A Cold Dark Place

Chapter Thirty-four

Monday, exact time and place unknown

Jenna woke up, shivering. her hands and legs were still bound together. Dried tears had formed a gluelike crust on her eyes. She rubbed her face against the fabric on which she lay. She tried to lift her head and breathed in. Good. The sickly sweet smell that had left her dizzy, then asleep in the darkness, had abated. The air was damp and heavy, but it did not have that strange odor. To her left the crack of light had narrowed to the thinnest of slits. Where was she?

She called over to Nick. "Can you hear me?"

There was no response, so she tried again, saying his name in a louder voice, though still a whisper.

But again, nothing. She worried that he was still overcome by the fumes of what had been tossed into the dark space. She rolled over on her right side. As she did so, the mattress beneath her buckled on its rusted frame. For the first time, she realized she was on a bed of some kind. It had springs and batting. She wriggled her torso to get on her side so she could see Nick. He'd almost been free when she passed out. He'll get us out of there. He was cutting the tape that bound him.

"Wake up," she said, urgency rising. "Nick, I need you" She could feel the ligature around her wrists. Was it her imagination? It seemed looser than it had been before the curtain of utter blackness fell. Before the sound of the crashing, breaking glass. The smell. It was all in her memory as she twisted her body. In shifting her position, she'd been able to reduce the tension of the binding. It no longer cut into her flesh. Instead she felt she could move her wrists. They hurt. The raw edges of her sliced skin stung. She did not cry. Instead, she could feel something else rise within her. Resolve. Hope. Courage.

I'm going to get out of here, she thought. Nick and I are going home. Please wake up.

Monday, 4:05 RM., Seattle

Olga Morris-Cerrino knew she wasn't on the case anymore. She knew that she'd long since exchanged her love for the law for the joy she'd found tilling the soil and making fruit leathers from her own apricots and her husband's prized golden raspberries. But when she heard that Bonnie Jeffries had been murdered, Jenna Kenyon was missing, and Dylan Walker had been released from prison, she went into Seattle and sought out the one person she thought might have some answers.

"Hi Tina," she said, as she stood in front of a floor-to-ceiling painting, an abstract of a waterfall, at the Winter Gallery, where the former prison-groupie-turned-society-babe volunteered two days a week.

"Do I know you?" Tina looked blankly right into Olga's penetrating eyes. She was scanning for recognition. A party perhaps? Probably not, the jewelry's from Macy 's. A patron? No, the shoes are cheap. She tilted her head and looked suitably confused.

Tina looked as good as though only a few years had passed, not so many more. Olga put on a reasonably warm smile. It wasn't easy, but it was necessary. They were in a public place. "We met years ago," she said, "through a mutual friend, Dylan Walker. I'm Olga Cerrino. I used to be Detective Olga Morris."

Tina's flinty eyes flitted nervously around the gallery. Patrons stood in front of enormous contemporary paintings that mimicked the splattered work of Jackson Pollock. They stared as if there was meaning in the chaos of the artist's wanton spray.

Olga said, "Is there a place we can talk? Or should we just do it here?"

"Oh no," Tina said quickly. "Let's go back to the docent's office"

"Then you do remember me?"

"Yes," Tina said, leading her past the sculpture gallery and into a long white-walled corridor. Her Pradas smacked hard on the marble.

Olga didn't say anything as Tina took a brass key and turned the lock on an office door. Some African tribal figures stared from one corner. Supplies nearby indicated that they were in some state of repair. One of them was a large woman with a protruding belly. She was obviously some kind of fertility goddess.

"I call her Trader Vicki," Tina said, noticing how transfixed Olga had been by the statue, "I think she belongs in a bar and not a museum" She smiled nervously.

Olga didn't see the need for small talk. "Look, I know about you and Bonnie and Dylan."

Tina turned away from the carved ebony goddess and faced her interrogator. "You're going to ruin my life, aren't you?"

Olga remained expressionless. "I don't know what you're talking about"

"I see the way you look at me, judge me, envy me"

"Trust me, I don't envy you."

