Wright shuffled through the photographs and set another on the table. “Puma,” she said. “Also popular at that time with kids, also size ten.”
“So that’s definitely three and maybe four,” Tracy said.
Wright handed Tracy another photograph, but this one captured a pattern much different from that of the Converse or the Puma—inverted Vs above three rows of multiple slash marks, with the second row slanted in the opposite direction from the first and third rows. It looked like a row of backslashes between two rows of forward slashes on a computer keyboard.
^^^^^^^^^^^
\\\\\\\\\\\\\
/////////////
\\\\\\\\\\\\\
“Also size twelve,” Wright said.
“Doesn’t look like an athletic shoe,” Tracy said.
“It isn’t. It’s from a rubber boot,” Wright said. “I did a little research. The pattern is distinct for boots made by the United States Rubber Company. They were popular in the 1970s and highly sought after because they were rubber, which meant waterproof, but also because they were lined with fur, which meant they were warm. They were originally made for soldiers in World War II and became popular with hunters, but the plant closed when rubber was needed for more pressing war purposes.” Wright handed Tracy another photograph. “Something else.”
Tracy held it up to the light. “What is it?”
“I had to look at it under a microscope,” Wright said. She handed Tracy the magnifying glass. “It’s chewed-up tobacco leaves. I’m totaling hypothesizing now, but if someone was chewing tobacco in a car that went airborne like it appears it did and slammed back down . . .”
“They would have swallowed the tobacco and threw it back up,” Tracy said.
“Or spit it out involuntarily,” Wright said. She laid out the photographs of the shoe impressions on the table, recreating the clearing. “Now, what do you notice about the shoe impressions?”
“They’re all over the place,” Tracy said. “They’re facing in every direction.”
“Some are smudged. Some are elongated,” Wright said. “There’s no pattern to them. They were clearly not moving with any deliberate intent.”
“They were panicked, worked up,” Tracy said.
“Scared. Confused.” Wright said. She handed Tracy photographs numbered forty-nine to fifty-three, which captured impressions made by the boots.
Tracy brought the photographs closer. “These impressions look to be around the area you said the body was on the ground.”
“Not just around it. Under it.”
Tracy looked to Wright for clarification. “Under it?”
“The person wearing those boots picked the body up,” Wright said, confirming Rosa’s opinion—Kimi Kanasket had been moved after sustaining her injuries.
“You see that rounded impression in the mud?” Wright said.
“Yeah.”
“And this one here, where you can see only the inverted Vs and the first row of slash marks?”
“Okay.”
“The distance between the two is just eighteen to nineteen inches. The rounded impression is the impression made by someone dropping to a knee. The second is the ball of that person’s foot. Now, you see these shoe impressions that are twisted and staggered?”
“Yeah.”
“Those were likely made when the person stood, but he was bearing the weight of someone else, maybe staggering to adjust the weight and regain his balance,” Wright said. “People don’t realize how heavy a person is when they’re deadweight. Even a hundred pounds is difficult to lift.”
“A hundred and twenty-five,” Tracy said.
Wright looked up from the photographs. Then she straightened.
“A seventeen-year-old girl,” Tracy said. “She was five seven and a hundred and twenty-five pounds, and she was a runner, and she had the rest of her life ahead of her.”
Wright took a moment. She spoke softly. “What did they do to her?”
“I’m not fully certain yet,” Tracy said. “And I’m starting to wonder, whoever it was, whether they had any idea what they actually did.”
The likelihood that four, and maybe five, young men, had been in the clearing the night Kimi Kanasket died changed things in Tracy’s mind. It could still have been Tommy Moore, except that would have meant that Moore would have had to have enlisted the help of others quickly, possibly too quickly for the timeline Buzz Almond’s investigation revealed. If you believe Moore and his roommate were telling the truth, after leaving the diner, Moore drove his date home, then drove back to his apartment. He couldn’t have enlisted his roommate’s help because the roommate had spoken with both élan and his posse and to Buzz Almond that night.
As for élan, he was out that night and already had a group of young men with him, but those young men had arrived to help Earl Kanasket, and it was difficult to consider a scenario where they suddenly turned and went after Kimi, though it could have been an accident.
What had first come to mind when Wright said at least four young men had been present were the newspaper articles on the high school football championship, and that made Tracy think that maybe Buzz Almond hadn’t included them in the file just to help witnesses recall that weekend.
Tracy had punched in the number on her cell phone before she finished crossing the parking lot back to her truck. Sam Goldman’s home phone rang six times, and Tracy thought it would go to voice mail, but he answered in the middle of the seventh ring. “Sam, it’s Detective Crosswhite from Seattle.”
“How are the bad guys, hero?”
Tracy climbed into the truck cab and shut the door. “Still bad. Sam, I’m sorry, but I have a few more questions for you.”
“Fire away. If I can answer them, I’m happy to help.”
Tracy heard Adele in the background. “Who is it, Sam?”
“It’s the detective from Seattle,” he said before quickly reengaging Tracy. “What can I help you with?”
“The Four Ironmen,” she said, fumbling in her briefcase to grab her notepad and flipping back through her notes. “Reynolds, Devoe, Coe, and . . .”
“Gallentine.”
“Right. What can you tell me about them, Sam?”
“What is it you want to know?”
“What kind of kids were they off the field?”
Goldman paused, and Tracy heard Adele say, “They were full of themselves,” indicating that she was listening in on the conversation.
“How so?” Tracy asked.
“They weren’t bad kids,” Goldman said. “You know how it is. None of them came from much, and suddenly they were getting a lot of attention and seeing their names in the paper every week. Adults would stop them in the street to congratulate them and want to talk all about the upcoming game. It went to their heads a bit.”
“They ever get in any trouble?”
“If they did, friend, I never heard about it.”
“You sound uncertain.”
“Rumors. Nothing I could ever print.”
Tracy watched Kaylee Wright leave the coffee shop and head to her SUV. Tracy gave her a wave. “Sometimes there’s truth in a rumor,” she said.
“And lawsuits,” Goldman said with a burst of a laugh. “I’m like Joe Friday. I print just the facts.”