A Cold Dark Place

by Gregg Olsen

  The paperboy—a girl named Tracy Ross—told her mother that she was worried about the Chapmans at 4242 Foster Ave., an especially nice street of upscale homes with swimming pools and built-in barbecue pits. The girl, fourteen, had an excellent relationship with everyone on her route.

  “They usually tell me when they go out of town,” she said over a family dinner of roast chicken and mashed potatoes.

  “Maybe it slipped Mrs. Chapman’s mind.” Tracy’s mom, Annette, offered.

  “That’s right,” Rod Ross said. “This is a busy time of year.” He smiled broadly at his brood of six children, Tracy being the oldest of four girls and two boys. Dinner conversation was always pleasant. They didn’t allow TV in the house. “Think about it. Think about how busy we are. Try not to worry, Sweet Pea. All’s well in Ogden.”

  “All right, Father,” Tracy said. She finished her meal, still worried about the Chapmans. There were only three of them. Mr. and Mrs. and their daughter, nineteen, a bookworm named Misty. How busy could they be?

  Chapter Sixteen

  Thursday, exact time unknown, at the abandoned mine

  “I’m here. I’m not leaving. But you have to tell me everything.” Jenna Kenyon had been patient enough. Up to that point, she had been too scared and confused to ask the really hard questions, but the article on the grease-marred pages of the newspaper begged for answers that only Nick could provide. She’d held him at night. She’d dried his tears. She’d even suffered the indignity of using an old Folger’s coffee can for a toilet while he turned his back. It would be wrong to say she was a prisoner. She didn’t think Nick would hurt her if she bolted for the door. But she had to know. She had to ask.

  “What happened?”

  His dark hair hanging like loose fringe over his hooded blue eyes, Nick sat on the dingy plaid sofa staring into the darkness of the old Horse Heaven Hills Mine hiring office. He pulled his legs up tight to his chest, his chin resting between his bony knees. Nick owed Jenna the truth. But he stayed silent.

  “Tell me,” she prodded once more. She put her arm gently around his shoulder. The smell of sweat and gasoline was pungent in her nose.

  “All right,” he began, slowly. “I’ll tell you.”

  It was just after lunch on the previous Thursday when Nick got a call from the school office that there was some kind of a family emergency and that he was needed at home.

  “I just spoke with your mother,” the dour secretary said, “I just spoke with your mother,” the dour secretary said, wire-rimmed readers on a chain from her slender neck. A worried look on the teen’s face brought much-needed reassurance. She smiled and said, “She’s fine. Your dad and brother are okay, too. I asked.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “I don’t know. Go home. Call us if you need anything from here. Okay?”

  “I guess so.”

  Nick signed out for the afternoon, slung his backpack over his shoulder, and hurried to the Ford pickup his dad had given him for his seventeenth birthday. He checked his pocket for cash, but came up short. He should have filled up earlier in the day. He revved the engine; a cloud of exhaust poured from the tailpipe. The gas gauge indicated he had an eighth of a tank. Good. Enough to get home. He figured the “family emergency” probably involved grandpa or grandma. His dad’s parents were already gone, and both Nick and Donny were close to their maternal grandparents. They lived on a farm just south of Billings, Montana. Some of Nick’s happiest memories were of visits to their farm, a place of happiest memories were of visits to their farm, a place of long summer afternoons and quiet, star-filled nights.

  Pulling into their long wagon wheel driveway, Nick spotted his parent’s vehicles parked in front of the house. There was also a black Buick, a Skylark. It was unfamiliar. The plates were framed in a rental car company’s holder.

  Wonder who’s here?

  The front door was ajar.

  “Mom!” he called once inside.

  There was no response. Natasha rubbed against his leg, and Nick bent down to pick up the cat. She immediately turned on her motor and started purring.

  “Where is everyone?” he asked, petting the cat and moving deliberately through the house. The living room with its pair of antique love seats set off by an oval braided rug was empty. So was the kitchen. A drawer was open. Almost absentmindedly, Nick shut it with a push of his hip. The cat stopped purring and wanted down, but Nick held her. Next he made his way down the hall, but everything was quiet. Really quiet. On his way back from his dad’s vacant office at the opposite end of the hall, he noticed Donovan’s fifteen-pound, shoulder-bruising backpack by the front door. He was already home?

