A Cold Dark Place (9 page)

Jenna shrugged slightly, her eye still on the pasta. "Well
enough to know he didn't kill his family, if that's what you're asking." She set the stainless steel colander in the sink and
retrieved the heavy pot of water.

The steam rushed from the sink as the water drained into
the colander.

"I really don't know that much about Nick except I just
can't believe he'd kill anyone. He was an artist. He looked a
little creepy but his art was always sweet. Birds and nature
stuff. He wasn't drawing death avengers or violent images of
women being stabbed and bound like half the other guys in
the class."

Emily knew exactly what she was talking about. The
schools did a good job about being PC and tolerant when it
came to every other group besides women. It was still all
right for boys to run around with images of tied-up women
on their T-shirts.

"That looks great, sweetie," said Emily as her daughter
transferred the pasta to a bowl and began pouring on the
sauce. "I'm getting to bed early," she said. "Sheriff's going to be on Diane Sawyer tomorrow and I don't want to
miss it."

Jenna's eyes widened and she started to laugh. "Oh wow!
That would be worth seeing. I'm calling Shali. The girl will
think your boss is a superstar."

The bed held her like a coffin. Despite all that had gone
on in Cherrystone, Emily slept more soundly that night than
she had in a week. She'd laid her head on the pillow and the
next moment the alarm clock beeped to wake her. The merlot, she thought. Better than knockout drops. She put on the
thinning white terry robe she'd taken home from the hotel in
Cabo San Lucas where she and David had honeymooned.
They'd been so happy. It hadn't all been fury and vitriol. The man that made her angrier than any other had also been the
love of her life. She couldn't bear to toss the robe, even though
it was frayed at the cuffs. Her wedding ring was buried deep
in her jewelry box, never to be worn again, but not the robe.

She padded down the hall toward the kitchen. Passing her
daughter's room, she knocked once. "Jenna, get up! Kiplinger's
on TV in ten minutes or so. I'll make coffee"

The kitchen was still a mess, but Emily could deal with
that. She turned on the burr grinder and it made its interminable racket. Fresh ground coffee never smelled so good.
She imagined Kiplinger getting his big handsome face powdered by some assistant provided by the Spokane ABC affiliate, where he was going to appear via satellite.

"Jenna!" She called once more, as she filled the filter
with the dark roast that smelled heavenly at that hour. Always did. She poured distilled water in the reservoir and
flipped the switch. The machine rumbled.

Diane Sawyer, all sunny and blond, was on the tube, talking about Cherrystone and the twister that miraculously had
killed no one, but now the town was the scene of a murder
investigation.

The show broke for the local Spokane weather.

Good, it was just a tease, telling the audience what was
coming after the next commercial break. She hadn't missed
the sheriff.

Emily hurried down the hall and pushed open the door.
Jenna's room was empty. The bed made. She looked at her
watch. It was almost seven. Shali must have come to get her
early. It passed through her mind that earlier this week Jenna
had mentioned something about posters and banners needing to be put up at school.

"First a devastating tornado and now a small town in
Washington State is reeling with a mysterious homicide."

It was Diane Sawyer talking.

Emily, her robe flapping as she ran to the living room,
fixed her eyes on the TV screen.

Brian Kiplinger stared into the camera. Or stared at something. Emily couldn't be sure what he was looking at. His
eyes looked around nervously. He nodded like a doll with a
spring neck as Diane coolly asked what was known about
the Martin family.

"This is a good family. The kid was troubled. We're not
sure what happened, but we think the answers will be uncovered once we find him. I have my best detective on the case"

Nice, Emily thought, a shout out from the sheriff. Of
course, I'm the only detective so that makes me the best by
default.

"What theories do you have about what might have happened?" Sawyer asked.

"We don't know. We don't speculate. But we do want to
find Nicholas Martin." His eyes darted in search of a place to
focus, and the camera mercifully cut to a high school yearbook picture of Nicholas. Unsmiling, with his dark locks
and spooky blue eyes, Nichols did look troubled. "He's not a
suspect, but he is a person of interest." Kiplinger's face came
back into view. Sawyer thanked him and as the camera cut
away, he continued to talk, thanking her for the opportunity
to be on her show, but the sound was cut off.

