A Cold Dark Place

Chapter Two

Monday, 10:48 n.M., Cherrystone, Washington

The temperature had dropped and Emily Kenyon felt the chill of a late spring breeze nip at her. The strobe of blue from the police light made her shudder and she grabbed a jacket as she got out of the car. Jason Howard, his flashlight like a light saber, raced toward her. Broken glass and splinters of wood were everywhere. It was like the heavens had opened and snowed fragments of the Martin house all around them.

"Glad you're here," Jason said, his flashlight's beam aimed at Emily's face, making her look even more tired and almost ghoulish. She blinked back the light and made a quick nod. "I think I found Mrs. Martin," he said. Emily caught the fear in his voice. She also saw it in his deep-set dark eyes, burrowed into his head under a characteristic knitted brow. The kid is scared shitless.

Before she could say anything calming, her eyes followed the swift movement of the young deputy's flashlight beam.

"She's over here," he said.

Amid the darkness, the light fluttered over the ground like a moth. Emily's heart sank when a white figure popped against the darkened backdrop.

"Oh, dear, there she is," she said, her voice catching slightly.

"I'm pretty sure she's dead."

"I can see that, Deputy."

Margaret "Peg" Martin was splayed out nude; her clothes appeared ripped from her body by the fury of the storm. She was facedown in the mud. Kitchenware was scattered helter skelter. Broken dishes. Fiestaware, Emily thought. Shards of glass glittered around her chalky frame. Pieces of fabric and slivers of paper fluttered as the wind passed through the gully that once held the pretty home. It was as if a bomb had gone off. It was Bosnia. It was Baghdad.

It was Cherrystone, Washington.

"Jesus," Emily said, stooping next Mrs. Martin's lifeless body. "We need some help out here. We need to find Mark Martin and the kids."

Jason stood frozen, his brown eyes dilated to near black. Perspiration rolled from under his thick, wavy hair.

"I heard that one time a chicken was plucked by a twister in Arkansas," he said, a non sequitor that came from a nervous mind.

Emily knew he was rattled, so instead of saying, "What the hell are you talking about?" she shrugged, and said, "Heard the same thing." She retrieved a Maglite of her own and pointed its beam over the wreckage, noticing for the first time that the roof had been ripped from the house and planted some twenty yards away. The walls had fallen like dominos, one on top of the next. The light swept back over to the naked body. Emily leaned closer and touched Peg's neck. It was a formality, of course, but it had to be done. She was, very sadly and very completely, dead.

"Calling the sheriff, now," Jason said, now with the cruiser's radio in hand. A cat meowed, something shifted somewhere in the dark, and Emily steadied herself. She turned toward the noise. Glass crunched under her feet.

She couldn't think of the little Martin boy's name, but she called out the others.

"Mark? Nicholas? Anyone? Can you hear me? Try to move something, say something."

She stood still, but nothing. Again the cat yowled and Emily found herself wishing the poor thing would stop.

Shhhh kitty, kitty, she thought.

"Ambulance is coming," Jason announced, inching his way back toward the corpse.

Emily nodded. "The others have to be around here somewhere ""

"Mr. Martin?" Jason said, his voice thick with dread. He ran his light over the debris field. "Are you here? Can you hear me?"

Emily moved her light methodically over the remains of the house. With each pass from north to south, she covered a bit more ground. And with each swipe of the light, more of what had once been was revealed. A chair. A tabletop. A child's toy. Her heart nearly stopped when the light passed over the blank-eyed stare of another woman. It was so fleeting that it took a second for it to register.

A magazine cover.

"I've heard of people surviving in India after an earthquake for up to ten days or more," Jason said from the other side of the remains of the house.

"I've heard the same thing. Let's hope that they are that lucky."

"Yeah, luckier than Mrs. Martin," he said.

"That goes without saying, Jason. You know, sometimes you just don't have to say the obvious."

As soon as she said the words, she regretted it. She was tired. So damned tired from the last couple of days. She had done more than double duty. She was on edge.

"Sorry, Ms. Kenyon," he said. His apology was so genuine, so much like the way he was, that Emily felt like she had kicked a puppy or something.

"No apologies needed. Been a long last few days, hasn't it?"

"Yeah. I haven't slept more than four hours since Sunday."

They continued to scour all that remained of the house, but it was useless. There was so much of it and their flashlights were too weak for the task.

"We need to cordon off the area and look at first light," Emily said.

"Okay. Will do"

Emily looked down at her watch. First light was in five hours.

"I hate to do this to you Jason, but after we transport Mrs. Martin to the morgue, I'm out of here. I have to get home to Jenna"

Jason didn't look happy about it, but he couldn't say anything. Motherhood was more important than hanging around an accident scene. At least he figured his mother would say so-and he still lived with her.

"Fine by me," he said. "I'll manage"

Emily stood still in the dark, scanning. Could there be anyone alive? She called out for the Martins once more, but her voice was mocked by the sounds of ambulance sirens a faint wail in the distance at first, moving closer and closer.

"Donovan," she said to herself first, then over to Jason.

"Huh?"

She called out louder, irritated that she had to repeat herself. "The little Martin boy's name is Donovan. Donovan, are you out there, honey? Donny? Mark? Nicholas? Are any of you out there?"

The ambulance swung down the driveway, moving faster than it had to, of course. Ricky Culver was at the wheel, and Ricky still thought that driving an ambulance was the next best thing to NASCAR-his real dream. He parked next to the cruiser and two paramedics, sisters Anna and Gina Marino, jumped out of the vehicle.

