CHAPTER 5
Tracy showed her badge to the deputy seated at the desk inside the glass doors and told him she was with the group from Seattle. He did not hesitate to direct her to the conference room down the hall.
“I know the way,” she said.
When she opened the door to the windowless room, the conversation abruptly stopped. A uniformed deputy stood at the head of the wooden table, marker in hand, topographical map pinned to a cork board behind him. Roy Calloway sat closest to the door, eyebrows inched together and looking worried. On the opposite side of the table, Kelly Rosa, a forensic anthropologist from Seattle, sat along with Bert Stanley and Anna Coles, volunteers from the Washington State Patrol’s Crime Scene Response Team. Tracy had worked multiple homicides with them.
Tracy didn’t wait for an invitation to enter, knowing it wouldn’t come. “Chief,” she said, which was what everyone in Cedar Grove called Calloway, though technically he was the sheriff.
Calloway stood from the table as Tracy stepped past his chair and slipped off her corduroy jacket, revealing her shoulder holster and the badge clipped to her belt. “What do you think you’re doing?”
She draped her jacket over the back of a chair. “Let’s not do this dance, Roy.”
He stepped toward her, straightening to his full height. Intimidation had always been his staple. To a young girl, Roy Calloway could be terrifying, but Tracy was no longer young or easily intimidated.
“I agree, let’s not do this. So, if you’re here on police business, you’re out of your jurisdiction. If—”
“I’m not here as a police officer,” she said. “But I’d appreciate a professional courtesy.”
“Can’t do it.”
“Roy, you know I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize the integrity of a crime scene.”
Calloway shook his head. “You’re not going to get that chance.”
The others looked on, uncertainty etched on their faces.
“Then I’m asking you for a favor . . . as a friend of my father’s.”
Calloway’s blue eyes narrowed. His brow furrowed. Tracy knew she’d struck a deep wound, one that had never healed. Calloway and her father had hunted and fished together, and her father had cared for Calloway’s aging parents before they died. The two men had also borne the guilt and the burden of being unable to find Sarah.
Calloway pointed a finger at her like he’d done when she was a kid riding her bike on the sidewalk. “You’ll stay out of the way. If I tell you to leave, you will leave. Do we understand one another?”
Tracy was in no position to tell him she’d investigated more murders in a year than he’d investigated his entire career. “We do.”
Calloway gave her a lingering glare before returning his attention to his deputy. “Go on, Finlay,” he said, and retook his seat.
The deputy, whose badge read “Armstrong,” took a moment to regain his train of thought before returning his attention to the topographical map. “This is where they found the body.” He drew an X where the two hunters had apparently stumbled across the remains.
“That can’t be,” Tracy said.
Armstrong turned from the map, looking uncertain. He glanced at Calloway.
“I said, go on, Finlay.”
“There’s an access road here,” Armstrong continued. “It was cut for a development.”
Tracy said, “That’s the old Cascadia property.”
Calloway’s jaw muscles tensed. “Continue, Finlay.”
“The site is about half a mile from the access road,” Finlay said, sounding less certain. “We’ve set a perimeter here.” He drew another small X. “The grave itself is shallow, maybe a couple feet. Now—”
“Wait,” Rosa said, lifting her head from taking notes. “Hold on. Did you say the grave was shallow?”
“Well, the foot wasn’t very deep.”
“And the grave looked to you otherwise undisturbed?” Rosa asked. “I mean other than where the dog had dug.”
“Looked that way; I suppose it could just be a leg and foot.”
“Why do you ask?” Calloway asked.
“The glacial till in the Pacific Northwest is rock hard,” Rosa said. “It makes digging a grave very difficult, particularly in this type of terrain, which I’m assuming has an extensive root system. I’m not surprised the grave is shallow. What is surprising is that no other animals have disturbed it before now.”
Tracy spoke to Rosa. “That area was just starting to be developed into a golf and tennis resort to be called Cascadia. They’d cleared some of the trees and brought in temporary trailers to use as a sales office to pre-sell the lots. You remember that body we found out in Maple Valley a few years back?”
Rosa nodded and directed her question to Armstrong. “Could the body have been buried in a hole created from a tree uprooted during the development?”
“I don’t know,” Armstrong said, shaking his head and looking confused.
“What difference does that make?” Calloway asked.
“For one, it could be indicative of a premeditated act,” Tracy said. “If someone knew the area was being developed, they could have planned to use the hole.”
“Why would a killer use a hole in a place that he knew was going to be developed?” Rosa asked.
“Because he also knew the development was never going to be built,” Tracy said. “It was a big story around here. The resort was going to have a big impact on the local economy and make Cedar Grove a vacation destination. The developer submitted land use applications for a golf course and tennis resort, but shortly thereafter the Federal Energy Commission approved the construction of three hydroelectric dams across the Cascade River.” Tracy stood, walked to the front of the room, and held out her hand for Finlay’s marker. The deputy hesitated before handing it to her. She drew a line. “Cascade Falls was the last dam to go online. That was mid-October, 1993. When it did, the river backed up and the lake’s perimeter expanded.” She drew the lake’s new perimeter. “It flooded that area.”
“Which put the grave site under water and out of reach of animals,” Rosa said.
“And out of our reach.” Tracy turned to Calloway. “We searched that area, Roy.”
Tracy knew. She’d not only been part of the search team, she’d kept the original topographical map after her father had died. In the intervening years, she’d gone over it so many times she knew it better than the lines on the palm of her hand. Her father had divided the map into sectors to ensure a thorough and systematic search. They’d gone over each sector twice.
When Calloway continued to ignore her, Tracy spoke to Rosa. “They took down Cascade Falls earlier this summer.”
“And the lake receded back to its natural dimensions,” Rosa said, understanding.
“They just reopened that area to hunters and hikers,” Armstrong said, also catching on. “Yesterday was opening day of duck season.”
Tracy looked to Calloway. “We went over that area before it flooded, Roy. There was no body there.”
“It’s a big area. You can’t rule out the possibility we missed it,” he said. “Or that it isn’t her.”
“How many other young women disappeared around here during that time, Roy?”
Calloway didn’t answer.
Tracy said, “We searched that area twice and did not find any body. Whoever put the body there had to have done so after we’d searched and just before the flood.”