In the Clearing (Tracy Crosswhite, #3)

by Robert Dugoni

“Don’t come back here unless you have something real to tell us. Don’t come with your ‘might haves’ or ‘maybes.’ Don’t make promises you can’t keep.

For a police officer, a violent crime was one case in a career. You did your job and went home. For the family, the crime was a life-altering moment they would never forget.

“The Four Ironmen?” “Eric Reynolds, Hastey Devoe, Archie Coe, and Darren Gallentine.”

Then Hastey moved, and he saw Eric standing over what looked like a log on the ground but what he quickly realized to be Kimi.

Darren had expressed relief and said he felt lighter than he had in years, unburdened. Then he drove home and shot himself.

That was the travesty of a murder. It was never just a single life lost. It destroyed many lives.

She thought again of Eric Reynolds’s statement that Buzz Almond had come to the house to ask if he had been out Friday night. Why would Buzz have suspected Eric? He wouldn’t have, not unless he’d first suspected that the tire tracks could have been made by the Bronco’s tires. It was more likely that if Buzz had visited, it was not to talk to Eric but to see the car, to determine if the car had any damage. And if the car had still been damaged, Buzz would have never tracked down the receipts because he wouldn’t have known it had undergone repairs. The fact that he had the receipts, therefore, had to mean that the Bronco had already been repaired. That’s when what had been gnawing at the back of Tracy’s mind—not one thing it turned out, but several, all interrelated—began to become clear. And Tracy realized she’d been dead wrong.

“We like to believe our parents are perfect, but then you realize they’re human, with all the same faults and imperfections. I think that’s the hardest thing to accept.”

“Photographs revealed two sets of tire tracks in and out,” Tracy said. “Someone came back, alone, and moved her. I couldn’t reconcile that being any of the four of you. You would have done it together. And even if it had been you, there was no reason for you to change your shoes, no reason to go home and put on boots and come back. It was snowing, but you wouldn’t have considered that, not under the circumstances. Then there were the two cash receipts. Seven hundred dollars would have been more than a high school student playing football would have had readily available, even if all four of you had pooled your resources. Nor did I see any of you having the foresight to ask for a cash receipt. Lionel did your father a favor, but he wasn’t about to do it for free, and I’m guessing your father wanted the receipt in case Lionel ever got squirrely—to remind Lionel that he, too, was now involved.”

“Maybe I knew all along this day would come. Maybe I was hoping it would. I want people to know the truth. As strange as it sounds, it’s a relief.”

The one consistent thing about psychopaths was their ego. They never imagined getting caught because they believed they were smarter than everyone.

“It’s a terrible thing when a child is stripped of his perception that his parents are perfect. Kids want to believe their parents will always be there to take care of them. One of the hardest things about getting older is losing that naïveté that allows us all to believe in myths and fantasies, having it replaced by harsh reality. We don’t want to believe our parents aren’t perfect, some far from it.”

The ceremony to name the stadium for Ron Reynolds had been permanently canceled, and Eric had withdrawn his father’s name from consideration. Instead, at Eric’s request, the stadium would be renamed Kimi Kanasket Memorial Stadium.