A Cold Dark Place

by Gregg Olsen

  “Hear, hear.” Christopher tilted his head in the direction of the front door. “Let’s get you some air.”

  “Thanks. Turn up anything back there?” she asked.

  “Yeah. One thing. The kill was fresh. Probably within the last hour or so. The ME will know better. I’m just stating the obvious of course. The blood on the floor had barely coagulated. Slippery mess in there.”

  Emily didn’t say anything. She didn’t know what to say.

  “When did you get here?” Christopher picked up the slack in the conversation, the light of a sunny day now flooding the yard in front of the dull brown house. A flowering cherry tree Emily hadn’t noticed was like a mushroom cloud of pink over the garage. “About what time?” His tone wasn’t exactly accusatory, but it bothered her. But not for the reason Christopher Collier would have dared to imagine. She thought of the coin purse. When had Jenna and Nick been there?

  “I was here no more than five minutes before Cen Comm took my 911 call for help.”

  “That’s what I thought. Sure is something that you’d find another body when looking for answers to those three back in Cherrystone.”

  “Yes, I guess so.” She didn’t know what else to say. He was right.

  “Are you going to be okay?”

  She nodded.

  “Drink later? I have to stay and process the scene.”

  Emily didn’t want to, but saying no right then might appear like she was pushing him away. Better to have him close just then.

  “At the Westerfield downtown. Call me there,” she said.

  Emily put her car in gear and started to leave, and watched the scene in her rearview mirror. Christopher Collier walked back inside. Four more cops and techs had arrived, as had the tricked-out truck of the local 24/7 radio news crew. The TV people would probably be next on the scene. Yellow plastic tape now stretched across the front of the house like a banner for a soldier’s homecoming from Iraq. Emily had no intention of going back to the hotel. Not now. Now more than ever, she needed to find her daughter. No more mistakes. She drove east to David’s house on Mercer Island. The image indicating a new message played on the tiny LCD screen of her phone. A text message from Sheriff Kip that nearly caused a pile up on the I-5 and I-90 interchange.

  Walker released last year. Returned to WA. Tacoma area.

  Emily took her cell phone to the sitting room adjacent to the bedroom. It occurred to her that the space would have been a better work area than her bed. A lot better. She sighed and punched the speed dial number for David. It went immediately to voice mail. He was on the phone. She sighed and dialed Olga’s number.

  “Emily?” Olga answered. “Is that you? Are you all right?”

  “It’s me. I’m sorry it took so long to call you back. The day has been a nightmare.”

  “I know. I heard about Bonnie turning up dead.”

  “Oh,” Emily said, slumping into a chair. “What’s the media saying?”

  “It hasn’t been on the news,” Olga said. “A friend of mine from Seattle PD called me. Gruesome. You found her?”

  “Yes,” Emily said, softly, unable to stop the images of what she’d found from playing once more. The blocked-out windows. Bonnie on the bed. Everything soaked in blood. The little pink purse. The baby pictures. They rolled, one after another. She changed the subject to save herself from reliving it even more.

  “Do you know anything about Bonnie’s family?” Emily asked.

  “What family? She was an only child. Her parents disowned her when she went head over heels over Walker. I talked to them one time, very briefly. Ran into them at the Angel’s Nest trial. I was going to testify that she was a nut job, but I was never called.”

  “There were baby pictures in the hallway,” Emily said. “She must have had someone in her life. No sibs?”

  “None that I ever knew about. Best friend was Tina Walker and the love of her life was Mr. Wonderful, Dylan Walker.”

  Emily’s phone indicated that David was calling and Emily told Olga that she’d get back to her as soon as she could. She said good-bye and pushed the Talk button.

  “I tried calling a moment ago.”

  “I know,” David said, his voice cool. “What did you want?”

  “Our daughter, of course. God, do you have to be such an ass about all of this?”

  “You haven’t exactly made my life easy.”

  “Easy? Let’s not go there.”

