“But you didn’t do that. You all agreed to never talk about what happened. You left Kimi there, and you drove the others home, but when you got home you realized you couldn’t leave her body out there because it left things unfinished. So you changed into your hunting boots because it had started to snow, and you drove back to the clearing. You put Kimi in the back of the Bronco, drove her to the river, and threw her into the water. That, Eric, was a deliberate act. That’s what you can’t deny. You can’t camouflage it behind this fa?ade you’ve created.
“And when you were finished, you took the Bronco to Lionel Devoe, who was running his father’s businesses at that time, and you had it fixed and the windshield replaced, and you thought that was the end of it. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t the end because Buzz Almond wouldn’t let that be the end of it. And it didn’t have to be this way, Eric. That’s the most ironic and saddest thing of all. It didn’t have to be like this.”
“It didn’t?”
“No,” she said. “Because Kimi wasn’t dead.”
Reynolds stopped petting the dogs. His foot no longer bounced.
“She was still alive, Eric, and if you had just done the right thing, if you had just called for help, Kimi would have lived.”
Tracy watched the remaining color drain from Eric Reynolds’s face, leaving him as pale and sickly as a corpse.
Reynolds didn’t stand when Tracy rose from her chair. The two dogs sat up, watching her. Tracy considered taking the gun, but she had no right to confiscate it, and Eric Reynolds had access to many guns and rifles, and he’d no doubt had those guns out many nights but had never used one. She didn’t think he would use it tonight either.
Tracy left him physically sitting in his chair with his two dogs. Mentally, however, she could tell he’d returned to the clearing, a place no doubt he frequented often in his dreams. She wondered if this time Reynolds was staring down at Kimi Kanasket, trying to comprehend what Tracy had just revealed, and wondering what might have been if he’d only done the right thing.
CHAPTER 33
Tracy didn’t have to wait outside Reynolds’s gate or along the side of the road. If she was right, she knew where he’d go when he mentally returned from the clearing.
And he would go. He’d go because he wouldn’t be able to not go.
She’d kept her promise to Jenny and remained in phone contact, advising her of her intent. The backup followed.
Tracy parked just up the block, not worried about her truck being seen. Reynolds didn’t know her truck, and it blended nicely with the other trucks and older-model vehicles on the block. Then again, she doubted Eric Reynolds would have cared even if he did know. The two sheriff’s vehicles were one block over, out of sight.
Snow began to fall through the gaps in the trees, the kind of large, heavy flakes she and Sarah used to catch on their tongues and watch float to the ground from Tracy’s bedroom window, as excited as on Christmas Eve. They knew the snow would stick, and that meant a possible snow day from school and playing all day in the backyard with their friends. It was one of the best memories from her childhood, one she clung to and refused to have taken from her.
The sound of the big Silverado’s engine preceded the glow of its headlights in her truck’s passenger-side mirror as it approached. She imagined the Bronco limping down the same street that night forty years earlier, broken and damaged. Eric Reynolds drove past Tracy without turning his head, continuing to the small one-story home in which he’d grown up, though his gaze still seemed to be forty years in the past.
He parked the Silverado behind the Dodge Durango in the cluttered carport beneath plastic roofing that had yellowed with age and was covered in pine needles. He’d bought the truck for his father the prior Christmas, an extravagant gift, but without his father, Eric Reynolds would have become nothing. That’s what he’d thought. That’s what he’d been led to believe all these years. He’d been led to believe that without his father, he would have been in prison, a convicted felon, and never would have had all the accolades, the smiles and the waves and the greetings from old acquaintances, which seemed to always begin “Remember when . . .”
He stepped from the truck. The porch light over the side door clicked on, casting a sickly yellow light—such a contrast to the pure-white snow beginning to blanket the ground and flock the trees. The door pulled open, and his father stepped out while putting on his glasses. Despite his age, eighty-two now, he still looked and moved well. People said Ron Reynolds had become an older version of himself, still powerfully built with large forearms and chiseled features, still wearing the crew cut that had survived every decade and every style that had come and gone.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“What did you do, Dad?” Eric Reynolds asked. “What did you do?”
Saturday, November 6, 1976
Ron Reynolds checked his rearview mirror for any sign of approaching headlights. Not seeing any, he turned off the road into the brush and proceeded slowly down the path. The right fender and hood were smashed, but the metal grille along the front bumper had done its job and absorbed most of the impact. Rather amazingly, both headlights still worked, illuminating a light snowfall.
Eric had come home wide-eyed and gibbering almost incoherently about needing to call the police, needing to let someone know. His pupils were as small as pinheads and as black as night. It took a strong slap across the face just to get him to calm down and to stop talking. He’d started to cry, great gasps and sobs, almost wailing. Then he started gibbering again, about Kimi Kanasket, about how he’d killed her.
Ron Reynolds had been angry when he’d learned that his son had snuck out of the house the night before the biggest game of their lives. He had been waiting for Eric to return, thinking about how or if he could discipline him, but when he heard those last words, his blood had run cold and his legs had gone weak.
“What are you talking about?” he’d asked.
Eric sat on the couch sobbing, shaking his head.
“Tell me, Goddamn it!”
And Eric told him. He told him about how he’d snuck out to drink beer with Hastey and Archie and Darren. He told him about Cheryl Neal going out with Tommy Moore. He told him about how, while they were driving home, they came upon Kimi walking along the side of the road.
“I didn’t mean to hit her, Dad. I swear to God, I didn’t mean to hit her.”
“What are you talking about? What do you mean you hit her? Did you punch her?”
He told his father how they’d exchanged words, about how he had lost his temper and chased her into the woods in his car. “I just wanted to scare her,” he’d said. “But then we went over a hill and . . . and I couldn’t control it. The front end, it just came down. She must have fallen, Dad. She must have fallen, and the car, it just . . . We have to call somebody, Dad. We have to call someone.”
Ron had rushed outside, disbelieving until he saw the damage to the car. Then the gravity and magnitude of the situation hit home. It was the damage that made him realize that everything . . . everything they had worked for had potentially been lost.
When he went back inside, Eric had gotten up from the couch and held the telephone.