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

  Buzz was up early to get his own choice seat, though not along the parade route. He intended to wait outside Tommy Moore’s apartment. Moore had not returned over the weekend; Buzz had periodically checked while on patrol, and he’d asked other deputies to do the same on their day and swing shifts. No one had seen Moore’s white Ford truck. But Buzz figured come Monday, Moore had to go to work or risk getting fired.

  So Buzz returned to Husum. The main intersection for the unincorporated town consisted of a gas station, industrial buildings, and a few warehouses. Just north of a grocery store, he turned into a dirt-and-gravel parking lot littered with trucks, tractors, and harvesting machinery in various stages of disrepair. All had been dusted with an inch or two of snow. He drove along the side of the well-worn stucco building for M&N Mechanics to the back of the lot. His hunch had been accurate. Moore’s white Ford sat parked near the long staircase leading up to the second-floor apartment.

  Buzz killed the lights, pulled in behind the truck bed, and shut off the engine. He sat a moment, watching the windows of the apartment for any sign of life. Seeing none, he stepped out into the chilled air and quietly shut the door. The yard held the distinct odor of petroleum. The snow crunched beneath his boots as he walked alongside Moore’s truck, where he noticed the front fender and hood had been smashed in. He bent to take a closer look. The damage was significant, indicating a high rate of speed, and the lack of any rust or flaking paint was a sign that it had been recently inflicted. Upon closer inspection, he noticed that someone had banged out the buckled fender to keep it from rubbing on the oversize tire, which had deep treads and grooves, likely for off-road activities.

  Buzz returned to his vehicle, grabbed his Instamatic camera, and took a few photographs of the damage. Then he pocketed the camera and stepped carefully to the wood stairs. Ice beneath the thin layer of snow made them slick. He held on to the railing and climbed deliberately. At the landing he peered inside a window but didn’t see any light or any movement. He knocked on the door and stepped to the side. He heard the sounds of someone startled awake, indecipherable voices followed by footfalls.

  “Who is it?”

  “Klickitat County Sheriff’s Office. Open the door, please.”

  Silence ensued, followed by more muffled voices.

  Buzz knocked again. “Open the door, please.”

  After a few seconds, the door pulled open, revealing a well-built Native American man wearing nothing but boxer shorts. Buzz had already met the roommate, William Cox. This was Tommy Moore. Moore had black hair that touched his shoulders and a body adorned with tattoos, the largest an American eagle—wings spread, talons extended—across most of his chest. He looked up at Buzz with sleepy blue eyes that, with his bronzed skin, reminded Buzz of the kids with surfboards he and Anne had watched on Waikiki Beach on their honeymoon. Those were eyes that could break a girl’s heart. Maybe Kimi Kanasket’s.

  “Tommy Moore?”

  “Yeah,” he said with a hint of defiance.

  “Where’ve you been the last couple days?”

  “Visiting my mother.”

  “Good for you. A son should visit his mother. Where does she live?”

  “On the rez in Yakima.”

  “We’ve been looking for you, Tommy.”

  “Yeah, I heard.” Moore looked back inside the apartment where his roommate stood in a T-shirt and sleeping pants.

  “Need to talk to you about Kimi Kanasket.”

  “Heard that too.”

  Buzz could feel the heat seeping out the open door, along with a dank odor that reminded him of the smell of wet wood. “We can do it standing out here in the cold, but I’m a lot better dressed for it than you.”

  Moore stepped back and allowed Buzz to enter. He’d been inside the apartment on Friday night. It was what he’d expected to find for two young men. The furniture was mismatched essentials—a couch, a chair, and a television. Nearby was a square table with two folding chairs beneath a chandelier made from deer antlers. The walls were unadorned by pictures or photographs, and the ceiling was stained where the roof had leaked. A garbage pail overflowed with fast-food bags. Cigarette butts and two spent joints filled an ashtray on the coffee table, the odor of tobacco and weed strong.

  Moore moved toward the ashtray.

