In the Clearing (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 3) Page 12

  “Yeah?” Buzz asked. “How could he know that?”

  “Water in the lungs, for one. She was alive when she hit the water. Hundred percent certain.”

  “What I mean is, Lorraine said Kimi wasn’t upset when she left. So how could he know she jumped in?”

  “That’s what they say about suicides, right? You can’t tell because the person is calmest right before they do it. They got their mind made up. It’s a relief. Everybody says, ‘Never saw it coming.’” Ostertag gave Buzz a condescending smile. “Okay? We good?”

  Buzz nodded, but he wasn’t feeling good.

  “Here’s another thing.” Ostertag lowered his voice. “Those Indians? They’re not like us, okay? They get out of whack about stuff that doesn’t bother us, like the school mascot bullshit. They’re high-strung, can’t handle their liquor. Who knows what sets them off half the time. Tomorrow, I’ll take a drive out and tell the family the pathologist’s findings. It isn’t what they want to hear, but you learn in this job that you can’t argue with the evidence.”

  Ostertag turned and walked off, wing tips tapping on the linoleum. Buzz wondered if it was guilt for having told Earl and Nettie Kanasket that he’d find their daughter that was driving him to find something that might not exist. Maybe Ostertag had a point. Maybe you couldn’t argue with the evidence.

  Except in this case, Buzz Almond still thought you could.

  Judging from the fledgling foliage next to the sidewalk and in the yards, Tracy surmised that the development where Tommy Moore lived had been built within the past year or two. Unlike Earl Kanasket’s neighborhood, the address for each of the one- and two-story homes here, cut from the same cookie-cutter architectural plan, was prominently displayed on the wall between the garage and the front door.

  Tracy turned on her truck’s headlights and slowed as she approached the house she had stopped at earlier that afternoon. A heavyset man in jeans, work boots, and a winter jacket stood in the yard spiking at the ground with a bladed shovel, but with one eye seemingly watching the street. Parked in the driveway was a white truck, the bed filled with gardening tools, rakes, a mower, and gas cans, and the words “Golden Gloves Landscaping” stenciled on the doors and tailgate.

  Tommy Moore stopped pretending to be picking at the ground when Tracy pulled to the curb. He approached her truck before she had a chance to step out. Tracy instinctively moved her right hand to her Glock. “You the detective from Seattle?” he asked.

  Little remained of the Golden Gloves boxer Buzz Almond had described in his report as looking “like a Hawaiian surfer.” Moore had fought as a welterweight, which had a weight limit of 147 pounds. The man before her was considerably heavier, with fleshy features and nub-short gray hair.

  “Tracy Crosswhite,” she said.

  “Élan said you would be stopping by.”

  “You two still talk?” Tracy said.

  “No,” Moore said, shaking his head. “We don’t.”

  “Getting kind of dark for gardening,” Tracy said.

  Moore glanced at the house. “I have a wife and two girls. They don’t know anything about Kimi. I’d like to keep it that way.”

  “I understand. I saw a bar in town.”

  “I don’t drink.”

  Tracy recalled Moore’s Triple I criminal background check and the lack of any convictions after 1982. “How long have you been sober?”

  “Twenty years.”

  “Congratulations. How about coffee?”

  “Can’t drink it at night. Keeps me awake. Let’s go for a drive. I know a place.” Moore left the shovel on the lawn, walked around the bed of Tracy’s truck, and got in the cab. “Head back out to the main road. There’s a park,” he said. “I take my kids there.”

  Three turns later they came to an open field with a playground structure. At the moment, the park was deserted. Tracy shut off the engine, keeping her right hand near her Glock, though Moore showed no signs of aggression. To the contrary, he looked and sounded tired.

  “You mind if I smoke?” Moore asked.

  “Let’s step outside.” She walked around the hood to where Moore leaned against the front fender shaking a cigarette from its pack. He pulled it free with his teeth and cupped the tip with his hand to light it. The breeze quickly caught the smoke and caused it to dissipate.

  “Not a day goes by I don’t regret going into the diner that night,” Moore said, slipping the cigarettes and lighter into the pocket of his wool-lined jean jacket and looking out at the playground like he’d already mentally slipped forty years into the past.