  The Seth Thomas grandfather clock in the foyer ticked like a bomb.

  “Donny? Dad? Mom?”

  Natasha jumped from Nick’s arms and scampered toward the door. Maybe they were in the backyard? The afternoon sun was blinding and a breeze wafted the scent of lilacs and mint through the air. Swallows that had set up housekeeping under the eaves swooped low over the grassy field that zoomed up the hill from the driveway to the highway. He noticed that laundry had been hung that morning. It fluttered soaking in the smells of the country that his mother loved so much. The serenity of the scene was utterly at odds with the supposedly urgent request to get home. Something’s really wrong. Nick could feel panic rising.

  He went back inside and stood at the bottom of the honey fir–planked stairway.

  “Mom?”

  There was no reason to be upstairs. There were only bedrooms on the second floor. With a visitor here, why would they be up there?

  Up he went, into a nightmare.

  Jenna found an old cotton painter’s drop cloth, and put it around Nick’s shoulders. Each word of his story sent a shiver from her neck to the base of her spine. Like shards of glass stabbing. Like ice. Nick was looking at her then, measuring the impact of his words, not sure if he was losing her or winning her over. What he had to say was nothing, however, compared with what he’d seen in his parents’ bedroom.

  “It was bad,” he whispered. “It wasn’t some movie set or anything like that, but I wanted it to be fake. To be like some big joke. But I knew that my mom and dad would never play a joke like that.”

  Jenna held him closer. Her heart ached for what he was about to disclose.

  “You’re going to be all right, Nick. You’re going to be fine. I’m here.”

  He shot her a look that stopped her cold. He didn’t even have to say the words. She felt stupid. Of course, he wasn’t all right. How could he be?

  “I want to smoke,” he said.

  “Later. I can’t help you if I don’t know what happened.”

  He drew in a deep breath and held it. He wished he didn’t have to breathe at all. Breathing meant living. He’d wished to God that he’d been dead, that he never seen what was in his parent’s bedroom.

  “Mom? Dad?”

  The room was dark and absolutely still. The blinds glowed orange from the daylight outside, but the light was out and Nick couldn’t see anything. He reached for the switch. The flash from an overhead bisque and brass fixture filled the room with creamy light . . . and red.

  The red, he knew with the visceral response that comes with complete fear, was blood.

  Not this. No. No. Please.

  His mother was nude on the bed. She’d been bound with something on her legs and feet. His father, dressed, was beside her. A spray of blood spatter arced behind the bed. There was so much blood! He took each piece of the scene in like a Polaroid, not waiting to really see what he was viewing. Later the images would emerge from the fog of what he’d seen. His father’s curly silver hair was caked in shiny whorls of blood. His mother’s skin was tissue white. Everything had been touched by the dark red color of blood.

  “Mom! Dad!” Nick lunged for the bed and tried to shake them into waking, though he knew they were dead. His father’s dark eyes stared blankly at the ceiling. His mother had doll eyes, too. Open, but seeing no
thing at all. He was crying then. His hands were wet with blood and he spun around, as the reality of what he’d seen sucked him deeper into terror. “Momma! Daddy!”

  On the floor, he saw a foot, a leg, and then the rest of his brother. Still. Lifeless like his parents. Nick started circling the front of the bed. He was a caged animal. The door was open, he could leave, of course, but he just kept circling. He needed to call 911. Call the police. But he was paralyzed by fear. He called out, a wail of emotion, for his brother and his parents. Had Dad killed Mom, then Donny? Why? Nick felt his pocket for his cell phone, but it was gone. Must be in my backpack. Or the truck.

  Family pictures looked on from the dresser. Among them was a shot of Nick and Donny grinning in cutoffs and Grand Canyon T-shirts standing against the celebrated red rocks of Sedona, Arizona. His mom and dad’s wedding photo, his dad having to forever live down the white and powder blue tux that he’d put on because he loved Peg so much. Mom with her medallion for winning the Tri-State Cat Fanciers show.