  “Leave it,” Buzz said. He wasn’t interested in busting them for pot, and the cigarette odor didn’t bother him. He’d been a pack-a-day smoker in the Marines, but when Anne said she wouldn’t marry a smoker, he quit cold turkey.

  “You have any weapons in here?” Buzz asked.

  “Couple hunting rifles, a few knives,” Moore said.

  “Where are those?”

  “In the closet in my bedroom.”

  “Can I shower?” the roommate asked. “I have to go to work.”

  “Go ahead,” Buzz said. The young man glanced at Moore before leaving the room. Buzz reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and removed a spiral notepad and pen.

  “I got to get to work too,” Moore said.

  “Good thing you have a short commute.”

  Moore sat on the couch.

  “What happened to your truck?”

  “Hit a tree on the rez.”

  “When was that?”

  “The weekend.”

  “This past weekend?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Looks pretty bad.”

  “I banged it out and got it running. I don’t have the money at the moment to fix it right.”

  Buzz leaned forward in the chair so he could take notes. “You and Kimi dated?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How long?”

  “A while.”

  “How long is a while?”

  “Since summer.”

  “So, three to four months.”

  “Sounds right.”

  “You broke up when?”

  Moore dropped his focus. Then he said, “Maybe a week ago.”

  “Why’d you break up?”

  “Just did.”

  “Did you end it, or did she?”

  “It was mutual.”

  “Why’d you want to end it?”

  Moore shrugged. “No point.”

  “No point what?”

  “No point in dating anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “She’s always busy. Cross-country, track, studying. She was leaving for college anyway.”

  “Why’d she want to break up with you?”

  “Same reasons.”

  “Were you frustrated?”

  Moore just shrugged. “Like I said, it was mutual.”

  Buzz wasn’t detecting an attitude as much as ambivalence, which seemed especially odd given that Kimi had just been pulled from the river. “When’d you last see her?”

  “Friday night.”

  “Where?”

  “The diner.”

  “You went there?”

  Moore nodded. Buzz played a hunch based on what the roommate had told him and what he knew about the nature of young men and young women. “You bring anyone with you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who?”

  “Cheryl Neal.”

  “Who’s Cheryl Neal?”

  “Just a girl.”

  “Of all the places to eat, you bring her to the diner where your ex-girlfriend works?”

  “I like their chicken-fried steak.”

  “Yeah? Is that what you had to eat?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “We didn’t stay long.”

  “Hmm,” Buzz said as if taking time to consider something. “You drove fifteen minutes to a diner where you knew you would run into your ex, and you didn’t stay to eat?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I decided I wasn’t hungry.”

  “What about your date?”

  “She wasn’t hungry neither.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Drove her home and came back her
e.”

  “What time did you get here?”

  “I don’t know. Midnight maybe.”

  “Was your roommate home?”

  “He told you he was.”

  Buzz sat back and considered Moore. The young man was well trained in the art of the boxer’s stare, not about to be intimidated. “Did you bring Cheryl Neal to the diner to make Kimi feel bad about breaking up with you, Tommy?”

  “I said it was mutual.”

  “Yeah, I know what you said. But when it’s mutual, a guy doesn’t bring a new girl to a place he knows he’ll run into his old girlfriend unless he has a reason.”

  “I told you, I like the chicken-fried steak.”

  “Really? You weren’t trying to make Kimi jealous?”

  “No reason to. Plenty of other girls out there.”

  “Why would Kimi’s brother and friends come looking for you?”

  “I don’t know. You’d have to ask them.”

  “I’m asking you. I went to the house. When they learned Kimi was missing, her brother came here. Why would he do that if the two of you had broken up?”

  Moore shrugged one shoulder. “Ask Élan.”

  “You two friends?”

  “Not really.”

  “Enemies?”

  “No.”

  “How’d you hear we pulled Kimi out of the river?”

  “Read about it in the paper.”

  “How’d that make you feel?”

  Moore lost focus again, a blank stare. Buzz was content to wait him out. After a few moments, Moore reengaged. “Sucks,” he said.