Emily made a mental note to tell him he did a great joband that he could have the next biggie when it came to interviews. She didn't need the grief.

Emily poured her coffee and given the state of the world,
the effects of the wine from the night before, and what was
facing her that day with the Martin investigation, she used
the steaming brew to swallow three aspirins. No cream in the
coffee that morning. She still needed the buzz.

A familiar horn beeped from the driveway. It was Shalimar Patterson's VW bug. The girls must have forgotten some thing. Emily wished they'd come back ten minutes sooner;
they'd have seen Kiplinger's media debut.

The horn honked again and Emily went to the door. Not
wanting the neighbors seeing her in her bathrobe, she stuck
her head out.

"Hey Mrs. Kenyon," Shali called from the open driver's
window, "tell your daughter to get her butt out here"

"What? Jenna's not home. I thought she was with you"

"Here I am. And she's not here?" She turned off the ignition and the VW coughed until the engine stopped. "Where
is the weirdo?"

Emily ignored Shali and hurried down the hall. The bed
was made. The desk light was on. Jenna wasn't in her bathroom. Everything there was in its place. She looked in the
shower stall and it was dry. She touched a towel. Dry.

"Where is she?" It was Shali Patterson, who must have let
herself inside.

Emily tried to stay calm.

"Did she say anything to you? Did she have a meeting at
school this morning? Early?"

Shali Patterson stood frozen, searching her memory for
something that she had probably screwed up. She never paid
attention to anything.

"I don't know," she finally said. Shali slumped down into
the cushioned desk chair in front of the pink computer. Its
dark empty screen stared at her like an enormous blank eye.

"Think. Think, Shali. This isn't like her. You know it."
Could Shali see panic starting to emerge on her face?

"I don't have a clue. She's Jenna. She probably went jogging or something." Now Shali was looking panicky.

"That's an idea," Emily said, realizing now that she was
scaring the girl.

Right now, she was scared witless. It was one thing to
have some kid missing from the mall, but with the Polly Klaas case had come an indelible marker in the annals of
crime. Parents across America had learned that brazen lowlife
creeps driven by the need to fulfill their twisted needs will
go right into a little girl's bedroom to get what they want. No
fear. No worries. Just a way to get what they want.

Emily was jumping to conclusions and she knew better.
Facts first, feeling second. The room was in perfect order.
The window was shut and latched. She looked around. Jenna's
pink Juicy sweats were hung on a peg. She hadn't gone for
an early morning jog. And even though all of that was apparent, she didn't let on that her heart was pounding with fear.

"This is crazy," she muttered. "This is Jenna. There must
be an explanation."

Suddenly, Shali started to cry. "Right. Yes. There is. Maybe
I was supposed to meet her at school." The teenager buried
her face in her hands. As she did so, her elbows nudged the
computer mouse. The screen sprang to life. Emily put her
arms around Shali's shoulders and tried to comfort her.

"It's fine. There's nothing to worry about. We'll find her,"
said Emily.

"Jenna has been a little off lately."

"What do you mean?" Emily was startled.

Shali didn't answer. Her eyes were riveted to the computer screen, its ghastly blue glow casting a pall over her
tear-streaked face.

"Mrs. Kenyon," she said, her voice full of fear. She pointed
to the screen.

Emily's eyes followed Shali's finger. A chat window had
been left open. She bent closer and read each line

Batboy88: Don't give up on me.

Jengrrl: Never.

Batboy88: I messed up.

Jengrrl: We all do sometimes.

Batboy88: Yeah. But this is big.

Jengrrl: Where RU?

Batboy88: I'll meet U.

Jengrrl: Same place?

Batboy88: Y.

Jengrrl: When can you be there?

Batboy88: Two hours.

Jengrrl: OK. R U sure U don't want me to tell mom?

Batboy88: She won't understand.

Jengrrl: K.

"Who is Batboy88?" Emily tugged at Shali's shoulder.

