In the Clearing (22 page)

“Which is what we have here,” Rosa said. “The bruising on her body is another indicator she was alive when she went into the water—that is, that her blood was still circulating to those areas,” Rosa said. “When you have antemortem bruising, you expect swelling, damage to the skin, coagulation at the site of impact, and infiltration of the tissues with blood, resulting in color changes, which is what the coroner noted in his report and documented in photographs. You don’t find that in postmortem bruising.”

Tracy sat back from the table, feeling deflated, though she also knew as well as anyone that most cases were exactly what they seemed. The “whodunits” were a lot rarer than the grounders. “So she committed suicide.”

Rosa started to answer, but the waitress had returned with Gabriel’s beer, setting it on a coaster.

“Can I get you anything else?”

“I think we’re good,” Tracy said.

After the waitress departed, Rosa sipped her beer and set the glass back down on the coaster. “Actually,” she said calmly, “I don’t believe she committed suicide.”

“What? Why not?”

“Three things.” Rosa held up a finger as she raised each point. “First, pattern recognition with respect to the bruising. Second, the nature of the recorded injuries. And third, river dynamics. I’m going to let Peter start with the river dynamics.”

Gabriel handed Tracy and Rosa each a document. “Let’s start with terminology. The flow of a river is measured in cubic feet per second. That flow is going to vary based on the particular river, the month, and seasonal factors, such as the depth of the snowpack in the mountains that year, and the number of inches and the severity of spring rains—those sorts of things. What I just gave you is a document from the USGS website, which records water flow on just about every river. NOAA provides similar information—historical data on things like inches of rain, temperature, and river flow. For fishermen and river guides, this is our bible. It’s no different than people commuting to work checking traffic cameras to determine the traffic flow before going to work or driving home. River guides and fishermen check river flow.”

“How far back do these records go?” Tracy asked while trying to decipher the document on her own.

“About eighty years,” Gabriel said. “Your body was found in November 1976. November and February are wild-card months in my business. The water flow can be highly unpredictable. It can be at its absolute peak one day and at its absolute low just days later. We refer to them as transition months. In September and October, the water level is traditionally at its lowest flow because the spring and summer runoff from the snowmelt in the mountains has ordinarily ebbed by then, but if we’ve had a particularly good snowpack, the river can run high all the way into December. If we’ve had a poor snowpack, like the past two years, or we’ve had an Indian summer and the warmer temperatures extend into October, the water levels will be low. But even then, if we get early November rains or maybe a light snow in the foothills that melts, the water flow can go from superlow to superhigh extremely quickly, a matter of days.”

“Okay. So you’re saying you really have to look at it day to day,” Tracy said. “But when you say the river has a high flow rate, how fast are we talking? Can you put it in layman’s terms?”

“In November?”

“Right.”

“In November the water flow in the White Salmon can peak at two hundred twenty cubic feet per second, which is the equivalent of about eight to twelve miles an hour. Doesn’t sound like much for a car, but on a river it’s really, really fast, and the water is really high,” Gabriel said. “When the water is that high, the boulders are covered; a river guide can literally just point the raft downstream and steer it into and over big waves.”

“And a body would go over them also?”

“A body in the river with a life jacket would go over them. A body
without
a life jacket or wet suit is likely to get pulled under, especially if the person is already hurt or inexperienced in that type of survival situation. I’ve been there, though I always wear a life jacket and a helmet and I’m experienced. It isn’t a lot of fun. You don’t see the rocks and boulders coming, so you don’t have time to brace for a hit or the chance to try to avoid it. It’s like getting hit with a baseball bat. The pain is excruciating.”

Tracy looked to Rosa. “So, swift enough to cause the type of impact injuries the coroner noted on his report?”

“Maybe,” Rosa said, nodding again to Gabriel and taking another sip of her beer.

“If the river is low, the flow is maybe five hundred to six hundred cubic feet per second, which equates to four to five miles an hour. The water flow isn’t as intense, but then the water isn’t as high, and there are more exposed boulders and rocks to navigate. A person in the water at low flow won’t absorb the same impact, but she’ll hit more rocks and boulders. It’s more a rat-a-tat-tat,” he said tapping on the table, “instead of thwack.” He slapped his palm for emphasis, causing Tracy to reach for her glass.