  Tracy poured out the remainder of her wine in the kitchen sink and switched to chamomile tea. Tommy Moore was, at the very least, a liar and an ass. Was he also a murderer?

  Roger lay sprawled across the dining room table, snoring. Tracy picked up the first packet of photographs and went quickly through them, finding three photographs of damage to a white Ford truck. As Buzz Almond had described in his report, the front right side looked like the vehicle had impacted something at a high rate of speed—maybe the tree Tommy Moore said he hit. It also looked like someone with experience at bodywork had done initial repairs to get the truck functional again.

  Tracy set the photographs aside. Buzz Almond had done exactly what Tracy would have done after speaking with Tommy Moore. His next report documented his trip to the home of Cheryl Neal, who lived in Stoneridge with her parents and two brothers. Since school had been canceled that day for the parade, the Neals were at home. Tracy could only imagine how thrilled the girl’s parents must have been to have a sheriff’s deputy knocking on the door that early in the morning.

  Cheryl Neal confirmed Moore took her to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show, then to the Columbia Diner. She said she knew Moore had been dating Kimi Kanasket but said Moore told her they’d broken up. Neal said she and Kimi were “not friends,” denied they were “enemies,” but admitted she knew Kimi worked at the diner. Tracy suspected Moore had asked Neal out precisely because she and Kimi were “not friends,” and that Neal enjoyed the idea of Moore taking her to the diner where Kimi worked. The plan had apparently backfired, however. Buzz Almond’s report noted that Neal told him Moore abruptly left the diner “pissed off” about something and drove her home at roughly eleven. She couldn’t vouch for where Moore had gone after that.

  But he would have had plenty of time to go back to the diner, or to park along State Route 141, and wait for Kimi. If they’d dated for months, he would have known her routine.

  Tracy flipped to the autopsy report, which she noted had been filled out by the Klickitat County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. At present, only six counties in the state of Washington had dedicated medical examiners, sixteen had coroners, and the remaining smaller counties had an individual designated as the prosecuting attorney/coroner. Those counties usually contracted autopsies to a local pathologist because they didn’t have their own dedicated facilities or staff. Tracy doubted it had been different in 1976. For those reasons, without even reading the report, she was already suspect of the findings.

  The coroner’s report appeared to be a copy, which made sense; the prosecuting attorney’s office would have maintained the original. Tracy deduced from the poor quality of the copy that the original had been typed on onionskin paper, or something equivalent, and had been generated from microfiche. The type was so small it was hard on the eyes, especially late at night after a long weekend, but Tracy pushed on.

  The external examination indicated that photographs had been taken for identification purposes and to document the condition of the body. Tracy found them in Buzz Almond’s file, and they weren’t pretty. She skimmed the general examination report just enough to get the basics—female, five foot seven, 125 pounds, black hair and eyes. The pathologist noted contusions, abrasions, scrapes, and cuts of various lengths and severity over much of the body, including the forearms, legs, and face. Kimi’s right tibia was fractured, and her chest showed signs of blunt-force trauma. She also had bruising over much of her back and upper right shoulder. The pathologist concluded that the external injuries were “consistent with the expected impact of the body being thrown up against and dragged over boulders and rocks and submerged debris in a rushing current.” The coroner also noted the aspiration of fluid into Kimi’s air passages, including her lungs, which he concluded was consistent with someone being suddenly immersed in cold water. “The deceased inhaled water due to the reflex from stimulation of the skin.” Kimi had also vomited and aspirated some gastric contents, also consistent with someone who “inhaled water,” which he said “causes coughing and drives large volumes of air out of the lungs, leading to a disturbance of the breathing and vomiting.”

  Tracy flipped another page, but the report abruptly ended with the pathologist’s signature just beneath his opinion.

  “This woman came to her death as a result of multiple traumas to the head, chest, and extremities.”

  Donald W. Frick, MD

  She flipped through the remainder of the file, which included photocopies of two invoices from a company called Columbia Windshield and Glass, one stamped “Paid” in faded red ink for $68, and a second receipt for $659 from Columbia Auto Repair. Neither receipt noted what the payment was for, the name of the owner, the type of vehicle, or the license plate number. She reconsidered the photographs of Moore’s truck. The windshield had a crack.

