In the Clearing (17 page)

A sudden glare of high beams caused her to quickly steer her truck to the shoulder. A large flatbed blew by her in the opposite direction, the rush of wind shaking her truck. The encounter had the same effect as if she were a boxer administered smelling salts in between rounds; she sat up, more focused. When she did, she spotted a one-room log building along the side of the road, and it triggered something she’d read in Buzz Almond’s file. She drove to a crude gravel parking area. From the building’s dilapidated condition, Tracy could tell the establishment had long since closed, but she had no doubt that it was the Columbia Diner.

She opened the file and skimmed Almond’s report of his conversation with the waitress, Lorraine. After speaking to the waitress, Almond had made this note:
I drove
in the direction Kimi Kanasket would have walked home, and came to a turnout
100–150 yards past the café
.

Tracy pulled back onto the road and continued at a slow rate of speed, frequently checking her rearview mirror for headlights. After driving a little more than the length of a football field, she spotted a half-moon-shaped escarpment, about the size of a car, carved out of the otherwise encroaching brush.

She parked, reached into her glove box for her Maglite flashlight, and confirmed it worked. Then she grabbed her coat and pushed open the cab door to a rush of cold air. She stepped out, quickly zipped her coat and shut the door, but she did not immediately turn on the flashlight. Without the cab’s dome light or the benefit of any street lamps, and with a low cloud layer preventing any natural light, it was “darker than dark,” as her father liked to say—probably as dark as the night Kimi Kanasket went missing and Buzz Almond described as “dark as ink.”

Tracy flipped on the flashlight and started along the edge of the road, directing the beam over the brush. It was cold enough that she could see the white vapor of her breath in the stream of light, and the chill caused her fingertips and cheeks to tingle. She switched the metal cylinder to the other hand, blowing into her free hand. She’d gone less than ten yards when the beam seemed to pierce through an initial wall of foliage. Stepping closer and using the Maglite to push aside branches, she found an overgrown path that conjured the image of the deer paths her father had taught her to use when hunting in dense brush. If this was the path Buzz Almond had written of in his report, Tracy wasn’t surprised he hadn’t seen it that first dark night. She’d been specifically looking for it and still had almost walked past it.

Common sense told Tracy to go back to her truck and come back in the morning when it was light, but common sense was taking a backseat to curiosity—and her desire to retrace Buzz Almond’s footsteps in the same conditions he’d encountered. Besides, the dark had never bothered her. Maybe because Sarah had been so afraid of the dark, Tracy, as her big sister, never allowed herself to be afraid. Tracy and her friends used to play hide-and-go-seek at night in the woods behind their home, and they’d pitch tents on the back lawn and turn off all the lights and tell ghost stories. Sarah never lasted long before rushing inside, but Tracy enjoyed it. Beyond that, she had the Maglite and her Glock.

Tracy stepped from the road into the brush, kicking at encroaching vines snagging her jeans. A hundred yards down the path, the foliage became less dense and the footpath more defined. Recent rains had made the ground soft but not sloppy. Farther along, the grade steepened, enough that Tracy’s breathing became more pronounced from the exertion. The foliage changed to scrub oak and pine trees, the ground covered with pine needles. Tracy used her jacket sleeve to protect her face from the branches, snapping off the smaller limbs as she went. The grade continued to steepen until she was bent forward, driving with her legs, feeling the cold in her lungs. At least the effort had warmed her and stemmed the chill.

Sensing she was nearing the top of the grade, she bent under a branch, pushed through a final tangle of tree limbs, and came out atop a hill looking down at an open patch of ground—what had to be the clearing Buzz Almond had written of and Earl Kanasket had described. She was surprised to feel a strange sense of accomplishment at having found it. She turned off the Maglite. A break in the cloud layer allowed sporadic moonlight, and the clearing appeared as both men had described it, barren of any tree, sapling, bush, or shrub. It looked like one of those crop circles in the middle of a field that you see featured in tabloid magazines—a compressed area people said had been made by alien spaceships.

