A Cold Dark Place

by Gregg Olsen

  She and Christopher were looking for a little girl named Kristi Cooper. The Northwest had been riveted by the story of the little girl, who had last been seen by her mother in one of those gigantic bins of multicolored plastic balls at a Seattle fast food restaurant. Last seen. It had been a while. Kristi had been missing for almost three weeks. She was blond and pretty. She was also small for her age. In a media-driven world that had embraced the concept of bland American adorable, Kristi fit the bill to a T. Her picture was everywhere—newspapers, flyers, even a billboard along the interstate just north of Olympia. Certainly her face was a key reason that Kristi captivated the hearts and minds of residents around Washington State. But it wasn’t the only reason. She also was the daughter of a wealthy car dealer—one who made his fame by appearing on cheap TV commercials smashing cars with a sledgehammer and screaming that only his insanity could explain the low prices he offered.

  “I’ll smash up this car to make a deal with you!”

  It was a clear case of kidnapping when a $250,000 ransom demand quickly followed. That, of course, made it a federal case handled under the auspices of the FBI, with help from the Seattle Police Department. Seattle PD was stuck in a supporting role, while taking most of the heat from the media as the story unfolded. Rick Cooper, Kristi’s used-carmagnate father, followed the FBI’s request to withhold the ransom while they tracked hundreds of potential leads. None, however, seemed to get any traction. A week after it started, the kidnapper stopped calling.

  Emily, who up until that point had peripheral involvement in the case, volunteered for extra duty the day of the beach search—another low priority follow-up from an anonymous tipster.

  Those days always played in her mind like a bad dream. There were many images that came to mind. The girl, of course. But the one that held the tightest grip was the face of her father. Emily could never forget seeing his bitterness, his deep hurt, his complete and unmitigated rage.

  All of it had been directed toward her.

  “Does she know what she’s done?” Rick Cooper asked a local TV reporter, the microphone so close to his angry mouth that he could have swallowed it in one gulp. “We don’t know where Kristi is and Emily Kenyon is the reason why.”

  The reason. The cause.

  Emily didn’t reach for the bottle like some cops who’d made mistakes they could easily live with. She did see a doctor and took some meds for anxiety, but only for a short time. She didn’t fall apart, at least not outwardly so. She had a husband and daughter who needed her. There was an investigation over what happened in the Cooper case. There were more media reports. She gave up her shield for thirty days. She tried to keep her mind on Jenna and David, but a girl she never met would not leave her mind. Even when she was engaged in a conversation with David, thoughts unspooled. She had screwed up. She hadn’t meant to, of course. But when she looked down at her hands, she knew they had been the inadvertent instrument of a little girl’s demise.

  God, please forgive me. God, give me the chance to make this right.

  Reynard Tuttle was wheezing, his lungs pierced by a single bullet from Emily Kenyon’s police-issue gun. It had all happened so fast—a racing speed that allowed not a second for introspection about what had just occurred. A dark spot of blood bloomed on his food- and sweat-stained white cotton T-shirt, and then oozed crimson to the cabin floor. He was only twenty or so, barely a man. Emily knelt beside him. He was trying to speak. She pushed his gun away and she leaned close.

  “Shouldn’t have done that,” he said, barely able to form his words.

  “Where’s Kristi?”

  “That’s for me to know and you to find out.” His voice was a soft rasp.

  Emily knew he was dying, but his death went far beyond the tragedy of his own wasted life. He had to live to tell her what she needed to know. Adrenaline pulsed. She shook him. “Don’t fuck with me.”

  “You’ll never find her.” Tuttle turned his head slightly and looked up. His eyes were beginning to roll.

  “Don’t leave!” she said. “Stay with me. You don’t want this to be what you’re remembered for. You don’t want to hurt Kristi. Where is she?”

  Collier rushed through the opened doorway. “Jesus, Emily, are you all right?”

