In the Clearing (Tracy Crosswhite #3)(15)

“You think she’s covering for the son,” Faz said.

“Very well could be.”





CHAPTER 6


Back in the car on their drive home from the Almonds’ house, just past Kelso, Dan reached for the radio and turned down the Seahawks game, drawing Tracy’s attention. She’d been staring out the window, watching the acres of farmland pass along I-5, the daylight fading quickly, as it did in the fall.

“I thought you were enjoying the game,” Tracy said.

Dan angled toward her, his left arm on the steering wheel. “Enjoying? The Forty-Niners are kicking our butts. I’m not enjoying it.”

“Oh,” Tracy said.

“You’ve been awfully quiet. I don’t think you’ve said more than two sentences the past half hour, and you’ve obviously tuned out the entire third quarter, or you’d have known we’re down by twenty points.”

She smiled. “Okay. Guilty.”

“Does it have anything to do with that file back there?” Dan gave a small nod toward the backseat.

“You noticed that, did you?”

“You’re not the only one with detective skills. So, what is it?”

“An old case Jenny found in her father’s desk.”

Dan reached into a bag of wasabi-flavored almonds. He was on a quest to lose five to ten pounds and didn’t go anywhere without some form of nut to snack on. “A cold case?”

“Not exactly. In 1976 a seventeen-year-old Native American girl went missing on her way home from work. Two fishermen found her body in the White Salmon River the next afternoon, caught on the limbs of a submerged tree. The autopsy and the prosecuting attorney concluded she jumped into the river and drowned.”

Dan popped more nuts in his mouth. “Jumped? As in, on purpose?”

“The official conclusion was that she was upset over a recent breakup with her boyfriend. Unfortunately, it happens too often in high school. One minute they’re in love; the next minute they hate each other. Jenny thinks her father believed there was something more to it. She asked me to have a look.”

“Can you do that? It’s a different county.”

“We can. It usually happens if a body is found in one county but it’s suspected the murder took place somewhere else—things like that. But the sheriff of a county can always ask for assistance. Jenny wants a fresh take, in case she has to reopen the investigation.”

“How do you think Nolasco is going to react?” Dan asked, referring to Tracy’s captain and longtime nemesis.

“Johnny Boy’s been on his best behavior since he got his hand slapped by OPA,” she said. The Office of Professional Accountability was reviewing a decade-old homicide investigation by Nolasco and his then partner, Floyd Hattie. Tracy had found the file for the case while hunting the Cowboy, and her review of it revealed certain improprieties that called into question Nolasco’s methods. OPA had broadened its inquiry to Nolasco’s and Hattie’s other cases, and word was, it was finding more misconduct. Only the support of the union had kept Nolasco at his desk.

“You think maybe it could be too close to home?” Dan said, concern creeping into his tone.

“They’re always going to be too close to home,” she said. “A disproportionate number of victims who get abducted, abused, and murdered are young women. I can’t change that.”

“No, but you don’t have to volunteer either.”

“I know, and when Jenny started telling me about the case, I thought my first reaction would be to say no. But the similarities between Kimi and Sarah are what made me want to take a look. Maybe it’s because I know what something like this does to a family.”

“Forty years is a long time,” Dan said. “Is there any family left still alive?”

“The mother passed away. The father would be is in his mid-to late eighties. Jenny thinks he lives on the Yakama Reservation. The girl also had a brother.”

“What if they don’t want to talk about it?”

Tracy hadn’t thought about that. “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess I’ll cross that bridge if I ever get to it. I might not find anything that warrants reopening the investigation anyway.”




After saying good-bye to Dan, who had an early flight to Los Angeles the next day and still needed to get back and prepare for a week of depositions, Tracy shut the door to her West Seattle house and took care of Roger, her black tabby. Roger let her know loudly that he was not happy about being abandoned for two days, never mind that he had an automatic feeder, plenty of water, the full run of the house, and a teenage neighbor who came in to check on him each day.

As Roger devoured his canned food, Tracy poured herself a glass of wine and took it into the dining room, eager to review Buzz Almond’s file. She turned on her iPad, found a country music station, which she liked to listen to when working, and let Keith Urban fill the silence.

The first thing that struck her about the file was its thickness—hefty for an investigation that had quickly concluded that the victim committed suicide. What created much of the bulk were four gold-and-white Kodak envelopes, the kind she used to pick up at the Kodak counter in Kaufman’s Mercantile Store in Cedar Grove. She opened the first packet and thumbed the pictures but quickly set them aside. She never started a review with photographs, since she had no idea what they were meant to depict. She unfolded the two brass prongs holding the file folder together and carefully slid the contents free.