As Tracy started down the hill, she quickly realized she’d misjudged the grade. The ground, slick from the rains and the drop in temperature, made keeping her footing like navigating a thin sheet of ice. The soles of her boots slipped and slid, and she feared she’d lose her balance and tweak an ankle, or snap a leg or an arm. She had to angle her body and sidestep to better control her descent. Halfway down, she gave in to gravity and allowed herself to stumble to the bottom.

A noise, what she first thought to be the low, drawn-out hoot of a barn owl, drew her attention to the top of the hill. But it wasn’t an owl. The limbs of the trees, stripped of their fall foliage, began to whip and sway, and she watched the blades of tall grass fold over as a gust of wind shot down the hill. It sounded just as Earl Kanasket had described it, like a man moaning. The wind rushed at her, strong enough to blow the hair back from her face, and felt as though it was passing right through her. She turned and directed the beam of her flashlight to the edge of the clearing, following the wind as it flowed in a clockwise direction, the branches of the pines dancing and swaying. She felt as though she were standing in the eye of a tornado and wondered whether the swirling wind, and not some hanged man’s curse, was the likely reason nothing grew here.

As she followed the wind’s progress, the beam of light fell on something moving at the edge of the clearing. From its brown coloring, Tracy first thought it was an animal—a deer or a bear. But deer and bears didn’t walk upright on two legs.

“Hey,” she yelled, starting across the field. “Hey!”

The man looked back over his shoulder before disappearing quickly into the tree line. Tracy ran after him. “Hey. Stop. Hang on a minute.”

The man didn’t stop, and Tracy gave chase. At the edge of the forest, she unholstered her Glock and used the beam of light to search between the trees, but she didn’t see the man or a defined path he might have taken. She stepped farther in, ducking and bending and picking her way carefully over fallen trees. She thought she caught a glimpse of the man off to her left and continued another fifty yards, but she saw no sign of him. She was about to turn back when she sensed the brush and the trees beginning to thin, so she kept going, and soon stepped out onto a power line easement. Electrical cable strung between metal towers continued up and over the ridge.

But no one was there.

She wondered if her eyes had played a trick on her, or maybe she
had
seen Henry Timmerman’s ghost, as Élan had warned. She directed the flashlight to the ground, searched a moment, and found what looked to be bootprints and the tread of a thick bicycle tire, likely a mountain bike of some sort. Both appeared to be fresh. The tire tread followed the path of the electrical cables up the hill to the ridge.

Ghosts didn’t ride bicycles. Not to her knowledge, anyway.

She took a few pictures with her phone before making her way back through the trees to the clearing. There, she spent a few minutes shining the beam of light over the ground looking for shoe imprints, but something else caught her eye—a small shrub. She bent to a knee, touching the freshly tilled soil.

Nothing grows in the clearing,
Earl Kanasket had said.

Maybe not,
Tracy thought, looking back to the edge of the clearing where she’d seen the man,
but someone’s trying anyway.

CHAPTER 15

I
n the morning, after another early run, Tracy headed out to get a pulse on the town. Downtown Stoneridge was an odd mixture of alpine architecture, reflecting German and Scandinavian immigration to the area, and the more traditional nineteenth-century Pacific Northwest stone and brick buildings that reminded Tracy of Cedar Grove. Whereas Cedar Grove had one stoplight, Stoneridge had only a stop sign at the end of a long block of businesses—a general store, pharmacy, hardware store, and post office, among others, on the north side of the street, and a pizza and brew pub, flower shop, and art gallery displaying Northwest Native American pieces on the south side. It should have been quaint, a town that quietly exuded history and tradition, but something about the tableau was unsettling, something that made the town seem as fragile as a Hollywood set—a façade lacking depth, a town that did not exude its history but seemed intent on hiding it.

As she drove down the block, a white sedan slowed its approach as it drove toward her from the opposite direction. Tracy considered the blue lettering and shield on the door panel identifying it as a Stoneridge Police Department vehicle. She waved and briefly considered stopping to introduce herself but instead continued to the end of the block. When she checked the rearview mirror, the police car had pulled to the side of the road and parked.

