In the Clearing (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 3) Read online

  “Yes, to look further into Buzz Almond’s investigation.”

  Earl turned his head and looked at the only framed photograph in the room, a picture of Kimi with a woman Tracy assumed to be his wife. After a moment he redirected his attention to Tracy. “Tell me what’s in the file.”

  Tracy retook her seat and explained the contents. She said she was having the coroner’s report reviewed in Seattle and had also sent several dozen photographs to be studied by an expert. While she spoke, Earl Kanasket sat motionless, hands resting on the file in his lap. His bony fingers never moved to open it.

  “Photographs of what?”

  “A path in the woods leading to a clearing.”

  “I know it.”

  “You do?”

  Earl nodded, though again it was a barely perceptible tilt. “It holds bad spirits.”

  “Bad spirits?”

  “Dead who are not at rest.”

  When Sarah died and her father took his own life, Tracy lost what remained of her faith, never having been much of a believer in things like heaven or life after death. But she couldn’t reconcile the moment in the mine above Cedar Grove when she’d felt Sarah’s presence as strongly as if Sarah had been physically present. After that, Tracy didn’t dismiss talk of spirits. “Why there?” she asked.

  “What do you know of it?”

  “Nothing.”

  Earl shut his eyes and took a deep breath before opening them. “Many years ago they hung an innocent man in the clearing. They said he committed murder, and they brought him to an old oak tree so everyone in the town could witness the hanging. When they asked him for his final words, he said he was innocent, and if they hung him he would rise from his grave and burn the town to the ground. A month after the hanging, a fire burned most of the buildings in downtown Stoneridge, but the cause of the fire was never determined. When they finally opened the man’s grave, they found it empty. Shortly after those events, the oak tree died. Since then, nothing grows in the clearing.”

  The dog sat up and barked, causing Tracy to flinch. Earl Kanasket never moved, never shifted his gaze from her face. Seconds later she heard the sound of heavy boots climbing the front porch and felt the house shudder as the front door popped inward.

  “Dad? Whose truck is in the—?”

  A man carrying a brown grocery bag stepped into the room. His eyes shifted between Tracy and his father before settling on her. “Who are you?”

  Élan bore a passing resemblance to his father. His hair, more gray than black, extended past his shoulders, and he had the same dark eyes, though where his father’s eyes engaged, Élan’s repelled, in an intense, challenging gaze.

  Tracy stood. “My name is Tracy Crosswhite. I’m a detective from Seattle.”

  “What do you want? Why are you talking to my father?”

  “She’s here about Kimi,” Earl said.

  “Kimi?” Élan scoffed. He set the groceries on an end table and walked farther into the room. “Is this some sort of a joke?”

  “No,” Tracy said. “It’s not.”

  “What could you possibly want to know about Kimi?”

  “She doesn’t believe Kimi killed herself,” Earl said.

  Élan glanced at his father, then back to Tracy. “The former sheriff kept a file on your sister’s death,” she said.

  But the more she tried to explain, the more agitated Élan looked, like a man with bugs crawling up his back. He cut her off. “What possible good do you think will come of this, huh? Are you going to bring Kimi back?”

  “No,” Tracy said. “But if your sister didn’t kill herself—”

  “What? What are you going to do? Arrest someone? They didn’t arrest anyone then, and they haven’t arrested anyone in forty years. They . . . didn’t . . . care. Kimi was just another dead Indian.”

  “We have technology now that wasn’t available back in 1976—technology that might reveal evidence that your sister’s death wasn’t a suicide.”

  “Might?” Élan stepped closer, not enough that Tracy felt threatened, but it was clear he intended to intimidate. “Might? You came out here to tell us you might find out something? You mean you don’t even know anything yet?”

  “I came to get your father’s approval and to let him know the sheriff has reopened the file.”

  “You want his approval? My mother went to her grave grieving Kimi’s death. My father has been without his daughter for forty years. And you come here and tell us you might have . . . what? What could you possibly have?”