  She glanced over her shoulder and with one quick nod, indicated she was unhurt. When she looked back down at Tuttle, his eyes had been emptied of life. They were the eyes of a cold, dead animal.

  “Come back here!” she said, tugging on his shoulders. “Goddamn you!” His head thumped on the cabin’s planked flooring. Hard. “Where is the girl?”

  “Emily, stop!”

  She couldn’t and Tuttle’s head smacked against the floor over and over. But he was gone. So was Kristi.

  A helicopter outfitted with an infrared camera worked a precise grid of forest and beachfront acreage in the vicinity of the Tuttle shooting. Tourists and homeowners watched the sky as the aircraft’s whirling blades rattled their windows. Everyone knew what the Seattle Police and FBI were looking for—the telltale hot spot that indicated Kristi Cooper, dead or alive. At one point, a team was dispatched for follow-up on a glow of red picked up near Foster’s Pond. Working shoulder to shoulder in a squared-off line, almost fifty FBI agents, police, and Boy Scouts trained in a process of a detailed grid search marched lockstep toward the hot spot.

  “Anything and everything gets tagged,” a Seattle sergeant yelled across the front of the line as the teams began to walk. One kid dropped a marker at a smoked cigarette; another found a rotted sleeping bag.

  “Tag it!”

  About twenty-five minutes into the march, a female volunteer caught an acrid whiff of the instantly recognizable scent of death. She started coughing. She was sure that she’d found Kristi Cooper’s remains. Any hope that she was alive was erased by that terrible smell. That stench could only mean one thing. It was over.

  “Over here, my end of line,” the young searcher called. Two CSIs moved methodically toward the call for help. They stepped on the existing tracks of the search team. Each step was a shadow behind those who’d walked ahead.

  In front of the young woman, now doubled over in anticipation of vomiting, was a mass of undulating maggots.

  A CSI in a dark blue jumpsuit, bent down. “Dead fawn,” he said, not masking his disappointment. “No tag, but steer clear. Damn it. This must be our hot spot.”

  For nearly two years, the dead deer was the closest anyone really got to finding Kristi. Emily had left the Seattle Police Department by then, moving David and Jenna into the old house on Orchard Avenue. She’d told everyone that her parents were ailing, but the truth was she could no longer face the reminders of what she’d done. Being exonerated by the department’s Internal Affairs meant nothing.

  Not when a missing girl with blond hair and blue eyes haunted every dream.

  Sunday, 7:10 P.M., Seattle

  Emily finished a drink from the minibar and looked in the mirror. All the makeup in the world wouldn’t make her beautiful just now. Christopher Collier would have to see her for what she was—a middle-aged mother heartbroken with worry about her only child. Where was Jenna? What had happened at Bonnie’s? She filled the sink and splashed cool water on her face. She’d hoped it would reduce the puffiness of her eyes, but she doubted it. She patted herself dry and put on a touch of makeup and some lip color. She was about to try something with her hair when the hotel phone rang.

  “Emily, I’m downstairs. Want to eat here? I checked out the dining room menu. Looks good.”

  “Sure, Chris. Be down in a minute.”

  “Good. We have lots to talk about.”

  Emily buttoned up a fresh blouse and slipped on a simple linen skirt. She ran a brush through her thick, dark hair. She fished through her bag and found a gold bracelet that Jenna had given her for Mother’s Day the year before her marriage crumbled. She dabbed on a little blush. This was as good as it was going to get.

  Christopher has seen me at my worst. He won’t
mind.

  Sunday, 8:00 P.M.

  The dining room at the Westerfield was all cream and gold, with ceilings soaring thirty feet above candlelit tables spread with linen, silver, and crystal. The menu was a haute cuisine mix of Pacific Rim cooking. The feature that evening was Chilean sea bass prepared with sesame, garlic, and scallions. Emily and Christopher both ordered it, along with a bottle of Chardonnay from a small Washington vintner that had won raves from Wine Spectator. A little awkward small talk reigned for a while. Christopher had been divorced for ten years. His kids lived with his ex and her new husband on a ranch in Boise. He lived in a downtown condo overlooking Puget Sound and Seattle’s Pike Place Market. He still loved hiking and made frequent treks in the Cascades and Olympics.

