A Cold Dark Place

Chapter Three

Tuesday, 1:46 A.M., Cherrystone, Washington

Dead tired. Emily thought that would make the perfect title for a book of her life. So exhausted, but still aware. Frogs that had taken up residence in her neighbor's Home Center terracotta fountain caused a little commotion there, but everything else on Orchard Avenue was calm and benign. The air barely stirred the scent of the old white lilac bush. Jenna had left the porch light on for her mother and a swarm of gray and white moths swirled around without pausing to land. Emily bent down to keep them from her hair and inserted her key. The dead bolt slid. Inside, she dropped her overstuffed handbag on the console and when the contents spilled for the second time that day, she just left everything where it fell. Once down the hall, she peeked in on her sleeping daughter. Jenna was curled in a ball, pink-cheeked and dreaming-her mother hoped-happy dreams. We could use some happiness wherever we can get it in this life, Emily thought.

She shifted the Indonesian batik spread and Jenna moved. Her blue eyes were narrow slits. She half-smiled at her mother, but said nothing.

Good, she's alive. Emily knew the thought was absurd. But nearly every mother experiences that feeling of deep worry whenever they leave their children alone-six or sixteen-a few minutes to get the mail, or a couple of hours to check a crime scene. When they sleep in too long. When they don't come down to dinner right away. The worst always seems possible, even plausible, when love is so strong. All mothers know that.

Emily picked up a small dish and spoon, the apparent remains of a late-night snack. Chocolate ice cream, it seemed. Probably Brownie Batter, Jenna's favorite. For a second the coagulating ice cream made her mind flash to Peg Martin and the dried blood on her chest, but she swallowed hard and tried to pass it out of her memory. She crept across the room, shut the door with her hip, and walked to the kitchen. The red light on the answering machine atop the antique butcher block beckoned once more and though she could barely stand, she pushed the play button.

"I don't like being disregarded, Emily."

It was Cary McConnell. The jerk of a lawyer who made other lawyers seem like marriage material.

"I've called you three times since the storm," he went on. "I want to make sure you and Jenna are all right. I mean, I know you're okay, because I've seen you twice in town, but Jesus, I thought we had something going "

She pushed the FAST FORWARD button and the tape whirled, making Cary sound like a helium inhaler.

"And if you think you can ignore me-"

You really know how to win back a girl, Emily thought, selecting the ERASE button. The machine clicked and shut off. The red eye blinked one final time.

"Good night, Cary. And good-bye," she said, softly to herself.

In her bedroom at the end of the hall, she adjusted her alarm clock to allow three and a half hours' sleep. She was glad she didn't have on any makeup because she'd been raised by a mother who thought going to bed with makeup still applied was akin to a mortal sin. Emily put her head on the pillow and thought of Peg Martin and the one vivid memory she could recall. It was the time she'd seen Peg at a school carnival the October before last. They had worked the bakery booth together for two or three nights. Emily brought chocolate chip cookies from Safeway and rewrapped them in home bakeware. Like a gas thief with petroleum breath caught with a gas can and a rubber hose, she confessed.

"I guess I'm not fooling anyone"

Peg, older than Emily, by ten years, was gracious. "Some people prefer when it's store-bought anyway."

"Yeah, but yours aren't. They look too good to be from any store"

Peg smiled. "I'm not a detective. I'm a homemaker. Ask me to solve a crime and I'll bring in a DVD of CSI and we can watch it together. That's about as close as I'd ever get"

Peg was a lovely woman, the kind who'd always show up with more than what was requested. She gave time to whatever the cause. She'd made the best macaroons outside of a bakery, tall, fluffy, and dipped in dark chocolate. And she always smiled.

"Take two," Peg had said that chilly autumn evening to a boy with a crumpled dollar bill, "They're kind of small." Then she winked the kind of exaggerated conspiratorial move kids make when they know they are being bad and want everyone else to know they know it, too.

But they weren't small, of course. They were like cocoa covered Mount Rainier, Washington's tallest, grandest peak. Peg was just that type of woman. Now she was dead, under a pile of tornado trash, a gunshot wound in her chest, and her family strewn somewhere out in the darkness that enveloped her property. Emily willed herself to think of something positive, the carnival, the cookies, but the image of the dead bake-sale lady, probably murdered, kept materializing.

I'll find out what happened to you, she thought, drifting off to sleep.

Tuesday, 3:10 A.m., a rural area near Cherrystone

The moon was slung low in the sky, dipping to the horizon that drew a hard edge from Horse Heaven Hills, a basalt rock formation about twenty miles outside of Cherrystone. An old lead mine had flourished there decades ago. The remnants of the mine camp had been used by teenage partyers proving their prowess with Budweiser since the 1960s. Maybe even earlier. Cans and bottles scattered along the roadway up the hill. Not everyone could wait to get up to the top.