  Blood spatter mottled the mirror. Nick caught a glimpse of his own horror, a face he almost didn’t recognize, so twisted in fear. He turned away to go for the phone when a guttural sound called out from the bed. It was a plaintive cry, not quite human sounding. He wondered if Natasha had followed him upstairs.

  The noise was a gurgling sound, but it wasn’t the cat. It came from his father. Nick bent close. He could feel the warmth of his dad’s breath.

  Mark Martin was alive.

  “Dad! What happened? What? I’m getting help now.”

  Mark Martin’s eyes weren’t tracking his son, but his lips were moving. Blood pooled from his mouth.

  “Nick?”

  Fighting back his tears, Nick wanted to tell his father how sorry he was for everything he’d done to disappoint him. He put his hand under his father’s head, cradling him like a baby. He could feel the wetness under his dad’s back that he thought at once had to be blood.

  “I’m getting help. Going right now,” Nick said.

  Mark Martin tried to lift his head, he gurgled out another cry. He wheezed. “Closer . . . thought Donny was you.” His words disappeared into the agony of his ebbing life.

  Nick was near hysterics by then. He couldn’t hear what his dad was saying. It just didn’t make sense. Donny wasn’t him. Of course, he wasn’t.

  “What, Dad?”

  “Get out . . . son . . . go. Not safe. Angel here. Hide. Won’t stop until you’re dead.”

  And with that, Mark Martin’s seemingly dead eyes rolled back into his head. He had taken his last breath to issue his son some kind of a warning. Hide. Not safe. Get out. Nick was in such a state of anguish and fear that he thought he might have dreamt the whole thing.

  How he wished that could be true.

  Nick was crying so hard by then that Jenna knew her words couldn’t console him. Nobody’s words could. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He hadn’t shot his mother and father and brother. She believed everything Nick said, not because she was some gullible young girl, but because the Nick Martin she knew, the one that she had fallen a little in love with, was the gentlest of boys. He would never hurt anyone. He never had.

  It was as if all the emotion had sputtered out of him. Nick Martin was immobile. He’d relived the images of what he’d seen in his parents’ bedroom. He wasn’t even crying anymore. The lack of emotion was nearly as disturbing as what Jenna had heard him describe. She kept her arms around him, not sure what to say. He was like some kind of bird who had smacked into a window and slumped down to the ground. Stunned. Motionless.

  “I’m all right,” Nick finally said. “My dad saved me. He told me to get out. The killer might have been there. I don’t know. I just got in my truck and drove. I didn’t know where to go. I was so messed up. I came here.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Jenna said. “We need to get help. My mom can help. You didn’t do this.”

  He looked more hurt than distraught just then. “Did you think that I did?”

  “No. I didn’t. But Nick, I don’t understand any of this. Who would have killed your family?”

  Nick stood. “Do you think I know? Do you think that I would be sitting in this crap hole if I knew who did this? I want to make them pay! I’ll kill them myself.” His voice was rising with anger and it scared Jenna.

  “Calm down, Nick. I’m here for you. I believe in you.” She didn’t let go, though her heart was pounding. Fear was filling the room. She wasn’t really sure what had happened back at the Martin house, but she could accept that Nick hadn’t played a role in it. “We have to think. We have to figure out what happened.”

  “A couple of weeks ago, my parents told me that my birth mother had wanted to meet me when I turned eighteen next month. She—I guess through a lawyer—contacted my dad through a lawyer here in Cherrystone—Cary McConnell.”

  “I know Cary,” Jenna said, a disgusted look now on her face. “He’s a jerk.”

  “You told me about your mom and him hooking up, so I didn’t want to say anything to you. Basically I didn’t want any part of this. I love my mom and dad. Sure I’m not exactly what they wanted, I guess. They are my parents. Not some woman who gave me up for adoption. Some guy who knocked her up and left her. Whatever her lame story is, I don’t care. I told my dad that.”

  “Your mom and dad really loved you.”

  “My dad saved me.”

  “He called you his angel.”

  Another tear rolled down his cheek. Nick didn’t bother to wipe it. He was lost in his thoughts. His father, mother, brother. All gone.

