A Cold Dark Place

Chapter Seventeen

Friday, 6:30 A.M., Cherrystone, Washington

Emily could not believe her ears. She was dripping wet from the shower and she risked an electric shock to turn up the volume on her bathroom radio. Candace Kane was reporting on the news that Jenna was on the run with a suspected killer. She didn't use her name, but might as well have.

"We're not identifying the girl, because she's a juvenile and out of respect for her mother, a county sheriff's employee," Kane said. "A source close to the investigation says that the girl disappeared the day after the Martin murders were discovered."

I'll kill her Emily thought. Why is she reporting this? How does this help any of us?

Water pooled where her feet were planted on the slippery ceramic tiles. Emily just stood there, frozen, taking in each word and growing angrier by the nanosecond.

Candace went on, "Classmates at Cherrystone High said the girl and Nick Martin were close."

Static followed for a second, then the voice of a teenage boy came through the speaker.

"Yeah, they were both artsy. He was kind of a Goth, I guess. She's probably one of those goody goodies that like to hang with the bad boys. Pretty common knowledge around here they were seeing each other."

Another voice cut in. This time it was a girl.

"It was like Romeo and Juliet. It was like both parents didn't want them to date and maybe that's why he offed his family."

Emily reached for a towel. Her body was shivering, but mentally she was numb with anger at Candace Kane and her so-called news station. Her daughter was not "on the run" and there would be no more "updates to come" As far as Emily knew, there had been no Romeo and Juliet love affair. Not on Jenna's part. These kids were taking a tragedy and working it into some kind of overwrought teen romance. Jenna might care for the boy, but if she was in love with Nick Martin, she'd have told her mother. Just what was going on?

The calls had been coming in all morning. They were stinging wasps that couldn't be knocked away with a sledgehammer. One after another. Some were friends and family, worried about Jenna and where she was. Those came out of concern, but Emily Kenyon wished she'd been able to say more than, "Thank you for your concern, your love." It felt so useless, so damned weak. But the vast majority of inquiries flooding every phone line at the sheriff's office were from media jackals looking for a story. The story. Some got through to Kip and Jason, and by mid-morning the beleaguered dispatcher, Gloria, stopped patching anyone through. Lavender Post-it notes encircled the screen of Emily's computer monitor like a feather boa. Call. Urgent. Third time. Important tip want to share. Emily made a stupid mistake on that last one, calling back only to find that the reporter wanted a tip, he didn't have one.

Thank you, Candace Kane, for your fantastic story, Emily thought. You've made my life even worse than it was. No small feat. Maybe you should be promoted to TV?

Around noon, Gloria-the-dispatcher buzzed Emily on the intercom, a communications system so poor a shout down the hall would have worked better in most instances.

"Call for you, Emily. Line three," she said, her voice crackling under the strain of the failing speakers.

Emily jabbed at the answer button. "Message please, Gloria. I can't work with all this. Give the call to Kip or better yet, my detective in training, Jason." Her tone was decidedly sarcastic, which she regretted right away. "Sorry. Just take a message."

"Trust me, you'll want this one. Emily, I think it's Jenna "

Emily stared at the blinking white light on her phone. "Jenna?"

Gloria's usual cool demeanor ("gunshot vie on line two ... incest perp calling again about computer ... lawyer wants police report") ratcheted up ten times to over-the-top excited. "I think so, Emily. Talk to her. Pick it up!"

Emily pushed the flashing button and put the phone next to her ear. The room seemed suddenly small and dark. Closed in. The blinking light was now a solid glow. Just her and the phone, a lifeline to her daughter. Before she spoke, she heard Jenna's breath against the mouthpiece. It was soft and sweet. A mother knows when her baby is close. But where was she?

"Honey?"

"Mom? I'm sorry!"

"Jenna!"

"You're not mad at me, are you?"

"Of course not," Emily said, searching for a word that carried some measure of her pain. "Worried. I'm worried about you. Honey, where are you?"

Jenna fought to hold it together, but her grip on her emotions was spiderweb weak. "I'm all right," she said, her voice breaking. "I can't say where I am. But I'm safe. I'm fine. I told Dad to tell you that I'm okay."

A noise coming from the hallway cut into the conversation, and with the phone tight to her ear, Emily shut the door. "He told me, but why didn't you call me? I am your mother"

Jenna was crying softly into the phone. "Mom, you know how you get. Nick needed my help."

Hold your anger. Keep calm. Jenna's okay.

Emily heard a car with a bad muffler in the background; it seemed to pass near wherever Jenna was calling from. She could hear other voices, too. She wondered if Jenna was at a pay phone, maybe at a gas station or store.

"Nick needed you?" she asked. "Nick is in a world of trouble."

Another car passed by. Was she outdoors?

