In the Clearing Read Online Free PDF Page B

to speed so he could apprise the day shift of the situation. When he’d finished, Buzz reluctantly drove home to relieve Anne, who, despite being very pregnant, was still working the morning shift at the hospital. They needed the money with the new baby coming.
    The call came as Buzz was cleaning up after lunch and starting the process of bundling Maria and Sophia in their winter gear. He’d promised to take them out in the snow, which had accumulated enough to make a decent snowman. That was going to have to wait—much to his daughters’ disappointment. Buzz buckled his girls into the backseat of his Suburban and drove them a stone’s throw down the road to Margaret O’Malley’s home. O’Malley had retired after thirty-five years teaching first grade and couldn’t get enough of Buzz’s girls.
    “What about the snowman, Daddy?” Sophia asked.
    “We’ll make one later, honey,” Buzz said, though the knot in his stomach was telling him that was another promise he’d likely not be able to keep.
    “Come on, girls,” Margaret O’Malley said, ushering them inside. “I need a couple of helpers to make chocolate chip cookies.”
    That did the trick. Snowman forgotten.
    After dropping the girls at Mrs. O’Malley’s, Buzz drove quickly into Stoneridge. It looked like a ghost town. No one walked the sidewalks, and the parking spots in front of the stores were nearly empty of cars. The Stoneridge Café was closed. So was the pizza-and-beer pub, the flower store, the barbershop, and the hardware store. Almost all had homemade signs in the windows that said things like “Go, Red Raiders!” and “State Bound!” Buzz had read something in the local paper about the high school football team playing in its first-ever state championship, and he grew worried the drugstore might also be closed, but it remained open. He hurried inside and bought a Kodak Instamatic and four rolls of film before driving out of town on State Route 141.
    He turned left on Northwestern Lake Road and went down the hill, slowing to a stop atop the narrow concrete bridge spanning the White Salmon River. Search and Rescue vehicles filled Northwest Park’s dirt-and-gravel parking area, along with two fire trucks, a Klickitat County Sheriff’s Office vehicle, and a blue-and-white Stoneridge Police car. Men wearing waders and rubber boots with their winter clothing worked along the river’s edge.
    Buzz parked beside the two fire trucks. It had stopped snowing, but several inches covered the ground and the picnic tables and benches, and had flocked the trees along the riverbank as well as the larger boulders protruding from the gray waters. Buzz put on his aviators to deflect the bright stream of sunlight that had burst through the cloud layer. Deputy Andrew Johns stood talking with a Stoneridge Police officer Buzz didn’t recognize, their breath white ribbons. Buzz had become familiar with most, though not all, of the other deputies, but he wasn’t as familiar with the Stoneridge officers—of which there were four.
    “Heard this was your call, Buzz.” Johns clapped his gloved hands then tucked them under his armpits. “Damn, it got cold fast.”
    “What’s Search and Rescue said?” Buzz asked.
    Johns pointed to two men dressed in fishing gear standing near one of the picnic tables. “Those two guys were fishing the banks. Thought they saw something in the water hung up in the branches of that fallen tree. Worked their way downstream for a closer look, but whatever it is, it’s submerged by the current. They think it’s a body.”
    Buzz’s stomach dropped. “Do you know them?”
    Johns shook his head. “Two guys from Portland.”
    “You get a statement?”
    “Just gave it to you. Search and Rescue’s stringing a cable across the river to give themselves something to hook on to. River’s not flowing that strong, but the rocks are slippery. They might know more by now.”
    Search and Rescue had cleared off a picnic table to stage