“How’d you hear about Kimi Kanasket?”
Reynolds rocked back on the legs of his banquet chair and slid the tips of his fingers beneath his belt buckle. His gaze shifted to the ceiling, and he spoke deliberately, as if trying to recall. “I believe we heard sometime that Sunday. We played the championship game Saturday night, and after the game we all went out—players, coaches, parents. We stayed the night in Yakima. On Sunday we boarded the bus and caravanned home. I believe someone said something on the bus. I remember being shocked. But it could have been an article in the paper . . . maybe on Monday. But don’t quote me. That part is a bit hazy.”
“What was your reaction?”
Reynolds shrugged one shoulder. “Same as everybody else. Shock. Dismay. It’s a small community, smaller back then. Everybody knows everybody. You think you’re invulnerable at that age. Then you hear something like that. It’s a shock. It was a shock.”
“So you knew Kimi?”
“Absolutely. We all knew each other.”
“What was your relationship with her?”
“Friendly. Kimi was smart and athletic. She was going to state in track, and I think she was also going to UW. We weren’t great friends, but I knew her.”
“You weren’t romantically involved?” Tracy was taking another shot in the dark. Reynolds was far too comfortable. She was hoping to shake him up.
Reynolds chuckled. “Kimi and me? No. First of all, you didn’t try anything with Kimi.”
“Why not?”
“Because she had a brother and a boyfriend—I forget the guy’s name, but I remember he was a Golden Gloves boxer and had a temper.”
“Tommy Moore?”
“That’s it. Tommy Moore.”
“How do you know he had a temper?” Tracy asked.
“He and Kimi’s brother got kicked out of school for fighting.”
“Do you know what they were fighting about?”
“Back then there was a beef about the school’s use of the name ‘Red Raiders.’ They said it was insensitive to Native Americans. I’m sure it was, though not as insensitive as a white kid wearing war paint driving a spear into the turf.” Reynolds lowered his chair. “Things were different back then. The old people in town got upset over the protests and dug in their heels. Me? I didn’t care what they called us. For me it was all about winning. I just wanted to finish undefeated and cart that state championship trophy off the field at the end of the season.”
“You said you took buses to Yakima Saturday morning and returned Sunday morning.”
“That’s right.”
“What did you do Friday night?”
“That’s easy. I stayed home. You didn’t go out the night before a game and play for Ron Reynolds. He wouldn’t have cared that I was his son and the starting quarterback. He would have benched my butt.”
“So you didn’t go out at all?”
“No. I stayed at home.”
“You’d be surprised then if I told you that Archibald Coe told me yesterday that you all went out together Friday night?” Again, Tracy was looking to rattle Reynolds and get him out of his comfort zone.
“Very surprised,” he said, shaking his head. “You spoke to him yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“How did he seem to you?”
“Fragile.”
Again, Reynolds paused, seeming to give this some thought. “Maybe Archie wasn’t thinking straight or got things confused in his head, given his apparent state of mind.”
Tracy let Reynolds’s answer linger. The detective part of her again thought the timing of Coe’s death just too convenient after he’d lived years with whatever demons had tormented him. “Anyone who could vouch for you, Mr. Reynolds?”
“For what?”
“For the Friday night that Kimi died.”
“Sure. My dad.”
“He’ll say you were home?”
“That’s what he told that deputy who came by the following week.”
The answer surprised her. “A deputy came by and spoke to your father?”
“Yeah. That’s what I recall. He came by and wanted to know if I knew Kimi and said he was just following up on some things. He asked if I had been out Friday night and maybe had seen her. I told him what I’ve told you—I was home and went to bed early. Like I said, winning that state championship was foremost on my mind. I imagine he would have filled out a report or something, wouldn’t he?”
“One would think,” Tracy said.
CHAPTER 28
Tracy left the clubhouse feeling like she was in the middle of a game of chess and it was her move. Eric Reynolds’s statement about Buzz Almond paying a visit to his home the week after Kimi disappeared had thrown her off her game. No such report existed, at least not in the file Tracy had, and Buzz Almond certainly appeared meticulous about including everything in his file. If Reynolds was telling the truth, Tracy had little doubt Buzz would have documented their encounter and kept it. And if he had, that meant someone had removed the report from his file.
Tracy considered the logic of someone doing that. If someone was aware Buzz kept a file, that person might be reluctant to destroy it, concerned that would draw too much suspicion. Instead, he or she could have opted to just destroy one essential element of the file, a portion that might have implicated a specific person but that nobody would have missed unless they knew it existed in the first place, a portion that might have been useful to an investigation but could not be duplicated. Lionel Devoe, Stoneridge chief of police, certainly would have known how to search for, and gain access to, a closed file.
The alternative was that Reynolds was lying, and Buzz Almond had not driven to the house to question his whereabouts that night. That would have been risky, but not if Reynolds already knew, or at least believed, the file—or the incriminating portion of it—had been destroyed. As for any concern that telling a detective that Buzz Almond had questioned him about his whereabouts that night could cause people to speculate that Buzz Almond considered Reynolds a suspect, Reynolds had a ready-made alibi.
Ask his father.
In which case, Reynolds could have offered the information to convince Tracy that law enforcement had already been down that dead end.
Still, if Buzz Almond had questioned Reynolds’s whereabouts, it meant he at least suspected exactly what Tracy suspected. That Reynolds and the other three Ironmen had some role in Kimi’s death.
Tuesday, November 23, 1976