A Wicked Snow

Chapter One

Emily Kenyon was thrashed and she looked it. She pulled herself from her gold Honda Accord, picked up her purse, and walked toward the front door. She turned her tired gaze toward the end of Kestrel Avenue. The neighborhood of vintage homes was safe. Not one fish-scale shingle from the three-story painted lady across the street had been harmed. Not so much as a splinter. Emily could even hear kids playing a couple of doors down. Everything was as it had been. The only hint that the world had turned over was the slight scent of acrid smoke that wafted through the air. It was faint—but enough of a reminder that across town, homes and cars had burned.

It had been two days since the tornado pounced on a section of Briar Falls Estates two miles away. It came nearly without warning and left a jagged swath of destruction that stole the hard work of homeowners and gardeners in ten minutes’ time. Roofs had been peeled off, play sets and bicycles hurled into trees. There was no making sense of whose house had been spared and whose hadn’t. Destruction reigned on the west side of Hawes Avenue, while the east side was pristine. Across the street from a home that had been nearly ripped in two, a birdbath stood without a drop spilled.

None had died. It was true that an elderly lady who had holed up in her bathroom had been hospitalized in bad shape. Emily expected that the woman, in her eighties, would survive despite her trauma. The lady was a fighter.

Emily stepped into the foyer. As she set down her purse on an antique walnut console table, its contents shifted. Her detective’s badge holder slipped out; along with a pink lipstick she wished she’d used up and could toss. But she was thrifty, and though it didn’t really work with her dark brown hair and eyes, she’d wear it until it was gone. She scooted the badge and lipstick tube back inside the pouch and called out for her daughter.

“Jenna? I’m home.”

The scent of cinnamon toast and the emptied glass of milk on the counter indicated her daughter was somewhere in the house. Emily didn’t wait for a response.

“I’m going to take a shower. Then let’s go out and get something to eat.”

“Okay, Mom,” a voice finally came from down the hall. “I’m on the phone. I’ll talk to you when you’re out. I’m hungry. Take a fast shower!”

Emily smiled. Jenna was seventeen, but still very much her little girl. It was just the two of them now. David had left for Seattle and had become a somewhat shadowy figure since the divorce was final. There had been a few dates with new men—even a fairly serious affair with a local lawyer. But Cary McConnell was too possessive and controlling, and Emily had had enough of that with her first—and only—marriage. He still called, but she avoided him whenever she could. That wasn’t easy. Cherrystone, Washington, was a town of less than 15,000. She was in the courthouse two or three times a week, and so was he.

Emily snake-hipped out of her black skirt and unbuttoned her blouse and let it fall to the floor. She was slender, blessed with long legs and a figure that looked more twenty than forty, which she was approaching on her next birthday. She clipped her dark tresses in a ponytail and twisted the shower knob with the red H all the way to the left. The C she moved a quarter turn. The old pipes clanked and steam swirled. Emily liked hot water.

“Pietro’s?” she called out before stepping inside the white and black tiled interior. “I’m thinking pizza.”

Of course, she really wasn’t. She was thinking of the tornado and its aftermath. It had come in the darkness of Saturday evening, almost unexpected as twisters were rare in Washington State. Only a handful of damaging storms had been recorded there; the worst had been one that killed eleven near Walla Walla in 1952. The twister that came to Cherrystone on Saturday had howled in the darkness and snatched up all in its wake. Houses and cars were shredded as if in a giant steel-toothed blender. Almost two dozen homes were destroyed or seriously damaged. A few, sucked in the air like Dorothy Gale’s Kansas house, had risen above the pines and landed, not in Oz, but in a neighbor’s pasture. A dairy near the junction of Wayne Road and U.S. 91 had been pulverized to such a degree that it would take a magnifying glass to determine what color the barn paint had been on the splinters of siding, which had been flicked like balsa. The Winston Granary was flattened which meant already scarce jobs had instantly become even scarcer. Five trucks that had been carefully parked in a row after shift had been tossed to utter ruin. Power lines had been snapped like frayed jute. A semi had been lifted more than a hundred yards and slammed into a hillside.

