A Cold Dark Place (30 page)

"There," Christopher said. "Right there."

She stopped. The black pages framed four news clippings. Emily put her hand to her chest. Her eyes were fastened to the pages in utter horror. She felt the air rush out of
the room. She could barely breathe. The photos and words
were so familiar, but the context of the book that someone
had created was all wrong.

"What in the world?" she finally said. Her eyes glistened
with the beginning of tears. "Chris?"

He leaned closer to her and put his hand on her knee.

"I know. I thought the same thing."

Emily started to cry. It was more than she could take in.
"You know what this could mean?"

"I know and I'm sorry. But it might be wrong, a hoax. A
mistake. Maybe wishful thinking on the part of Bonnie Jeffries. Maybe she wanted Walker to be responsible for every
unsolved murder case"

Emily swallowed hard. It was quick gulp for air. She
looked once more at the headlines. They were knives stabbing at her eyes, but she couldn't turn away.

GIRL ABDUCTED FROM RESTAURANT

Search Continues For Kristi Cooper

COP KILLS KIDNAPPER

Girl Still Missing

BOY, 12, FINDS MISSING GIRL'S BODY

The last article brought a torrent of memories. None of
which had ever been anywhere but just beneath the surface. The slightest scratch, a twitch, the wrong word brought her
back to the autumn of Kristi's discovery. With Christopher
holding her close, Emily spun her way back to that day.

In every way, Christopher Collier was there, too.

The vine maples were on fire, colors so deep red and
bright orange they looked like some set decorator's fantasy
of what autumn should look like in a 1950s movie musical.
All that had transpired was indelible, a memory tattoo.

Two Bentonville, Washington, boys with a new BB gun
worked their way through a trail as they searched for squirrels and birds to shoot. The older of the two, Tyler Preston,
was fourteen and the gun was a birthday present from his father. The other boy was twelve-year-old Mason Davidson.

"When am I going to get to shoot?" Mason asked for
what must have been the tenth time.

"Not very patient, are you? I guess you can have a turn,"
Tyler said, finally handing over the BB gun. "You know how
to shoot? See that robin over there?" He jabbed his finger at
a bird about twenty-five yards away, a close enough target
for him to hit, but not for the younger boy.

"Yeah"

"Watch this." Mason aimed, fired, and to Tyler Preston's
sheer amazement, the robin fell from the branch. He looked over
at his buddy with a gleeful smile and handed back the rifle.

"That's how it's done, bud!"

He ran to get the fallen bird. Tyler looked down at the shiny
barrel of the BB gun and shook his head. Beginner's luck. He
heard a noise and looked up, but Mason was nowhere to be
seen.

"Mason?" he called. "Where are you, bro?"

A faint cry came from twenty yards away. "In here!"

Tyler set the gun down and ran. He ran to what appeared
to be a big hole in the ground. A well? A sinkhole? He
leaned over to get a better look.

"Tyler! Get me out of here!" Mason didn't sound hurt,
but he sounded scared spitless.

"Hold on, dude!" Tyler looked for a branch or something
he could use to extricate his buddy from the darkness below.
"Hang on!"

"Get me out of here! Tyler!"

As his eyes adjusted to the dim and dank surroundings,
Mason's terror escalated. He was unsure of what he saw at
first. Was it real? Was it a joke? He moved closer and gasped.

"There's a bed down here and some other stuff. Hey, I
think there's a dead body down here"

"No shit?"

"Yeah, there are bones," he said, cupping his hands to amplify his voice in the darkness. The makeshift covering of
rotting boards shoved aside, a stream of light found its way
to the floor of the twelve-foot-deep hole. "There's blond hair,
too!"

"Whoa! Cool!"

"You wouldn't think so if you were stuck down here.
Come on!"

Mason Davidson didn't know it right then, of course, but
he'd solved a mystery that had haunted the Pacific Northwest
for two years.

He'd found Kristi Cooper.

In the same red pencil Emily noticed that someone had
underlined Reynard Tuttle's name in an article that detailed
how Emily had shot him in the ill-fated raid on the cabin.
There was also an annotation. The words were tiny and in
grammar school perfect script: Poor Dope.