“Sorry,” he said.

“No worries.” Tracy reconsidered the document Gabriel had handed her, which included a graph with data points. “Help me out here. It looks like from this document that the water flow for the first week of November 1976 was a little over five hundred cubic feet per second. Am I reading that correctly?”

“You are,” Gabriel said, using a pen to circle the information on Tracy’s document.

“So,” Rosa said, “some of the injuries identified in the coroner’s report would be consistent with what you would expect to see on a body being forced down a river with a four- to five-mile-per-hour-flow—bruising, cuts and scrapes, some abrasions.”

“But not all of them?” Tracy said.

“In my opinion, your victim suffered what are called ‘crushing injuries,’ injuries more consistent with blunt-force trauma. What I would expect to see as a result of a high-speed impact.”

“Like if the river was at a high water flow,” Tracy said.

“Not necessarily,” Rosa said, “but possibly. If she was slammed into a boulder and then crushed by, say, a log or other debris, yes.”

“Which we did not have,” Tracy said, looking to Gabriel.

“Not according to the USGS report,” he confirmed.

“So how did she sustain her injuries?” she asked Rosa.

Rosa picked up her copy of the coroner’s report. She’d scribbled all over the margins, circled words, and drawn arrows. “In my opinion, the fractured pelvis, bilateral rib fractures, and the fractures to the pubic rami, as well as the cracked sternum, are consistent with the type of injuries I’ve seen when a person is crushed by a car traveling at a high rate of speed.”

Tracy’s adrenaline pulsed. She thought of Tommy Moore and the damage to his truck. “She was run over,” she said, needing to hear the words spoken out loud.

“Which brings us to the third factor, pattern bruising.” Rosa handed Tracy one of the photos from the coroner’s report. It took Tracy a moment to determine that she was looking at bruising on Kimi Kanasket’s back and right shoulder. Gabriel picked up his beer and looked away.

“Intradermal bruises occur where the blood accumulates in the subepidermal area,” Rosa said, “and a pattern emerges when the skin is distorted by being forced between ridges or grooves, like you’d find on a car tire.” Rosa used her finger to outline some of the bruises. “The more pronounced the ridges and grooves, the easier it is to discern a pattern from the bruising. It is highly unlikely that your hospital pathologist in 1976 would have recognized this, but we are much more attuned to it now. In my opinion, this is a classic example of pattern bruising from a tire. I’d have Mike Melton take a look and see if he can match the bruising to a particular tread from the State Patrol Crime Lab.”

Tracy had already made a mental note to do just that. “Okay, what else?”

“Her face and chest suffered lacerations and abrasions, indicating the body was impacted, forced down, and shoved forward by the blow.”

“Wait a minute,” Tracy said. “Are you saying you believe she was knocked down and dragged, or that she was already on the ground?”

“If she had been hit and dragged, say on pavement, I would have expected to see a lot more abrasions, skin and muscle torn from bone, those sorts of injuries.”

Tracy thought of the clearing. “What if she was standing on grass and dirt at the time of the impact?”

“Maybe, but I think it more likely she was already on the ground because of the nature of the injuries and the location of the most prominent bruising.”

Tracy thought of her visit to the clearing. The weather conditions and temperature had been, according to Buzz Almond’s report, similar to the night Kimi disappeared. The ground had been soft from a recent rain, but the back side of the hill leading down to the clearing had been slick from the moisture and drop in temperature. Tracy had nearly fallen.

“So . . . you’re saying what . . . ?” Tracy leaned over the table to demonstrate as she spoke. “She was on the ground, facedown, and a car came down on top of her, then went over her?”

“I’d say she was on the ground,” Rosa said, “and she tried to cover up to protect herself, which is why the bruising is on the right side of her back and shoulder. That would be the natural instinct.”

“So the bruising on her forearms isn’t necessarily from impacts with rocks and boulders. It could have been from the impact with a car.”

