In the Clearing (29 page)

“Nothing grows in the clearing. Everything dies.”

“But you’ve planted things there, at the spot where Kimi was run over. You’ve tried many times. Why do you put plants there, Mr. Coe?”

Coe’s complexion, already sickly, had become ghostly pale. He looked on the verge of tears.

“Kimi was still alive,” Tracy said. “She didn’t die in the clearing.”

Coe looked up, and for the first time met and held Tracy’s gaze.

“Whoever hit her with the truck didn’t kill her, Mr. Coe. She was still alive when she was thrown into the river. Tell me what happened. You’ve been a solid citizen for forty years. You’ve never committed a crime. People are forgiving, Mr. Coe, but they want accountability. I get a sense you do too. You’ve been carrying this around for forty years. It’s time you unburdened yourself and got it off your chest. Tell me what happened in the clearing that night.”

“Nothing grows in the clearing. Everything dies,” he said, and he turned and directed the wand to the next tree in the row.

CHAPTER 24

A
s Tracy left the nursery, Jenny called.

“Looks like Hastey Devoe is getting a head start on celebrating the reunion. He’s drinking his lunch at a restaurant bar near Vancouver. I suspect he’ll be getting back in his car soon enough to drive home.”

“Jail is as isolated as it gets,” Tracy said.

“That was my thought exactly. I’ll tell my guys to pull him in before he reaches Stoneridge and give you a call when they do.”

“Stall him if he asks to make a call.”

“Will do. What did Coe have to say?”

“Not much, unfortunately.” She summarized her conversation with Archibald Coe as well as her impressions of the man and what she thought it could mean in light of Darren Gallentine’s own emotional fragility and suicide. “I’m sure he was the person I saw in the clearing that night and that he’s been planting things in that spot for years. I found dozens of dead plants discarded in the woods.”

“A memorial,” Jenny said.

“A would-be memorial. Nothing grows there. Everything dies. That’s what he said. We’re on the right track now, Jenny. I know it. And I got a very strong sense Coe knows what happened and that it still bothers him. I just have to find a way to get him to talk to me. If I can get him to tell me what happened, then all the circumstantial evidence becomes not just relevant, it becomes corroborating, and possibly damning.”

“I can speak to the DA about it; maybe we can offer Coe some sort of deal in exchange for his testifying.”

“I don’t think that’s the issue,” Tracy said. “He’s not being recalcitrant. He’s emotionally fragile. It’s like going back to what happened is a door he can’t open or talk about. I’m going to have to think about this and be cautious about how I approach him. We can discuss it more when your deputies bring Devoe in.”

“Where are you going now?”

“To look at some more old newspapers.”

Sam Goldman greeted Tracy with a smile. “You must have been driving the Batmobile,” he said.

“I might have broken a speed limit or two,” Tracy said.

“Perk of the job, right?”

“It isn’t the pay, the hours, or the praise.”

Goldman roared. “You said it, friend. Teachers, newspaper reporters, and police officers—the most underpaid professions on the planet.”

Goldman stepped aside to let Tracy in.

“You said you wanted to see the newspapers again?”

“If it isn’t too much trouble.”

“No trouble at all, chief.” Goldman was already moving through the kitchen to the mudroom. Adele sat at a small table positioned beneath the window, a pencil and a Sudoku book in hand and the same half-troubled, half-curious expression, as if she were uncertain about this continued break in their retirement routine.

“
Back to the Future
two, Adele,” Goldman said.

“Nice to see you again,” Adele said to Tracy. “Can I get you a cup of tea?”

“Not today, but thank you. I promise not to take much of Sam’s time.”

Goldman was on a roll. “Places to go and people to see, Adele. She’s a woman on a mission.”

They stepped out the back door, and Goldman repeated the ritual of unlocking the padlock that was securing the shed doors, then placing the five-gallon bucket at the corner to keep the door from swinging shut. Inside, he turned on the light and weaved his way to the stacks of boxes containing his life’s work.

He found the box Tracy had looked at previously and pulled out the issues. Tracy opened the first paper.

Reynolds’ Arm, Legs Take

Stoneridge to the Brink

The front-page article carried over to an inside page containing additional articles and photographs. One photo depicted Eric Reynolds jogging off the field after the game with his helmet raised overhead and the broad smile of a kid with a bright future beckoning. Having taught high school in a small town, Tracy knew that wasn’t the case for everyone. Behind Reynolds the football field was filled with teammates celebrating, girls in cheerleading outfits, and parents and students in knit hats and coats, holding pennants and handmade signs.

“That’s the game that really put him on the map,” Goldman said, adjusting his glasses and looking over Tracy’s shoulder. “Up until then, only the smaller schools had been recruiting him, but everyone came calling after that game. He threw for more than two hundred yards and two touchdowns and ran for two more scores. When UW came knocking, that was all she wrote. The old man wanted Eric to go there, and that was it. They didn’t have the big circuses back then like they do now, but we wrote a story on his decision. He signed his letter of intent at the newspaper and used our machine to fax it over to the U.” Goldman thought for a moment. “That would have been February.” He set the box aside and lifted the lid on the box beneath it, thumbing the papers again until he found the edition he was looking for.

“February 17, 1977,” Goldman said, unfolding the newspaper. “A day that will not live in infamy.”

The photograph was on the front page, Eric Reynolds seated at a desk, pen in hand. Ron Reynolds stood at his son’s side, one hand braced on the desk, the other clasping Eric’s shoulder. Both men looked up at the camera with broad smiles. They shared a passing resemblance. Eric had inherited the strong jawline and the smile that inched just slightly higher on the left side. Unlike Ron, who wore a crew cut and had the hard features of a drill sergeant, Eric had shoulder-length blond hair and softer features. His eyes were likely blue, though the photograph was black and white, and unlike his father’s, which burned with intensity, Eric’s sparkled. This was a high school kid who melted girls’ hearts with just a passing glance.

