“No point what?”
“No point in dating anymore.”
“Why not?”
“She’s always busy. Cross-country, track, studying. She was leaving for college anyway.”
“Why’d she want to break up with you?”
“Same reasons.”
“Were you frustrated?”
Moore just shrugged. “Like I said, it was mutual.”
Buzz wasn’t detecting an attitude as much as ambivalence, which seemed especially odd given that Kimi had just been pulled from the river. “When’d you last see her?”
“Friday night.”
“Where?”
“The diner.”
“You went there?”
Moore nodded. Buzz played a hunch based on what the roommate had told him and what he knew about the nature of young men and young women. “You bring anyone with you?”
“Yeah.”
“Who?”
“Cheryl Neal.”
“Who’s Cheryl Neal?”
“Just a girl.”
“Of all the places to eat, you bring her to the diner where your ex-girlfriend works?”
“I like their chicken-fried steak.”
“Yeah? Is that what you had to eat?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“We didn’t stay long.”
“Hmm,” Buzz said as if taking time to consider something. “You drove fifteen minutes to a diner where you knew you would run into your ex, and you didn’t stay to eat?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I decided I wasn’t hungry.”
“What about your date?”
“She wasn’t hungry neither.”
“So what did you do?”
“Drove her home and came back here.”
“What time did you get here?”
“I don’t know. Midnight maybe.”
“Was your roommate home?”
“He told you he was.”
Buzz sat back and considered Moore. The young man was well trained in the art of the boxer’s stare, not about to be intimidated. “Did you bring Cheryl Neal to the diner to make Kimi feel bad about breaking up with you, Tommy?”
“I said it was mutual.”
“Yeah, I know what you said. But when it’s mutual, a guy doesn’t bring a new girl to a place he knows he’ll run into his old girlfriend unless he has a reason.”
“I told you, I like the chicken-fried steak.”
“Really? You weren’t trying to make Kimi jealous?”
“No reason to. Plenty of other girls out there.”
“Why would Kimi’s brother and friends come looking for you?”
“I don’t know. You’d have to ask them.”
“I’m asking you. I went to the house. When they learned Kimi was missing, her brother came here. Why would he do that if the two of you had broken up?”
Moore shrugged one shoulder. “Ask élan.”
“You two friends?”
“Not really.”
“Enemies?”
“No.”
“How’d you hear we pulled Kimi out of the river?”
“Read about it in the paper.”
“How’d that make you feel?”
Moore lost focus again, a blank stare. Buzz was content to wait him out. After a few moments, Moore reengaged. “Sucks,” he said.
Tracy poured out the remainder of her wine in the kitchen sink and switched to chamomile tea. Tommy Moore was, at the very least, a liar and an ass. Was he also a murderer?
Roger lay sprawled across the dining room table, snoring. Tracy picked up the first packet of photographs and went quickly through them, finding three photographs of damage to a white Ford truck. As Buzz Almond had described in his report, the front right side looked like the vehicle had impacted something at a high rate of speed—maybe the tree Tommy Moore said he hit. It also looked like someone with experience at bodywork had done initial repairs to get the truck functional again.
Tracy set the photographs aside. Buzz Almond had done exactly what Tracy would have done after speaking with Tommy Moore. His next report documented his trip to the home of Cheryl Neal, who lived in Stoneridge with her parents and two brothers. Since school had been canceled that day for the parade, the Neals were at home. Tracy could only imagine how thrilled the girl’s parents must have been to have a sheriff’s deputy knocking on the door that early in the morning.
Cheryl Neal confirmed Moore took her to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show, then to the Columbia Diner. She said she knew Moore had been dating Kimi Kanasket but said Moore told her they’d broken up. Neal said she and Kimi were “not friends,” denied they were “enemies,” but admitted she knew Kimi worked at the diner. Tracy suspected Moore had asked Neal out precisely because she and Kimi were “not friends,” and that Neal enjoyed the idea of Moore taking her to the diner where Kimi worked. The plan had apparently backfired, however. Buzz Almond’s report noted that Neal told him Moore abruptly left the diner “pissed off” about something and drove her home at roughly eleven. She couldn’t vouch for where Moore had gone after that.
But he would have had plenty of time to go back to the diner, or to park along State Route 141, and wait for Kimi. If they’d dated for months, he would have known her routine.
Tracy flipped to the autopsy report, which she noted had been filled out by the Klickitat County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. At present, only six counties in the state of Washington had dedicated medical examiners, sixteen had coroners, and the remaining smaller counties had an individual designated as the prosecuting attorney/coroner. Those counties usually contracted autopsies to a local pathologist because they didn’t have their own dedicated facilities or staff. Tracy doubted it had been different in 1976. For those reasons, without even reading the report, she was already suspect of the findings.