A Cold Dark Place

Chapter Twenty-two

Friday, 2:26 eni., Cherrystone, Washington

Emily knew the name, Angel's Nest, because it had been in the news intermittently when she was a student at the University of Washington in the early 1980s. In the almost twenty years since then, she hadn't given it a single thought. She turned on the teakettle and waited for the whistle. Angels Nest. What was that all about? Cary had said it was a "blast from the past." She remembered that the agency had been in the news. There had been some kind of scandal. When the boiling water rumbled, and then whistled, she dropped a bag of chamomile and a squeeze of honey from a plastic teddy bear bottle into a cup. Steam rose up from the spout as she poured. Everything that could be wrong, was just that, wrong. She was still jittery and angry at Cary, heartbroken that Jenna wouldn't just come home, and a wreck over the whole idea that she didn't know her daughter as well as she thought she had. How could she have been so blind? How can they seem so close one day, and the next be separated by a triple homicide? Herbal tea, something her mother pre scribed for everything from a broken date to a hysterectomy, sounded good.

She sipped it from the cup Jenna had painted at the Ceramic Castle; orange poppies spun around the rim. She was unsure exactly what had been the source of the agency's troubles. She'd called David to see if he remembered anything, but she got his answering machine-his voice sounding puffed up and all-important, even when he wasn't there to speak. She left a message. Next she did a quick search of the Internet, which only turned up the scantest of information. Angel's Nest was an adoption agency shut down in the mid-1980s over charges that its president had not only misappropriated funds but also somehow snipped through government regulations when it brought babies into the country. One woman from Tacoma even had to give her baby back.

But how would Nick Martin have been involved with this agency, anyway?

Taking her steaming cup down the hall to her office, Emily lingered in the doorway of Jenna's bedroom. Her old bedroom. The screensaver on the Mac was a digital aquarium with a pair of pink kissing Gouramis doing what they did best, over and over. Emily flopped herself on the pineapplepost bed, patting the pink-and-yellow quilt her grandmother had made. Memories of her daughter flooded the room. She could smell Jenna's Vanilla Fields perfume, a gift from Shali that Christmas. Over the bed was a framed print of The Little Mermaid, a souvenir from a trip to Disneyland. Beanie Babies left over from the long-abandoned collecting craze took refuge on a shelf. A purple Princess Diana teddy bear was the prize, a plastic "tag protector" dangled from its paw. So innocent then. All of us were. Jenna was smart. She was capable. She cared about doing the right thing. Emily sat still, breathing in her daughter, then went to her office and sat in front of her computer.

You'll be home soon, she thought. I'll never be too busy to listen.

The screen snapped to life and she typed in the web address for a Seattle daily paper and clicked on the link for the archives. She typed in "Angel's Nest," hit Search, and two small items popped up. One was a brief mention in a column, quoting a detective who had worked a homicide case that had tangential ties to Angel's Nest. The other was an item that indicated that all the assets seized by the government had been dispersed at auction, five years after the scandal. Emily thought there would be more; it had seemed like a bigger story. She searched again, but nothing more came up. It was then that she noticed the archives only went back to 1990.

What was it?

She tapped out the name of the detective quoted in the article: Olga Morris.

Friday, 3:39 PM, Salt Lake City airport

The reader of the newspaper wadded it up and threw it into an airport trash receptacle. A teenage girl chatted with her boyfriend on her cell phone. A woman scrounged through her purse to come up with enough change for an Orange Julius. A businessman's fingers worked over the keyboard on his laptop, something apparently so important that it couldn't wait. Amid the blase world of the airport concourse, the reader of the newspaper wanted to scream. The article that so enraged the reader was an account of the Cherrystone murders, discovered after the tornado had swept through parts of the eastern Washington town. The story recounted how Mark and Peg Martin, and their son, Donovan, had been shot and left for dead. The storm had taken what was likely a family rampage and twisted it into a perfect crime.

Perfect crime? Not even close. Perfect screwup was the real truth.