“I was standing on a desk to get that shot,” Goldman said with some pride.

“The mother didn’t get to join in the fun?”

“The mother died before they moved from Southern California. It was just the two of them.”

“No siblings?”

“Nope. Eric was the golden boy. Led the basketball team to state also that year. And he pitched well enough he would have been drafted, but Ron made it clear that football was king and young Eric intended to play quarterback and then go on to the NFL.”

The article continued on the next page, accompanied by another photograph of Eric, this time wearing a letterman jacket adorned with more patches than a Boy Scout uniform, and reclining easily against the side of what was likely the precursor to the SUV—a Jeep maybe—with a cloth canopy.

Tracy held the paper up and angled it to better catch the yellow light. She realized that it was actually a Bronco with off-road tires. But her initial euphoria quickly dissipated. She could make out some of the tire tread but not much, and she could see very little of the sidewall, where she knew the make and model number were placed. “Damn,” she said.

“What are you looking for, chief?”

“The tire. I need to know the make and model number of that tire.”

“Let me see it.” Goldman took the paper, raised his glasses onto his forehead, and studied the photograph. “We cropped this,” he said.

“You cropped it?” Tracy asked.

“Sure. Had to crop it to get it to fit.”

“Would you still have the original photo?” Tracy asked, cautious but optimistic, given Goldman’s seeming penchant to keep everything.

Goldman gave her a knowing smile. “You underestimate me, hero.” He started toward a row of file cabinets lining a side wall. Each drawer contained a white card in the front slot, the ink faded and in some instances barely visible. Goldman again raised his glasses to the ridge of his forehead, bending to read the cards in the muted light. “This one,” he said, flipping the button with his thumb and pulling the drawer open. “We kept the photographs for each issue. Never knew when you might need a canned shot.”

Like the boxes of newspapers, the drawer was neatly organized, with tabbed hanging green files. Goldman went through them front to back, his pace slowing as he neared the last files. “Nope,” he said.

“You don’t have it?” Tracy asked.

“Wrong drawer.”

Goldman slid the drawer closed and pulled open the drawer beneath it, repeating the process, slowing, and pulling out one of the hanging files near the front. “This is it.” He took the file back to the makeshift Bekins box table. Inside the file were loose black-and-white photos. Goldman went through them as fast as a card dealer, setting aside the photographs that had nothing to do with Eric Reynolds or his father.

“Here they are.” He flipped through shots of Eric leaning against a stucco building, some with his letterman jacket on, some with it off. “It was Adele who suggested we take the picture of Eric leaning against the car, to give us better contrast.” Goldman held up one of the photographs. “She said these looked too much like mug shots.”

Goldman handed Tracy the shot of Eric leaning against the Bronco. Someone, likely Goldman, had used a red grease pen to draw a rectangle to delineate the area of the photo that would be used in the paper. Outside that rectangle, below the Bronco’s front fender, the camera had captured more of the oversize tire than had been published in the newspaper. Tracy could see the tread, as well as a portion of the sidewall, but she couldn’t see the make or model number, at least not with the naked eye.

“Sam, I’m going to have to take this picture and this negative. Copies won’t work. You have my word I’ll scan the photo and bring it back. The negative I have to send to the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab in Seattle.”

Goldman’s eyes were blazing with excitement. “Now, that’s a story to tell the grandkids,” he said.

Another thought came to her. “Can I see the issue covering the parade—the one with the collage?”

“That’d be the issue—Tuesday, November 9, 1976,” Goldman said.

After finding the box, Goldman found the issue and opened it as if it were a centuries-old relic, carefully laying it on the box lids. Tracy studied the photographs capturing the parade. The residents of Stoneridge lined the streets, smiling and yelling, and cheerleaders carried a hand-painted “State Champions” banner at the head of a procession that included the band. Players and coaches filled trucks and convertibles. Several of the photographs were taken at angles that captured the vehicles carrying the team members in their jerseys—a station wagon, a Mustang, a pickup truck with several players standing in the bed, and a flatbed truck carrying another two dozen or so, seated with their feet dangling over the side while they waved to the crowd.

Tracy considered more closely a photograph capturing three of the Four Ironmen—Eric Reynolds, Hastey Devoe, and Archibald Coe sitting atop the backseat of a convertible Cadillac. Reynolds held a trophy aloft over his head, and Devoe had his index finger raised and a broad smile. Coe stood beside them with a blank stare, looking as impassive as he’d been at the nursery. Tracy noted Darren Gallentine’s absence and scanned the other photographs, but she didn’t see his face or his jersey number in any of the pictures. She also didn’t see Eric Reynolds’s Bronco, and she wondered why, since with its removable soft top, it would have seemed a natural for the parade.

Tracy’s cell phone rang. She recognized the number.

“They just pulled over Hastey,” Jenny said.

CHAPTER 25

T
he Klickitat County sheriff’s main office remained located in Goldendale, a fifty-minute drive, but Buzz Almond had opened a “West End” office in Stoneridge to better serve that portion of the county and, if he was honest, probably to shorten his commute. When she arrived at the sheriff’s office, Tracy decided to let Hastey Devoe cook for a few minutes while she and Jenny scanned and sent the photograph of Eric Reynolds leaning against the Bronco’s bumper to Kelly Rosa and Michael Melton. Tracy asked Rosa to consider whether the bruising pattern on Kimi Kanasket’s back and shoulder matched the tire tread in the photograph. She advised Melton that she was having the negatives driven up to him in Seattle by a deputy sheriff and asked that he compare the tread with the tread in the photographs from the clearing.