Emily found her footing and spoke. "I don't know what to
say."

"I don't know what any of these means," Christopher
said, releasing his slight embrace. "And you know how much
I hate to admit that"

"I'll never forget the day those boys found her"

"I know. Whenever I see fall colors, I think of her, too"

"Whoever wrote in this book-Bonnie, I guess-wants
us to think that Tuttle wasn't Kristi's captor."

"But he was," Christopher insisted.

Emily had always had her doubts. It was something she
never spoke about to anyone, not David, not Christopher. It
was the small voice she'd heard in the back of her head
whenever she thought of Kristi and how she died. The voice
she heard was never answered out loud. To do so, would
bring home what she'd done.

"As far as we knew," she said. "I mean, there was nothing
that tied him to the body, once we found her. No trace. No
DNA"

His eyes were penetrating. "We can't second-guess what
we did now."

"But you've brought this to me for a reason. You think
there's something there"

"There's a link between Bonnie and Walker."

"She was his number-one fan," Emily said. "I talked with
her girlfriend, Tina Esposito. She said she and Bonnie were
best friends and had a major falling-out over Walker. Bonnie
basically stole Walker from Tina. God knows why. They hadn't
spoken in years"

This clearly interested Christopher. "Fighting over a serial killer?"

"You could put it that way. It wasn't that he was a serial
killer. They believed he wasn't. Both of them. In fact, there was a legion of Bonnies and Tinas out there that lined up to
see Walker during and after the trial."

He let out a sigh. "Another prison groupie, Jesus. What's
with these women?"

Emily narrowed her gaze. "It isn't simple. I fought over a
two-timer," she said, letting her guard down a little. "I lost.
Some women love a guy they can't have" Emily looked over
to the minibar. Another drink was against her better judgment, but the memories of Kristi Cooper and the possibility
that she actually hadn't shot her captor called for something
to thwart her creeping doubt. She opened the minibar.

"I'11 have what you're having," Christopher said.

She opened a couple of mini Chivas Regal bottles. "No
ice. No mix. Okay?"

He agreed and she poured. They sipped the smooth, smoky
whiskey. "Perfect," he said. "Now let's get down to business.
I've saved the best for the last."

"Better than Kristi?"

"Better"

"What are these?" Emily asked. Christopher was holding
several slips of paper that had been kept in the back of the
black album as precious souvenirs.

"Letters from Bonnie's boyfriend."

Emily pulled them out and looked at the signature on the
last page of the first missive.

"Dylan Walker?"

"Yeah, and it's the typical sick stuff that these creeps send
to women on the outside."

"The lonely and desperate or the desperately lonely." Emily
started to scan the pages. "The handwriting appears consistent with the penciled notations in the album," she said, flipping back to the "Me" and "Poor Dope" written on the news
clippings.

"That's what I thought. I mean, we're not allowed to spec ulate-rush to judge-and everything goes through the lab."
He rolled his blue eyes and smiled.

Emily started reading, mostly silently, but as she moved
through the pages she caught a few choice lines and looked
up at Christopher.

Feel me take off your clothes, one button at time ...
lingering as they fall to the floor. Your hunger for my
touch, insatiable ... but I try.

"Can you believe these women fall for this?"

"I know. Remember when the Shadow Murderer Bill
Canton got married?"

Emily nodded, a disgusted look on her face. "You mean
that Baby Jane-type blonde who went all over TV professing
her love."
"

"Yeah, her love for a man who stalked and killed eight
young women and dumped them all over LA like they were
garbage"

I guess Bonnie was that type of woman. Willing to believe anything, do anything, for love." She looked down and
started reading, cherry-picking another line to read aloud.

... You stare back, longing for us to become one.
Your hands slip between my legs ...

Jaws dropped to the floorboards as Shali Patterson climbed
aboard school bus number 227. She managed to make it to
the bus stop that morning when she found her car missing and
a message from Jenna Kenyon. One of the kids she'd smoked
with her tailpipe every morning couldn't resist making note
of the occasion.

"Your ride in the shop, Shah Patterson? Have a seat. Anywhere"

Shali scanned the front, then the back of the bus. This
sucks. Right now, she wanted to strangle her supposed best
friend. She found a seat next to a freshman girl and slid next
to her.

