In the Clearing (Tracy Crosswhite #3)(75)
“Oh, I’ll prove it. You can count on that. I learned from fishing with my dad that you don’t always need bait to catch fish. I’ve caught them with a fly, a lure, a net, and a spear. I’ve even caught them with my bare hands.”
“Well then, good luck with that.” Lionel started for the door.
“And when you call Eric Reynolds to report in, let him know I’m coming to talk to him next,” Tracy said. Her comment caused Lionel to stop. He looked back with a searing gaze, but when he opened his mouth he apparently couldn’t articulate what he wanted to say.
Jenny filled the pause. “I’d suggest you get your brother a lawyer before tomorrow, Lionel.”
CHAPTER 26
Tracy passed on her run the next morning, telling herself she wanted to give her body a day to recover. In truth, she didn’t feel like running. She sensed she was reaching a dead end, and that frustrated her. Lionel was right. Her bravado and accusations wouldn’t get her very far, not without more. Her best bet remained Archibald Coe, but she had to find a way to somehow get him to open up.
Her decision not to run became easier when she looked out the window. A light snow had fallen during the night, leaving a sparkling silver-and-white landscape. It was beautiful, but like a high mountain lake in winter is beautiful—unspoiled and pure, but also teeth-chatteringly, spine-numbingly cold. Mike Melton further dampened her mood when he called to tell her about the photograph of the tire on Eric Reynolds’s Bronco.
“The lab worked overtime,” he said. “I’m sorry. I know I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but there’s just not enough to be definitive. The photo didn’t cover enough of the tire for me to state with certainty it’s the same make and model as the tread captured in the photos taken in the field. It looks similar, Tracy. It could be the same tire, but there were other models by other manufacturers made back then that are too similar to rule out.”
Tracy’s breath fogged the kitchen windowpane. “So you can’t say it’s that tire, only that it could be that tire.”
“I can say the impressions in the ground captured in the photographs are similar to the impressions I would expect that tire would make. But no, I can’t say it was that tire. I’m sorry. I know that isn’t the answer you wanted.”
And that was a problem.
Tracy thanked Melton. His answer wasn’t totally unexpected, and it was certainly better than him telling her the tires were definitely not the ones that had made the impressions. But similar would not get her where she needed to go. She suspected Kelly Rosa would offer the same conclusion—the pattern of bruising on Kimi Kanasket’s back and shoulder was of the type she would expect to be left by that make of tire, but she couldn’t definitely say the bruising was made by that tire.
Tracy left the window and sat at the table to reassess what she knew and where that put the investigation. Certainly there was plenty of circumstantial evidence pointing to Kimi Kanasket having been chased and run down by a truck with all-terrain tires. Eric Reynolds drove a vehicle with that kind of tire, but so did Tommy Moore and élan Kanasket, and Hastey and Lionel Devoe had access to company vehicles that could have had similar tires, not to mention the many other trucks and SUVs in the county. The same was true of the shoe impressions. Except for the hunting boots, they were made by brands of shoes popular among young men at that time.
Beyond that, as with any decades-old case, the evidence was riddled with uncertainty any defense attorney worth his salt would exploit. Jurors would question why the case was being brought now, and even convincing arguments about advances in technology could be trumped by a more practical and human argument—whether it was justified to prosecute three or four men who had never committed another known violent act against anyone on the basis of questionable evidence. Without more, the case would be near-impossible for a prosecutor to convince a jury to sacrifice those lives for the life of a young woman dead forty years.
Someone knocked on the front door. Tracy was surprised to find Jenny standing on the porch. She looked troubled. “I just came from the Central Point Nursery,” she said, and Tracy felt her stomach drop. “An employee found Archibald Coe hanging in one of the hothouses.”
They moved into the dining room, but neither Tracy nor Jenny sat. Tracy felt as though she’d taken a mule kick to the gut.
Jenny had driven out to the nursery upon receiving the call earlier that morning. “He wasn’t answering his phone or responding to calls over the nursery’s loudspeakers,” Jenny said. “Someone noticed he’d never clocked out last night and took a walk over to the hothouse.”
“Are you certain it was a suicide?”
“The person who found him said the door was unlocked when he tried it. I got a CSI team over there, but there’s no indication of a struggle. He positioned some plants around himself in a circle, looped a rope over one of the overhead beams, stood on a ceramic pot, and kicked it over.”
“A memorial. Like the clearing,” Tracy said.
“Looks like that’s what he intended.”
“Any note?”
“Not that we’ve found,” Jenny said. “I sent detectives to his apartment. I think it best under the circumstances that you not get too close to this. Let my office handle it. I’ll let you know if we find anything.”