Emily tilted her head backward, a funnel of water pouring from the chrome fixture. Hot water, beyond a temperature most could endure, flowed over her naked body, sending the stress of the tornado, the worries of a long day, down the drain. Stepping from the shower, Emily wrapped a thick cotton towel around her torso. She bent over, wrapped a second one around her head, then flipped her hair back. She called once more to Jenna.

“You never answered, honey. Is Pietro’s all right?” Again, silence.

Steam swirled in the bathroom and she flipped on the fan. A moment later, she slipped on a terry robe and padded down the hall to Jenna’s bedroom—a space that had been hers when she was a girl. A rectangle of yellowed glue on the door revealed the spot were she’d once put up a NO BOYS ALLOWED sign to keep her little brother, Kevin, at bay. With each step, a memory. Through a knife-slit of light in the doorway, she could see Jenna typing out a message on her girly-girl pink Macintosh computer. Jenna was a petite girl, a little small for her age. Her stature didn’t diminish her, though; indeed, it only made her stand out. Long hair like her mother’s framed her delicate heart-shaped face. Her eyes were blue, the cool color of the Pacific. She tapped on the keyboard with frosted pink fingernails, chipped and ready for another mother/daughter manicure session in front of the TV with one of the Law and Orders on.

Emily pushed open the door, startling Jenna, who looked up with a frozen smile.

“Oh, mom, I didn’t hear you.” She closed the chat window and swung around to face her mother.

“Are you up to no good?” Emily asked, allowing a smile to come to her lips, but deep down, the very idea of her daughter chatting with anyone was more than she could take. She’d seen the way perverts worked the keyboards of personal computers and stalked their prey, unsuspecting children in houses all across America.

“Just talking with Shali,” she said. “And yes, we were up to no good. There’s a nice guy who wants to meet us at the Spokane Valley Mall next weekend. He says he looks like Justin Timberlake and Jude Law. Combined.”

Emily sat on the edge of the bed, smoothing out the sateen spread.

“He does, does he?” Emily said. She knew when her daughter was pulling her leg and she started to play along. “Maybe I could meet him, too?”

Jenna shook her head. “Sorry, mom, but you’re too old for him. Shali and I are probably too old for him. He seemed to lose interest when we said we were old enough to drive.”

“That’s not funny.”

“Sick, I know.”

“You know how I worry.”

“And you know that you don’t have to worry about me. I know the drill. I don’t make mistakes. My mom is a cop, you know.”

“So I’ve heard.” Emily shook out her hair. “I’m not going to dry this mess. Let’s get out of here and eat. I’m beat.”

Jenna grinned. “Okay. Jude Timberlake can wait.”

With that, Emily returned to her bedroom, and put on a pair of faded blue jeans and a cream-colored boat- neck sweater. She looked in the mirror and gave herself a once over.

“Not bad for almost 4-0,” she said, loud enough for Jenna to hear, which, of course, she did. “Maybe this Jude Law look-alike of Jenna’s would be interested in an old chick like me.”

Jenna appeared in the doorway and put her hands on her hips.

“You’re disgusting,” she said, a smile widening on her pretty face. “Shali and I had him first.”

Twenty minutes later they were sitting in a maroon and black vinyl booth at Pietro’s, the only place in Cherrystone that made pizza that didn’t taste like it came from the frozen food section of the Food Giant. Emily was grateful that her daughter had outgrown the “cheese-only” topping option for something a little more adventurous—pepperoni and black olives. Emily ordered a beer and Jenna nursed a soda.

“You know, you don’t need to order diet cola, honey.”

Jenna swirled the crushed ice with a pair of reed-thin plastic straws. “You mean I’m not fat? Yeah, I know. But I’m hedging my bets. I’ve seen the future. Look at Grandma Anna.”

