A Cold Dark Place (5 page)

"Detective," he said, correcting himself as a he sunk into
the mud of the Martins' ravaged yard. "We found Mr. Martin's mangled body about an hour after you left. I called the
sheriff, and I guess he called Spokane for backup. They
showed up at four-thirty."

Emily Kenyon felt lousy just then. The kid was flustered.
He was doing what the sheriff had told him.

"Emily, err, Detective, there's one thing you ought to know,"
he said. She was so mad at him, he could feel it. He didn't
wait for her response. "I saw the same wound on Mr. Martin.
I think he's been shot, too. So do the guys from Spokane"

Emily paused. She hadn't expected that. Adrenaline pulsed.
"Jesus, Jason," she finally blurted, "what the hell happened
out there? Are you sure? And where are the boys? Have you
seen any sign of them?"

"No. Nothing. Backhoe's on its way. We're taking video
and stills as soon as the light's a little better here. Then . . "
he caught himself. "When you get here and give us the go
ahead we'll see if we can find them. I remember reading
about a kid who survived longer than a week.. "

She cut him off. "Yes, you told me, in Pakistan."

"It was India," Jason said, slightly glad he could trump
her on something. She'd hurt his feelings and it was a tiny
payback. It felt just a little bit good.

Emily Kenyon got that, even on the tiny cell phone.

"Yes, India," she said. "I'm on my way. Be there ASAP."

She hung up, put on a shirt, and ran a brush through her
hair. A rubber band was the only remedy. The ponytail was
ridiculous at her age, and Emily knew it. But there was no time for anything like washing and blow-drying, which on a
good day was a fifteen-minute chore. Not when there were
two bodies west of Cherrystone and two kids missing.

Need to cut this mess, she thought, thinking of her mother's
advice that a woman should cut her hair when she reaches
forty. And, if you ask me, that's stretching it, Emily, her
mother had added.

She didn't have the heart to wake Jenna as she passed her
room. Leaving her alone again wasn't right, but Jenna had
school. Besides, somebody deserved some rest around there.
She wrote a note and stuck it on the refrigerator-the first
place Jenna was sure to go.

"Come home right after school. Serious case. Love, Mom"

And Emily was out the door.

Jenna Kenyon grabbed a Stawberry Pop-Tart and started
for the door. There was no time for the toaster to do its thing
that morning. She'd have to eat it gummy and cold. Jenna
hastily wrote, "See you after school. I love you, too, Mom,"
and added a smiley face to the note her mother had left on
the fridge.

It was after seven and Shalimar Patterson, her best friend
since she moved to Cherrystone, was never late. Jenna
locked the door behind her, and stood in front of the old
house on Orchard wondering just what her mother had been
up to all night and this morning. The past few days had been
anything but routine. With school and work, routine was always a little on the fragile side. But the storm was completely unexpected, and her mother had thrown herself into a
24-7 schedule. What with her breakup with that jerk Cary,
and her dad's constant button pressing, Jenna knew her mother
was enduring what she called a "bad patch" It would pass.
They always did.

Shah's classic VW bug-cream with a slightly tattered
black ragtop-lurched into the driveway. The car radio's volume was cranked up loud enough for Jenna to make out the
song lyrics from the Kenyons' front door. Not good. But that
was Shalimar Patterson to the nines. In your face, but forgivably so. Jenna hurried to the car. A half-empty bag of kettle corn and a backpack occupied the passenger seat. She
was also anything, but neat.

"Sorry about that" Shali revved the engine. "Oops, foot
slipped."

Jenna smiled and scooted both items to the backseat.
Popcorn fell on the driveway.

`Birds will eat it," Shali said.

"Yeah. Hey, something's up at Nicholas Martin's place."
Jenna slid into the duct-tape-repaired bucket seat as Shali, a
decidedly ordinary girl with a name that always promised so
much more, grinded the gears as she found reverse.

"You mean that freak with the black eye makeup?"

Jenna fished for the seat belt, wincing as her fingertips
touched an apple core stuck between the door and the seat.
Got it. She pulled the belt across her lap. Her mom was a
cop and she followed every rule. It irritated some of her
friends, but that's the way it had to be.