"Where's the vie?" Anna asked. She grabbed her bag and swung around looking into the rubble pile that had once been such a pretty house. Something caught her eye. The running horse weathervane had managed to stay put on the cupola, which had been tossed aside like baggage in the underbelly of an airplane.

"Better question," her sister, Gina, the older of the pair, a petite young blonde, mused, "is where on God's green Earth is the house?"

Her sister, who wore her curly dark hair short, almost a white woman's 'fro, answered back.

"It's this pile of junk, all over the place. God, Gina, use your head"

"Twister touched down here," Emily interrupted. She waved over the darkened terrain. "You can see the path of destruction. It must have landed here, then pulled up and touched down right at the house and plowed across the field like a sonofabitch."

"Anna, you can be such a bitch. Nobody said a damn thing about the tornado when they dispatched us. They said the victim was a woman with serious injuries. Life threatening."

"It's all right," Emily said. She liked the girls, but she was tired and their ceaseless banter grated. "I'll take you to Mrs. Martin. And she's not a vic. She's not a patient. She's a corpse"

Anna Marino bent over the body, while her sister, Emily, and Jason hovered like fireflies, their lights brushing the im mediate area. With the increased illumination, Emily could see that Mrs. Martin hadn't been covered in mud after all. The dark brown coloring over much of her torso was dried blood. As Anna lifted her arm it was apparent that she'd been dead awhile; rigor had come and gone.

And there was something else.

"Gina, let's roll her on the board and get her out of here"

"Okay."

"Just a second," Emily said, bending closer, her beam trained on a darkened circle of bloody flesh.

"What's that?" Jason asked.

"She probably got poked by wood splinter or something during the storm," Anna said. "I've heard of nails flying through the air and being embedded into a tree"

"I was telling Emily about a chicken that got plucked by a tornado ""

"Say that five times real fast," Gina said. The other two laughed, letting off a little tension. No one meant to be disrespectful but it was the middle of the night, cold, creepy.

Ignoring their banter, Emily was on her knees now, pitched over the dead woman and staring intently. She was so close to Mrs. Martin's body that a nudge would have pushed her face down into the wound that had captured her interest.

"I don't think so" She looked up at Jason and indicated the circular tear in Mrs. Martin's chest. "We can't move her. The tornado didn't kill her."

"Huh?" Jason was confused. He had no idea what she was talking about.

"Jason, secure the scene. It looks like Mrs. Martin was shot."

"Shot?"

"You need me to repeat it? I'm so tired I don't think I can, but yes, shot. Close range, too. GSR burns around the wound here"

She pointed to the smudged edges of the injury.

"I see it," he said.

Gina looked at her sister. "Shit, we haven't had a murder in Cherrystone since we were kids." "

"That was a suicide," Anna corrected, referring to the case of a local pet shop owner who had been poisoned to death.

Gina made a face. She'd had this argument before. She spoke a bit louder so Jason and Emily could hear.

I never was so sure about that. I mean, he died of arsenic and that's a slow death. His wife said he had Parkinson's for years. Sounded a little feeble to me"

"Some things are never meant to be known," Jason said.

Emily stood up, glad she'd put on a pair of jeans. Her knees were muddy and hurt like hell.

"That won't be the case here," she said. "We will find out what happened to her and her family."

Jason went to the radio for backup. Photos would have to be taken. The debris had to be searched, piece by piece. Mrs. Martin was dead, but there were other potential victims, too.

"Tell the sheriff I've gone home. I'll be back at first light," Emily said. She looked at the illuminated face on her gold watch. It was after midnight. "See you in a few. Nobody touches anything. Where I come from this is a crime scene"

To avoid puncturing a tire, Emily thought it best to back her car out of the long driveway. She looked back at the ambulance and the cruiser as their spinning lights duked it out in the night sky. Red. Blue. Red. Blue. The lights pulsed like a heartbeat. What had happened back there? Who shot Mrs. Martin? Where was the rest of her family? A shiver ran down Emily's spine and she turned up the heat. Maybe she'd been wrong. Maybe the injury was the result of the tornado and the gunshot residue she thought she had seen was something else. Dirt. A burn. Anything. She was so tired her eyes blurred; the streetlights passed by like a wand of a light.

It was almost one in the morning; she'd get a couple of hours' sleep and get back to the scene. She probably wouldn't even see Jenna. All she knew was that with the light of day, answers would come. Maybe some hope, too. Hope was so very, very needed.

Weeks before, exact time unknown

A cache of letters was tucked into the back of the scrapbook, a kind of secret meeting place where, whenever the need for arousal or remembering was needed, they'd be there. They were flat as if they'd been ironed under steam and pressure. Though they had once been damp from the heat of fingers, even the wetness of tears, they were stiff now. Crisp. Treasured. Charged.

One missive began:

If only we had a song, Id sing it in your ear, my hot breath, moist and gentle. If only we could touch, Id play my fingers all over your body. Only you know me. Only you know how I feel. Break down the walls. Break down the barriers. Feel me take off your clothes, one button at time ... lingering as they fall to the floor. Your hunger for my touch, insatiable ... but I try. I try ...

The memories were a torrent and the reader's breath accelerated to near gasping as the forbidden feelings of desire washed over head to toe.

... Naked we stand, our arms around each other, our mouths searching for the hotness and wetness of our passion. I look you in the eyes. You stare back, longing for us to become one. Your hands slip between my legs ...