A Cold Dark Place (27 page)

As Christopher Collier started down the hall, Emily did
the only thing that came to her fragile mind just then. She
put the tiny coin purse in her jacket pocket. She breathed in
deeply. She heard Christopher and the other detectives as
they moved about the back bedroom. She heard a photographer taking pictures. What had happened here? What had
Nick and Jenna done? She closed her eyes.

"You all right?" It was Christopher. His voice snapped
her back.

"Fine. Thanks"

"You look as pale as a ghost."

Emily tried to shake it off. "I don't know. I guess you just
never really get used to this stuff. Not if you're human," she
said. The pink edge of the purse protruded slightly from her
pocket, and she gently pushed it out of sight. Her heart was a
bass drum. She felt sweat work its way down her temples.

"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 1-5 and 1-90 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.

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 response 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"

"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 bythe-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: Dani2l.

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 some thing 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?"