“Could have been,” Rosa said.

Tracy sat back. “How sure are you?”

Rosa gave it a moment of thought. “That she was hit by a car? Ninety to ninety-five percent. That all the injuries are attributable to a car and not the river? Not as certain.”

Tracy slowed the conversation. Her mind was spinning with questions. “So you’re saying she was run over, but she was still alive when she went into the water.”

“Correct.”

“Given the nature of her injuries, could she have walked to the river on her own?”

“Highly unlikely,” Rosa said, “but I don’t know the distance we’re talking about.”

“Considerable,” Tracy said.

“Not very likely. In fact, I’d say no way.”

“So the only way she could have made it to the water would have been if somebody carried her there.”

“That would be my theory.” Rosa turned to Gabriel. “Do you agree?”

“I do,” he said. “And here’s another thing to maybe consider. If she’d been capable of walking to the river on her own, I would have expected her to have had the physical capability to protect herself as she went downriver, and I don’t see that was the case, at least not from what’s in this report.”

“What do you mean?” Tracy asked. “What would you have expected to see?”

“What we discussed earlier—scratches and abrasions on her forearms and hands as she tried to protect herself,” Gabriel said. “Also, the coroner’s report noted that the body was found with both shoes on and that she was still wearing her coat.”

“Why is that significant?”

“If a body is found in the river missing both shoes and articles of clothing, it’s usually an indication the person was fighting for their life and still had clarity. One of the first things a person will do is remove clothing weighing them down.”

Tracy looked again to Rosa. “Assuming she was hit by a car, in your opinion were those injuries life-threatening? Would she have died from them?”

“It would have depended on how much time passed before she received medical attention. And remember, this was 1976 and in a remote area that didn’t have a trauma center,” Rosa said. “Bottom line, the longer she lay there, the more likely she wouldn’t have survived. But if you’re asking me
could
she have survived
had
she received immediate medical attention, I’d say yes. I think she would have.”

CHAPTER 19

T
racy remained alone at the table, feeling light-headed, in a fog that had nothing to do with the beer; she hadn’t finished her one glass. She needed a moment alone to consider what Rosa and Gabriel had told her and to consider it in conjunction with what she knew. Kimi Kanasket had been run over, almost certainly in the clearing in the woods. That’s what Buzz Almond had suspected. That’s why he’d taken all those photographs, why the ground was chewed up. She was kicking herself for not having kept copies of the photographs, or at least the negatives, before she gave the packets to Kaylee Wright, and now she had the irrational fear that Wright had somehow lost them.

She recalled at least three photographs of the damage to Tommy Moore’s white truck, but she couldn’t recall if those photographs captured the tires, or only the damage to the hood and front right fender.

She tried Wright’s cell phone, but the call went straight to voice mail. She left a message and tried the King County Sheriff’s Office, but she was having trouble hearing over the increasingly animated crowd at the Elysian. She put a finger in her ear to cut down the ambient noise.

“She’s where?”

“Tacoma,” the woman on the phone said. “She’s working a missing-person case.”

“She’s back from Germany already?” Tracy said.

“That would appear to be the case,” the woman said.

Tracy left a voice-mail message on Wright’s desk phone. Until Wright called her back, Tracy would just have to be patient, which wasn’t one of her better-developed character traits.

She gathered her purse and the materials Rosa and Gabriel had left her. As she stood to leave, her cell phone rang. She hoped it was Wright, but when she checked caller ID she got that terrible sick feeling that accompanied the realization she was supposed to be someplace and had completely forgotten.

“Dan,” she said, answering.

“Hey. I’m at your house. Where are you?”

“I’m sorry. I got tied up. I’m on my way.”

“I can hardly hear you.”

“I was just in a meeting,” she said, trying to navigate the crowd to get outside and escape the noise.

“This late? Sounds like you’re in a bar.”

“I’m done. I’ll explain when I get there. I’m on my way.”

“Maybe I should just go?”

“No. I’m on my way. Just let yourself in.” She disconnected and hurried to her truck.