  “The coroner’s report. Witness statements. Photographs.”

  “Photographs of what?”

  “The clearing,” Earl said.

  Again, Élan’s glance flickered between his father and Tracy. “The clearing? What does the clearing have to do with anything?”

  “The deputy took photographs of it,” Tracy said. “I’m having them analyzed.”

  “Why? Do you think a ghost killed Kimi?” Élan smiled, but it was a dark smile. “Maybe it was Henry Timmerman come back to life to seek his revenge.”

  Tracy couldn’t blame Élan for his skepticism. She’d grown more and more skeptical with each year that she couldn’t solve Sarah’s death. After twenty years, she’d all but given up hope.

  “Your sister never made it home. Don’t you want to know why?”

  “We know why. She threw herself in the river.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “What difference does it make whether I believe it or not. That’s what they told us.”

  “What if they’re wrong?”

  “What if they’re not? Are you going to get my father’s hopes up like that deputy who told us he was going to find Kimi? He found her all right. He found her in the fucking river. I think you should leave.” Élan stepped back and motioned to the door. “I think you should get the hell out.”

  “Stop,” Earl said, his voice soft and calm. Élan lowered his arm and looked away, like a chastened boy not about to challenge his father, but also not about to listen. Earl rolled his wheelchair to Tracy. The dog padded alongside him. Earl reached up and took Tracy’s hand. His skin was cool to the touch and so thin it revealed every bone and knuckle. “The deputy was young,” he said. “He was starting a career, and he had a family to consider. You are not just starting your career. And you have no family.”

  “No,” Tracy said, not entirely certain what he was getting at and how he would know that she had no family. “I don’t.”

  Earl released her hand and offered back the file. “Finish what Buzz Almond started.”

  “I’ll try.” Tracy took the file, glanced at Élan, and started from the room. Élan eyeballed her as she stepped past him and pulled open the door. She wasn’t surprised that he followed her down the porch and out into the yard. She wasn’t about to look like she was running from him, so she turned and faced him.

  “My father might trust you,” he said, “but I don’t.”

  “Why’s that? Why wouldn’t you trust me?”

  “Trust isn’t given. It’s earned.”

  “So why not give me a chance to earn yours?”

  “Because we’ve been trusting you for two hundred years and you just keep ripping us off.”

  It was the type of generic statement Tracy had heard often as a police officer when someone had no specific or rational answer to one of her questions. Instead, they accused her of being a racist. “I’m Norwegian and Swiss,” she said. “And a little Irish. What did I rip off from you?”

  Élan smiled, but again there was no humor in it. “What? Did my father wow you with that little show back there—the part about you not being young and not having a family? Do you think he’s some kind of Indian medicine man?” He glanced at her hand. “You’re not wearing a wedding ring. And you aren’t exactly young. I wouldn’t get too worked up about it if I was you.”

  “You didn’t answer my question. Why wouldn’t you want to know? If you’re big on injustices, why wouldn’t you w
ant to right this one, this one above all others?”

  “Because in the end you won’t find anything, and even if you did, nothing will come of it. That’s the way it’s always been.” He took a half step toward her. “Don’t come back here unless you have something real to tell us. Don’t come with your ‘might haves’ or ‘maybes.’ Don’t make promises you can’t keep. And don’t send an old man to his grave with expectations you aren’t prepared to fulfill.”

  Élan gave her a final withering glare, then turned and went up the steps and back inside, the door slamming shut. Tracy looked to the right, to the plate-glass window facing the field of kale. Earl Kanasket had rolled his wheelchair to the window, but this time he was facing it, watching her.

  After driving by the address provided for Tommy Moore and finding the name “Moore” on the mailbox but no one home, Tracy drove into downtown Toppenish and found a restaurant to grab a bite to eat. She ordered a turkey sandwich, sipped on an iced tea, and thought of Buzz Almond and how he must have regretted telling the Kanasket family that he would find Kimi and that she was going to be all right. It was not an infrequent mistake made by young officers with good intentions. Tracy had been in that helpless situation herself, both as an officer and as the relative of a victim of a horrific crime, but she had quickly come to learn the two were not the same.

