In the Clearing (Tracy Crosswhite #3)(83)
Sixty minutes later, Tracy was back in her truck driving north on I-5, a trip she felt like she could now make blindfolded. Her hair remained damp and felt greasy. In her rush, she’d failed to thoroughly rinse out the shampoo. She called Jenny on the drive and explained what had happened, letting her know that she would not be going into the sheriff’s office to prepare the affidavit in support of the subpoena to search Eric Reynolds’s home.
“Why don’t you take a stab at drafting it and leave a couple paragraphs at the end. I can dictate those on the drive back, depending on what I find out, if anything. This could be a wild-goose chase.”
Nearly four hours into her drive, Tracy neared Seattle’s baseball and football stadiums south of the downtown skyscrapers. She took I-90 east and fifteen minutes later exited for the Highlands. Following the GPS’s directions, she made the first right at the top of the hill and drove through a newly constructed shopping area, coming to a roundabout with a grass park surrounded by a waist-high wrought-iron fence. Old-fashioned street lamps and quaint two-story English colonial townhomes rimmed the perimeter. Despite the clear fall weather, the park and sidewalk were empty but for a lone man walking a chocolate lab on a leash.
Tracy found the address and parked in the street at the foot of stairs leading up to the small front porch. She was early, but she wasn’t about to wait in the car. She pushed out, quickly climbed the steps, and knocked.
“Mom, she’s here,” a female voice inside said, followed by the sound of a deadbolt disengaging.
Tiffany Martin pulled open the door with a look of resignation and said, “Please, come in.”
Two adult women in their thirties, remarkably similar in appearance, waited in the small marble entry. Like their mother, the two sisters were well put together, hair and makeup done and nicely dressed, but also like their mother, they each looked on edge. Tracy knew they were all reliving those horrible moments fifteen years ago, and she regretted having to put them through it again.
“These are my daughters, Rachel and Rebecca,” Tiffany Martin said.
Tracy greeted each, and Martin motioned for them to step down into a spotless living room with white leather furniture. A sprawling palm in the corner near a game table and a large oil-based painting provided color. The room held the smell of a vanilla air freshener.
“That’s it,” Martin said, her voice catching as she nodded to a brown file on the glass coffee table. None of the women moved to touch it. Rachel, standing closest to her mother, wrapped an arm around her shoulder.
“We talked about it as a family,” Rachel said. “We didn’t want another family to suffer if they didn’t have to.”
Tracy said, “That’s very kind of you.”
“At the same time, we decided we didn’t want to read it,” Rachel said. “We don’t want to know the details of whatever it was that led my father to do what he did. We don’t see the point.”
“I understand,” Tracy said.
“My father . . .” Rachel had to take a moment to compose herself. She looked to her sister. “Our father was a good man. He was a good father. He was troubled. We recognized that as we got older, but he never let us see how much. He shielded us from it. We have very fond memories, which made this decision so difficult. We don’t want to relive that pain.”
“I know how you feel.”
“Mom told us you did,” Rachel said. “That’s another reason we decided to do this; we thought you would be sensitive to what we went through.”
“I am, and I will be,” Tracy said. “What do you want me to do with the file after I’ve reviewed it?”
The three women looked to each other, and Tiffany Martin nodded to her youngest daughter to continue. “We were hoping you could review it someplace close by,” Rachel said. “Someplace discreet. And we’ll wait here.”
“We’re not prepared to read it,” Tiffany Martin said, “but we thought maybe if you reviewed it and found that . . . I don’t know . . . it isn’t too bad, you could come back and let us know?”
“Of course,” Tracy said.
“If you don’t come back,” Martin said, “well, we’ll know. And then we’d like you to keep the file. We don’t want it.”
They stood in awkward silence, taking furtive glances at the file. When Tracy realized no one was about to pick it up, she stepped to the table and tucked it under her arm.
They moved collectively to the front door. Tiffany Martin pulled it open. “We’ll be here until two o’clock,” she said. “If we don’t hear from you by then, we’re going to go out together and try to eat lunch and get our mind off of it.”
Without another word, Tracy stepped out onto the porch, and the door closed behind her.
CHAPTER 30
Tracy had to resist the urge to open the file and read it in the cab of her truck. Instead, she drove quickly to the Issaquah Library, which was nearby. Downtown Issaquah was buzzing. The area had seen a recent revival with the influx of young families, and the city managers had kept the downtown quaint, with mature oak and plum trees, a repertory theater with a marquee announcing the winter run of the musical Oklahoma, restaurants with sidewalk seating, though not on this cold November day, and a vintage 1940s Shell gas station.