In the Clearing (Tracy Crosswhite #3)(81)

“Do you have babies?” Sarah whispered, as if sharing a secret.

“No,” Tracy whispered back. “No babies.”

Sarah poked at Tracy’s stomach. “What about in there?”

“Nope. Nothing in there,” Tracy said.

Sarah released her grip and lay back, scrunching down into the covers.

Tracy went back downstairs and found Jenny in the kitchen, pouring what smelled like a potent lemon-and-garlic sauce over breasts of chicken on beds of rice with a side of broccoli.

“Smells incredible,” Tracy said.

Jenny set the pan down on the stove. “An old standby. Simple but healthy. You don’t look any worse for wear.”

“They’re great kids.”

“They can be a handful, especially when one of us works late.” Jenny handed Tracy a plate and a glass of wine, and they carried them into the dining room and sat at the table. Jenny let out a breath and sank into her chair like a balloon collapsing. “These are the moments of peace I treasure.”

As they ate, Jenny updated Tracy on the investigation into the death of Archibald Coe. “No sign of a forced entry or struggle, and the coroner didn’t find any marks on the body to indicate that Coe didn’t act willingly. Nothing to indicate he didn’t kill himself.”

“Except the timing.”

“Except the timing.”

“Any note?”

“No,” Jenny said.

Tracy took a sip of wine. “What about his employers? Did they notice anything out of the ordinary?”

“Nothing except you coming to speak to him, which was beyond rare. Coe didn’t talk much to anyone—just came in and did his work and went home. It was actually amazing how little they knew about him.”

“Nothing in his apartment?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Jenny said. “We found an entire medicine cabinet—Vicodin, Zoloft, sleep aids. But he didn’t have a computer or a laptop, and he didn’t own a cell phone or a car. Apparently, he rode his bike everywhere.”

“Further confirming he’s the man I saw in the clearing that night.” She set down her utensils, frustrated that she’d been that close and now the opportunity had evaporated. “Did you get ahold of his ex-wife and kids?”

“The ex-wife thanked us. She sounded saddened but not surprised and said she’d call their children. I have their numbers if you decide you want to talk to them after this dies down a bit.”

“I’d sure like to ask them if their father ever confided in them about what had caused his problems.”

Tracy thought of the moment upstairs when Sarah kissed her lips and asked, Do you have babies? Tracy didn’t, but she knew enough to know you couldn’t truly appreciate what others went through, their joys or their sorrows, unless you had experienced it yourself, or something similar. If her current working hypothesis was correct and the Four Ironmen had something to do with Kimi’s death, Tracy suspected that neither Darren Gallentine nor Archibald Coe had fully appreciated the pain Earl and Nettie Kanasket had gone through until they had become fathers themselves, especially when their daughters had reached the same age as Kimi. That appeared to be what put them both over the edge.

Jenny pushed aside her plate. Neither she nor Tracy had finished. “Tell me about your conversation with Eric Reynolds.”

“I’ll tell you as we clean up.” They took their plates to the kitchen, and Tracy ran them under the faucet and handed them to Jenny, who put them in the dishwasher. “He was very polished,” Tracy said. “Professional, polite. If he was anxious or nervous, he didn’t show it.”

“And full of shit?” Jenny asked, finishing what was left in her wineglass and handing it to Tracy.

“Maybe. He told me a deputy came by the house to talk to him about a week or two after they found Kimi.”

“My father?”

“He didn’t say that, but if it happened, it had to be.”

Jenny set down the glass and dried her hands on a towel. “I don’t recall reading anything about that in the file.”

“It isn’t in there.”

“Did he say what my dad wanted?”

“He said a deputy came by to ask him where he’d been the Friday night Kimi disappeared, whether he’d been out.”

“So my dad suspected him?”

“Maybe. Reynolds said he had the impression the deputy was just asking if anyone might have seen Kimi that night.”

“What did Reynolds tell him?”

“He said he’d been at home in bed resting for the big game and that his father would vouch for him. If you think about it, if it was a lie, it’s very low-risk because it’s simple, it’s believable, and it’s unlikely to be refuted.”

“Why would Reynolds lie about something like that and potentially draw attention to himself? It seems counterintuitive.”

“I thought about that also. It could be he’s using it to let me know someone already went down that path and nothing came of it. Or it could be that he knows, or at least he believes, that someone already removed that report from the file, so I can’t prove him wrong or question him. And like I said, his father is still alive to vouch for him.”

Jenny filled the tea kettle at the faucet. “I wonder if that’s why the system indicates the file was destroyed—if my father wanted whoever did go looking for it to believe the file no longer existed. He puts ‘Destroyed’ into the system and takes the file home and locks it in his desk.” Jenny set the kettle on the stove atop a blue flame. “Why wouldn’t he have just duplicated the report?”