A Cold Dark Place (4 page)

"Anna, you can be such a bitch. Nobody said a damn thing
about the tornado when they dispatched us. They said the victim was a woman with serious injuries. Life threatening."

"It's all right," Emily said. She liked the girls, but she was
tired and their ceaseless banter grated. "I'll take you to Mrs.
Martin. And she's not a vic. She's not a patient. She's a corpse"

Anna Marino bent over the body, while her sister, Emily,
and Jason hovered like fireflies, their lights brushing the im mediate area. With the increased illumination, Emily could
see that Mrs. Martin hadn't been covered in mud after all.
The dark brown coloring over much of her torso was dried
blood. As Anna lifted her arm it was apparent that she'd been
dead awhile; rigor had come and gone.

And there was something else.

"Gina, let's roll her on the board and get her out of here"

"Okay."

"Just a second," Emily said, bending closer, her beam
trained on a darkened circle of bloody flesh.

"What's that?" Jason asked.

"She probably got poked by wood splinter or something
during the storm," Anna said. "I've heard of nails flying
through the air and being embedded into a tree"

"I was telling Emily about a chicken that got plucked by a
tornado ""

"Say that five times real fast," Gina said. The other two
laughed, letting off a little tension. No one meant to be disrespectful but it was the middle of the night, cold, creepy.

Ignoring their banter, Emily was on her knees now, pitched
over the dead woman and staring intently. She was so close
to Mrs. Martin's body that a nudge would have pushed her
face down into the wound that had captured her interest.

"I don't think so" She looked up at Jason and indicated
the circular tear in Mrs. Martin's chest. "We can't move her.
The tornado didn't kill her."

"Huh?" Jason was confused. He had no idea what she
was talking about.

"Jason, secure the scene. It looks like Mrs. Martin was
shot."

"Shot?"

"You need me to repeat it? I'm so tired I don't think I can,
but yes, shot. Close range, too. GSR burns around the wound
here"

She pointed to the smudged edges of the injury.

"I see it," he said.

Gina looked at her sister. "Shit, we haven't had a murder
in Cherrystone since we were kids."
"

"That was a suicide," Anna corrected, referring to the case
of a local pet shop owner who had been poisoned to death.

Gina made a face. She'd had this argument before. She
spoke a bit louder so Jason and Emily could hear.

I never was so sure about that. I mean, he died of arsenic
and that's a slow death. His wife said he had Parkinson's for
years. Sounded a little feeble to me"

"Some things are never meant to be known," Jason said.

Emily stood up, glad she'd put on a pair of jeans. Her
knees were muddy and hurt like hell.

"That won't be the case here," she said. "We will find out
what happened to her and her family."

Jason went to the radio for backup. Photos would have to
be taken. The debris had to be searched, piece by piece. Mrs.
Martin was dead, but there were other potential victims, too.

"Tell the sheriff I've gone home. I'll be back at first
light," Emily said. She looked at the illuminated face on her
gold watch. It was after midnight. "See you in a few. Nobody
touches anything. Where I come from this is a crime scene"

To avoid puncturing a tire, Emily thought it best to back
her car out of the long driveway. She looked back at the ambulance and the cruiser as their spinning lights duked it out
in the night sky. Red. Blue. Red. Blue. The lights pulsed like
a heartbeat. What had happened back there? Who shot Mrs.
Martin? Where was the rest of her family? A shiver ran down
Emily's spine and she turned up the heat. Maybe she'd been
wrong. Maybe the injury was the result of the tornado and
the gunshot residue she thought she had seen was something
else. Dirt. A burn. Anything. She was so tired her eyes blurred;
the streetlights passed by like a wand of a light.

It was almost one in the morning; she'd get a couple of
hours' sleep and get back to the scene. She probably wouldn't
even see Jenna. All she knew was that with the light of day,
answers would come. Maybe some hope, too. Hope was so
very, very needed.