  For a police officer, a violent crime was one case in a career. You did your job and went home. For the family, the crime was a life-altering moment they would never forget. Buzz Almond wouldn’t have been human if he hadn’t wanted to ease the Kanaskets’ worry, but he must have felt incredible guilt when he watched the Search and Rescue team pull Kimi Kanasket’s body from the water and realized he wasn’t going to be able to deliver on his promise. Tracy wondered if that was why Buzz had maintained an interest in the case. She also wondered why, if he thought Kimi Kanasket hadn’t killed herself, he hadn’t pursued it further.

  Earl Kanasket said Buzz Almond had been starting a new career, with a family to consider. Was he implying that Buzz Almond had reason to be concerned about the well-being of his family, or simply making a statement of the limitations Buzz was operating under? If the latter, Earl Kanasket was correct in his assessment of Tracy. She had no such limitations. If the former, however, Earl Kanasket’s comment very well could have been intended as a warning.

  CHAPTER 13

  Tuesday, November 9, 1976

  After filling out his reports for his shift, Buzz went looking for Jerry Ostertag, who was not at his desk.

  “He went to take a leak,” another detective said.

  Buzz jogged down the hall and around the corner, the soles of his shoes slipping on the worn linoleum when he tried to slow. He called out, “Detective Ostertag?”

  Ostertag stopped and wheeled at the sound of someone calling his name. Buzz took a quick step toward him. “Sorry to shout at you like that.” He extended a hand. “Buzz Almond. Wanted to talk to you a minute about the Kimi Kanasket case.”

  Ostertag looked twenty pounds overweight—not obese, but like a man who finished his plate and liked a cocktail every night, as well as his sweets. He’d begun the middle-aged man’s first concession, wearing the buckle of his belt below his protruding stomach.

  “Almond. Right. I thought the name sounded familiar. I got your reports. They were good. Very thorough. Thanks for those.” Ostertag worked a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other and looked at Buzz through silver-framed glasses that resembled the ones Telly Savalas wore on the popular detective show Kojak. Buzz wondered if that was why Ostertag also shaved his head.

  “Thanks. Listen, I spoke to Lorraine at the Columbia Diner.”

  “Who?”

  “She’s the waitress at the diner where Kimi Kanasket worked the night she went missing.” Buzz had assumed Ostertag would have spoken to Lorraine, but that had apparently not been the case.

  “Right. And you talked to her . . . why?”

  “I just stopped in to get a bite to eat, and we got to talking,” Buzz said, again conscious not to look as though he was stepping on Ostertag’s investigation. “Anyway, she said Kimi wasn’t upset about Tommy Moore coming in that night.”

  “Hang on.” Ostertag raised a hand and turned to a man in a suit passing in the opposite direction. “Hey, Carl, we still on for tomorrow?”

  Carl turned, talking while he walked backward. “I reserved the court for six thirty. Figured we could grab breakfast after we play.”

  “Loser buys?”

  “Hey, I never pass up a free meal.”

  “Bring your credit card,” Ostertag taunted. “Winning makes me hungry.”

  Ostertag redirected his attention to Buzz. “Sorry. I gotta kick his ass in racquetball tomorrow morning. Keeps him in line. So you were saying something about a waitress?”

  “Lorraine,” Buzz said. “She said Kimi wasn’t upset about Tommy Moore breaking up with her. That Kimi even waited on his table that night.”

  “Remind me again—Moore was the boyfriend, right?”

  “Ex-boyfriend,” Buzz said, wondering what the hell Ostertag had been doing. “He brought a date with him to the diner to get a rise out of Kimi, but he stormed out when he got no reaction.”

  “Hang on again. I’m sorry. I was on my way to take a leak. Drank too much damn coffee this morning, and my back teeth are floating. I’m gonna drown if I don’t take care of it.”