  “No doubt now,” she said. Roger lifted his head from the table. “Tommy Moore was suspect number one.”

  Running out of steam, she shut the file. “Come on, Roger, bedtime.”

  Roger stood and stretched. Tracy carried him to the bedroom, her mind still going over the file. Putting aside for a second the indisputable fact that a deputy sheriff was conducting an unauthorized investigation, and abiding by the adage that nothing in an investigative file was irrelevant, Tracy had to assume Buzz Almond had included everything for a reason, but she was a long way from knowing those reasons.

  CHAPTER 7

  Wednesday, November 10, 1976

  Buzz Almond hugged and kissed his wife, Anne, at the front door. “Love you,” he said.

  “Love you,” she said.

  “Take care of my girls.”

  “Take care of my Buzz.”

  It was their routine, and Buzz knew it eased Anne’s concern to hear the words. She worried each day he left for work. And with two little girls at home and a third child on the way—maybe that boy Buzz silently hoped for—Anne had every right to worry. Her parents were well-off and would take care of her and the kids if anything ever happened to him, but they both knew money was a poor substitute for a husband and a father. He hated knowing she worried like she did, and he hated leaving his girls alone at night.

  Anne slid her arms around his waist just above the cumbersome belt that held his revolver, nightstick, flashlight, radio, and handcuffs. “You haven’t been yourself the past few days. Is it that Indian girl?”

  “Kimi Kanasket,” he s
aid.

  “Such a tragedy,” Anne said. “What’s bothering you?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, though he did. “Just the thought of it, I guess. A girl that young, bright future ahead of her.”

  “Do they know what happened yet?”

  “They’re waiting on the autopsy.”

  Anne snuggled as close as she could get with the belt between them. Her hair smelled of coconut—some new shampoo—and when he lowered his nose and nuzzled her neck, Buzz detected the familiar odor of caramel. Neither of them knew why. They’d done a smell test of Anne’s creams and perfumes, and none of those had been the source. It was her natural scent, they assumed, and it was a surefire way to get Buzz’s motor going. “You are as sweet as candy,” he told her.

  “Well, maybe when I get home this afternoon and you get off-shift, we can find a way to take your mind off of work and onto something more pleasant.”

  He smiled. “I’d like that. You have a magic spell to make Sophia and Maria sit still for half an hour, do you?”

  “Not half an hour, but I might have a spell or two to last fifteen minutes.”

  He pulled back and feigned indignation. “Has it come to that already? A quarter of an hour?”

  “It’s not the number of minutes that counts, it’s the quality. And you, Buzz Almond, make every minute special.”

  “Try explaining that to the guys at the station.”

  “I hope you don’t,” she said. “I’d be too embarrassed to look them in the eye again.”

  “You? I’d be the one they started calling Quick Draw.”

  She laughed and slapped his chest. “You just come home to me, Buzz.”

  “How could I not, with those thoughts on my mind?” He kissed her again and left her in the doorway looking prettier than the day he’d married her.

  Later, on patrol, his thoughts vacillated between the anticipated rendezvous with Anne, and Earl Kanasket. He couldn’t imagine the man’s grief, couldn’t imagine losing one of his daughters. He’d heard people say that a parent never recovers from the loss of a child, but it had been one of those sayings that had little meaning without context. Buzz had seen enough young people die during two tours in Vietnam; it was something he’d never gotten used to, and he hoped he never did. But he hadn’t been a father then. He didn’t know what it was like to truly love a child of your own flesh and blood. He’d never seen a parent’s anguish, not until that horrible moment when he’d driven to Earl and Nettie Kanasket’s home and delivered the news that their daughter was dead. Earl had been stoic, like a boxer who’d taken a solid right to the head, still on his feet but uncertain of his surroundings or circumstances. Nettie had simply melted, her legs giving way, collapsing to the floor.