Missing from what had once been the Martin family home was the eldest boy, Nicholas. Also missing was the chief detective's daughter, Jenna.

Find the cop's daughter. Find the boy. Finish the job.

Friday, 6:50 RM, northern Washington

Running a rototiller at fifty-one was not easy. with a smile on her face, Olga Morris-Cerrino cursed her late husband's idea that they should move out to the country, till the land, raise exotic sheep.

"It will make us more interesting," Tony Cerrino had joked when he sold her on the idea of the mini farm on the outskirts of Whatcom County. "You know ... gentleman farmer types ""

Easy for you to say, she thought back then. Even more so now.

Olga brushed the sweat from her brow, leaving a muddy streak on her already tanned forehead. How she missed him. How she wished that he hadn't taken that business trip that icy November.

"Damn you," she said softly, standing in the cookie-batter soil of what would have been her husband's best year ever gardening. "I loved you so much" Her arms ached, but she wasn't unhappy about what she'd accomplished. Her eyes ran over the plot of creased earth behind her. The rows were perfectly straight.

"No need for strings if you have a good eye," he had told her that first day they'd planted. "And you have a good eye, my dear."

She'd sowed popcorn, sweet corn, and a brand-new variety of buttercup squash that early evening. She'd planted more than she could use. That was by design. She knew the old women at the Whatcom Food Bank would be pleased when harvest came that fall. She'd arrive with a red wagon of produce fit for the tables of the finest restaurants in the county. But it would be for those who really needed it. Doing that would be hard this fall. It would be the first without him.

Olga Morris-Cerrino watched the sun dip below her white clapboard house, as a chilling breeze worked its way across the meadow, then closer, to the garden where she stood. She zipped up her jacket and checked the tiller for gas. It was getting dark, but once she got going it was hard to stop. Evenings in the country were like that. Tony knew it. He loved it. And despite everything she had once thought about herself, she'd grown to love it, too. Yet the breeze right then was like an icy hand on her neck. When she heard the phone ring she set the tiller down and used the intrusion as the excuse she needed to go inside.

She swung open the gingerbread-framed screen door and went to the antique wall phone that Tony had re-outfitted for the modern age. The change kept with the integrity of the home, he'd say. But it was wall mounted and hard to get to. So much for modern.

"Hello?" Olga said, into the mouthpiece, out of breath.

"Olga Morris?"

She pulled the zipper on her jacket. "Who's calling?"

"I'm Emily Kenyon, sheriff's detective, Cherrystone"

Sliding off one sleeve, then the other, Olga sighed. "Oh, I'm sorry, but I've already made my donations for the year."

"Detective Morris, I'm not collecting for anything. I'm calling for your help."

"It's Cerrino now, and I'm retired." The cat jumped on the kitchen counter and Olga frantically shooed it down. "Down, Felix!"

"Huh?"

"The cat. Never mind. You're calling about?"

"It's about an old case you worked," Emily said. "Do you have a moment?"

The cat was now on the floor, and Olga was at ease. She took a seat on the old oak stool and absentmindedly started straightening the paper clips, tape holders, and scrap paper she kept by the phone. Felix yowled, his Siamese lineage coming through loud and clear.

"They're all old cases," Olga continued. "I'm retired, as I said. Now is not the best time, can you give me a few? I have a cat here that if she doesn't eat she'll scratch a bloody groove through my leg."

Emily laughed. "I know the type. I'll call you in say, a half hour?"

"Fine. And what case was it?"

"Angel's Nest"

There was a long silence and for a second Emily assumed that Olga Morris-Cerrino had hung up.

"You still there?" she asked.

Again a short pause.

