A Cold Dark Place (10 page)

Her cell phone rang. It was her ex-husband.

"David," she said, doing her best to remain calm, "have
you heard anything? Has your mom gotten a call from Jenna?"

"No. Not a word. Anything there? Should we really be
alarmed?"

"You know something? I don't know why you even bothered calling. Or maybe you dialed me by mistake. FYI, your
daughter is missing. You know, the cute little girl you left behind when you went off with what's her name?"

"Do you really want to go there?" David was ice. It was a
practiced affect. He used to be a different kind of man, gentle, caring, even loving.

"Go where? I just want to find out where Jenna is."

"She's my daughter, too" David kept his answer curt.
"And I love her."

Emily softened a little. She hated herself for badgering
him. After all he didn't take her. He didn't know a thing
about her whereabouts. It sputtered through her mind that he
might know, but she set the idea aside as beyond cruel. Even
for David. Ultimately, Emily didn't think he'd stoop so low
as to conspire with Jenna to get her back to Seattle.

"I know," she said. Her teeth were clenched and her eyes
hurt from crying.

Sheriff Kiplinger appeared in the doorway. He motioned
to Emily that he needed to speak with her. He mouthed the
words: "It's important."

"I have to go," Emily said into the phone. "Call me if you
hear anything. I'll do the same" She looked up, clutching
her cell phone tightly against her breast.

"What is it?" she said, almost daring the sheriff to tell her.
She could barely read the man. She had no clue what was
coming.

"There's someone here to see you"

It passed though her mind that Jenna was there. Thank
God! I'll read her the riot act, but thank sweet Jesus that she's all right. But as the sheriff motioned around the corner,
another young girl appeared in the doorway.

It was Shali Patterson. She'd obviously been crying. Her
usually somewhat heavy-handed makeup had left a pair of
mascara tributaries down her cheeks. Kiplinger ushered her
into Emily's office.

Emily stood up, and then froze, reading Shah's face like a
search warrant. "What's going on? What is it? Have you
heard from Jenna?"

Kiplinger backed off toward the doorway, removing his
hand from Shah's shoulder, now visibly shaking. The teen
shook her head in an exaggerated "no" indicating that she
wasn't bringing any news. She looked like a ten-year-old,
not the reckless driver who terrorized the neighborhood with
a too-fast VW bug.

"Mrs. Kenyon, I've been thinking a lot." Tears had already fallen, but her big eyes threatened a deluge. "And I
think I remember one thing about Nick and Jenna"

Emily moved closer. "What was it, Shah?"

"It's about Nick Martin." She hesitated.

"What about Nick?"

"I know that he'd talked a lot about like finding his real
dad. That he and his adopted dad weren't that close. His dad
was an engineer and he was, you know, artsy. His dad just
didn't get him, you know."

"No, I didn't." Emily wondered if the scenario that had
played out before the tornado held something even darker
than she could imagine.

"Did his father hurt him?" she asked.

The question seemed to stun Shali. She shook her head.
"No, not that I know of."

"Then what? Was it worse?"

"No. Not that. It was just that he wanted to find his real
dad"

"Was he actively looking?"

The girl nodded. "He registered on one of those Web
sites." She reached for a tissue box, and Emily pulled one
out and passed it to her. Shali was pulling herself together.
There was guilt there, of some kind, but it wasn't so sinister
as Emily had imagined.

Emily prodded her. "And?"

Shali wiped her eyes. Her tissue was black. "Not that I
know about, but it really wasn't my thing. Jenna was helping
him because she felt bad about her dad"

"Her dad?" Emily had no idea where this was going, or if
Shali was even paying attention to her best friend's status.
"She wasn't adopted"

"I know that, Mrs. Kenyon. What I mean is that Jenna
was mad at her dad and didn't think she could be that close
to him after what he did to you and her. You know. Like the
new girlfriend, Dani."

Emily winced. It seemed like this teenager that peppered
her entire speech pattern with extraneous "likes" was getting
a little personal. The conversation wasn't going in that direction. Not even an inch.