  “What are we going to do?” he asked.

  “My mom. My mom will help.”

  “She thinks I did this,” he said.

  “I’ll tell her what happened.”

  “I don’t trust her. I don’t know what my dad wanted me to do.”

  “Let’s talk to her. Let me call her.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Friday, 6:30 A.M., Cherrystone, Washington

  Emily could not believe her ears. She was dripping wet from the shower and she risked an electric shock to turn up the volume on her bathroom radio. Candace Kane was reporting on the news that Jenna was on the run with a suspected killer. She didn’t use her name, but might as well have.

  “We’re not identifying the girl, because she’s a juvenile and out of respect for her mother, a county sheriff’s employee,” Kane said. “A source close to the investigation says that the girl disappeared the day after the Martin murders were discovered.”

  I’ll kill her, Emily thought. Why is she reporting this? How does this help any of us?

  Water pooled where her feet were planted on the slippery ceramic tiles. Emily just stood there, frozen, taking in each word and growing angrier by the nanosecond.

  Candace went on, “Classmates at Cherrystone High said the girl and Nick Martin were close.”

  Static followed for a second, then the voice of a teenage boy came through the speaker.

  “Yeah, they were both artsy. He was kind of a Goth, I guess. She’s probably one of those goody goodies that like to hang with the bad boys. Pretty common knowledge around here they were seeing each other.”

  Another voice cut in. This time it was a girl.

  “It was like Romeo and Juliet. It was like both parents didn’t want them to date and maybe that’s why he offed his family.”

  Emily reached for a towel. Her body was shivering, but mentally she was numb with anger at Candace Kane and her so-called news station. Her daughter was not “on the run” and there would be no more “updates to come.” As far as Emily knew, there had been no Romeo and Juliet love affair. Not on Jenna’s part. These kids were taking a tragedy and working it into some kind of overwrought teen romance. Jenna might care for the boy, but if she was in love with Nick Martin, she’d have told her mother. Just what was going on?

  The calls had been coming in all morning. They were stinging wasps that couldn’t be knocked away with a sledgehammer.
One after another. Some were friends and family, worried about Jenna and where she was. Those came out of concern, but Emily Kenyon wished she’d been able to say more than, “Thank you for your concern, your love.” It felt so useless, so damned weak. But the vast majority of inquiries flooding every phone line at the sheriff’s office were from media jackals looking for a story. The story. Some got through to Kip and Jason, and by mid-morning the beleaguered dispatcher, Gloria, stopped patching anyone through. Lavender Post-it notes encircled the screen of Emily’s computer monitor like a feather boa. Call. Urgent. Third time. Important tip want to share. Emily made a stupid mistake on that last one, calling back only to find that the reporter wanted a tip, he didn’t have one.

  Thank you, Candace Kane, for your fantastic story, Emily thought. You’ve made my life even worse than it was. No small feat. Maybe you should be promoted to TV?

  Around noon, Gloria-the-dispatcher buzzed Emily on the intercom, a communications system so poor a shout down the hall would have worked better in most instances.

  “Call for you, Emily. Line three,” she said, her voice crackling under the strain of the failing speakers.

  Emily jabbed at the answer button. “Message please, Gloria. I can’t work with all this. Give the call to Kip or better yet, my detective in training, Jason.” Her tone was decidedly sarcastic, which she regretted right away. “Sorry. Just take a message.”

  “Trust me, you’ll want this one. Emily, I think it’s Jenna.”

  Emily stared at the blinking white light on her phone. “Jenna?”

  Gloria’s usual cool demeanor (“gunshot vic on line two . . . incest perp calling again about computer . . . lawyer wants police report”) ratcheted up ten times to over-the-top excited. “I think so, Emily. Talk to her. Pick it up!”

  Emily pushed the flashing button and put the phone next to her ear. The room seemed suddenly small and dark. Closed in. The blinking light was now a solid glow. Just her and the phone, a lifeline to her daughter. Before she spoke, she heard Jenna’s breath against the mouthpiece. It was soft and sweet. A mother knows when her baby is close. But where was she?