"I had that art class with him," Jenna said. "He was kind
of cool in the obviously tortured-soul-seeking-attention way."

Shali checked her makeup in the rearview mirror, permanently tilted toward her for just that purpose. The blush on
her right side was heavier than the left, so she evened it out
with her palm.

"What did he do? Meth?" she asked.

Jenna shrugged, but Shali kept pushing for details. She
did that even when she didn't know Cherrystone's criminals
and losers, but had merely read their names in the paper and
knew that Jenna's mom had the dirt on someone.

"I'll bet it was meth" She spat out the words. "Or pot. He
comes to school baked half the time. Must have been doing
a lot of it if your mom's on the case"

Shali's Volkswagen sped by kids without wheels who'd
lined up to catch the bus to the high school a few miles away.
A few stared hard at the car as if they could stop it and get a
ride. Anything was better than the bus even a ride with
Shali Patterson behind the wheel.

"Probably. But I don't know. My mom's been out there all
night."

"Yeah? Cool." Shali scrunched her long dark hair, over-
gunked with a hair product she'd ordered from a TV shopping channel. She wore a hooded sweatshirt and a baby-T,
cropped pants, and chunky gold ankle bracelet (also from the
home shopping channel) she had put on in the car. Jenna
wore her uniform 7 blue jeans and a sweater. If Shali was
the ho' in the video-or at least an all-talk wannabe-Jenna
was the good girl who never got any airtime.

Their friendship worked because Jenna was confident
about who she was. A friend like Shalimar Patterson could
be over-the-top annoying, the type that sought the spotlight
whenever she could find it. Jenna wasn't like that. She just
didn't feel the need to sell herself so hard. Shali did.

Jenna changed the subject. "Want to get a latte? I could
use a boost"

"No kidding. Me, too. A white chocolate soy mocha
sounds kind of good"

Shali pressed the pedal to the floor as they drove the short
stretch of roadway to the school. They passed a place where
the twister had set down. Shali scrunched her hair again and
made a face as the splintered house zoomed from view.

"Never liked the color of that house anyway," Shali said.
"What were they thinking?"

Jenna nodded in slight agreement, though she hadn't really felt that way. Shali could be such an idiot. The people who
owned that house were without far more than good taste.
They no longer had a place to live.

"You can be such a bitch," she finally said.

Shali knew that. This almost a game between the two best
friends. She smiled.

"You got a problem with that?"

"No. Not really." Jenna hesitated. "Maybe sometimes."

"Make up your mind."

Jenna reached for her coffee card as they pulled up to the
window of Java the Hut.

"Just sometimes. Like after a tornado trashed someone's
house. Times like that"

"I can be harsh. But that's why you love me"

Jenna looked out the window as Shali gave the kid at the
drive-through their espresso orders. Her thoughts had turned
back to her mother. She must be beyond frazzled. She got
that way every now and then. As cool as her mom could be,
she could also unravel. She did that more than once during
the divorce. It might have been justified but even so it wasn't
pretty. She hated seeing her mother cry or talk bad about
herself and her life. It stung deeply. She wished she could
run a triple tall latte to her. She'd need it. What was going on
over at the Martins'?

The morning sunlight poured itself slowly over the striated hillside like syrup, exposing the shattered ruins of the
Martin house and a parking lot of Cherrystone police cars,
two aid cars, and assorted sedans, including Emily Kenyon's
much-maligned Honda ("an American cop ought to drive an
American car," Sheriff Kiplinger had said, but didn't press it
further because the officer's car allowance was less costly
than leasing a new vehicle). None of the observers of the scene had ever taken in such a disturbing sight as the remains of Mark and Peg Martin's farmhouse.

And it was about to get worse. Far worse.

"Can I get the photog over here?" a call came from one of
the Spokane police techies. He was about thirty-five, tall and
lanky, and had arrived on the scene with a pristine lab kit
and an unmistakable countenance of superiority. The look
on his face just then, however, was utter horror. He stood
about twenty-five yards into the debris pile on the southwest
side of the property.