A cache of letters was tucked into the back of the scrapbook, a kind of secret meeting place where, whenever the
need for arousal or remembering was needed, they'd be there.
They were flat as if they'd been ironed under steam and pressure. Though they had once been damp from the heat of fingers, even the wetness of tears, they were stiff now. Crisp.
Treasured. Charged.

One missive began:

If only we had a song, Id sing it in your ear, my hot
breath, moist and gentle. If only we could touch, Id
play my fingers all over your body. Only you know
me. Only you know how I feel. Break down the walls.
Break down the barriers. 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. I try ...

The memories were a torrent and the reader's breath accelerated to near gasping as the forbidden feelings of desire
washed over head to toe.

... Naked we stand, our arms around each other,
our mouths searching for the hotness and wetness
of our passion. I look you in the eyes. You stare back,
longing for us to become one. Your hands slip
between my legs ...

Dead tired. Emily thought that would make the perfect
title for a book of her life. So exhausted, but still aware.
Frogs that had taken up residence in her neighbor's Home
Center terracotta fountain caused a little commotion there,
but everything else on Orchard Avenue was calm and benign. The air barely stirred the scent of the old white lilac
bush. Jenna had left the porch light on for her mother and a
swarm of gray and white moths swirled around without
pausing to land. Emily bent down to keep them from her hair
and inserted her key. The dead bolt slid. Inside, she dropped
her overstuffed handbag on the console and when the contents spilled for the second time that day, she just left everything where it fell. Once down the hall, she peeked in on her
sleeping daughter. Jenna was curled in a ball, pink-cheeked
and dreaming-her mother hoped-happy dreams. We could
use some happiness wherever we can get it in this life, Emily
thought.

She shifted the Indonesian batik spread and Jenna moved. Her blue eyes were narrow slits. She half-smiled at her mother,
but said nothing.

Good, she's alive. Emily knew the thought was absurd.
But nearly every mother experiences that feeling of deep
worry whenever they leave their children alone-six or sixteen-a few minutes to get the mail, or a couple of hours to
check a crime scene. When they sleep in too long. When
they don't come down to dinner right away. The worst always seems possible, even plausible, when love is so strong.
All mothers know that.

Emily picked up a small dish and spoon, the apparent remains of a late-night snack. Chocolate ice cream, it seemed.
Probably Brownie Batter, Jenna's favorite. For a second the
coagulating ice cream made her mind flash to Peg Martin
and the dried blood on her chest, but she swallowed hard and
tried to pass it out of her memory. She crept across the room,
shut the door with her hip, and walked to the kitchen. The
red light on the answering machine atop the antique butcher
block beckoned once more and though she could barely
stand, she pushed the play button.

"I don't like being disregarded, Emily."

It was Cary McConnell. The jerk of a lawyer who made
other lawyers seem like marriage material.

"I've called you three times since the storm," he went on.
"I want to make sure you and Jenna are all right. I mean, I
know you're okay, because I've seen you twice in town, but
Jesus, I thought we had something going "

She pushed the FAST FORWARD button and the tape
whirled, making Cary sound like a helium inhaler.

"And if you think you can ignore me-"

You really know how to win back a girl, Emily thought,
selecting the ERASE button. The machine clicked and shut
off. The red eye blinked one final time.

"Good night, Cary. And good-bye," she said, softly to
herself.

In her bedroom at the end of the hall, she adjusted her
alarm clock to allow three and a half hours' sleep. She was
glad she didn't have on any makeup because she'd been
raised by a mother who thought going to bed with makeup
still applied was akin to a mortal sin. Emily put her head on
the pillow and thought of Peg Martin and the one vivid
memory she could recall. It was the time she'd seen Peg at a
school carnival the October before last. They had worked the
bakery booth together for two or three nights. Emily brought
chocolate chip cookies from Safeway and rewrapped them
in home bakeware. Like a gas thief with petroleum breath
caught with a gas can and a rubber hose, she confessed.

"I guess I'm not fooling anyone"

Peg, older than Emily, by ten years, was gracious. "Some
people prefer when it's store-bought anyway."

