In the Clearing (Tracy Crosswhite #3)(10)

Search and Rescue had cleared off a picnic table to stage its equipment. Two of its men, in rubber waders and boots, were tightening a bolt that would lock a cable they’d looped around the trunk of a fir tree. The cable extended across the river, where two of their colleagues were securing the cable in a similar fashion.

“All right?” one of the men shouted across the river.

“We’re good,” his colleague shouted back.

The two men on Buzz’s side of the river cranked a hand winch and began to cinch the cable until it was suspended like a tightrope a foot above the gray water. The men would clip on to it as they entered the water and made their way across to the sunken tree.

“You guys know anything more?” Buzz asked someone on the Search and Rescue team preparing to enter the current. Not in uniform and not familiar with the men—he hadn’t yet worked a case with Search and Rescue—he showed them his badge. “I got the call last night about a missing girl.”

He hoped they didn’t hear the quiver in his voice or would at least attribute it to the biting cold; hoped they’d tell him it wasn’t a body, just a backpack or piece of clothing from a summer rafting trip that had remained submerged; hoped he wouldn’t have to make the drive out to Earl and Nettie Kanasket’s double-wide and tell them he’d found their daughter, wishing again that he’d never promised them anything.

“Definitely a body,” the first responder said.




The shouts and squeals of children drew Tracy’s attention to the bay window. Dan cradled the football, dodging a pack of kids in hot pursuit. It didn’t resemble any football game Tracy had ever witnessed, but they all looked and sounded like they were having a good time.

“If this is too close to home, Tracy, you can just tell me to stop.”

Tracy shook her head. “It’s fine,” she said. Like Kimi, Sarah had been about to start college when she disappeared. Tracy had become a homicide detective out of a strong desire to determine what had happened to her sister, and to help other young women like her.

“The pathologist who did the autopsy and the prosecutor concluded it was a suicide,” Jenny said. “They said Kimi Kanasket jumped from a bridge into the White Salmon River and drowned. The rapids knocked her around pretty good on the rocks. She had broken bones, and bruises on her arms and chest. She might have flowed all the way to the Columbia, but her clothing got hung up on the branch of a submerged tree. The current wedged her body beneath it.”

“And the theory was she did it because of the ex-boyfriend?”

“Tommy Moore. He’d come into the diner that night with another girl.”

“What did he have to say about it?”

“According to my dad’s report, Moore confirmed that he took another girl into the diner where Kimi worked, but he said he quickly left, took the girl home, and went to his apartment.”

“His date confirm that?”

“Pretty much. Her statement’s in the file too. She said Moore got upset because Kimi ‘dissed him,’ and he drove her home.”

“Dissed him how?”

“Apparently, she acted like she didn’t care.”

“Anyone vouch for whether Moore went to his apartment?”

“My dad took a drive out there. Moore’s roommate said he’d come home but that he took off again when the brother’s posse showed up armed and asking questions.”

“Roommate know where Moore went?”

“No.”

Tracy flipped through the file. “You think there’s more to it?”

“I think my father believed there was more to it.”

“Where’d you find this file?” Tracy asked.

“Right here, in my father’s desk.”

“Where are the closed files usually kept?”

“A file this old would have been moved to the off-site storage unit. But this was never a cold case.”

“What do you mean?”

“After I found it, I checked our computer records at the office. There is no record that a Kimi Kanasket file was ever sent to storage. The records at the office indicate it was destroyed.”

“Destroyed when?”

“No date provided.”

“By who?”

“Doesn’t say.”

“What’s the policy on destroying old files?”

“Now? Now we keep closed homicide files for as long as eighty years, or until the detective who worked the case says it can be destroyed.”

SPD had a similar policy. “Did you check with the detective who worked this case to see if he authorized it?”

“He’s long gone. He died in the nineties.”

Tracy pointed to the file on the desk. “So then, either that file is the official file or a personal file your father kept.”

“That was my conclusion. And if it’s the official file, then my father either checked it out and indicated it had been destroyed, or the last person who looked for it concluded it had been destroyed because it was missing.”

“Either way, your father took it.”

“There are some notes in the file indicating he was looking into things from time to time. I think this case weighed on him.”

Tracy flipped deeper into the file contents, the pages two-hole-punched and held by a clasp at the top. “Witness statements, the coroner’s report, photographs, sketches.” She let the contents fall back to the first page. “Looks like a complete file.”