  David exhaled. “All right. Jenna’s not here. We haven’t seen her all day. I left you a message to call me.”

  “I’ve been busy.” Though she felt defensive just then, Emily also felt a wave of panic. She’d hoped that Jenna was home with her father. She didn’t see the need to tell him about the Jeffries murder nor about Jenna’s coin purse being found there. Neither could she admit that she’d reconnected with Christopher Collier, albeit at a crime scene. The name would enrage David. He’d been the source of many of their arguments in the past.

  “Why don’t you just confide in your cop buddy?”

  “You have your own little girl now. Kristi Cooper has been dead for years. Get over it. I’m your husband. Christopher Collier is married to someone else.”

  “Christopher called. He’s worried about you.”

  There had never been any real reason for the jealousy. Their relationship had never been sexual. But David didn’t see it that way.

  “David, we’ve got to find her. Jenna’s in trouble.”

  “Besides her boyfriend with the dead family, what do you mean? Jesus, Emily, what is going on?” His patience was maxed out and the familiar timbre of his irritated voice was in full force.

  “Look, I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t have a goddamn clue right now. But this is bad. This is serious. You need to act like her father. You need to make her safe.”

  “Don’t start lecturing me. She was living with you when she ran off.”

  “You know something? I’m glad that you have Dani. She’s a bigger bitch than I could ever be.”

  Emily snapped the phone shut. And it felt good.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Sunday, 2:10 P.M., Seattle

  Emily felt her pocket. The little pink change purse. Jenna and Nick had been at Bonnie Jeffries’s house. They’d probably found her in the phone book or in some Google search at the library. What had they seen? What had they done?

  The “Watching the Detectives” ringtone sounded. Emily reached for her cell. The number was local, but unfamiliar. She answered.

  “Emily? It’s Christopher Collier. We’re wrapping up the scene. Pending notification, this is going to make some news. The media will probably want to talk to you.”

  Her heart sank. It would take two seconds for even the worst Seattle reporter to make a connection with her name and past news items.

  “Can’t you leave me out of this? I’ve got my own problems right now.”

  “You know I can’t. You found the vic. That’s the first question anyone is going to ask about.”

  “How much time do I have?” she asked.

  Christopher hesitated. “I don’t know. We’re trying to track down her family.”

  “All right.”

  “You know where they’re at?”

  Emily turned the Accord onto the freeway headed west toward the hospital. “I didn’t know she had any kids.”

  “The pictures in the hall. The baby pictures.”

  Emily remembered. A trio of black-and-whites of a newborn were framed among a montage of other photographs. Some of Bonnie. Some of her pets. They hung in a row of cheap drugstore frames, the golden finish tarnished and flaking.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Can’t help you.” Her mind throbbed with worry for her daughter and what might have happened to her. It was all that she could process just then. His next words snapped her back into the moment.

  “Drinks tonight? Like we talked about?” he asked, almost hopefully.

  Emily caught the vibe. And her own respons
e surprised her.

  “Sure,” she said. “Love to. I have some things to do.”

  “Jenna will turn up,” he said.

  “I’m going to see David.”

  “Right. I’d tell you to say hi, but I know how that would go over.”

  Emily disregarded the comment. There was no point in going there.

  “See you tonight,” she said.

  She called David and begged him to meet her at his office.

  “I don’t know where Jenna is,” he said. “Dani and I are busy today, anyway.”

  “Be there. I need you.”

  Her message must have come through. She didn’t think she was pleading. She didn’t think his heart could open to her anymore. But for a second, the walls came down.

  “Okay, I’ll be there.”

  Sunday, 3:30 P.M.

  “After what you said to Dani, I should never speak to you again without a lawyer.” David Kenyon was as angry as Emily had ever seen him. His face was red and his eyes were narrowed so tightly they threatened to merge into a single lens.

  “You can hate me all you want,” she said, knowing full well she’d crossed the line. Hell, jumped over it. She’d come to his office prepared to eat a bucket of dirt because what she was about to do went against everything she knew her by-the-book ex-husband stood for. She wanted him to break the law. “But this isn’t about me right now, David. It’s about our daughter.”