  Ostertag crossed the hall and disappeared behind the swinging door to the men’s room, leaving Buzz in the hall feeling like an idiot. He took a few steps farther down the linoleum and tried to look like he was doing something. After several minutes, Ostertag propped open the door with his foot while he finished drying his hands with a brown paper towel. He tossed the wad back inside, presumably at a garbage pail. When he stepped into the hall, he seemed surprised Buzz remained waiting for him.

  “So after I spoke to the waitress,” Buzz said, “I was driving away, and I spotted a turnout, maybe a hundred, hundred and fifty yards past the diner. I couldn’t see it that night when Earl Kanasket and I walked the road because it was too dark, and it had started snowing. Anyway, there’s a path there, and I noticed footprints and tire tracks. So I followed them and—”

  “And you came to a clearing,” Ostertag said, loosening the knot of his gold tie and undoing the top button.

  “You know it?”

  “Everyone on the force knows it.”

  “You’ve been out there?”

  “More times than I cared to be when I was on patrol.”

  “I mean for this investigation.”

  “This investigation? Why would I be out there for this investigation?”

  “The footprints and tire tracks lead to the clearing. I’d say two, maybe three people. Hard to tell.”

  Ostertag’s brow furrowed. “I meant, what does that have to do with Kanasket?”

  “Well, I mean that was the direction she would have headed walking home. She’d have walked 141. If something spooked her—”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know.” Buzz fought against becoming irritated.

  Ostertag frowned. “How long you been on the force . . . ?” As his voice trailed off, it was clear he’d forgotten Buzz’s name.

  “Buzz,” he said.

  “How long you been on the force, Buzz?”

  Buzz was not in the mood to hear sage advice from an overweight desk jockey who probably got a college deferment from the draft while Buzz spent two tours slogging through the jungles of Vietnam commanding his own platoon. “Couple months.”

  “This your first case? First big case?”

  “Yeah, but what does—?”

  “Let me give you a piece of advice, help you with your career. Your job is to respond to the calls and get those witness statements. And you did a nice job; I’m going to note that to my sergeant. My job is to follow up and investigate. You do your job and let me do mine, and everything is smooth sailing. Right?” Ostertag smiled. T
he toothpick flicked to the corner of his mouth.

  “I understand,” Buzz said, mentally counting to ten. “But I took photographs. I was going to get them developed. I could show you.”

  Ostertag continued to smile. “You took photographs of footprints and tire tracks?”

  “Right.”

  “Let me tell you about the clearing, Bert.”

  “Buzz.”

  “The kids like to go out there on the weekends because it’s isolated. They bring a couple six-packs of beer, get drunk, and get in their cars and spin donuts. Other times, it’s a guy and his date. He takes her out there to look for ghosts.”

  “Ghosts?”

  “A legend about some guy getting hanged there and coming back and burning down the town. They say his ghost is still out there, that you can hear him moaning when the wind blows. You know, bullshit high school stuff guys tell their dates, hoping to get them scared so they cling close and he gets his hands up her shirt or down her pants, right? You got pictures of footprints and tires tracks that could belong to every kid at Stoneridge High and every car parked in the parking lot.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Ostertag scoffed. “You don’t think so?”

  “The ground froze that night when the temperature dropped. That means whoever was out there Friday night, their footprints and tire tracks froze.”

  “Froze?”

  “In place. They froze in place. Anybody going out there after that wouldn’t leave tracks or footprints because the ground would have been too hard. So the tracks had to have been from Friday night. It had rained earlier in the week. The ground would have been soft, which is why the tires chewed up the path.”

  “How do you know those tire tracks haven’t been there a week, or a month, or six months? You see what I’m saying?”

  “But it could be something. I mean, shouldn’t we follow up on it?”

  “We?” Ostertag scratched at the side of his head. “Listen, I’m gonna ease your mind. We got the pathologist’s report back this afternoon. If it makes you feel any better, he confirms the kid killed herself. Jumped in the river, got banged around good on the rocks, and drowned.”