“Jenna! That’s not nice.” Emily tried to act indignant, but Grandma Anna was her ex-husband’s mother, and it was true that she had thick thighs. “Besides, your body shape is more from my side of the family.”

Jenna drew on her straws and nodded. “Thank God.”

The pair sat and ate their pizza, but the mood shifted when the conversation turned to the storm. “We are lucky. All of us. The tornado ravaged those homes on Hawes, but no one was killed.” Emily swallowed the last of her beer, regarding the foamy residue coating the rim of the schooner. “I don’t use the word lightly, you know, but it was a bit of a miracle, really.”

“I know. Shali and I were talking about that,” Jenna said. “Now you know that Jude Law Timberlake is not real. Nice fantasy, though.”

Emily managed a faint smile. “I’ll say.”

Emily Kenyon was a homicide detective, not an emergency responder, but Ferry County was so small that when the storm hit she immediately reported to work to do what she could. She had to do something. Anything. She’d grown up in Cherrystone and it was her town. Always would be. The house on Kestrel Avenue was her childhood home. Her parents, who had died in a car accident, had left the family home to Emily and her brother. Since only one could live there, Emily bought out Kevin with savings and took a small mortgage. The house, with its bay windows and high-pitched roofline, was the reason she returned to Cherrystone. Not the only reason. Her divorce from David, a surgeon with a quick wit and an even faster fuse, was the other. The divorce made him mad. Emily made him mad. The world was against him. Cherrystone was about as far away as she could go. Leaving a detective’s position in Seattle wasn’t easy, but the move was never in doubt. It had been the right thing.

Of course, in the middle of it all was Jenna. She loved both her parents, but felt her mother needed her more than her father. At sixteen, the courts allowed her to schedule her own visitation with her father. She saw him once a month, usually in nearby Spokane. And that, she was sure, was enough.

Emily asked for a pizza box to take home the remainder of the pie.

“We can have it for breakfast,” she said.

“Only if it lasts that long.”

Emily’s cell phone rang, its dorky ring tone of Elvis Costello’s “Watching the Detectives” chiming from her purse. The number on the LED was Dispatch. The sheriff was calling. She picked it up and held it to her ear.

“Kenyon,” she said.

With her mother’s hands full, Jenna picked up the flat carton and the pair walked toward the door. With her free hand, she fished some Italian ice peppermints from a bowl by the hostess lectern and offered one to her mother.

Emily shook her head, her ear pressed tightly to her flip phone.

“I see,” she said. Her tone was flat, like someone checking a list for which there was no need. “All right. Okay. Got it. I can take a drive out there tomorrow, first thing.”

Emily looked irritated as she put away her phone.

“Do you know Nicholas Martin?” she asked.

“Sure. Who doesn’t? He’s a senior and besides, he’s kind of a freak.”

Emily turned the ignition and the Accord started. She put it into drive.

“Freak? In what way?”

“You know, one of those country kids who didn’t get the memo that the Goth look was so last millennium.”

“Black clothes? White face?”

“And eyeliner, mom, even eyeliner. But what about him?”

Emily sighed; glad she didn’t have a son to deal with.

“Did you see him at school today?”

“I don’t know. Although, if I did see him, I’d probably remember. He’s the memorable type. What’s up, mom?”

“Probably nothing. His aunt in Illinois has called the office twice. She’s panicking because she hasn’t been able to reach anyone from the family since the storm. The big cell tower past Canyon Ridge was knocked out in the twister, too. Sheriff wants me to drive out to their place tomorrow morning and have a look around.”

“I think Nicholas has a brother, Donovan. He’s younger. Third grade?”

“Oh, now I remember. Nice family. I’m sure they’re fine.”

“I could IM Nicholas when I get home. He hangs out in that Goth chat room Shali and I go to all the time.”

Emily shook her head and attempted to suppress a weary smile.

“Uh, you’re kidding, right?”

“Yeah, I’m kidding.”

“No need, honey. I’ll handle it.”