"I know what you're thinking, Mom. That's why I didn't call you first. You are always too quick to judge. Nick didn't do what they're saying-what you're saying."

Emily wanted to yell into the phone for her daughter to get a grip. The boy was dangerous, unbalanced, any number of adjectives zoomed through her mind, but she knew better than to use any of them. "Jenna, you don't know what happened," she said.

Silence.

"Jenna?"

"I do, mom. Nick told me. He didn't do this. He isn't capable of anything like this. I know him." Jenna's words shattered into pieces and she stopped to compose herself. "He's scared, Mom. I'm scared"

Emily had never felt so helpless in her life. Jenna was her baby. She thought their bond had been stronger than anything she could imagine. From her side, it was. But there she was, about to beg her scared little girl to come back to her. The idea of such a plea would have seemed beyond inconceivable a week ago. But the world had turned over since the storm. Nothing was as it had been.

"Come home, Jenna. Both of you. This isn't safe. Don't you know that the FBI is within a hairbreadth of getting involved? They're thinking kidnapping here"

"Kidnapping?" Jenna wasn't crying anymore. Her mood had shifted. She was angry. "You wouldn't let them do that. You know I went with Nick willingly. I went to help him. I care about him."

"I realize that," Emily said, now lying. She hadn't even heard Jenna mention Nick Martin's name up until that phone call. She wondered how well she knew her only child.

Jenna went on. "I told Shali to tell you the truth, but she didn't think she could get through to you. That you wouldn't listen to her." Her voice now showed traces of exasperation. It was probably abundantly clear that Shali didn't tell her mom anything.

"You talked to her, too?" Emily felt foolish to feel hurt over that, but the feeling grabbed her too quickly for her to assess it and set it aside. "Dad, Shali? Finally, you call me?"

"Mom," she said, "Don't be like that"

"All right. Now tell me where you are"

"I can't do that. I'm okay. That's all I'm saying right now."

"Jenna," Emily again struggled to keep cool. "Do you know what you're doing here? This is not right. His family is dead and he-"

"He didn't do it. I know him."

By then Emily was sure if she pressed the point any harder, her daughter the real love of her life-would hang up. She'd get in some car with Nick Martin and disappear for a while. Emily had to think like an investigator, just then, not like a mother.

"Okay. Maybe I can help. I want to help. Can I talk to him?"

Emily heard Jenna put her hand over the phone and say something, though it was too muffled to make out.

Jenna got back on the line. "No, not now. But I can tell you what he told me"

"All right, honey, tell me. Take your time."

Jenna went on to describe how Nick had come home from school because of a supposed family emergency. He had searched the living room, kitchen, the yard, everywhere, but found absolutely no sign of his parents.

"Mom," Jenna started to sob again, "he went upstairs and found his parents and brother ... they were all dead and stuff. I mean, his dad wasn't dead, but he was hurt real bad. He told Nick to get out. To run away. That there was someone that wanted to kill him."

Both ends of the line grew quiet for a moment. Another car passed by.

"Jenna? Are you still there?"

"I'm here, Mom," she said. "Oh, Mom, he's scared. He said his mom and dad and brother ... they were all shot"

Emily wished she could reach through the phone line and put her arms around her daughter.

"Oh God, honey. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Is Nick all right?"

"He's a mess, mom. He's scared spitless. We're both scared. Whoever is out there wants to kill him."

"Kill him? Why? Why in the world would anyone want to kill his mother and father and little brother, and then him?"

Jenna paused. She was collecting her thoughts, but Emily felt as if her daughter was sifting out what to tell and what to hold close.

"Nick thinks it has something to do with the adoption," Jenna said. "Ask Cary about it."

The name was a knife in Emily's heart right then. Maybe to her back, she wasn't sure.

"Cary?" She was incredulous. "What does he have to do with any of this?"

"I knew that would piss you off, Mom. Glad you dumped him. Nick says that Cary talked with his dad. Made his dad really, really mad. Something about the agency or the birth mother wanting to see Nick, but Nick's dad didn't want anything to do with it. Nick and his dad fought about that"

Emily put her fingers to her lips. It just didn't compute. "But Cary? I don't understand how he was involved?"

A young man's voice said, "Let's go"

It seemed to distract Jenna for a second. "I don't know," she finally answered. "Nick said something about how Cary and his dad got into it one night, over the adoption. But he doesn't know."

"I'll find out. Now come home."

"No. We can't. Mom, we saw what you said in the paper. You said Nick's a killer. Everyone says so. But he didn't do it. And we aren't coming back until you know who did. Bye, Mom. I love you"

The line went silent so fast that Emily didn't have a second to plead for her daughter to stay put. Help will come. I'll take back what I said. I love you. Don 't do this. Don 't be gone. Her hand still frozen on the receiver, the room swelled back to its normal size. Gloria was at the door.

