The man looked back over his shoulder before disappearing quickly into the tree line. Tracy ran after him. “Hey. Stop. Hang on a minute.”
The man didn’t stop, and Tracy gave chase. At the edge of the forest, she unholstered her Glock and used the beam of light to search between the trees, but she didn’t see the man or a defined path he might have taken. She stepped farther in, ducking and bending and picking her way carefully over fallen trees. She thought she caught a glimpse of the man off to her left and continued another fifty yards, but she saw no sign of him. She was about to turn back when she sensed the brush and the trees beginning to thin, so she kept going, and soon stepped out onto a power line easement. Electrical cable strung between metal towers continued up and over the ridge.
But no one was there.
She wondered if her eyes had played a trick on her, or maybe she had seen Henry Timmerman’s ghost, as élan had warned. She directed the flashlight to the ground, searched a moment, and found what looked to be bootprints and the tread of a thick bicycle tire, likely a mountain bike of some sort. Both appeared to be fresh. The tire tread followed the path of the electrical cables up the hill to the ridge.
Ghosts didn’t ride bicycles. Not to her knowledge, anyway.
She took a few pictures with her phone before making her way back through the trees to the clearing. There, she spent a few minutes shining the beam of light over the ground looking for shoe imprints, but something else caught her eye—a small shrub. She bent to a knee, touching the freshly tilled soil.
Nothing grows in the clearing, Earl Kanasket had said.
Maybe not, Tracy thought, looking back to the edge of the clearing where she’d seen the man, but someone’s trying anyway.
CHAPTER 15
In the morning, after another early run, Tracy headed out to get a pulse on the town. Downtown Stoneridge was an odd mixture of alpine architecture, reflecting German and Scandinavian immigration to the area, and the more traditional nineteenth-century Pacific Northwest stone and brick buildings that reminded Tracy of Cedar Grove. Whereas Cedar Grove had one stoplight, Stoneridge had only a stop sign at the end of a long block of businesses—a general store, pharmacy, hardware store, and post office, among others, on the north side of the street, and a pizza and brew pub, flower shop, and art gallery displaying Northwest Native American pieces on the south side. It should have been quaint, a town that quietly exuded history and tradition, but something about the tableau was unsettling, something that made the town seem as fragile as a Hollywood set—a fa?ade lacking depth, a town that did not exude its history but seemed intent on hiding it.
As she drove down the block, a white sedan slowed its approach as it drove toward her from the opposite direction. Tracy considered the blue lettering and shield on the door panel identifying it as a Stoneridge Police Department vehicle. She waved and briefly considered stopping to introduce herself but instead continued to the end of the block. When she checked the rearview mirror, the police car had pulled to the side of the road and parked.
She turned left and drove past several churches, Baptist and Methodist, and a building that housed some fraternal order. The homes were small, mostly one-story, with yards going dormant for the winter, lawns a little ragged, and cut wood stacked neatly beneath overhangs. Her GPS directed her to a tree-lined street, and she pulled to the curb at the base of concrete stairs leading up to the red brick Stoneridge Library, which resembled something out of colonial America, with two white pillars and a pediment over the entrance.
She climbed the steps and felt the warm air as she pulled open the door. Inside, Tracy interrupted a middle-aged woman applying makeup while sitting behind the reference desk.
“Sorry,” the woman said, slipping a compact into her purse and sliding the purse beneath the counter. “I didn’t get a chance to put my face on this morning.”
“Not a problem,” Tracy said.
“How can I help you?”
“I’m hoping to review some old high school yearbooks and newspaper articles from the Stoneridge Sentinel,” Tracy said. “Would that be possible?”
The woman grimaced. “How far back are you looking to go?”
“1976.”
“Are you writing an article on the reunion?”
No point in lying. Having lived in a small town, Tracy knew word of her presence would spread quickly, no matter how low a profile she kept. “Actually, I’m a police officer from Seattle,” she said, showing the woman her ID and shield. “I was hoping to review some articles written back then. I assume the library keeps them on microfiche?”
“We did,” the woman said. Tracy didn’t like the sound of that. “We had a fire in 2000, and what the fire didn’t burn, the sprinklers ruined. We don’t have any archives before that.”
Tracy considered this a moment, then asked, “Would any other libraries in the area have kept copies?” She thought it doubtful but worth a shot.
“Not likely the Sentinel. That was primarily local Stoneridge news. They might have some of the bigger newspapers, like the Columbian and the Oregonian. You could try the library in Goldendale. It’s about an hour northeast of here.”
Tracy didn’t see the point in that. “How long have you lived here?”
“Me? My entire life.”
“Have you heard of a couple of companies called Columbia Windshield and Glass, and Columbia Auto Repair?”
“Sure.”
“You have? I couldn’t find either one online. I was assuming they’re out of business?”
“Oh, yeah. They’ve been out of business for some time now,” she said. “Shortly after Hastey Senior passed.”
Tracy recalled that name from the article on the reunion and pulled out the newspaper, finding the photographs and the caption. “Hastey Devoe?” she asked, handing the woman the newspaper.
“That’s young Hastey. The father owned both businesses. They were side by side, out on Lincoln Road. His wife closed both businesses shortly after Hastey Senior died.”
“Is his wife still alive?” The chance that Devoe’s wife would have any information about two incomplete invoices was slimmer than none, but Tracy knew that small businesses in small towns were often family affairs, and the wife could have also been the bookkeeper.
“I really don’t know. Last I heard she was living in a nursing home in Vancouver and had Alzheimer’s or dementia.”
“What does the son do now?”
“Hastey Junior? He works for Reynolds Construction, I believe. At least I’ve seen him driving one of their trucks around town. Don’t ask me what he does though.”
Tracy considered the newspaper photograph and caption. “Would that be Eric Reynolds’s company?”
“That’s right.”
“Does Hastey Junior still live in town?”
“In the house he grew up in, over on Cherry.”
Tracy made a note on her notepad and thanked the woman. As she stepped away, the woman said, “You might try Sam Goldman. He might have copies of the paper.”