Emily parked in front of the house, the night air filled with the scent of white lilacs her mother had planted when she was a girl. They were enormous bushes now, nearly blocking the front windows. Emily didn’t have the heart to give them a good pruning, though they really needed it. She only thought of the job when springtime rolled around and the tallest tips were snowcapped with blooms. The memory brought a smile to her face, but the smile fell like a heavy curtain with the ring of another call.

Sheriff Kiplinger, again.

“Kenyon, off duty,” she said, to put the reminder of her status up front.

“Emily,” the sheriff said, “you’ll need to go out to the Martin place tonight. Casey will meet you there. Neighbors say they think the twister might have touched down that way.”

“Jesus,” Emily said, waving Jenna inside. “Can’t it wait until morning? I’m about half dead, right now.”

“You know the answer. Once we get a call from a concerned citizen we have to act on it right away. Damned public relations. Damned lawyers.”

Sheriff Brian Kiplinger had a point. An adjacent county nearly went bankrupt in the late 1990s when a woman reported that her sister was being abused by her husband. When law enforcement had arrived three days later, the woman was paralyzed from a beating that happened two days after the sister phoned in her concerns.

“All right,” Emily said. “I’m going.”

“Casey’s already on his way.”

Emily exhaled. She told herself that she’d be back home in bed within a couple of hours. She grabbed one of Jenna’s Red Bulls from the fridge, thinking that the energy drink’s sugar and caffeine could fuel her for the drive out to the Martin ranch on Canyon Ridge, about fifteen miles out of town. Once there, she knew adrenaline would kick in. So would Casey Howard’s bottomless reserve of energy. Casey was only twenty-five, a sheriff’s deputy with a four-year degree in criminology from Washington State University. He was single. Bright. Always up for anything. Youth and enthusiasm counted during the grindingly long hours after the storm.

She glanced at the red Cyclops of the answering machine light but ultimately ignored it. Whoever had called could wait. She blew a kiss at Jenna who was now in front of the TV watching some bad-taste dating show. Emily was too tired and too preoccupied to say anything about it. She grabbed her purse and went for the door. The car radio was playing a B.B. King song, which was like comfort food for her soul. She loved that Mississippi Delta sound; B.B. was her favorite.

This, too, shall pass, came to mind as she drove.

The sky had blackened like a cast-iron pan, pinning her headlights to the roadway. A tumbleweed, a hold- out from the previous season, skittered in front of the car. The wind that had converged on Cherrystone and obliterated everything in its wake now was gentle but present. Dust and litter swirled over the roadway as she drove into the darkness of a spring night. Lights off the highway revealed the neat ranch homes amid fields of hops and peppermint, the two most important cash crops of the region. Emily felt the buzz of the caffeine as she took a sharp left off the highway.

The mailbox announced who lived there: Martin. She’d been out there before, of course. Despite her big-city credentials, she’d probably been to every place in the entire county before she got her detective’s shield and still had to patrol. Growing up in Cherrystone had also brought even more familiarity, though much of the place had changed. She vividly remembered the Martin place as a typical turn-of-the-century two-story, with faded red shutters, and gingerbread along a porch rail that ran the length of the front of the house. The roofline featured a cupola covered with verdigris copper sheathing, topped with an elegant running-horse weathervane. The house sat snugly in a verdant grade etched by meandering year round Three Boys Creek.

Emily pointed the Accord down the gravel driveway toward the house. Dust kicked up and the sound of the coarse rock crunched under her wheels. She was surprised by the contrail of dust following her car. It billowed behind her, white against the night sky. She didn’t think she was going fast and she didn’t think that any dust could remain in the county, which was scoured by the tornado. She negotiated the last curve and saw Casey’s county cruiser, a Ford Taurus made somewhat more legit by its black-and-white “retro police car” livery. It had been parked with its lights stabbing into an empty darkness. The blue light spun in the night.

“What in the world?”

Emily Kenyon could barely believe her eyes—the Martin house was gone.