A Cold Dark Place

by Gregg Olsen

  Tuesday, 12:25 P.M., Cherrystone, Washington

  It was the biggest mistake of a very long day and Emily knew it when she absentmindedly answered her cell phone without looking at the caller ID panel. She just flipped it open and there he was. It was Cary McConnell’s husky voice. Her heart plunged.

  “I thought you were avoiding me,” he said.

  “I’ve just been busy,” Emily lied.

  “I know. I saw you on the Spokane news.” He paused. “Twice.”

  There was an awkward beat of silence as Emily toyed with pretending that she had a bad cell and couldn’t hear him. She was more direct than that and as much as she was beginning to loathe Cary McConnell, he deserved to know the truth.

  “Yeah. Brian’s hooked up with Diane Sawyer and I’m stuck with Spokane TV talking to a reporter just out of communications school.” She tried to inject a friendly tone in her voice, but mostly Emily just wanted the call to be over. She knew what he was after. But she was too tired to be quick with an excuse as to why she had to cut the call short.

  “Are you busy tomorrow night?”

  Damn it, he asked.

  “Now isn’t a good time,” she said, wishing she’d been more direct and used “never is a good time.”

  “We have something, you know.”

  She found her footing. “No, Cary, we don’t. We dated. It didn’t work out. And now the best we can be is good friends.”

  “We’re not friends. Last time I looked, friends don’t mess around like we did.”

  Her skin crawled. Sleeping with any man who still used the term “messing around” for making love was confirmation that she had, in fact, really made a mistake.

  “Listen, Cary, I don’t want to hurt you any more than I apparently have. I didn’t mean for things to go so far.”

  “So far?”

  His voice became tight and she could imagine the veins on his neck popping like night crawlers on a rainy pavement.

  “You know what I mean. I’m not ready for a relationship.” Again, Emily censored herself. She didn’t add the last bit that passed through her mind: “with you. Ever.”

  “Don’t do this. Let’s talk.”

  “We already have.”

  “Let’s work it out. Let’s have a drink tonight so we can talk.”

  Emily lost it. She felt like their roles had been reversed. She was operating on logic and rational thought and he was fluttering around with hurt feelings, treading water in a stormy sea of emotions.

  “I can’t talk,” she said. “Hear me on this. I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to see you. It was a mistake, Cary. Let it go.”

  “I can’t stop thinking about you,” he said. “We had something and I’m not going to let it go. Why should I?”

  “What do you mean? Are you forcing me to get a restraining order? Jesus, Cary. You’re a goddamn lawyer. You know you can’t harass me.”

  She pulled the phone from her ear as Cary’s voice carried like a gunshot to the side of her head.

  “You are a stupid bitch and you can’t do this to me. You belong to me . . .”

  She pressed the CALL END button.

  Chapter Five

  Tuesday, 2:00 P.M., Cherrystone, Washington

  Java the Hut loomed like a mirage and Emily pulled in and absentmindedly ordered the special of the day—a doubletall white chocolate mocha. She wondered about the wisdom of making a mocha with white chocolate anyway. Was white chocolate really chocolate after all?

  The young woman at the window took her order.

  “Make it a triple shot,” Emily said. “And no whip.”

  Emily stared out the window and mentally sorted the preliminary findings phoned in from Spokane County’s coroner’s office. The coroner’s assistant talked with the dispassionate voice of someone who worked with violence every day. She rattled off the findings, laundry-list style, without taking a single breath. None of what she said was earth-shattering, but it was good that what Emily had seen at the crime scene matched what the techies were finding in the dank, cramped, and acrid-smelling basement lab. Observation and science went hand in hand in the courtroom provided they ever got that far. It appeared that both of the parents had been shot at close range, nearly execution style. The youngest victim was shot in the back from some distance, perhaps indicating flight. Maybe Donny had come across Nicholas as he fired away at his parents? And in running to get help or save his own life, he had been blasted by Nick with the shotgun? Their dress—or lack of it—suggested evening or early morning as the time of attack. Then again it could have been the raging fury of the tornado, ripping off their clothes. Jason’s plucked-chicken comment came to mind.