"Pretty ugly," he said recoiling at what he was seeing.
"Looks like his arms were pulled off."

Emily Kenyon balanced herself on a large piece of Formica
countertop from what had once been a seventies-era kitchen.
It annoyed her that the Spokane tech was taking over the
scene. She moved closer, to claim her turf.

Mark Martin had been a handsome man, in good physical
condition for someone in his early fifties-lean and muscular. He worked for the local power utility as its chief engineer
and was known to bike the dozen miles to the office in the
summer. His curly silvering hair was matted with mud. His
blank eyes stared into nothingness.

"Let's shoot stills and video and get him with his wife,"
Emily said, kneeling by the body and studying every inch of
its battered form.

Peg Martin's body was already ziplocked and ready for
the ambulance and the ride to Spokane where she'd be
processed as if she were nothing. Not the bake-sale lady. Not
the woman who did everything for the community whenever
anyone asked. Peg was an apparent murder victim. Emily
looked at Mark Martin's battered and nearly sanded-off skin.
He had on boxer shorts and a single sock. He might have had
on a shirt, but it was gone with his arms.

She was sure he, too, had been the victim of a gunshot
wound. A scenario played in Emily's mind. It was a familiar
one. She'd worked at least three cases of similar presentation
back in Seattle. She thought about the position of the wounds
and whether or not they were dealing with a murder/suicide.
She hadn't heard there were any problems between the Martins. She had checked. There had never been a single domestic violence call from their residence to the sheriff's office.
Not a single one. They had seemed a happy couple, though
they did tend to stick to themselves. Peg did her school stuff
like a trooper, but Mark was a more introspective type-the
typical engineer.

"The kind that snaps," Emily said to herself.

A gentle breeze blew from the north, picking up a little
dust and fiber. The scene was not really the type to yield much
in the way of trace forensics. A tornado had likely stripped
away any scraps of evidence. The processing going on now
was more about documenting that everything had been done
properly when the defense got Emily on the stand. She
doubted it would ever get that far, though. It seemed like
the shooter was dead. The only question was where were the
boys?

Emily caught the loose tendrils of her long ponytail and
stuck them behind her ear. The wind blew harder. It seemed
that time stood still. People were frozen in their duties, digging through the debris, ferrying a body bag to the second
victim. Even the flashing lights atop the cruiser seemed to
become still. Her heart stopped, too. Out of the corner of her
eye, she saw something she didn't want to see.

She knew they had to be there.

Where else could they be?

"Please, no," she said softly as the world started to crank
back into action, at first in a stop-start fashion like one of those old school filmstrips. Then faster. Then finally at normal speed.
She turned her attention to a chunk of drywall with some obvious blood spatter. It was about ten feet from where she
stood.

"What is it?"

The voice was Jason Howard's. The earnest deputy could
see that Emily was frozen in her tracks. Stiff. Intent on something in the remains of the house.

"He's over there," she said, indicating the drywall.

Jason walked closer, but didn't see what Emily had discovered.

"Help me move this," she said. The pair bent over and
lifted the chalky board. It was like turning a rock at the beach
to see what might scurry out to get away from the exposure
of the light of day. Yet nothing moved.

"It's Donovan, I think. Maybe Nicholas," she said. "I saw
the tips of his fingers"

"Jesus, Detective," Jason said, remembering how touchy
Emily had been. The boy was in jeans and a button-down
shirt. Remarkably, he was intact. Even his face, which struck
Emily as resembling his mother's so much that it was disconcerting, was untouched. It was almost like he was asleep.

"I know him," Jason said. "He's in my little brother's Cub
Scout troop. Nice kid."

Emily waved the techies over. "Let's process this area as
best as we can and get a board over here and get him out of
here ""

"He looks so peaceful," Jason said.

Photo flashes ricocheted off the boy's pale skin. Two
coroner's employees hoisted him on to the stretcher, which
they had spread with a midnight-blue body bag. Handles for
easy transfer flapped in the wind.