idiot.”

  “Still flowers,” Hastey said.

  “Will you both just shut up,” Eric said.

  Darren sat up, ready to get home. He could see his breath, and the cold was starting to creep down his neck beneath his fur-lined jean jacket and seep through the soles of his Converse shoes. They called him “the Dozer” because at five eleven and 210 pounds he ran with his shoulder pads low to the ground and hit as many people as he could, shoving them out of the way. “You’re just mad because Cheryl Neal is o
ut with Tommy Moore,” he said to Eric while continuing to strip bark off a tree branch.

  “What?” Hastey and Archie said in unison.

  “I thought that loser was dating Kimi Kanasket,” Hastey said to Eric.

  Eric gave Darren a look that was supposed to be a warning, but at six two and 180 pounds, Eric was no match for Darren, and he knew it. It wasn’t just the difference in size. Darren was the strongest kid on the team, and he proved it every day in the weight room.

  “Kimi dumped Moore’s ass, and Moore asked Cheryl out,” Darren said.

  “And she went?” Hastey said.

  “’Course she went,” Archie said. “That girl’s hornier than a sixteen-point buck. You might even have a chance, Hastey.”

  “Why don’t you just broadcast it to the whole fucking school,” Eric said to Darren.

  “Why’d she go out with him?” Hastey asked.

  “Because she is a whore,” Eric said.

  “Yes, but she was your whore,” Archie said.

  “That’s it. I’m going to kick your ass.”

  Eric slid off the hood and started toward Archie, eyes blazing. Hastey stepped between them, allowing Archie a chance to quickly retreat into the underbrush. Archie was fast, but that was because he was smaller than the rest of them and slight, maybe 150 pounds. Eric would crush him.

  “You better run. And good luck getting home, you pussy.”

  “Don’t take it out on him,” Darren said, tossing the stripped piece of wood to the ground and looking for another.

  “Why’d you bring it up?” Eric said.

  “Because you’ve had your panties in a bunch all night about it, and we’ve got a game tomorrow night.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’ll do what I have to do.”

  “Good,” Darren said. “Because I’m not going all the way to Yakima to lose the last game I ever play.”

  “Let’s just get out of here and go home,” Eric said, fishing the keys from his jacket pocket. “Grab the lantern.”

  “Fine with me,” Darren said, picking up the lantern.