  David didn’t soften one bit, at least outwardly. His anger was deep and invoking Jenna’s name wouldn’t fix it. Even so, he knew that he had to help.

  “I don’t want to be like Rick Cooper,” he said. It was a cheap shot—a reference to her freefall from grace—but Emily let it roll off her. She didn’t offer a retort that punished him for something that he’d done.

  Like screwing Dani and getting her pregnant when we’re trying to raise a daughter into a decent young woman.

  She held her tongue.

  Just then, David’s assistant Lindsay McKee entered the office. She was young, single, pretty—a deadly combination for any doctor.

  “Working on a Sunday?” Emily gave David a knowing glance.

  He ignored it.

  “Doctor, I had some things to do,” Lindsay said, shashaying into the room, in a short skirt and three-inch heels. “Some problems with the insurance on your Tuesday surgery.” Lindsay rolled her big green eyes and David smiled.

  “All right,” David said, letting out an exaggerated sigh. “Did any of us think insurance companies would run our lives when we were back in med school?’

  Lindsay laughed. “God knows they run this hospital!” She nodded at Emily and waited a beat to see if Dr. Kenyon would introduce them, but he stayed mum. As soon as the girl left, Emily came around the desk to face the computer screen. David started typing his password: Dani21.

  It wasn’t hard to see the keys he was hitting, especially the last two.

  “Is that her age?” Emily’s words were drenched in sarcasm.

  David made a face, but said nothing.

  “Kidding.”

  David hit the Enter key and the system flashed into life. A blue-and-white screen displayed various fields for names, socials, addresses, and insurance information.

  “Okay, to search the database is pretty easy,” he said, looking at Emily. “If I can do it, you can do it.”

  “Okay. Remember you’re talking to a woman who still thinks blackberry is a pie filling.”

  “I remember.” He softened a little. “Records from all Seattle hospitals are held on separate servers that share the same interface and same security protocol. The only hitch here is that I’m a surgeon, not a records clerk. I have access, but it will log that I’ve looked at records that I probably have no need to review. It will send a report up to the IT people and I’ll have some explaining to do.”

  “You’ll think of something,” Emily said. “You can be a good liar when you want to be.” She hated herself for saying that, but the words just slipped out. David was doing something that she needed done. Desperately. A court order would take too long.

  Jenna won’t be another Kristi Cooper.

  “Where’s your printer?” Emily asked.

  “You didn’t say anything about making copies. I could get in deep shit for this. No copies.”

  “You want me to be here all day? Do you want me to get to the bottom of this?”

  David eyed his office door. He wasn’t entirely convinced, but he was willing to consider what Emily was saying. His assistant Lindsay dropped off some correspondence. She smiled at David. It was a slightly flirtatious smile, not quite come hither, but far past cordial.

  The look for a single doctor. Emily figured she didn’t know that Dani was at home, pregnant and destined to be the doctor’s wife.

  After she left, David spoke.

  “Okay, the printer is next to Lindsay’s workstation. I’ll tell her you are printing out some tax stuff for us, and to keep people clear of the printer. She’ll listen.”

  “Yeah, she’s in love with you.”

  David blushed slightly, but he didn’t deny it. “Just do what you need to do. For Jenna.” He left his expansive office, letting the door shut slowly behind him.

  Emily stared at the screen and began to type: Angel’s Nest + Agency. The system’s hourglass timer began to spin as the computer worked through the thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of records. Emily looked around and noticed for the first time a photo of Jenna and David taken at the Grand Canyon. She was missing from the shot. Not because she’d held the camera—as she did on most of their travels—but because he’d cropped her out. She could still see the shadowy form of her arm over Jenna’s shoulder. Emily shook her head. The computer kept grinding. Through the frosted glass panels alongside his office door, Emily could see Lindsay’s silhouette moving around her cubicle.