"Yeah, but yours aren't. They look too good to be from
any store"

Peg smiled. "I'm not a detective. I'm a homemaker. Ask
me to solve a crime and I'll bring in a DVD of CSI and we
can watch it together. That's about as close as I'd ever get"

Peg was a lovely woman, the kind who'd always show up
with more than what was requested. She gave time to whatever the cause. She'd made the best macaroons outside of a
bakery, tall, fluffy, and dipped in dark chocolate. And she always smiled.

"Take two," Peg had said that chilly autumn evening to a
boy with a crumpled dollar bill, "They're kind of small."
Then she winked the kind of exaggerated conspiratorial
move kids make when they know they are being bad and
want everyone else to know they know it, too.

But they weren't small, of course. They were like cocoa covered Mount Rainier, Washington's tallest, grandest peak.
Peg was just that type of woman. Now she was dead, under a
pile of tornado trash, a gunshot wound in her chest, and her
family strewn somewhere out in the darkness that enveloped
her property. Emily willed herself to think of something positive, the carnival, the cookies, but the image of the dead
bake-sale lady, probably murdered, kept materializing.

I'll find out what happened to you, she thought, drifting
off to sleep.

The moon was slung low in the sky, dipping to the horizon that drew a hard edge from Horse Heaven Hills, a basalt
rock formation about twenty miles outside of Cherrystone.
An old lead mine had flourished there decades ago. The remnants of the mine camp had been used by teenage partyers
proving their prowess with Budweiser since the 1960s. Maybe
even earlier. Cans and bottles scattered along the roadway up
the hill. Not everyone could wait to get up to the top.

But he did. He made it up there the night after the storm.
It was dark then, with the lantern moon obscured by a ghostly
cloud cover. He could barely see ten feet in any direction, but
couldn't think of anyplace else to go. He'd abandoned the
pickup when it ran out of gas, and started walking the rest of
the way. The miners' hiring office was nothing more than the
most primitive shelter. Windows were smashed out. Graffiti
about who'd give who a blow job-male or female were
spray painted in an agitated script over the boarded-up old
pay window. A nylon plaid couch retrieved from the courtordered ladies' lounge area was in decent shape, considering
how many teens had romped on it over the years.

None of that mattered. He was so exhausted. It was a bed
right then and it was where he'd wait. Animals with tiny
claws, mice, maybe squirrels, skittered in the walls. The smell of urine stung his nose. But he curled up. Slept. Waited.
Tried to figure out just what he'd do. What had happened before his world literally turned upside down.

More important, he wondered who he really was.

Emily was furious. She held her cell phone with a death
grip. She ran to the bathroom, phone clamped to her ear,
rinsed her mouth with Scope, and skipped the brushing. Certainly no flossing, about which she was nearly obsessive, to
the point of working the fiber between her teeth in the car as
she waited in traffic back in Seattle. She looked worse than
she ever had, but she had a new vigor. She was pissed off.
Royally. She listened to Jason and spat out the icy blue liquid and rinsed the sink.

"Yes, I know I said I was beat. Everyone is. But, Jesus,
Jason, why in the hell didn't you call me?"

"I did," the young deputy said. "Sorry, but I did."

Emily regarded the same jeans she wore the night before
and pulled them from the upholstered chair that functioned
more as an open-air closet than a reading place, as she'd intended. They'd do. She was nearly in a frenzy. Things were
happening down at the Martin place and that was officially
her territory. She didn't like it one bit that interlopers were
there.

"Peg Martin is my case," she said. "I should be notified
before the lab rats and techies come over from Spokane and
work the scene. My scene"

"You didn't answer, Emily."

"Detective, call me detective. Why don't you start calling
me detective for a goddamn change?" The operative word of
her rant was pounded out with a hammer. Jason couldn't
miss her irritation.

She looked at her phone and the blue face showed two missed calls. She scrolled the phone numbers and ranted
some more. Jason had called twice-at 2:45 and 4:30.

"Maybe if you acted like I was your superior, which I am
in every way, you'd know better. I'm not your cousin. Your
sister. Your buddy."