“I got a buddy who’s a genius at this stuff. Let me ask him.”
“This might help.” She handed Melton the three photographs of the white truck. Buzz Almond had focused on the body damage to the truck, but in two of the pictures he’d managed to capture a portion of the front tire. “Hoping you can work your magic and blow these up enough to make out the make and model of the tire.”
“You want to know if it matches the make and model that left these impressions.”
“Or if it doesn’t,” she said.
“Then these will help.” Melton lowered his glasses to the tip of his nose and held up the photographs of Tommy Moore’s truck, considering them. “You have the negatives?”
“They’re in the packet.”
Melton removed the strip of negatives from the front pouch of one of the Kodak packages and also held it up to the light. Then he reached into his drawer and pulled out a magnifying glass, running it first over the photograph, then over the negatives. He lowered the glass without comment. “I take it this isn’t an ongoing investigation?”
“It’s a cold case from 1976, and it’s a bad one, Mike.”
“Aren’t they all?”
“Seventeen-year-old girl went missing on her way home from work. They found her body in the river the next afternoon and concluded suicide. Evidence indicates that wasn’t the case. Someone ran her down.”
That gave Melton pause, as Tracy thought it might. He shook his head. “How do people live with themselves?”
Tracy thought of Sam Goldman telling her he’d scrapped the article on the twenty-five-year anniversary of the state championship when he realized it wouldn’t be the celebratory piece he’d anticipated. “Maybe not very well,” she said.
When she got to her cubicle at the Justice Center, Tracy e-mailed the Department of Licensing in Olympia for a vehicle check on Tommy Moore’s truck. Buzz Almond’s photographs had captured the license plate. She also ran the names Eric Reynolds, Hastey Devoe, Lionel Devoe, Darren Gallentine, and Archibald Coe through Accurint, as well as the National Crime Information Center. And she sent a second e-mail to DOL, seeking the make and model of every vehicle registered to those men or, since they were in high school in 1976, their fathers.
She received return e-mails that afternoon. DOL had been able to use the vehicle identification number from Tommy Moore’s truck to determine that the truck was sold in January 1977 to a buyer in Oregon and had since been scrapped. The fact that Moore had sold the truck just two months after Kimi’s death made Tracy question his statement that he’d had the windshield and body damage fixed. Why bother if he was going to sell it? On the other hand, maybe that was the reason for the cash invoices—Lionel Devoe, who was running his father’s business at that time, could have cut Moore a deal for paying cash, which Devoe didn’t have to show on his books or otherwise pay a business tax.
The second report revealed that Hastey Devoe Senior’s businesses owned several trucks, including tow trucks that likely would have been fitted with all-terrain tires. Earl Kanasket owned a 1968 Ford truck. A 1973 Ford Bronco was registered to Ron Reynolds. Bernard Coe, who Tracy assumed to be Archibald Coe’s father, owned a 1974 Chevy truck. Any of them could have also had all-terrain tires. In fact, Tracy suspected they did. She also suspected that the chances any of those vehicles remained in circulation were slim to none. The chances they’d have the same tires as in 1976 was ludicrous to even consider.
The Accurint report confirmed that Hastey Devoe lived in Stoneridge, and an electricity bill indicated that Archibald Coe lived close by, in Central Point, as Sam Goldman had said. The address looked like it would be for an apartment. Eric Reynolds’s address was also Stoneridge, though a Google map and satellite search revealed the property was far out of town and surrounded by orchards. Tracy didn’t find a utility record for Darren Gallentine, but she wasn’t expecting one, since Sam Goldman had said Gallentine had killed himself.
Other than Tommy Moore, only Hastey Devoe had a criminal record. He’d been arrested three times for driving under the influence—the first arrest in 1982, the second in 1996, and the most recent in 2013. Tracy could only imagine how many times a career drunk had driven impaired and not been caught, or had been caught but received the benefit of having a brother serving as the chief of police.
Tracy ran Gallentine’s name through the Washington State Digital Archives and got a match. Darren John Gallentine died October 12, 1999, at age forty-one. The death certificate from the Washington State Department of Health listed the cause of death as a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. She located a short obituary in the Seattle Times archives. Gallentine had worked for nearly two decades as an engineer for Boeing after graduating from UW in 1981. He was survived by his wife, Tiffany, and his two daughters, seventeen-year-old Rebecca and fourteen-year-old Rachel. In lieu of flowers, the family had asked for donations to an organization called Evergreen Health Clinic Northwest. Tracy Googled the name and found that the clinic still existed and had been serving the Puget Sound region since 1973. Searches using the name Tiffany Gallentine produced no results. Gallentine’s wife could have died, remarried, changed her name, or simply not done anything to warrant a Google hit. The names Rebecca and Rachel Gallentine produced multiple possibilities on Facebook of women who would have been about the right ages. However, given that the sisters would be in their early thirties, they also could have married and legally changed their last names, making the hits for “Gallentine” even more suspect.
Deciding to go after the lowest-hanging fruit, Tracy called the clinic referenced in Darren Gallentine’s obituary and asked to speak to the director. She knew she was treading on thin ice. Under federal HIPAA laws, the confidentiality of a patient’s health information continued even after the patient’s death, and the law was particularly touchy about psychotherapy notes. She was connected to an Alfred Womak, who confirmed that the clinic had treated Darren Gallentine but wouldn’t reveal for what. Tracy said she was in the area and would appreciate a few minutes of the director’s time. Womak agreed to see her for twenty minutes starting at two.