Jenna thinks she s got it bad, but she doesn 't know what
bad is.

Christopher Collier's resonant voice filled Emily's ears
and jolted her like a slap in the face. She nearly dropped the phone. She'd always been an excellent judge of a witness's
veracity. She listened, assessed, and without fail was right on
the money when she determined whether or not she could
trust someone. She'd believed Tina Esposito when they shared
lunch and a smattering of true confessions at Embers restaurant. As far as Emily could see-and her instincts were always flawless Tina was a gracious woman who'd made a
horrendous mistake many years ago and suffered for it. Yet
she was a survivor, a woman who'd completely extricated
herself from Dylan Walker and Bonnie Jeffries. But what
Christopher was telling her now indicated all of that was a
big lie.

"Five calls this week alone," he said. "More when we go
back a few weeks. There was even a call from Tina the morning Bonnie was murdered"

Emily was stunned. "She told me they hadn't spoken in
years"

"She's a liar. I'm going to see her," he said.

With the cell phone snug against her ear, Emily looked
for her cream-colored jacket. "Not without me, you're not. I
can meet you at her place or you can pick me up and we can
go together. Your choice."

"I figured that. I'm calling from downstairs."

Emily managed a smile. Christopher Collier knew her
better than anyone. She liked him, trusted him, but she'd had
more lapses in judgment when it came to men. Something
about last night bothered her, but she'd had too much to drink
to be sure about everything that had transpired. Sunlight
streamed between a slit in the hotel curtains she hadn't remembered drawing. In fact, she hadn't remembered much of
what happened after she'd started pouring the Scotch.

"Chris?" she asked.

"Yes?"

"Last night ... we didn't, did we?"

"God no," Christopher Collier said. "Do you wish we did?"

The mosaic of what had transpired the previous evening
started coming together. The dinner. The drinks. The revelations. The scrapbook. She noticed that it remained on the desk
next to the hotel phone.

"You left the album," she said.

"I know. Bring it when you come downstairs."

Five minutes later, Emily was in the lobby. Christopher,
looking dapper in a blue blazer and red tie and khakis, was
waiting with Starbucks in hand.

"Vanilla latte?" he said, handing her the hot cup. "I just
guessed"

"You're a mind reader, thanks"

A moment later, they were in his Audi-where the scent
of cigarette smoke could not be refuted. He saw the look on
her face.

"Yeah, I haven't quit yet" It was a preemptive strike
against Emily's expected rebuke.

"I didn't say anything," she said.

They drove from the hotel toward the exclusive waterfront high-rise that Tina Esposito called home, Harbor Court.
It was twenty stories tall and had been the source of much
resentment from upland locals for blocking their waterfront
views. But money and zoning talked. It always did. The Espositos owned the top floor.

"She's there," Christopher said, turning down the hill toward the waterfront. "We have an unmarked car down there
with a couple of guys babysitting for me. We wouldn't want
to miss her."

"You love this, don't you?" Emily asked.

He turned from looking at the street in front of him, his
handsome face now overtaken by an almost impish smile.
"Don't you?"

She had to admit that she did. "Better than a traffic stop in Cherrystone, that's for sure" But deep down, she thought
that the recent events in Cherrystone had been anything but
routine. Mark, Peg, and Donny Martin had been murdered
and that was the reason why she was in Seattle.

"My husband can't know about any of this" were the first
words out of Tina Esposito's perfectly painted mouth as she
opened the penthouse door. She was referring to Rod Esposito, the software developer who had earned millions when he
developed a computer program that quickly became the gold
standard of the airline industry's reservation systems. The
joke was that he was afraid of flying. "He's away on business
in Vancouver." She looked at her diamond-encrusted Cartier
Santos watch. "His train arrives in three hours" With a
sweeping gesture, she escorted the detectives into a living
room with an absolutely breathtaking view of Elliott Bay to
the west and Mt. Rainier to the south. Everything about the
space was luxe. The carpets were Persian, and not from
some flim-flam rug store featuring a two-year going-out-ofbusiness sale.