“What if they don’t want to talk about it?”
Tracy hadn’t thought about that. “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess I’ll cross that bridge if I ever get to it. I might not find anything that warrants reopening the investigation anyway.”
After saying good-bye to Dan, who had an early flight to Los Angeles the next day and still needed to get back and prepare for a week of depositions, Tracy shut the door to her West Seattle house and took care of Roger, her black tabby. Roger let her know loudly that he was not happy about being abandoned for two days, never mind that he had an automatic feeder, plenty of water, the full run of the house, and a teenage neighbor who came in to check on him each day.
As Roger devoured his canned food, Tracy poured herself a glass of wine and took it into the dining room, eager to review Buzz Almond’s file. She turned on her iPad, found a country music station, which she liked to listen to when working, and let Keith Urban fill the silence.
The first thing that struck her about the file was its thickness—hefty for an investigation that had quickly concluded that the victim committed suicide. What created much of the bulk were four gold-and-white Kodak envelopes, the kind she used to pick up at the Kodak counter in Kaufman’s Mercantile Store in Cedar Grove. She opened the first packet and thumbed the pictures but quickly set them aside. She never started a review with photographs, since she had no idea what they were meant to depict. She unfolded the two brass prongs holding the file folder together and carefully slid the contents free.
She flipped to the first entry, which turned out to be a yellowed newspaper article folded in half to fit the length of the file. It had been cut from the Stoneridge Sentinel, the date handwritten above the headline: Sunday, November 7, 1976.
Stoneridge Red Raiders
Reach Pinnacle, Win State Title
Tracy quickly skimmed the article. The Red Raiders had defeated Archbishop Murphy 28–24, capping an undefeated season for Coach Ron Reynolds and capturing the school’s first state championship in any sport. A parade was to be held in Stoneridge that Monday afternoon to celebrate the accomplishment.
Accompanying the article was the type of iconic photograph found framed in high school trophy cases everywhere. Young men, looking exhausted but jubilant, beamed at the camera, their uniforms grass-and dirt-stained, their hair matted with perspiration, their faces smeared with black eye grease and bits of dirt. They held aloft a shimmering golden football mounted atop a wooden base.
Tracy moved to a second article, hand-dated Monday, November 8, 1976, this one commemorating the parade in the team’s honor. In the accompanying photograph, three boys wearing letterman jackets sat atop the backseat of a convertible, fingers raised. A sizable and animated crowd of fans waving Stoneridge High pennants and pom-poms lined the sidewalks, streamers and confetti fluttering all around them. Like the previous picture, it was a moment forever frozen in the small town’s history, and that was likely the reason Buzz Almond had included the articles in the file. Trying to get witnesses to remember an event months or even just weeks earlier could be difficult, but the fact that Kimi Kanasket had disappeared the weekend of what was apparently the most celebrated sporting event in Stoneridge’s history gave Buzz Almond, and now Tracy, a point of reference to ground witnesses’ recollections. It was like asking people who lived through the sixties “Where were you when Kennedy was shot?” It was also an indication that Buzz Almond had deduced that the investigation could take years.
Tracy set the second story aside and reviewed an article on Kimi Kanasket’s death.
Local Girl’s Body Pulled
from White Salmon River
This article was given far fewer inches of print—just half a column and a few inches long, with Kimi’s senior photo halfway through. It said that as a junior at Stoneridge High the previous year, Kimi had competed in the state track championship in the hundred-yard dash and the high hurdles, finishing second and third, respectively. She was survived by a mother and father, Earl and Nettie Kanasket, and an older brother, élan. There was no mention of suicide. There was no mention of an investigation. There weren’t even any follow-up articles.
Having grown up in a small town in the mid-1970s, Tracy knew people didn’t air their dirty laundry or others’. If Kimi Kanasket had killed herself, Tracy doubted anyone would have been eager to publicize it or to read about it. A stigma was firmly affixed to suicide and, unfairly, to the family. When Tracy’s father shot himself two years after Sarah’s death, he destroyed not only his own legacy, but also the family’s. People talked—never in front of Tracy or her mother, but they talked. It was one of the reasons Tracy wanted her mother to move with her to Seattle.
Tracy next found a wallet-size photo of the young woman stapled to a missing-persons report. Kimi had lustrous black hair that flowed well past her shoulders. Visible just beneath her right earlobe was an intricate feathered dream-catcher. Tracy suspected that Kimi’s youthful facial features would have become more angular with age, making Kimi a stunningly attractive woman. But Kimi Kanasket, like Sarah, wouldn’t get that chance. She would be forever young.
Buzz Almond’s responding officer’s report was next. The onionskin paper and uneven type indicated that it was his original report and not a copy. It looked thorough—nearly seven pages—and documented everything, starting with Almond’s receiving the call from dispatch and his conversations with the Kanasket family at their home.
A separate report documented Buzz Almond’s conversation with Tommy Moore the following Monday, the day of the parade.
Monday, November 8, 1976