  Tracy thrust her hands into the pockets of her jacket to warm them. “Why did you?”

  Moore shot her a lazy glance. “Why do you think? I was angry at Kimi for breaking up with me. She was heading off to college at the end of the year. Said she wanted to spend her final year in high school with her friends, but that wasn’t it.”

  “What was it?”

  “She could do better.” He shrugged and took another drag.

  The wind kicked up the dust and caused the swings to shake and sway on their metal chains. “So why do you think she went out with you in the first place?”

  “I was better-looking back then.” Moore smiled, but his smile quickly waned. “You know how it is. I was a boxer, and I played that . . . you know? The brooding, silent type. I was also older, and Élan put in a good word. That doesn’t work for long on girls like Kimi.”

  “You told Buzz Almond the breakup was mutual.”

  He flicked the ashes. “Who’s Buzz Almond?”

  “The deputy who came and interviewed you.”

  “I probably did. But that was just pride talking. I probably also told him I didn’t care about her. That was also pride. I wouldn’t have gone into the diner that night if I hadn’t cared.”

  “What happened?”

  “I was mad, so I took a girl in with me, thinking I’d get even.”

  “Cheryl Neal?” Tracy said, recalling the name from the file.

  “That’s right. She and Kimi didn’t get along. Cheryl was a cheerleader and had a reputation of sleeping around, and she didn’t much care for Kimi.”

  “Why not?”

  Moore took another drag on his cigarette, the tip glowing red. He didn’t exhale, just let the smoke escape his mouth and nostrils. “Jealous,” he said. “Like I said, Kimi was smart and athletic. She had a lot of guy friends, without having to sleep with them.” Moore’s gaze was focused on the ground. “Kimi acted like it didn’t even bother her when I walked in with Cheryl. And that just made me more angry.” Moore glanced at Tracy. “I was angry a lot back then, at just about everyone and everything. My job. My boxing career. It didn’t take a lot to set me off.”

  “Did Kimi set you off that night?”

  Moore didn’t hesitate. “Yeah, she did. I grabbed Cheryl and left. Took her home. I didn’t even walk her to the door.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “A bar in Husum.”

  “You told Buzz Almond you went back to your apartment.”

  “I was twenty, and I’d already had one DUI. Another one and I’d have lost my license and probably my job. I made it back to the apartment, but my roommate said Élan and some of the others had come by looking for me, that Kimi was missing. I didn’t like the sound of that, so I left for my mom’s. She lived here on the rez. But I drank too much, and I fell asleep and smashed my truck into a tree.”

  Tracy felt another gust of wind and a chill on her neck that ran down her spine. “Was there a police report?”

  “I wasn’t about to call the police. I got the truck running enough to get to my mom’s and spent the weekend banging it out so I could get back. I had to work Monday.”

  “Did you crack the windshield?”

  “Probably. Had to have.”

  “Where’d you get it fixed?”

  Another shrug. “I don’t know.”

  “Columbia Windshield?” Tracy asked, recalling the name on the invoice
in the file.

  “I don’t remember.”

  “How’d you pay?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Would you have paid with cash, a credit card, a check?”

  He took another drag. “Probably cash. I don’t remember. That was forty years ago.”

  “Where’d you get the bodywork done?”

  “Friend of mine did it in his garage.”

  “So you first heard about Kimi missing from your roommate?”

  Moore dropped the cigarette on the ground and crushed it with the toe of his work boot. “Only that he said Élan came by saying Kimi didn’t come home and wanted to know if she was with me. I read in the newspaper—Monday, I think—that she’d killed herself.”

  “You didn’t sound like you cared much when Buzz Almond interviewed you.”

  Moore pinched the bridge of his nose, and Tracy realized he was fighting his emotions. “I’m not proud of the man I was, Detective. I was already on my way to being a drunk, but when I found out what happened to Kimi, that put me over-the-top. I lost my job and had to move home with my mom. I cared, okay? I cared.”

  “Your criminal record indicates that wasn’t the end of your problems.”