Tina looked away. "Whatever."

"Listen, Tina, I just want to know what you really know. Not what you think you can get away with withholding to keep your own involvement minimized."

"Involvement with what?"

"You know," Olga said, though, of course she really didn't. God, this feels good, she thought. It had been so long since she'd had the opportunity to face off with someone who had something more precious than gold-pieces to a puzzle.

"Did you know Bonnie was dead? Murdered?"

Tina looked frightened. "Yes. It was on TV. But if you think I had anything to do with Bonnie's murder, you're crazy."

"I didn't say that. But I do think you know more about what Bonnie was actually up to"

Tina was less nervous now. "You do? Well, then, good for you "

"My friend at the Times would love to know."

"Are you blackmailing me? I have the best law firm in town on my side."

The haughtiness might work ifyou didn't know this lady backstory, Olga thought. She decided to press Tina, hard.

"Are you so incredibly self-centered that you don't care about a dead woman?"

"What do you want to know? Am I supposed to stand here and spill my guts? Is that how you want it?"

"Be truthful." Olga paused for emphasis. "About Dylan, Bonnie, and Angel's Nest"

"I knew this day would come," Tina said, tears welling up in her eyes, "When Bonnie came here a month ago ... "

Tina Esposito almost didn't recognize Bonnie Jeffries when she accosted her outside of the gallery, earlier that spring. So many years had passed and they hadn't been kind to Bonnie. She was older, and dumpier. Seeing Bonnie was like revisiting a bad dream, one she'd finally been able to suppress.

"You've done well for yourself. I hope you've been happy," Bonnie said. Her voice was cheerful and overcharged, like the phony inflections of teenage girls who act as if they are so so so happy to see each other.

Tina barely put on a smile. "Thank you. I can't complain. You look well, too" She lied. "I'm late for an appointment," she lied once more.

"This won't take long," Bonnie said, her own smile now waning. If she had expected there was a happy reunion of old friends, she'd been mistaken. She stood in front of Tina, almost blocking her.

"Obviously," Tina said, "we can't talk here." She directed her back to the docent's office. "Five minutes. But then I really have to go-a benefit tonight."

"I knew you were up there," Bonnie said, seemingly impressed. "I've seen your picture in Seattle magazine."

Tina nodded, but she didn't smile. She didn't want to give Bonnie Jeffries any more insight into her life. The magazine article had been a risk, and until just then, no one from her past had come after her. The article was as close as she wanted Bonnie to get.

"I'm a custodian for South Seattle schools," Bonnie said. "After the trial, no one wanted to hire me. Thought I was a whistle-blower. But all I was doing was coming forward to protect us"

"Us?"

"When I made the deal with the prosecution, they agreed to keep my pregnancies out of the papers"

"Your pregnancies?"

"And yours"

Tina appeared mystified. "I didn't know you had a baby."

Bonnie's lips curled to a smile. "I had three "" There was more than a hint of pride in her voice.

"I don't understand. I never knew." Tina Esposito was a good actress, she'd been playing rich and happy for years. But even she couldn't suppress her surprise just then. Who could?

"Jesus, Bonnie," Tina said. "I don't know what to say. Except, why are you telling me this now? What does it have to do with me?"

"My babies are your daughter's brothers"

The look on Tina's face was shock, then horror. "Dylan?"

"Yes. When you left him, he took me on as his soul mate. It was the happiest time of my life. I was continuing on with something you started, bringing life and love to a world that needed it."

"What I did was not about life and love. It was about being foolish and desperate"

"Call it what you want." She took some breath mints out of her purse and extended her hand to Tina.

"No thanks," she said. "Now that you've ruined my day, my life, what do you want?"

Olga sat breathless, only just believing all that she heard. The idea that these women had conspired to have a murderer's babies was beyond comprehension, though she knew other women had done it. She recalled how serial killer poster boy Ted Bundy managed to get a woman pregnant while he was incarcerated in Florida. A California student nurse who'd been caring for Charles Manson made headlines when she revealed she'd had the Helter Skelter killer's boy/girl twins six years after he'd been sent away for life.