  The barista attempted to make small talk as the espresso machine sent a cloud of steam into the interior of what had once been a Fotomat.

  “Busy day?”

  “Absolutely killer,” Emily said without an iota of sarcasm.

  The young woman smiled and shrugged as the steam forced its way through the tamped coffee.

  “Tell me about it,” she said. “I had to make seven drinks for a lady who was taking them to her office. My lineup of regulars was madder than you-know-what.”

  Emily smiled. She didn’t say anything about the stupid white chocolate coffee she was going to drink. She didn’t say anything about what she’d seen at the Martin place. Or who she was looking for. People would find out soon enough. Cherrystone, which had just dodged a bullet with the tornado in terms of no loss of human life, was about to be put on the map as the hometown of a gruesome and frightening family murder.

  Emily paid and drove over to the school. She told Sheriff Kiplinger that she’d talk to the principal at Cherrystone High about Nick Martin. The Spokane media was already swarming, and reporters from Seattle were also making inquiries about hotel rooms. A triple homicide was big, fat, unbelievable news. It was after lunchtime, and the usually tidy streets of Cherrystone were oddly quiet, given the coming of the second storm in a week—the media storm.

  Emily sipped her mocha and nearly gagged. It was sickeningly, almost throat burning, sweet. If she hadn’t considered the combination of sugar and caffeine as a necessary elixir given her past few days, she’d have tossed the paper cup out the window. Damn the city’s littering ordinance.

  Her cell rang. It was David.

  “Emily, we have to talk,” he said, without so much as a hello.

  “David,” she answered, her voice slightly brittle, “we don’t have anything to talk about. At least not now.”

  “Yeah, we do. We need to talk about Jenna. I don’t want her growing up in some Podunk town.”

  Her brow narrowed and she rolled her eyes. “Thanks. I grew up here, David.”

  “No offense, but I’m sure you’ll agree that Jenna deserves more opportunity.”

  “She’ll get that opportunity when she goes to college. I did. We all did.” Given the circumstances of the last few hours, she couldn’t bring up her old argument that Cherrystone was a safe haven. Seattle had a rave culture. Cherrystone was still 4-H. Certainly there were drugs in the town that David derided as “no more than a pockmark on the map,” but Emily knew more kids were concerned about showing how high their sunflowers grew than how high they got. Seattle teens got beaten and murdered and abused everyday of the week.

  And now Cherrystone had a murder times three. The idea pounded at her cranium. Was it lack of sleep or the realization that some kid had slaughtered his family for no apparent reason?

  “Really, David, I can’t talk about this right now.”

  “Someone’s dog loose? Cow get out of a pasture?” David could be cutting and never missed the chance to remind Emily that she was slumming in Cherrystone.

  Her head pounded. “I’d answer that, and since you’ll probably relay everything back to Dani, I’d better use small words so she’ll understand.” The second they spewed from her lips, Emily wished she hadn’t been so harsh and could pluck them from the air before David heard them. If she h
adn’t been under so much pressure because of the storm and now the Martin murders, she’d have held it together.

  “Now, I remember why I couldn’t stand being around you.”

  His words cut to the bone. She knew they’d been deserved, but she hated the idea of their entire life together being cast in an odious light. They did, after all, have a few good years earlier in their marriage. Maybe even more good years than bad. And they did have Jenna.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I do have to go. David, I’ll call you. But for now, please understand that Jenna is going to see you this summer—for the two weeks we’ve agreed upon in the parenting plan. Nothing more.”

  “Dani and I think she’s old enough to change her mind—”

  Dani was David’s girlfriend and Emily couldn’t stand it that she was closer in age to Jenna than she was to David. They’d met once, not long after the divorce was final. Dani had seemed nice enough. She wasn’t particularly beautiful. She wasn’t even blond. And her chest? Just average for a second wife, or at least what most men tend to go for when they trade up. Emily hated the age disparity. It just seemed wrong, ugly, and predictable. David was a lot of things in their marriage, many of them annoying, but he’d never been predictable.