  “You still hike, Emily?” He speared a bite of flaky white fish.

  She touched her napkin to her lips. “Yes, but we don’t get out as much as we’d like,” Emily said, obviously referring to her and Jenna. Every sentence seemed to be constructed that way. It only served to remind her of the deep emptiness she felt, the fear she had for her daughter’s safety.

  After a pause, she said, “Thanks for not making a big deal about me being the Emily Kenyon at the Jeffries scene.” When she’d overheard him talking about it, he’d seemed forgiving—more forgiving than she had been over the years about what had happened back then.

  He swirled the wine in his glass. “No problem. That case has followed you much more than me. I mean, I was there, too, you know.”

  “Yes, I remember.” Emily sipped her wine, reminding herself she’d had already had what amounted to two shots of tequila. Though grateful that he understood, Emily took the opportunity and changed the subject. “Did you make the notification about Bonnie Jeffries? Should I brace myself?”

  “No,” he said. He set his fork down. “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to see you. Catching up with you, as pleasant as it is, wasn’t my sole motive.”

  Emily felt a flash of embarrassment. “Of course.”

  “We can’t find any record of Bonnie having any family,” he said.

  She thought of the papers up in her room. Tina hadn’t mentioned any children, either. “What about the pictures? Maybe a nephew?”

  “No family. Seems Bonnie’s parents were killed in a car wreck back in ninety-one. No sibs. No husband. The woman lived alone after the Angel’s Nest scandal. Hardly ever went out. Her neighbors didn’t even know her last name or where she worked.”

  Dinner continued with some shop talk, some family stuff. When the dessert cart scooted by, both took a pass. Christopher pulled out what looked like an old photo album. It was scuffed black leather, with red corners. Emily hadn’t really noticed that he brought it along until then. She looked at it inquisitively.

  “From Bonnie’s place,” he said. “I think you should see it.”

  She put her hand out, but Christopher didn’t give it up.

  “Not here. Let’s take it somewhere private. Your room?”

  If it were any other man, Emily would have shot down the suggestion with a laugh and a quick retort. But she trusted Christopher. And more than that, she saw the concerned look in his eyes.

  Or was it something more?

  Chapter Thirty

  Sunday, 9:45 P.M., Seattle

  “Doing some clandestine research on the case?” Christopher asked as they entered Emily’s hotel room. She nodded in the direction of the stolen stacks of hospital records she’d laser printed off David’s office computer.

  “And, no, I didn’t have a warrant,” she said.

  “I didn’t log this baby into evidence yet, either,” Christopher said, setting the photo album on the corner of the bed. “Nice place,” he said. “They must have big expense accounts in Cherrystone.” He surveyed the plush surroundings, deep coppery hues on the pillow-overloaded bed, a gas fireplace, an oil painting that appeared to be original—not a massproduced phony like most places have. He walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows. The Olympic Mountains off in the distance were nearly indigo and the city lights of Seattle twinkled in the foreground. “My place is right over there.”

  Emily stood next to him, feeling the effects of too much Chardonnay. “Where?”

  He pointed to his condo, but when she didn’t spot it, he reached over and turned her head just a touch. “There.”

  The moment begged for double entendres along the lines of I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours—evidence, that is. But both parties resisted. There was too much at stake just then, and the teasing near-romance of their friendship was years ago.

  The message feature on her cell phone pulsed and Emily took the cue to break away from Christopher and the window. She dialed and learned that David and Olga had phoned. She’d call both of them back after Christopher showed her whatever it was that he’d brought to dinner.