"All right." Better just to acknowledge what she said and
move on.

"She and Nick kind of bonded over that. I think once she
got to know him, you know, once she got to see that there
was a reason for him acting all sad and artistic, you know."

None of this was tracking. None of it was making sense.
What did Jenna's disappearance have to do with Nick not
knowing his biological father?

"I'm sorry. I'm afraid I don't understand, honey."

The word "honey" seemed to help. Shali found her footing.

"Well, that she could help him. Get to know him. Maybe once she got to know him, she could like him. You know,
like, hook up"

It was a shot to the heart. No mother likes to hear that
they've been excluded from their child's life in some small
way. Emily had no idea about Nick and Jenna. No clue whatsoever that there'd even been a potential boyfriend lurking
somewhere in the background. Hooking up? Never. Jenna
would have told her. She and Jenna were close.

But that wasn't the worst of it. Jenna was missing and
Shali had held out information. Emily knew by reading Shali's
face more was about to come.

She was right.

"Mrs. Kenyon, I'm sorry. I lied to you about something
else." She started crying so hard, that whatever she tried to
convey, was lost in her sobs. "Sorry. . ."

"It's all right," Emily said. "Take your time. What do you
know? Where is Jenna? Do you know where she is?"

"No. That's not it," she said. "I don't know where she is
now."

Emily pulled back a little, looking into her eyes, her face
calm. Her daughter was gone and Shali Patterson was about
to actually be helpful. This was good. Unexpected. Joyful.
But good.

Shali held out a wrinkled piece of copier paper folded in
quarters.

"I let her use my computer before the storm. I found this
a day or so later, but with the storm and everything I just
didn't ask her about it. I don't know why she'd write this
kind of a message. If it was for English class, I missed the
assignment."

"Let me see," Emily said, her eyes still riveted on Shali.
Shali pressed the paper into her outstretched palm, and she
carefully unfolded it.

The detective looked down and read:

Do you think it is possible that someone could really
possess another? Do you think that a love could be so
powerful as to be sick? So good it could become bad? Tell
me how you feel? How you want to possess me as I want
to possess you. Never be lonely again. Never.

She looked up at Shali, her disbelieving eyes now full of
even greater worry than she'd ever felt possible.

"I don't think she wrote this either," she said. "Who do
you think did? Who do you think it came from?"

Sniffing for a second tissue, Shali nodded. She pulled her
feet up to her chair and tucked them under. She looked small
and scared.

"Batboy88," Emily answered for her. "Do you know who
this is?"

"I think it's Nick Martin," she said. "He liked Jenna "

Emily started for the door. "Stay right here. Don't move a
muscle." She hurried down the hallway, her heels clacking
like gunfire on the linoleum. She held the paper like it was a
telegram and she was rushing it to the recipient. But that
wasn't true. Her daughter had been the recipient. The tone
was scary. It was as if Nick Martin had a fixation on Jenna.
Images of the Martins, Nick, the tornado debris ran through
Emily mind. Now a twisted e-mail spoke of good and evil,
of love and possessing another.

Why, .Jenna? Why were you nice to him? Didn't you see
the danger? What happened to you? I want you home. Now!
Jenna!

She turned in to Kiplinger's office and planted the note on
his desk.

The sheriff slid his glasses down the bridge of his nose and set down a newspaper. He'd been scanning USA Today
for mention of Cherrystone and the Martin murders or the
tornado. But the town was no longer national news. So fast
had the media dropped them from page one. A few days before, Diane Sawyer's people were banging down the door for
an interview and now nothing. Zip. He looked at Emily. She
was wound tighter than he'd ever seen. There was good reason for it, of course. But he knew that whatever Shali Patterson had told his best and only-detective it was going to
be big. USA Today was merely a diversion as he waited.
Emily's face was red and her eyes bulged. She panted for
breath, not because of the hurried gait down the hall, but because of the heartbeat ramming inside her chest.

"A killer's got my daughter," she said.