  “No, it wasn’t. Like most drunks, I had a ways to go before I hit bottom.”

  “What changed?”

  “I met my wife. She wouldn’t go out with a man who drank. Her father drank. If I wanted to marry her, I had to get right. So I started going to AA meetings and taking a hard look at myself. It took a while to get sober. It took longer to stop blaming myself for what happened to Kimi, but like I said, it’s a rare day when I don’t think about her and about what part I might have played in it. It nearly ruined my life, Detective, thinking she killed herself because of me; are you here to tell me she didn’t?”

  “I don’t know yet. But you were one of the last people to see her alive. You were angry at her, you have no alibi after you dropped off your date, and your car was damaged.”

  “All true,” he said. “But if someone did kill Kimi, it wasn’t me.”

  “With forensics we can determine things we couldn’t determine back in 1976.”

  “Then I hope you find something.”

  “I intend to.”

  Moore might no longer look like the fighter Buzz Almond had confronted, but he still had a boxer’s confidence—or a good bluff. Tracy wasn’t going to be able to intimidate him. She ended the interview and got back in her truck, blasting the heat. She drove Moore back to his house and stopped at the curb. Twilight had become night, and light peeked out from behind the curtains. Inside, a woman apparently loved Moore enough to look past his faults, and two girls of his flesh and blood awaited him.

  Moore stepped down from the cab. “I have my own daughters now,” he said before closing the door. “I know how Earl must have felt, and it rips me up inside.”

  Tracy nodded but did not comment.

  “Forty years I thought I killed Kimi, Detective. I thought she jumped in that river because of me,” Moore said. “I hope you do prove me wrong. Not for Kimi—she’s in a better place. Not even for me. I hope you find out for Earl, so he can finally put his daughter to rest.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Tracy drove back into town and pulled over beside one of the murals, writing down everything she recalled about the interview while it remained fresh in her mind. After, she spent the drive back to the farmhouse going over her conversation with Tommy Moore another time, uncertain what to make of his final request. Moore looked and sounded sincere, but she knew from experience that his sincerity could be due to a lack of remorse, like Bundy and other psychopaths. It was also possible that Moore killed Kimi but over the years had convinced himself he had not; Tracy had seen other criminals do just that. The third option was that Moore was innocent, as he proclaimed, and someone else had killed Kimi, though the evidence seemed to dictate otherwise—notably the damage to his truck and the invoices to the auto repair and windshield companies, which had to be in Buzz Almond’s file for a reason. Moore also had a motive, and usually the person with the motive committed the crime.

  Tracy was even more uncertain what to think of Élan, a brother who seemed decidedly disinterested in getting answers about what had happened to his sister. Then again, maybe Tracy was just comparing Élan to herself, which wasn’t fair. Tracy had admittedly been obsessed with finding out what had happened to Sarah—so obsessed she’d nearly let it ruin her life. She remembered vividly that moment when she’d boxed up all the trial transcripts and witness statements, along with her notes, and shoved them into the closet of her bedroom because she knew she’d go crazy if she didn’t. For months she would glance at the closet door the way, she assumed, a recovering alcoholic like Tommy Moore glanced at a bottle of vodka: with a deep longing for just a small sample.

  Maybe Élan had long ago slid the memories of his sister’s death into his own mental closet so that he could get on with his life, and he had no desire to go back. If that was the case, he hadn’t gotten far, at least not from the looks of his current living situation. Or maybe Élan, too, was trying to forget something he did that night, something born out of animosity and jealousy toward a sister who was everything he was not—smart, athletic, and motivated to do great things.

  The fourth option, of course, was that Kimi had committed suicide, but every time Tracy considered that possibility, she became less convinced that had been the case. She just couldn’t articulate why. At least now she had Earl Kanasket’s blessing to try to find out.

  A sudden glare of high beams caused her to quickly steer her truck to the shoulder. A large flatbed blew by her in the opposite direction, the rush of wind shaking her truck. The encounter had the same effect as if she were a boxer administered smelling salts in between rounds; she sat up, more focused. When she did, she spotted a one-room log building along the side of the road, and it triggered something she’d read in Buzz Almond’s file. She drove to a crude gravel parking area. From the building’s dilapidated condition, Tracy could tell the establishment had long since closed, but she had no doubt that it was the Columbia Diner.

