In the Clearing (5 page)

“Heard this was your call, Buzz.” Johns clapped his gloved hands then tucked them under his armpits. “Damn, it got cold fast.”

“What’s Search and Rescue said?” Buzz asked.

Johns pointed to two men dressed in fishing gear standing near one of the picnic tables. “Those two guys were fishing the banks. Thought they saw something in the water hung up in the branches of that fallen tree. Worked their way downstream for a closer look, but whatever it is, it’s submerged by the current. They think it’s a body.”

Buzz’s stomach dropped. “Do you know them?”

Johns shook his head. “Two guys from Portland.”

“You get a statement?”

“Just gave it to you. Search and Rescue’s stringing a cable across the river to give themselves something to hook on to. River’s not flowing that strong, but the rocks are slippery. They might know more by now.”

Search and Rescue had cleared off a picnic table to stage its equipment. Two of its men, in rubber waders and boots, were tightening a bolt that would lock a cable they’d looped around the trunk of a fir tree. The cable extended across the river, where two of their colleagues were securing the cable in a similar fashion.

“All right?” one of the men shouted across the river.

“We’re good,” his colleague shouted back.

The two men on Buzz’s side of the river cranked a hand winch and began to cinch the cable until it was suspended like a tightrope a foot above the gray water. The men would clip on to it as they entered the water and made their way across to the sunken tree.

“You guys know anything more?” Buzz asked someone on the Search and Rescue team preparing to enter the current. Not in uniform and not familiar with the men—he hadn’t yet worked a case with Search and Rescue—he showed them his badge. “I got the call last night about a missing girl.”

He hoped they didn’t hear the quiver in his voice or would at least attribute it to the biting cold; hoped they’d tell him it wasn’t a body, just a backpack or piece of clothing from a summer rafting trip that had remained submerged; hoped he wouldn’t have to make the drive out to Earl and Nettie Kanasket’s double-wide and tell them he’d found their daughter, wishing again that he’d never promised them anything.

“Definitely a body,” the first responder said.

The shouts and squeals of children drew Tracy’s attention to the bay window. Dan cradled the football, dodging a pack of kids in hot pursuit. It didn’t resemble any football game Tracy had ever witnessed, but they all looked and sounded like they were having a good time.

“If this is too close to home, Tracy, you can just tell me to stop.”

Tracy shook her head. “It’s fine,” she said. Like Kimi, Sarah had been about to start college when she disappeared. Tracy had become a homicide detective out of a strong desire to determine what had happened to her sister, and to help other young women like her.

“The pathologist who did the autopsy and the prosecutor concluded it was a suicide,” Jenny said. “They said Kimi Kanasket jumped from a bridge into the White Salmon River and drowned. The rapids knocked her around pretty good on the rocks. She had broken bones, and bruises on her arms and chest. She might have flowed all the way to the Columbia, but her clothing got hung up on the branch of a submerged tree. The current wedged her body beneath it.”

“And the theory was she did it because of the ex-boyfriend?”

“Tommy Moore. He’d come into the diner that night with another girl.”

“What did he have to say about it?”

“According to my dad’s report, Moore confirmed that he took another girl into the diner where Kimi worked, but he said he quickly left, took the girl home, and went to his apartment.”

“His date confirm that?”

“Pretty much. Her statement’s in the file too. She said Moore got upset because Kimi ‘dissed him,’ and he drove her home.”

“Dissed him how?”

“Apparently, she acted like she didn’t care.”

“Anyone vouch for whether Moore went to his apartment?”

“My dad took a drive out there. Moore’s roommate said he’d come home but that he took off again when the brother’s posse showed up armed and asking questions.”

“Roommate know where Moore went?”

“No.”

Tracy flipped through the file. “You think there’s more to it?”

“I think my father believed there was more to it.”

“Where’d you find this file?” Tracy asked.

“Right here, in my father’s desk.”

“Where are the closed files usually kept?”

“A file this old would have been moved to the off-site storage unit. But this was never a cold case.”

“What do you mean?”

“After I found it, I checked our computer records at the office. There is no record that a Kimi Kanasket file was ever sent to storage. The records at the office indicate it was destroyed.”

“Destroyed when?”

“No date provided.”

“By who?”

“Doesn’t say.”

“What’s the policy on destroying old files?”

“Now? Now we keep closed homicide files for as long as eighty years, or until the detective who worked the case says it can be destroyed.”

SPD had a similar policy. “Did you check with the detective who worked this case to see if he authorized it?”

“He’s long gone. He died in the nineties.”

Tracy pointed to the file on the desk. “So then, either that file is the official file or a personal file your father kept.”

“That was my conclusion. And if it’s the official file, then my father either checked it out and indicated it had been destroyed, or the last person who looked for it concluded it had been destroyed because it was missing.”

“Either way, your father took it.”

“There are some notes in the file indicating he was looking into things from time to time. I think this case weighed on him.”

Tracy flipped deeper into the file contents, the pages two-hole-punched and held by a clasp at the top. “Witness statements, the coroner’s report, photographs, sketches.” She let the contents fall back to the first page. “Looks like a complete file.”

“Appears to be.”

“You get a chance to look at it?”

“Some.”

“What do you think?”

“I was born shortly after Kimi disappeared,” Jenny said. “We didn’t live in Stoneridge then. We moved there when my dad became sheriff. I don’t recall my father ever really talking about it. Yet, I
knew
about Kimi Kanasket. Everyone did. I can remember people saying things like ‘Don’t walk the road alone late at night. You’ll end up like Kimi Kanasket.’”