  The search screen popped up.

  What the—?

  It was packed with entries for Angel’s Nest. Bonnie Jeffries’s name leapt off a few of the citations. There must have been more than a hundred. Emily started scanning them when Lindsay decided she needed to come in with a mug of stale hospital coffee.

  “Want some? Dr. Kenyon told me you’re his ex-wife,” she said, though there was no reason except the medical assistant’s apparent need to confirm what her boss had told her.

  “I’m fine,” Emily said. “I’m printing out some private tax records.”

  “David told me,” she said.

  David? Hmmm. Poor Dani. I almost feel sorry for her. Almost.

  “I’ll get those pages for you.”

  “No,” Emily said firmly. “I’ll get them. They are, after all, private.”

  “Oh that’s okay,” the assistant said with a smile. “David trusts me with all of his private affairs.”

  “But I don’t.” Emily got up, pushed past the dumbstruck young woman and went to the printer. She guarded it as page after page rolled out. Finally, a moment or two passed, and the machine stopped. She retrieved the stack and started for the elevator.

  Lindsay stood there with her hands on her hips. She was talking to another medical staff member. Emily could read just one word on her lips.

  “Bitch.”

  You don’t know the meaning of the word, Emily thought. But Dani will teach you.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Sunday, 5:10 P.M., Seattle

  It was very late afternoon when Emily returned to her hotel room. She’d practically lived on her cell phone since leaving David’s office with the medical records tucked into a Macy’s shopping bag next to Lindsay-in-love’s desk. She’d talked with Gloria at the sheriff’s office back home. No news. She left a message for Olga. She had even talked with Dani to try to patch things up. The conversation played in her mind and she felt her anger rise.

  “I am sorry,” Emily had said, gritting her teeth somewhat, but making a valiant effort. An outboard motor went by. Dani was out on the deck overlooking the lake.

>   “I’d like to believe you,” Dani responded, coolly. “For Jenna’s sake.”

  Why do you insist on being such a bitch? You’ve got the view home. You got the surgeon. You can have all of that. Just don’t bring up my daughter’s name like she means a damn thing to you.

  “That’s right,” Emily said, swallowing the bile in her throat, “for Jenna.”

  She slipped out of her shoes and made a beeline for the minibar, which to her dismay didn’t have a drop of tequila. She’d had a taste for the Mexican booze all day. She settled for gin and tonic. After talking with Dani Brewer, it just seemed especially good right for the moment. She noticed the light on the hotel phone blinking and she punched in the code for the message center. There were two. Both from Christopher Collier.

  “Hi Emily. Chris here. Dinner tonight? I’ve tried your cell twice. You must be out of range. Call me and let me know if you want to meet up at your hotel.” Drinks had become dinner. That was fine with her. A kind face would be a welcome change.

  The second call was a hang-up.

  She dialed Christopher’s number, this time getting the Seattle Police detective’s voice mail. In a way it was a relief. She felt anxious, foolish, tired. But she was also lonely and in need of company. Maybe even in need of validation that she hadn’t screwed up her entire life or lost her daughter.

  Hadn’t been the victim of bad karma.

  “Chris, dinner tonight sounds lovely. How about eight? See you here at the Westfield.”

  Seeing Christopher, she knew, was something she had to do. She sipped her drink and remembered what until Jenna’s disappearance, had been the worst episode of her life. It was long ago and Christopher had been there.

  Long before the tornado, on the Washington coast

  The summer wind blew cool moist air over the driftwood along the Pacific shore. A few seabirds dove into the surf, and about a hundred yards down the beach, a couple of beachcombers looked for their elusive prize—Japanese glass fishing floats. Emily Kenyon was alone; her partner Christopher Collier was searching the area from the south side of the beach. She wore street clothes—khakis, open-toed shoes, and white cotton blouse. A heavy woolen sweater concealed her weapon. Sand and beach grit found its way inside and was grinding the soles of Emily’s feet. She cursed the fact that she wore those completely impractical shoes.