  She opened the file and skimmed Almond’s report of his conversation with the waitress, Lorraine. After speaking to the waitress, Almond had made this note: I drove in the direction Kimi Kanasket would have walked home, and came to a turnout 100–150 yards past the café.

  Tracy pulled back onto the road and continued at a slow rate of speed, frequently checking her rearview mirror for headlights. After driving a little more than the length of a football field, she spotted a half-moon-shaped escarpment, about the size of a car, carved out of the otherwise encroaching brush.

  She parked, reached into her glove box for her Maglite flashlight, and confirmed it worked. Then she grabbed her coat and pushed open the cab door to a rush of cold air. She stepped out, quickly zipped her coat and shut the door, but she did not immediately turn on the flashlight. Without the cab’s dome light or the benefit of any street lamps, and with a low cloud layer preventing any natural light, it was “darker than dark,” as her father liked to say—probably as dark as the night Kimi Kanasket went missing and Buzz Almond described as “dark as ink.”

  Tracy flipped on the flashlight and started along the edge of the road, directing the beam over the brush. It was cold enough that she could see the white vapor of her breath in the stream of light, and the chill caused her fingertips and cheeks to tingle. She switched the metal cylinder to the other hand, blowing into her free hand. She’d gone less than ten yards when the beam seemed to pierce through an initial wall of foliage. Stepping closer and using the Maglite to push aside branches, she found an overgrown path that conjured the image of the deer paths her father had taught her to use when hunting in dense brush. If this was the path Buzz Almond had written of in his report, Tracy wasn’t surprised he hadn’t seen it that first dark night. She’d been specifically looking for it and still had almost walked past it.

  Common sense
told Tracy to go back to her truck and come back in the morning when it was light, but common sense was taking a backseat to curiosity—and her desire to retrace Buzz Almond’s footsteps in the same conditions he’d encountered. Besides, the dark had never bothered her. Maybe because Sarah had been so afraid of the dark, Tracy, as her big sister, never allowed herself to be afraid. Tracy and her friends used to play hide-and-go-seek at night in the woods behind their home, and they’d pitch tents on the back lawn and turn off all the lights and tell ghost stories. Sarah never lasted long before rushing inside, but Tracy enjoyed it. Beyond that, she had the Maglite and her Glock.

  Tracy stepped from the road into the brush, kicking at encroaching vines snagging her jeans. A hundred yards down the path, the foliage became less dense and the footpath more defined. Recent rains had made the ground soft but not sloppy. Farther along, the grade steepened, enough that Tracy’s breathing became more pronounced from the exertion. The foliage changed to scrub oak and pine trees, the ground covered with pine needles. Tracy used her jacket sleeve to protect her face from the branches, snapping off the smaller limbs as she went. The grade continued to steepen until she was bent forward, driving with her legs, feeling the cold in her lungs. At least the effort had warmed her and stemmed the chill.

  Sensing she was nearing the top of the grade, she bent under a branch, pushed through a final tangle of tree limbs, and came out atop a hill looking down at an open patch of ground—what had to be the clearing Buzz Almond had written of and Earl Kanasket had described. She was surprised to feel a strange sense of accomplishment at having found it. She turned off the Maglite. A break in the cloud layer allowed sporadic moonlight, and the clearing appeared as both men had described it, barren of any tree, sapling, bush, or shrub. It looked like one of those crop circles in the middle of a field that you see featured in tabloid magazines—a compressed area people said had been made by alien spaceships.

  As Tracy started down the hill, she quickly realized she’d misjudged the grade. The ground, slick from the rains and the drop in temperature, made keeping her footing like navigating a thin sheet of ice. The soles of her boots slipped and slid, and she feared she’d lose her balance and tweak an ankle, or snap a leg or an arm. She had to angle her body and sidestep to better control her descent. Halfway down, she gave in to gravity and allowed herself to stumble to the bottom.