  Christopher took the opportunity to dial in for an update on the Jeffries case. His face was stone. No smile. None of the charm that he’d shown during dinner. Whatever he was hearing, it was unpleasant and dark. When he ended the call, he told her that he’d been talking with the medical examiner’s assistant about the Jeffries murder.

  “Overkill, for sure,” he said. “I guess even a rookie could tell that by the scene. Jesus, talk about blood-soaked. ME says that Bonnie Jeffries was beaten and stabbed. Either could have killed her. She was hit with a hammer or something like that—tool marks on her skull are being reviewed now. Looks like at least a half dozen times. She was stabbed with a serrated blade probably thirty-five times.”

  The possible circumstances of her last breaths were more than bone chilling. They were arctic.

  “She had a big set of knives in the kitchen,” Emily said. “I have the same set.”

  He nodded. “Right. I saw them. Not yours. Hers.”

  “I got that.”

  “The ME says she was probably out cold when she was stabbed. Not a single defensive wound.”

  “But she bled out, so she was still alive when the killer stabbed her,” Emily said.

  “Sliced and diced is more like it. The ME says that whoever killed her was driven by rage and contempt. Hatred to the nth degree. He drove that knife into her no more than a half inch, as if he wanted to tease her to death.”

  “Or enjoy it. Make it linger.”

  “Yeah. We know the type. Some twisted psycho who gets off on torture.”

  “Any trace? Anything at all to tag her assailant?”

  “Assailants, with an S. Had to be at least two. She’s a big girl as they say. ME says she was first hit in the kitchen, then finished off in the bedroom. Posed there.”

  The brutality of the attack made her sick. Emily studied the skyline, searching for words and trying to find some kind of calmness in the moment. The idea that there were two assailants was like an ice down her spine. Nick and Jenna? Not possible. But they had been there. Her mind was racing, but she fought to stay cool. She had no choice.

  “Anything on tox?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Clean.”

  That surprised her somewhat and she turned to look at Christopher. She remembered seeing a bottle of vodka on the kitchen counter and an array of pills. She’d expected something.

  “Whoever killed her caught her unaware. She didn’t see it coming,” she finally said. Her mind transported her back to the gruesome scene. She’d been in the bedroom only a minute, but the images of what she’d seen would never fade. Foil held the room dark. The radio played. The sheets—cheerful daisies were the print—were colored in ropes and slashes of blood. Bonnie was in a pale blue nightgown.

  “She was facedown on the bed,” she said. “Hit from behind?”

  “Maybe, but she was stabbed in the chest and the back. He or they moved her around on that bed a bit.”

  Christopher picked up the black album. “This is from Bonnie’s place. We found it wedged behind the desk. I don’t know if it was hidden there, or if it just fell.” He indicated a wingback chair he scooted ne
xt to the bed where he’d taken a seat. “Sit here. There’s some weird stuff in this book.”

  Suddenly the Macy’s bag of hospital records seemed irrelevant.

  Emily edged the chair closer to Christopher, who’d opened the book with his eyes fixed on hers, gauging her reaction. It was a compendium of news articles, neatly cut and pasted on black sheets of construction paper. Whoever had set up the book, clearly did so carefully. There wasn’t a crooked edge or scissor slip. The headline on the opening page was unfamiliar to her.

  MISSING ONE WEEK: WHERE IS BRIT?

  Now holding the book across her lap, Emily scanned the yellowed, brittle clipping. It was an article about Brit Osterman, a twelve-year-old girl who’d gone missing on her way home from school in her cozy Seattle neighborhood.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  Christopher just looked at her and shook his head. “Read on. And like I said, be prepared. I think there’s something here.”

  The article on the first page was followed by one with a picture of an adorable girl with cat-eye glasses and a nose splashed with freckles. She had not been found. Her parents were quoted as saying they’d “never give up . . . until our little girl is home safe and sound.”

  Another item recounted how the girl was never found.

  FIVE YEARS AGO, LITTLE GIRL VANISHED

  Emily looked up at Christopher. Her mind was racing for a connection. “Bonnie?”