In the Clearing (Tracy Crosswhite #3)(32)
“You found him?”
“Hopefully. Last known address is on the reservation,” Tracy said. “Appears to live with the son, élan. Records also indicate Tommy Moore lives out there. If so, I’ll pay him a visit as well.”
“Give yourself a couple hours to get there,” Jenny said. “And let me know if you need anything. I can give you a tour of the town and introduce you to the Stoneridge chief of police.” Some small towns contracted with the local sheriff’s office, but some, like Stoneridge, also kept their own force. “I gave him a courtesy call and let him know you’d be in town. He has no jurisdiction, since Kimi died outside the city limits, but he tends to get his panties in a bunch easily.”
Tracy laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Jenny looked to the grandfather clock in the front hall. “Speaking of panties in a bunch, I better get home and feed the kids. You need anything, you have my cell.” She handed Tracy a set of keys, and Tracy followed her outside. The shadows had reached the porch steps, and it felt as if the temperature had fallen a few more degrees.
Jenny got into her car and lowered the passenger-side window. “Call if you need anything,” she said.
Tracy watched the SUV navigate the perimeter of the property, then turn north. As the sound of the car engine faded, Tracy was again struck by the utter quiet. She imagined the sounds of a family sitting down at the table to eat, or to watch The Wonderful World of Disney after taking Sunday evening baths, which had been her and Sarah’s routine. The thought triggered a memory of her family’s unexpected trip to Disneyland, Sarah squealing on the Pirates of the Caribbean, covering her eyes in the Haunted Mansion, and the smile that didn’t leave her father’s face for three days. Their final night, as they watched the parade on Main Street, Tracy had asked him, “Can we come back, Daddy?”
“I think we’ve worn the park out, don’t you?” he’d said. “But you’ll come back someday. You’ll come back with your sister and your own kids, and you’ll make memories for them.”
That had never happened.
A psychopath had stolen that dream from all of them.
A chill ran up and down Tracy’s spine, and she quickly retreated inside, where she put on a hooded sweatshirt. She brought the newspapers to the dining room table, sitting beneath a retro oil-lamp chandelier. In addition to the articles on the reunion, the newspapers were filled with small-town news—a report on a swimming pool feasibility study, the gardening tip of the week, and an article encouraging citizens to serve on committees to plan Stoneridge’s future. The centerpiece of the front page, however, was the reunion and stadium dedication. In the photograph accompanying the article, a man in khaki pants and a polo shirt stood outside the entrance to the athletic complex Tracy and Dan had seen under construction. The caption identified him as Eric Reynolds, the quarterback of the 1976 championship team and president of Reynolds Construction, which was donating the manpower, equipment, and concrete to renovate the stadium. The unspoken quid pro quo was apparently the naming rights.
The article continued to an inside page with a collage comparing past and current photographs. In one, a fifty-seven-year-old Eric Reynolds, balding in a horseshoe pattern, stood behind a large man bent over as if to hike him a football. Reynolds looked still capable of stepping onto the field and playing. The photo was juxtaposed next to another taken forty years earlier of the same two men in the same positions but in their high school football uniforms. In that black-and-white photo, Reynolds had long hair and a bright smile. The caption identified the center hiking the football as Hastey Devoe. Time had not been nearly as kind to him as it had been to Reynolds. As a young man, Devoe had been big, but he’d carried his weight well, and his boyish features and wide-eyed stare made him look precocious. In the more recent photo, Devoe’s bulk had become slovenly, and his face had the fleshy, sagging features of a man who liked his food and probably his alcohol.
The photographs made Tracy nostalgic. Forty years had passed. Half a lifetime.
Not for Sarah. And not for Kimi Kanasket.
CHAPTER 12
Tracy awoke to the persistent crowing of a distant rooster. Unable to get back to sleep, she slid on her winter running clothes and headed out along the ridgeline. The initial cold hit her like an ice bath, chilling her to the bone, but she started slow, allowing her muscles and joints to loosen up until her core warmed and she could kick up her pace. About forty-five minutes later, after a quick shower and breakfast, she jumped in her truck and set out to find Earl Kanasket and either get his blessing or a kick in the pants—if he was still alive and still living at his last known address.
After a little over an hour and a half driving along US 97, Tracy approached the small city of Toppenish on the two-thousand-square-mile Yakama Reservation. She pulled off the exit and drove through a main street of one-and two-story stone and brick buildings that had the feel of an Old West farming community. Large murals adorned the sides of many of the buildings, the elaborate drawings depicting late eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century living—Native Americans riding bareback on painted horses, farmers plowing fields behind the reins of plow horses, a steam engine billowing smoke into a pale-blue sky.
Tracy’s GPS directed her along streets with modest but well-maintained homes to a T intersection and an expansive field of dark green that stretched seemingly to the horizon. Kale had become the new food fad. The address for Earl Kanasket was the last house on the left, a one-story blue-gray structure with an older-model Chevy truck and a Toyota sedan parked in a carport—a good sign, at least, that someone was home. The house listed slightly to the left, as if the attached carport weighed it down.