Shali shook her head.

"Do you know?"

"I don't know. She's never mentioned him to me. I never
heard of Batboy. A chat friend? She didn't say anything about
him last night."

"Last night?" Emily brightened. "You talked with Jenna?"

"Yeah, she said she'd tape the Good Morning America
show so we could watch it later. I told her okay. She said she
was too distracted to get up super early."

"Distracted?"

"I don't know. I'm thinking. She said you had a blowup
with her dad yesterday. Does that help?"

Emily remembered. But Batboy88 surely wasn't David's
handle. "Was she upset?"

Shali watched as Emily frantically moved around the room,
looking for something-anything-that might indicate where
Jenna had gone. Her coat was missing. Her purse was nowhere to be seen. The hamper was empty. She'd left wearing
what she'd had on at dinner.

"She seemed a little off, but she didn't tell me to forget
coming to pick her up this morning."

Emily processed what she was hearing and seeing. The
bedroom that she had grown up in, the room that she lov ingly painted pink for her daughter when they returned to
the big old house in Cherrystone, made her shudder.

She dialed David's number and he picked up. Noise like
an ocean growled in the background. He was on the freeway,
probably headed to the hospital.

"Are you alone?" she asked.

"Do you mean is she with me?"

"Not her. Is Jenna with you?"

David adjusted the volume of the speaker phone, his fingers too big for the tiny controls. Traffic whizzed past. He
leaned closer to hear.

"For a second, I thought you said Jenna," he said.

Emily let out a breath. It seemed like the first one since
she dialed her ex. It was as if she was one of those apnea patients and had forgotten how to breathe.

"I did, David. Jenna's missing."

"Missing?"

"Did you hear from her last night?"

"No "'

"Our daughter is gone"

It was midmorning the day after Jenna Kenyon went
missing. She hadn't been seen anywhere. Not at the school.
Not Java the Hut. Not the arcade on Main Street. Nowhere.
Just a day after it all started, Emily Kenyon dug into her own
life and remembered how she'd barely given another mother's
worry a second thought after a similar passage of time. She
had worked missing persons before in Seattle and her own
words echoed in her head like mantra that was meant to stall
and placate.

"Sorry," she had once told a mother facing similar circumstances, "but your son's barely a missing person. He was
only classified as a missing a few hours ago."

"That's why I'm here," the mother had said. "You told me
to go home yesterday."

I realize that, but really, kids today, you know, they are
different than we were"

The woman shook her head, sending a spatter of tears
across Emily's desk. Emily pretended not to notice.

"But my son isn't like that. He's an honor student"

"He'll turn up," she said, sending the woman away.

The end of the story, Emily never forgot, was that he was
a dead honor student. He'd been found two days later in
weedy vacant lot less than a mile from their house. A week
or so later, two boys were arrested for murder. The reason? A
girl one of them liked had said she thought the honor student
was "cute" Being cute got the honor student killed with a
tree branch club and the broken end of a beer bottle.

The police, of course, jumped on Jenna's disappearance
right away-something they likely would not have done if it
had been a girl or boy outside the family of law enforcement.
There had been endless phone calls. And the sheriff had
called in a computer specialist from Spokane who was trying to figure out just who Batboy88 was, and if he could possibly be Nicholas Martin.

No media attention, though. Emily had not wanted to rally
the media-not just yet. It seemed as if it would be more a
distraction than a help. After all Jenna was a good girl.

An honor student.

Emily and Shali had driven all over Cherrystone, but no
one knew a thing. The worst part of it was that the town wasn't
so big that she'd be missed if she was anywhere. She thought
of Elizabeth Smart and Polly Klaas-the two girls who had
made the country wake up and take notice that the worst
possible things can happen in the bedroom down the hall.
That tucking in your daughter and kissing her good night did
not guarantee that she'd be there in the morning. All the ugliest scenarios in the world came back to her like an avalanche,
yet she did her best to dismiss them. One by one. As she sat
in her office and saw the worried faces of those who knew
her best, each with anxiety and concern etched over all their
features, she prayed.