“You want me to take a look?”

“Forensics are better now, and it just feels like the cancer robbed my dad of the chance to finish this. I feel like I owe it to him to at least take a closer look, but I’m his daughter. I’m not sure I can be objective. I’m also an elected official, and I may have to reopen the file. If that’s the case, I’d like an independent assessment to justify my decision. If there’s nothing to it, so be it. If there is . . .” Jenny shrugged.

Another squeal, but this one sounded more urgent. When they looked out the window, they saw Trey on the ground crying, Neil trying to console him.

“Is he hurt?”

“That’s his ‘We lost’ cry,” Jenny said. “He’s competitive, like his father.”

“And his mother,” Tracy said.

Jenny smiled. “I get it from
my
father.”

“So do I,” Tracy said, picking up the file.

CHAPTER 5

E
mily Rodriguez, fifty-seven, lived one house to the north of Tim and Angela Collins’s home. The first thing Kins noticed when he and Faz entered her home was the large picture window that faced Greenwood Avenue.

“Thank you for speaking to us again,” Kins said. Faz and Del had interviewed the woman the night before.

Rodriguez looked uncomfortable. “It’s so sad,” she said. “So sad.”

“Did you know the family?”

“Not really. I’d wave in passing, say hello, that sort of thing.”

Kins nodded, letting the woman catch her breath. “Ever hear any arguing, yelling, anything to indicate they were having problems?”

“No.”

“Any neighbors ever indicate they’d heard there were problems in the home?”

“I don’t talk much with my neighbors. I’m not unfriendly or anything, I just don’t know them very well. A lot of people I knew have moved. But I never heard anything.”

“How long have you lived here?”

“Me? Thirty years.”

“Do you know when the Collinses moved in?”

“About five years ago, I’d say.”

“What about the son? Did you ever speak with him?”

Rodriguez shook her head. “Again, maybe in passing, but nothing I can recall. I’d see him getting on and off the bus in the morning.” She pointed out the window. “He waited right there at that bus stop.”

Kins stepped to the window. “I noticed in your witness statement you said you thought you heard a car backfire and looked out the window. I’m assuming it was this window?”

“That’s right. It was a bang, the way an engine will sometimes do that.”

“And you said that when you looked out the window, you saw a city bus?”

Rodriguez joined Kins and Faz at the window. “At that bus stop. Route Five.”

Kins smiled. “You’re familiar with it.”

“I rode that bus downtown and back for more than twenty years.”

“What did you do?”

“I was a paralegal at a law firm.”

“Do you recall what time it was when you heard the bang?”

“I didn’t look at my watch or anything,” she said.

In her witness statement, Rodriguez didn’t provide an exact time, but Kins hoped he could narrow it down using the city bus schedule, which he’d checked on the Metro Transit website that morning. “According to the schedule, that bus makes a stop at that location at 5:18 and then again at 5:34.” Angela Collins had called 911 at 5:39, so he guessed Rodriguez heard the shot at 5:34.

“That’s right. I would catch the 4:35 at Third and Pine downtown, and it would drop me here at 5:18.”

“Do you know if the bus you saw was the 5:18 or the 5:34?”

“I’m not sure. This was pretty upsetting.” Rodriguez massaged her temple.

“Take your time,” Kins said.

She closed her eyes, grimacing. Kins looked to Faz, who frowned and shrugged. He’d gotten the same answer.

“I’m sorry,” Rodriguez said. “I don’t . . .” She opened her eyes.

“What were you doing before you heard the noise?” Kins said, trying to ground Rodriguez in a task that might refresh her recollection.

“I was . . .” She looked to the window, then turned to a flat-screen in the corner of the room. “I was watching TV.”

“Do you recall what you were watching?”

“KIRO 7,” she said.

“Local news.”

“That’s right.” Kins could almost see the wheels starting to spin in her head. “I watch it from five to five thirty, then switch to
World News Tonight
on ABC. I was watching a story about housing prices rising on the Eastside. The noise startled me, and I went to the window to see what it was.”

“So that was during the local news, right?” Kins said. “Does that help you with respect to when you heard the shot?”

Rodriguez paused. “It does. It had to be the 5:18 bus.” She nodded. “It had to be. Didn’t it?”

Yes, it did,
Kins thought.

And that raised a whole different set of questions.

The call came in to the Justice Center as Kins and Faz were leaving Emily Rodriguez’s home, and the operator diverted it to Kins’s cell. When Kins disconnected and told Faz that Atticus Berkshire wanted to bring Angela Collins in to give a statement, Faz summed up his disbelief.

“Right, and I’m going on a diet.”

But an hour later, Berkshire did indeed come in with Collins.

They were all seated at a round table in the soft interrogation room, Faz overwhelming his plastic chair, forearms folded across his chest and resting on his stomach. Angela Collins sat beside her father. She’d dressed in yoga pants and a loose-fitting sweatshirt. The bruising on the side of her face had become a mottled purple, yellow, and black.

“As I indicated, Detectives,” Berkshire said, “Angela is prepared to tell you what happened that night. You may ask her questions, but I may instruct her not to answer a question if I believe the question is inappropriate, and I may terminate this interview at any time.” He, too, was dressed casually, in a checked button-down, glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. “Are those ground rules acceptable?”