In the Clearing by Robert Dugoni

from his desk and walked across the bull pen to Kins’s cubicle.
    Kins pointed to his computer screen and read the sentence aloud. “Negative for any prints.”
    “How can that be?” Faz said. “That don’t make no sense.”
    Kins continued reading. “But they did find Connor’s fingerprints on his father’s shoe. Why would the kid’s prints be on one of the shoes?”
    “Maybe he tried to move him?”
    Kins shook his head. “ME’s report says there was no indication the body was moved. Lividity is consistent with a body that had been lying in one spot.” Kins rocked in his chair. “The only way that sculpture could be clean is if someone wiped it clean, right?”
    “Or no one touched it in the first place,” Faz said.
    “Then how’d it get on the floor?”
    “Got knocked over during the argument.”
    “Why would she say he used it to hit her?”
    “She needed to explain the cut on her head.”
    “How else would she have gotten it?”
    “Don’t know.”
    “Well, at least we know somebody was doing something during those twenty-one minutes,” Kins said.
    “You think she’s covering for the son,” Faz said.
    “Very well could be.”

CHAPTER 6
    B ack in the car on their drive home from the Almonds’ house, just past Kelso, Dan reached for the radio and turned down the Seahawks game, drawing Tracy’s attention. She’d been staring out the window, watching the acres of farmland pass along I-5, the daylight fading quickly, as it did in the fall.
    “I thought you were enjoying the game,” Tracy said.
    Dan angled toward her, his left arm on the steering wheel. “Enjoying? The Forty-Niners are kicking our butts. I’m not enjoying it.”
    “Oh,” Tracy said.
    “You’ve been awfully quiet. I don’t think you’ve said more than two sentences the past half hour, and you’ve obviously tuned out the entire third quarter, or you’d have known we’re down by twenty points.”
    She smiled. “Okay. Guilty.”
    “Does it have anything to do with that file back there?” Dan gave a small nod toward the backseat.
    “You noticed that, did you?”
    “You’re not the only one with detective skills. So, what is it?”
    “An old case Jenny found in her father’s desk.”
    Dan reached into a bag of wasabi-flavored almonds. He was on a quest to lose five to ten pounds and didn’t go anywhere without some form of nut to snack on. “A cold case?”
    “Not exactly. In 1976 a seventeen-year-old Native American girl went missing on her way home from work. Two fishermen found her body in the White Salmon River the next afternoon, caught on the limbs of a submerged tree. The autopsy and the prosecuting attorney concluded she jumped into the river and drowned.”
    Dan popped more nuts in his mouth. “Jumped? As in, on purpose?”
    “The official conclusion was that she was upset over a recent breakup with her boyfriend. Unfortunately, it happens too often in high school. One minute they’re in love; the next minute they hate each other. Jenny thinks her father believed there was something more to it. She asked me to have a look.”
    “Can you do that? It’s a different county.”
    “We can. It usually happens if a body is found in one county but it’s suspected the murder took place somewhere else—things like that. But the sheriff of a county can always ask for assistance. Jenny wants a fresh take, in case she has to reopen the investigation.”
    “How do you think Nolasco is going to react?” Dan asked, referring to Tracy’s captain and longtime nemesis.
    “Johnny Boy’s been on his best behavior since he got his hand slapped by OPA,” she said. The Office of Professional Accountability was reviewing a decade-old homicide investigation by Nolasco and his then partner, Floyd Hattie. Tracy had found the file for the case while hunting the Cowboy, and her review of it revealed certain improprieties that called into question Nolasco’s methods. OPA had broadened its inquiry to Nolasco’s and