"Yes," Olga answered, sounding a little rattled. "I'm here. Yes, call me. I don't know how I can help you, but I'm glad that someone is looking into that mess"

Olga Morris-Cerrino was still all that she had been years ago. She was still blond without the help of a bottle. She was still tiny, with a trim figure unchanged by childbirth or bad eating habits. Faint lines collected at the corners of each eye, but no one really noticed them. How could they? When her eyes sparkled as they always did, no one saw anything else. She fed the cat and took a Diet Coke from the refrigerator, popped the top, and filled a water glass. She sliced a lime and dropped it in; fizzy pop bloomed over the sides. The call hadn't really surprised her. She had no idea what case the detective from Cherrystone was working just then, but she never thought Angel's Nest or any of the people associated with it would just fade into dust.

The world just doesn't work that way, she thought. Evil doesn't really die.

While she waited for the phone to ring, Olga meandered around the first floor, a space filled with antique furniture and carpets. Over a settee with a pin-point gallery light on timer was her husband's most prized possession an original Norman Rockwell portrait. It was a schoolgirl standing outside of a gymnasium as a group of cheerleaders practiced. It was called Dreamer. It was the image of his mother, who had posed for Rockwell when she was a girl in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. The painting had been a family heirloom and was worth tens of thousands.

Olga pushed the pager button for the cordless phone she kept in the den-the one thing she'd done that defied her husband's wishes, but he was gone and there would be no arguing about being "true to the house" The phone handset called out to her from a sofa cushion in the living room. She fished it out, put her feet up on an ottoman, and waited for the earthquake that was sure to come when the phone rang again.

It had been only a matter of time.

Jenna finished the conversation with her father, cut short by a cheap cell phone they'd stolen from a man at the counter of the minimart. The theft was completely impulsive, but after being called a murderer, a kidnapper, and an "artsy" high school student, just about anything went by then. Jenna looked at Nick with disapproving eyes. His new look would take some getting used to. Nick had shaved his head earlier this morning and a slight rash had developed, making his pasty white scalp look something like a bruised strawberry. He sat glumly on the curb, the light of day eclipsed by the hour.

"My dad said my mom called about us," she said.

"No surprise there. I knew we couldn't trust her."

"She's my mom. And we can trust her. She called my dad, not the FBI"

Nick lit a cigarette, his last one. "As far as you know."

That hurt a little and Jenna didn't try to hide it. "Don't be like that. Look, both my parents say the same thing. We need to turn ourselves in. We didn't do anything wrong"

Nick wasn't buying any of that. He slumped back down on the sofa. The mine building was rancid, creaky, and drafty. His family was gone, his house was gone. His life was over.

"Nobody's calling you a killer," he said.

Jenna pushed her long dark hair over her shoulder. He had a point. Words were so stupid, so hurtful, and at that time, so useless. They could hurt, but not calm.

"In her message," she said, finally, "my mom asked my dad if he knew anything about Angel's Nest."

Nick exhaled and his eyes followed Jenna as she moved closer and sat next to him. He turned his gaze to the grimy floor and searched for words.

"My dad warned me about that," he said while patting his irritated scalp. "He said to me ... before he died .... Nick let himself to go back to that upstairs bedroom, back into the depths of the worst memory he'd ever hold.

"Get out ... son ... go. Not safe. Angel here. Hide. You're in danger Won't stop until you're dead."

"Angel?" Jenna asked. "He called you angel?"

"He never called me that. He called me NickNack, but not Angel. I thought it was some weird comment, you know, like seeing an angel before you die."

Jenna couldn't make the connection. "What do you think he was saying?"

"I don't know, but I thought he was warning me about an angel now."

"Or Angel's Nest?"

Nick nodded, it seemed to make sense. "My dad said that was the name of the adoption agency in Seattle. It was what he and Cary McConnell argued about. We're going there"

"We can't." Jenna could feel fear rising in her.

"I need to know," he said. "You can stay. You can go back to your mom" When he said the word "mom," his voice cracked slightly, almost imperceptibly. "I'm going."

Jenna knew then that it was too late for her. She'd lost any choices she could make when she decided to help Nick. She cared about him. She trusted him. She thought that he could even be right about her own mother. Maybe she couldn't understand. Maybe she wouldn't really believe them.

"I know where Shali keeps an extra set of car keys," Jenna said.