"Is she okay?" she asked, sticking her head inside.

Emily set the phone down. She turned to Gloria and nodded. "I think so. Gloria, see if you can get this call traced. Right away."

Gloria stood there expecting more conversation, maybe some details that could set her own worried mind at ease, but Emily didn't offer anything. Instead she scooped up some files, and put them in a drawer. Next she grabbed her purse and coat and started for the door.

"Where are you going?" Gloria asked, moving aside.

"I'm off to see a scumbag lawyer," Emily said, disappearing in the whirlwind of her exit.

Friday, 1:14 n.M1

"Where's Cary?" Emily Kenyon refused to wait for a response from the latest in a long line of front desk girls at McConnell's over-ferned law office in the Old Mill Building. This one was blond and pretty, like the others. She was also completely out of her league when she tried to stop Emily. The detective would not be denied a meeting. Appointment or not. She kept walking toward McConnell's corner office in one of those industrial edifices tastefully reimagined by architects and interior designers into office space that said its occupants were hip and cool and cared about the history of their communities.

Without knocking, Emily pushed the office door open. It smacked into the doorstop with a loud thud. Cary McConnell, who was on the phone staring out the window at the street scene below, swung his burgundy leather chair around at the intrusion.

"Oh baby," he said. Seeing it was Emily, he put on a smile. His perfect teeth were blazingly white against his tanned face. "Miss me?"

"Miss you?" Emily wanted to lunge for him. "I could goddamn kill you"

Cary told the caller on the phone that "an upset client" had just arrived. "Unannounced. I'll call you later." He put the phone down, got up and shut the door behind Emily. She was seething.

"What's going on? Why are you angry at me?"

"Cary, look at my face. This isn't mad. This is furious. Why didn't you tell me you had information about the Martin case?" She felt her hands clench. She wasn't a person who ever thought of hitting anyone, but at that moment Cary McConnell nearly had it coming. If anyone ever did.

"Look, I can't talk about it," he said. "Anything I know is " privileged."

"Privileged? My daughter is out there and you're going to use that law crap on me?"

"Emily," he said, putting his hands on her shoulders.

"Don't even think about touching me."

He removed his hands and took a step backward. He looked through the floor-to-ceiling sidelight next to his door. The young blonde was watching from the receptionist's desk. Cary slid out of view.

I wanted to tell you, but you know I can't. You wouldn't respect me if I did."

"Respect you? I hate you. I can't believe that I slept with you again. That's a joke. I'm so stupid. God, I really know how to pick them"

"Let's not get personal," he said.

Wrong words, Emily thought.

"Personal? My daughter is off with some creepy kid. You know something about what's going on in his family. And you don't tell me? No. In fact you take me out for a couple of drinks and go back to my house ... God, I'm so stupid!"

The blonde was standing up by then. She held the phone up and pointed at it, signaling to Cary that she could call someone if he gave her the word. She mouthed: "Police? "

Emily almost laughed at that. Emily was the police.

"You're not stupid," Cary said. "And I am sorry. You know me better than that. I care about you. I care about Jenna."

Emily could see this was going nowhere. Everything he said now was some cheap way of trying to calm her so he could get rid of her. Get on with his day. Make some important deal. Screw the blonde. Whatever.

"Okay," she said. "Can you at least confirm something?"

"Maybe. Try me ""

"Was Nick's dad your client?"

Cary shook his head.

"Did another client talk to you about Nick's adoption?"

Cary, now sitting on the edge of his enormous mahogany desk, looked down at the floor. His face was completely grim. Saying anything was a breach of legal ethics.

"All right. I'll tell you this. My client is another lawyer, working for another party. I don't know the name. I can't give you the lawyer's name, either. But yes, it was about the adoption."

Emily moved closer. "Cary, please" She stared at him, imploring with her eyes to tell her what she needed to know.

"I don't know the client. But I'll tell you this. I think it has something to do with Angel's Nest in Seattle."

"Angel's Nest?" The name was vaguely familiar. Emily ran it through her memory. "Angel's Nest?"

"Yeah. Can you believe that? Talk about a blast from the past. That's all I can tell you I know."

Emily turned for the door. The fact that he held information that could have helped the case, could have shed light on Jenna's whereabouts, was bad enough. That he was so damn weak that he caved in and told her anything at all, was proof positive he was the biggest loser she'd ever slept with.

"Dinner tonight?" Cary asked.

Emily stopped and spun around and stood there. If ever she needed Botox it would be from the hostile glance she gave Cary McConnell. She held it longer than any expression she'd ever directed at anyone.

Finally she spoke. "Go screw yourself," she said.