But he did. He made it up there the night after the storm. It was dark then, with the lantern moon obscured by a ghostly cloud cover. He could barely see ten feet in any direction, but couldn't think of anyplace else to go. He'd abandoned the pickup when it ran out of gas, and started walking the rest of the way. The miners' hiring office was nothing more than the most primitive shelter. Windows were smashed out. Graffiti about who'd give who a blow job-male or female were spray painted in an agitated script over the boarded-up old pay window. A nylon plaid couch retrieved from the courtordered ladies' lounge area was in decent shape, considering how many teens had romped on it over the years.

None of that mattered. He was so exhausted. It was a bed right then and it was where he'd wait. Animals with tiny claws, mice, maybe squirrels, skittered in the walls. The smell of urine stung his nose. But he curled up. Slept. Waited. Tried to figure out just what he'd do. What had happened before his world literally turned upside down.

More important, he wondered who he really was.

Tuesday, 5:40 A.M., Cherrystone, Washington

Emily was furious. She held her cell phone with a death grip. She ran to the bathroom, phone clamped to her ear, rinsed her mouth with Scope, and skipped the brushing. Certainly no flossing, about which she was nearly obsessive, to the point of working the fiber between her teeth in the car as she waited in traffic back in Seattle. She looked worse than she ever had, but she had a new vigor. She was pissed off. Royally. She listened to Jason and spat out the icy blue liquid and rinsed the sink.

"Yes, I know I said I was beat. Everyone is. But, Jesus, Jason, why in the hell didn't you call me?"

"I did," the young deputy said. "Sorry, but I did."

Emily regarded the same jeans she wore the night before and pulled them from the upholstered chair that functioned more as an open-air closet than a reading place, as she'd intended. They'd do. She was nearly in a frenzy. Things were happening down at the Martin place and that was officially her territory. She didn't like it one bit that interlopers were there.

"Peg Martin is my case," she said. "I should be notified before the lab rats and techies come over from Spokane and work the scene. My scene"

"You didn't answer, Emily."

"Detective, call me detective. Why don't you start calling me detective for a goddamn change?" The operative word of her rant was pounded out with a hammer. Jason couldn't miss her irritation.

She looked at her phone and the blue face showed two missed calls. She scrolled the phone numbers and ranted some more. Jason had called twice-at 2:45 and 4:30.

"Maybe if you acted like I was your superior, which I am in every way, you'd know better. I'm not your cousin. Your sister. Your buddy."

"Detective," he said, correcting himself as a he sunk into the mud of the Martins' ravaged yard. "We found Mr. Martin's mangled body about an hour after you left. I called the sheriff, and I guess he called Spokane for backup. They showed up at four-thirty."

Emily Kenyon felt lousy just then. The kid was flustered. He was doing what the sheriff had told him.

"Emily, err, Detective, there's one thing you ought to know," he said. She was so mad at him, he could feel it. He didn't wait for her response. "I saw the same wound on Mr. Martin. I think he's been shot, too. So do the guys from Spokane"

Emily paused. She hadn't expected that. Adrenaline pulsed. "Jesus, Jason," she finally blurted, "what the hell happened out there? Are you sure? And where are the boys? Have you seen any sign of them?"

"No. Nothing. Backhoe's on its way. We're taking video and stills as soon as the light's a little better here. Then . . " he caught himself. "When you get here and give us the go ahead we'll see if we can find them. I remember reading about a kid who survived longer than a week.. "

She cut him off. "Yes, you told me, in Pakistan."

"It was India," Jason said, slightly glad he could trump her on something. She'd hurt his feelings and it was a tiny payback. It felt just a little bit good.

Emily Kenyon got that, even on the tiny cell phone.

"Yes, India," she said. "I'm on my way. Be there ASAP."

She hung up, put on a shirt, and ran a brush through her hair. A rubber band was the only remedy. The ponytail was ridiculous at her age, and Emily knew it. But there was no time for anything like washing and blow-drying, which on a good day was a fifteen-minute chore. Not when there were two bodies west of Cherrystone and two kids missing.

Need to cut this mess, she thought, thinking of her mother's advice that a woman should cut her hair when she reaches forty. And, if you ask me, that's stretching it, Emily, her mother had added.

She didn't have the heart to wake Jenna as she passed her room. Leaving her alone again wasn't right, but Jenna had school. Besides, somebody deserved some rest around there. She wrote a note and stuck it on the refrigerator-the first place Jenna was sure to go.

"Come home right after school. Serious case. Love, Mom"

And Emily was out the door.