She turned left and drove past several churches, Baptist and Methodist, and a building that housed some fraternal order. The homes were small, mostly one-story, with yards going dormant for the winter, lawns a little ragged, and cut wood stacked neatly beneath overhangs. Her GPS directed her to a tree-lined street, and she pulled to the curb at the base of concrete stairs leading up to the red brick Stoneridge Library, which resembled something out of colonial America, with two white pillars and a pediment over the entrance.

She climbed the steps and felt the warm air as she pulled open the door. Inside, Tracy interrupted a middle-aged woman applying makeup while sitting behind the reference desk.

“Sorry,” the woman said, slipping a compact into her purse and sliding the purse beneath the counter. “I didn’t get a chance to put my face on this morning.”

“Not a problem,” Tracy said.

“How can I help you?”

“I’m hoping to review some old high school yearbooks and newspaper articles from the
Stoneridge Sentinel
,” Tracy said. “Would that be possible?”

The woman grimaced. “How far back are you looking to go?”

“1976.”

“Are you writing an article on the reunion?”

No point in lying. Having lived in a small town, Tracy knew word of her presence would spread quickly, no matter how low a profile she kept. “Actually, I’m a police officer from Seattle,” she said, showing the woman her ID and shield. “I was hoping to review some articles written back then. I assume the library keeps them on microfiche?”

“We did,” the woman said. Tracy didn’t like the sound of that. “We had a fire in 2000, and what the fire didn’t burn, the sprinklers ruined. We don’t have any archives before that.”

Tracy considered this a moment, then asked, “Would any other libraries in the area have kept copies?” She thought it doubtful but worth a shot.

“Not likely the
Sentinel
. That was primarily local Stoneridge news. They might have some of the bigger newspapers, like the
Columbian
and the
Oregonian
. You could try the library in Goldendale. It’s about an hour northeast of here.”

Tracy didn’t see the point in that. “How long have you lived here?”

“Me? My entire life.”

“Have you heard of a couple of companies called Columbia Windshield and Glass, and Columbia Auto Repair?”

“Sure.”

“You have? I couldn’t find either one online. I was assuming they’re out of business?”

“Oh, yeah. They’ve been out of business for some time now,” she said. “Shortly after Hastey Senior passed.”

Tracy recalled that name from the article on the reunion and pulled out the newspaper, finding the photographs and the caption. “Hastey Devoe?” she asked, handing the woman the newspaper.

“That’s young Hastey. The father owned both businesses. They were side by side, out on Lincoln Road. His wife closed both businesses shortly after Hastey Senior died.”

“Is his wife still alive?” The chance that Devoe’s wife would have any information about two incomplete invoices was slimmer than none, but Tracy knew that small businesses in small towns were often family affairs, and the wife could have also been the bookkeeper.

“I really don’t know. Last I heard she was living in a nursing home in Vancouver and had Alzheimer’s or dementia.”

“What does the son do now?”

“Hastey Junior? He works for Reynolds Construction, I believe. At least I’ve seen him driving one of their trucks around town. Don’t ask me what he does though.”

Tracy considered the newspaper photograph and caption. “Would that be Eric Reynolds’s company?”

“That’s right.”

“Does Hastey Junior still live in town?”

“In the house he grew up in, over on Cherry.”

Tracy made a note on her notepad and thanked the woman. As she stepped away, the woman said, “You might try Sam Goldman. He might have copies of the paper.”

“Who’s he?” Tracy asked.

“Sam was the publisher of the
Sentinel
. Publisher, reporter, photographer. He and his wife, Adele, did just about everything. He’s retired now. We call him Stoneridge’s unofficial historian.”

“Where would I find him?”

“They live over on Orchard Way,” the woman said, already reaching for a pen and a pad of paper to jot down an address and directions.

Minutes later, directions in hand, Tracy descended the front steps of the library. As she did, she noticed the white police vehicle parked around the corner, only partially hidden behind the trunk of a cottonwood tree.