Morning light came throuh the rusty slits in the roof, the
same openings that had ensured that the indoor environment
was acrid and damp. Jenna lay very still on the stinky sofa,
her eyes scanning the ceiling for a clue as to the size of the
room that had provided shelter. It had been a moonless night
when he brought her there, after hours of walking and hiding. She repositioned herself and rubbed her right knee. She
remembered how she'd hurt it from crouching in a weedy
ditch as a car went by. Was it her mother?

At that moment things could have been different. She
could have called out. She could have ended everything right
then and there. But she didn't. She just crouched low and
waited until the headlights became two red eyes fading into
oblivion.

She felt a breeze blow through the drafty building and she
pulled herself together. She was a potato bug. Curled up. Protected from whatever dangers might befall her. Was this a
dream? She started to shake. What am I doing here? She
saw a rat and let out a scream.

"Shhhhh! It's all right. I'm not going to let anything happen to you!"

It was him. It wasn't a dream.

"It's a rat!"

"Big mouse," he said, trying to calm her. "Think a very,
very big mouse"

The wind kicked up and blew just enough dust across the
parking lot in front of the safety building so as to make the
hairs stand up on the back of Emily Kenyon's neck. Jenna
had been missing for thirty-two hours. Thirty-two hours is a
lifetime. Life and death. Emily had cried until no more tears
were left, but she also put on the kind of brave face that only
a person who'd seen the worst humans can do to others can
muster. It was a mask, she knew, but somehow it held her
steady.

Sheriff Kiplinger was elated when KREM TV from
Spokane called saying the network honchos might want to
do a story on the missing detective's daughter. Emily was
oddly ambivalent about the prospect. She'd been the first to
jump at the chance when the media came-so concerned, so
sincere-to profile a missing person. But not now. It felt
more intrusive than helpful. She tried to explain herself to
Kiplinger.

"I want to find her," she said, "not embarrass her to death"

He didn't get it. "That's flat-out stupid, Emily."

"Tell me how you'd handle it if it was your daughter?"

"I'd call out the cavalry," he said. "You know I would."

Emily put that out of her mind. The day had become one
of those evidentiary roller coasters or maybe a merry-goround, as it seemed to go in circles with no end. She'd been
on the phone with the bank card company. Nope, Jenna hadn't
taken out a dime. She'd called every parent in the PTA phone
book, grateful that it was still hard copy and not some goddamn online system. Old ways sometimes worked best. God
knew if the Internet hadn't been invented, her daughter probably wouldn't be off who-knows-where with Batboy. She
hoped, no she prayed, that Jenna had gone willingly.

Jenna wasn't Polly Klaas or Elizabeth Smart. No way.
Emily hoped that there was some connection that was reckless and wrong, but ultimately less scary. She was living in a
fool's paradise and deep down she knew it. Shali's printout
from her computer was proof enough that something was
terribly awry.

Do you think that a love could be so powerful as to be
sick?

The words made Emily's skin crawl. She knew there was
only one answer for such a question: "In your case, yes. Yes.
Yes"

Jason Howard slipped into her office. He carried a pair of
paper cups embedded in a cardboard tray.

"Latte?"

Emily barely nodded. "Thank you."

She pulled off the plastic lid and sipped.

"Any news?" he asked.

She shook her head, swinging her ponytail. It reminded
her that she probably looked like garbage. Her hair was oily.
Her makeup nonexistent. Looking good wasn't on her mind.
Only Jenna.

"We'll find her," he said. "She'll be all right."
"

Emily stayed mute. She felt so empty, so devoid of feeling. She never knew how it felt to lose someone in the night.
Others had. She always comforted them. But just as no one
really knows what it is like to be a mother until she holds her
first child, no one who hadn't felt the sudden loss of a child
could ever even approximate the stabbing ache that came
with every breath.

I know you're not thinking about the Martin case right
now," he started to say.

"Oh, but I am " Emily cut him off, summarily snapping
herself out of the pity that had mired her, sucked her down,
into the depths of despair.

"I know," he said, his bright eyes, now surprisingly compassionate for a young man who couldn't even begin to understand her pain. "I know ... if we find Nick, we might find
Jenna"