"What was her visit all about? What did she want?"

"At first I thought maybe she was lonely. Maybe she had a boring life and she read about me in one of those magazines and thought I had a more glamorous one and wanted to rekindle a friendship. You'd be surprised how many people read those stupid publications. But not Bonnie. She didn't want to look me up to be best pals. For Bonnie, it was always about Dylan. I guess she wanted to reconnect with me because Dylan had been our connection. And she wanted to tell me we were connected through his babies, too" Tina sighed. "She never saw through him. She'd been convinced that he'd been innocent of the murders of those girls in Meridian."

"Lorrie and Shelly," Olga said. "They had names, you know."

"Don't you think I know that?" said Tina, suddenly angry. "And I know Dylan Walker killed them, too. I know because he told me so"

The prison visiting room had been their sanctuary, a place where they could cement their love. Talking for hours, making plans that never really had to come to fruition. But in a very real sense, it had also been a tomb. There was no escaping it. It was in that vault that crying mothers, angry fathers, and deceived wives met with the men who had done humanity the greatest harm. It was a sad little play that repeated itself every week. Tina Winston never really saw herself as one of the foolish. The tricked. She viewed herself as woman enough to love a man she couldn't ever really have. It was a great and beautiful sacrifice.

But all of that changed one Saturday afternoon when he told her.

"I know people-reporters, cops, people-talk about me," Dylan said over a microwave-heated burrito that she bought with four quarters. "They don't always get it right, you understand "

"Certainly," Tina answered, "I know that"

"Do you?" His surprise was exaggerated.

She could barely take her eyes off his. It was that way whenever he spoke. She nodded and sipped her Coke from a paper cup.

"You are the only woman who really knows me to my soul, aren't you?"

"Of course" She adored how he leaned on her, confided his deepest feelings. He completely trusted her.

Dylan looked over at her pregnant belly. At four months, she was starting to show. "You've proven your love," he said. He couldn't touch her just then. Kissing and hugging were reserved solely for the hello greeting and the good-bye. He put his hands on the table, just a whisper from hers. She could almost feel the heat from his fingertips.

"I did it," his words coming to her like the soft, sexy talk of a lover. But the content didn't match the tone. Not at all. "I killed Lorrie and Shelley," he said. "Neither of them understood me. Not really. I mean, not the way that you do"

In a split second of clarity, Tina Winston understood for the first time that Dylan Daniel Walker was a monster. She said nothing more to him that day or any other day. She knew that whatever she carried inside her was the spawn of evil, a child she could never love. A mistake she could never obliterate.

Olga listened intently as the words tumbled from Tina's trembling lips. She stopped and blotted her eyes, careful not to smudge her makeup. "You know, that's the first time I've said his name in all these years. With Bonnie I just used `him' or Dash. I didn't want to give his name life, he was so dead to me after what he'd done"

"But that's not all," Tina went on. "He said there had been others. Others no one you, the police didn't know about"

"Did he say who?"

Tina shook her head. Droplets of her tears hit the shiny marble floor. "No. And I didn't ask. I just wanted to get out of there and throw up"

Olga waited for Tina to get a grip. It would take a while. Tina had gone from stunning and confident to haggard and limp like a wrung-out dishrag in about a half hour. Her eyes were puffy. Her nose was red. Every wrinkle on her face had suddenly etched itself deeper.

Something nagged at Olga. Something Tina had said before she had told her story. That's it. When she d asked why Bonnie had sought her out shed said `At first. At first I thought."

"Why did Bonnie come and find you?" she asked.

Tina took a deep breath and swallowed hard. Her eyes looked downward. "She said Dylan had gotten out of prison and was back in the Northwest. He was in Tacoma. She'd waited for him and he for her. She came to me to gloat, I guess. She was rather smug. As if we'd been in some competition and she'd finally had the upper hand. She'd been the chosen one. She'd been the one all along. You know what her last words to me were?"

Olga didn't have a clue and said so.

