A Cold Dark Place (41 page)

She found her very still, in front of the screen, staring at it
with disbelieving eyes.

"Mom, it's an IM from Nick."

Emily's face went pale. "It can't be" She peered over
Jenna's shoulder. "This is someone playing a game" Emily
gently pushed her daughter aside and sat down. She started
typing.

Jengrrl: Who is this?

Batboy88: Who do U think?

Emily looked up at her daughter, her keys tapping slowly.
She hit the ENTER button again.

Jengrrl: You aren't Nick. I know that. Who r u?

Batboy88: When I get out, you want to go to r place, u

know, the mining camp?

Without even thinking, Emily reached over and quickly
yanked the plug from the outlet. The screen sputtered and
went dark. The computer's tiny fan slowed, then whirled to a
stop.

Jenna looked horrified. "Mom! Why did you do that?"

Emily stayed quiet for a second, her mind trying to catch
up with what she'd done. Finally she spoke and when she did
so, the words were more a promise than a statement. "It's over.
He's over," she said. She put her arms around her daughter,
in the bedroom where she grew up. It was over. Nick Martin
was gone from their lives.

And so was Dylan Walker.

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Heart of Ice

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He'd been watching her all night. She never paid him a
single glance. Her sole focus seemed to be on herself. She'd
made several trips with her carbon-copy sisters to the Kappa
Chi upstairs bathroom, her purse slung over her shoulder
like she was headed into battle. In a way, it was. The frat
bathrooms were notoriously filthy. No TP. Just squat, do your
business, and flush with a well-placed foot. If not too drunk,
of course. When she and the pack returned to the party they
were giddier than ever, lips lacquered, hair fluffed up to look
messily styled.

Bet she loves the bed-head look, he thought. Bet she's not
as hot as she wants everyone to believe. Bet she's cold as ice.
Like the others.

Tiffany Jacobs brushed right by him as she made her way
to the basement. She could feel the heat of a hundred bodies
rise in the dank passage way. She caught the peculiar blend
of odors vomit, beer, pot.

Guys are so gross, she thought.

The frat boys were playing boat races with some of the
other drunken sorority girls down there. Upturned plastic
drinking cups floated on a slimy beer surface on sheet of plywood procured for the game. Drink. Slide the cup. Push it to
the edge. Drink. With each heat, a cheer erupted with the
kind of enthusiasm that might have greeted the winner of the
America's Cup.

But this was the big, blue, plastic beer cup.

The room was crowded and the walls were so hot, they
practically wept condensation. Tiffany's rubber flip-flops stuck
to the concrete floor from a coating of spilled beer that shined
like shellac.

"I'm going to get some air," she told her crew, all teetering woozily on a night of beers. One of her Beta Zeta sisters,
an unfortunate girl with brown hair and teeth that had never
seen the benefits of orthodontia, started to follow. She was
one of the four Lindseys who had pledged that year. Tiffany
knew she was a mistake, but they needed another girl to
make their quota. Lindsey S. wasn't really ZBM Zeta Beta
material-but she had a high grade point average.

"No, Lindsey S. I'll be back. I'm going to call my mom.
You stay here"

Lindsey S., drunk and bored, complied and returned to
the boat races.

Tiffany shimmied through the tightly woven human mass
on her way to the door. Her mom had called earlier in
evening-twice.

He was right behind her, just close enough to keep her in
his sightline, but not enough to make her feel uncomfortable.

The cool night air blasted her face and sent a welcome
chill down her body.

If Satan threw a party, he d have it at Kappa Chi, Tiffany Jacobs thought, as she walked up the concrete steps from the
basement to the yard. Bits of broken glass shimmered.

She could hear the sound of a couple making out by a
massive oak tree that sheltered much of the yard. She went
the other direction, toward the pool, and reached for her cell
phone and dialed the speed number for her mother.

"Hi honey," her mom said. "I wondered if you'd call me
back tonight."

"I'm sorry, Mom," Tiffany said, sitting next to a leaffilled pool, "I've been studying my butt off tonight."

"That's why you're there, honey."

"I know." Tiffany rolled her eyes.

"I called earlier because I wanted to let you know I can
come a day early for Moms Weekend"

"How early, Mom?" Tiffany was annoyed and had no
problem letting her mother know. "You know I have a lot of
responsibilities."

"I know you do, Tiff."

"Just a minute," she said cutting off her mother. She took
her phone from her ear.

"Do I know you?"

Mrs. Jacobs tried to speak to her daughter again, but
Tiffany was arguing with someone. She couldn't make out
anything that was being said. The tone of it, however, seemed
angry, confrontational.

"Tiff? What's going on? Tiffany?"

No answer.

"Tiff?"

Then the phone went dead.

Derek Edwards's eyes were two black, bottomless spheres.
To look deep into those eyes would be to fall into darkness. Sheriff Emily Kenyon felt the faint hairs on the back of her
neck rise. She'd been close to evil too many times to discount the feelings that came to her. It was as if somewhere
inside there was a malevolent barometer telling her to be just
a little more careful.

But not so careful that you let fear stymie what you need
to do.

"I'm surprised at you," she finally said. "You seem. . "
she paused to irritate him. "What's the word I'm looking
for? Indifferent. That's what I'm feeling from you here"

It was a lie, but a strategic one.

Derek Edwards, however, didn't blink.

"Are you expecting me to cry?" he asked, four feet away,
across her desk. The face of her daughter, Jenna, now 22,
beamed in her graduation photo from Cascade State University. Nearby, a little pink purse decorated with an eyeless
flamingo was filled with pennies and acted as a paperweight.

And as a touchstone to terrible things in the past, things
that made Emily and Jenna closer than ever.

"Some emotion would be nice, Derek."

He shrugged. On his lap was a stack of flyers that he'd
had made at Kinko's. They were facedown, but through the
cheap goldenrod colored paper the photo of a woman was
visible. The headline in squat, block letters, was also bold
enough that it could be read backward through the paper.

MISSING

Derek kept his papers balanced on his lap. His arms were
folded tightly across his chest. The muscles that enveloped
his sturdy frame like cables spun around a rigid spool, tensed
beneath his vintage Green Day concert T-shirt. He didn't
smile. There was nothing about him that seemed vulnerable.

As a man might seem when his pregnant wife vanished.

"Look," Emily said, still sizing him up, "I don't want anything from you but the truth"

Derek clutched his papers and leaned forward then stood
up. "Jesus, Sheriff, you know me. You know my family. You
know that I didn't do anything to her."

Emily stood so that she could meet his gaze head-on. She
noticed how he hadn't yet said Mandy's name. She stayed
quiet, hoping that her silence would invite the 30-year-old
man with the ever-so-slowly receding hairline and beefy biceps to reveal something of use in the investigation. To spill
more. It was a technique that had served her well in all kinds
of interrogations as a Seattle cop, then as sheriff's deputy,
and finally, the sheriff. On the wall behind the man with the
missing wife was a portrait of Brian Kiplinger, her predecessor and a friend she still mourned. Kip's photo was comforting and distracting at the same time.

"You need to be forthcoming." she said. "We understand
that things weren't that-and I don't mean to be unkind here
that great between you," she said, stopping herself and playing his game of not mentioning his wife's name. "And your
wife. You know your marriage was in trouble."

Derek slammed the flyers on Emily's desk, the heavy
thud, knocking over Jenna's portrait. It startled her.

"In trouble?" he asked. "We had problems, but not any
more than anyone else around Cherrystone or anywhere in
this country!"

She picked up the photo and righted it. "Yes, but she was
going to leave you"

Edwards' face went completely red. "I'm sick and tired of
all the innuendo coming out of your office. I loved my wife."

My wife. As is she were some possession, Emily thought.

Five days earlier, Derek Edwards had called the sheriff's department to report Mandy was missing. He was worried
when she didn't return from her scrapbooking group that
evening.

"That's not like her," he had said. "Mandy wasn't like that"

The dispatcher had immediately seized on his words.
"Mandy wasn't like that"

"He spoke of her in the past tense, Sheriff," she told
Emily. "Like she's gone for good. Weird, huh?"

Emily gave a quick nod, but said nothing.

More than weird, she thought as she went back to her office. With her chief deputy, Casey Howard, out sick, Emily
had made the first phone calls to other young women in the
scrapbooking club and immediately determined that Mandy
Edwards had never gotten that far.

"We gave up on her at eight," said one member. "At first
we thought she'd needed to stop at the store. It was her night
for snack. We made do with coffee and shortbread cookies."

Jesus, she thought. Some friends.

And now there was the husband sitting across from
her.

Derek Edwards's cold black eyes stared as Emily opened
the folder and like a menu handed it to him. Inside was a
photograph of a pretty blonde in a periwinkle sweater over a
blouse with a Peter Pan collar. Emily noted that Mandy was
apparently a very traditional pregnant lady who had chosen
the same look her own mother's generation had sportedpregnant woman as child. Big bows. Babyish prints. None of
the trendy hipster black pregnancy wear for her-no bumpclinging spandex tops revealing a thin slice of tummy.

"I know what my wife looks like," he said.

"Say her name"

Edwards shoved the folder back at Emily. "Damn you,
Emily. Mandy! Mandy is her name! Was this some kind of a test here? Why are you so willing to let another person die
under your watch?"

Emily knew he was baiting her with the old Kristi Cooper
case, but she didn't bite. She'd finally made peace with that.
To do otherwise, she knew, would have killed her like a
slowly bleeding wound.

"Calm down, Derek," Emily said, her voice steady and
commanding. "I want to find Mandy, too. I need some help
here. Are you sure you've told us everything?"

Edwards turned away from her and headed for the door.
"There isn't any more to tell," he said over his shoulder.
"You've been to my place. You've interviewed everyone
I've ever known. I'll look for her myself. Thanks for nothing"

From the hallway, Emily watched Derek Edwards's retreating figure. It was more than a hunch. She knew it in her bones.
Derek was holding back. Crime statistics indicated that Mandy
was dead and that her husband had killed her. But there was
no evidence. No blood.

"There's a reason for that," she told Casey Howard, her
deputy.

"Yeah, he didn't kill her.'

"But you saw the plastic bleach bottle in the trash"

"Yeah, but if you went to my house you'd find two bottles
in our trash. Bleach kills germs. I've got two germy kids."

Emily smiled. "I don't know. Something's with this guy."

"Yeah, he's full of himself, for one. His home gym is the
biggest room in the house. The baby's room is the size of a
closet."

"Not hard to tell his priorities," she said.

"Anyway, Sheriff, just because the dude is a self-absorbed
ass doesn't make him a killer."

She smiled.

Patrice Fletcher had left the potato chips in the trunk.

"Watch the boys, Stacy," she told her daughter, a fittingly
sullen girl of 14. "I'm going back to the car to get the chips."

"You always leave the boys with me. You ought to pay
me, Mom. I'm the live-in sitter around here"

Patrice pretended not to hear Stacy rant about watching
her younger brothers, Brandon and Kevin. She'd thought of
asking Stacy to get the chips, but she knew she'd complain
about that, too.

"You use me like a slave, Mom!"

Patrice and her children had packed up early that morning for a fall picnic at Brier Lake, just to the west of Cherrystone. She knew that cold weather would come in a flash and
that day might be the very last day before rain, snow and
bundle-up weather. Patrice was 35, with red hair that she
wore long, with bangs that made her daughter cringe whenever they were out in public.