"Our son-that's what she said-our son and Dash and I are going to be a family."

"Anything else?"

"Yes, she used the phrase, `there are some flies in the ointment' and she said she was sorry."

Monday, exact time and place unknown

Jenna Kenyon had worked her hands free. The release of her wrists and arms sent a quake of pain through her body. She expected that she'd feel her pain diminish, but the opposite had been true. She let out a little, soft cry and called over to Nick.

"I think I can get loose now," she said. "Nick, how are you coming?"

When she didn't hear anything, she pulled herself up, and moved her feet like she was dolphin kicking at the Cherrystone community pool. At last the cords that held her ankles together slipped to the earthen floor. It was too dark to see, so Jenna crawled on her hands and knees to where she'd last heard Nick's voice. She touched the floor lightly, timidly. No broken glass. Thank God. She didn't want to allow the thought to take hold, but it managed to slip inside her brain: What if he's not asleep? What if he's not drugged? What if he's dead?

She wondered where her mother was, if she was looking for her at all. She found herself praying to God and Jesus that she'd be able to wake Nick up, and they'd get out of the cruel darkness and she'd find her mother. My mom will get us out of here. My mom won't let whoever is doing this get away with it. My mom is the toughest woman I know The thin line of light in the black, which she now assumed was a doorway, had been dimmed. It seemed so far away.

On her stomach, feeling the hard, muddy floor, she slithered in the direction where she had last heard Nick's voice. Groping. Reaching. She put her hands out, touching a damp, soiled blanket. Her fingers were extended like claws. She was Helen Keller, probing with her fingertips to find something. To find Nick.

"Where are you? God, Nick, where are you?"

But once more, no answer. Jenna could feel her heart pounding deep inside her chest. It was thumping hard. But there was nothing to answer it back. No call for her to be calm. "Where are you?" She spun around and called in every direction, but nothing.

Jenna Kenyon was completely alone.

Monday, 7:45 EM., near Meridian, Washington

Olga Morris-Cerrino returned to her farmhouse, fed Felix, and put the teakettle on. She'd dialed Emily three times, but kept getting "customer out of service area" She turned on her computer and let the old PC rumble to a live screen. She logged on and the dial-up connection choked and coughed before she could log on to the archived files of the Retired Police Officers Association of the Northwest and put in her password.

She found Reynard Tuttle and started printing. Olga never doubted that Dylan Walker was a killer, despite her failure to have him put away for the rest of his life. It hadn't been her failure alone. The police in Seattle, Tacoma, and Nampa, Idaho, had also come up with nothing. Even the FBI had been unable to do what was needed to catch a killer. But no one, not a single law enforcement organization, had thought that the Reynard Tuttle/Kristi Cooper case had been related to Dylan Walker. In many ways, it didn't really seem to fit. None of the victims had been held captive anyplace-at least not that they were aware. When Olga pondered the Idaho case of Steffi Miller, she wondered if the girl hadn't been found because she'd been hidden somewhere. Somewhere besides a grave. Kristi had likely been disregarded be cause she'd been so young. But Olga knew that Walker was a cross-generational killer. He killed women of all ages.

She began seeping the Tuttle printouts. Now it was her turn to see photographs of Emily Kenyon when she was younger, before her downfall. There was no mention of Walker, of course, but there was a very small detail that leapt off the laser-printed page. The address of the McDonald's where Kristi Cooper had last been seen: 513 Winchester Avenue. Olga almost did a double take and then immediately went to the phone.

"Answer. Answer," she said, as Emily's phone rang and went to voice mail. "Damn it."

She waited for Emily's greeting to give way to the beep. At least she could leave a message, all staccato and full of excitement. "Emily, Olga. I've been poking around some. Got some interesting info from our favorite society gal, Tina Esposito. Bonnie had three kids, at least that's what Tina says. Three by Walker. Ugh. Anyway, call me. Also, found something interesting about Walker and your Cooper case. He lived a block from the restaurant .. ."

Olga wanted to say more, but the phone connection failed. Cheap piece of garbage, she thought. Hope she got all of that.