  “I didn’t call you to argue,” he said, his voice icy. “I wanted to tell you that I’ve been talking with Jenna and she wants to live with me for the summer. The hospital PR department says she could help out on the Web site. It would be a good opportunity.”

  Emily was stunned, but she tried to keep cool. Why would Jenna collude with her father? Wasn’t she happy? “She said so?” she asked, before she thought better of it, and laid the blame at David. “Or is this something you’ve cooked up?”

  “I’m her dad. She needs her dad. Studies say that girls grow into stronger, more self-actualized women if they have close relationships with their fathers.” He was superior, cool, and oddly detached; it was as if he was reading his words out of some journal that Dani probably nabbed off the Internet.

  “Really? That would have been nice to know when we were all still living together, wouldn’t it?”

  “Okay. This call is going nowhere.”

  “Right.” Like our marriage, Emily thought, though she held it in. “Good-bye, David. I’ll have my lawyer call yours.”

  As she moved the phone from her ear she heard him say, “When are you going to tell him? Tonight in bed—”

  It was a cheap shot and Emily snapped her flip phone shut. An argument with David always ended with a calculated abruptness. Even though it was a pattern that had been repeated ad nauseum during the more difficult times of their marriage, Emily never got used to it. Her face felt hot with anger. Her pulse raced. It was true, Cary McConnell had been her divorce lawyer. She and Cary hadn’t so much as shared a meal until after the divorce was final. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. The phrase out of the frying pan came to her mind.

  Emily got out of her car in the Cherrystone High School parking lot. A girl sat in her big brother’s blue Nova and smoked a More cigarette. She looked over at Emily, pulled the brown stick from her mouth, and waved. It was a girl who’d visited the house a few times when they first returned to Cherrystone. Emily smiled back. The girl turned her head to exhale a steady stream of smoke. A couple of teenage boys sat on a curb in front of the totem pole that marked the school’s entrance. Both wore holey jeans, wallet chains, and sweatshirts that had seen better days—or at least had been distressed enough to appear so. One was a faux vintage shirt for the band Poison. The other boy had a pair of gold earrings—thick and pretty enough that Emily thought they must have cost a bundle if they were real gold.

  “You here about Nick?” the one with the Poison shirt asked.

  The question caught Emily off guard. She thought for a moment before answering. It shouldn’t have surprised her much. The Spokane TV news had already broadcast the discovery of the three bodies.

  “Do you know him?”

  “Not really. We hung out a few times. Kind of quiet. But cool, too”

  The earring boy looked up; his dark hooded eyes seemed empty when he probably meant to cop a menacing affect.

  “Nick Martin was screwed up. Always has been. His whole family was f’d up.”

  She narrowed her gaze. “That’s quite an endorsement. What do you mean?”

  Golden earrings shrugged, but the other boy answered.

  “Kyle says everyone is screwed up.”

  “Yeah, I guess I do,” Kyle said, nodding in a slow and exaggerated manner, before adding, “I barely knew the guy.”

  Emily thanked them, and handed each a card.

  “Whoa,” Poison said, “you’ve got a business card. Cool.”

  She didn’t know if it was sarcasm or if he was truly impressed by the ivory and black sheriff’s department card, but she smiled nonetheless.

  “Call me if you can think of something that will be helpful, okay?”

  With that, she pitched her coffee cup into a trash can by the front door and made her way to the front office. A wave of silence seemed to follow her. There would be no need for introductions. There was no need to say why she was there. The school was abuzz with the news.

  “Dr. Randazzo is waiting for you,” said the secretary, a cheerful lady with an apricot chignon that looked like it had been spun from sugar at the county fair. “Go right on in.”

  Chapter Six

  Tuesday, exact time and place unknown

  It didn’t add up. Anyone could see it. How could she rebuff him? Deny him? Deny herself? He thought about those things as he tried to fit the tiny pieces of his life together. She had been all he’d ever wanted. She had been the one who made him whole. She was all he dreamed about. When he was eating a meal, it was she he was consuming. Sweet. Tender. Juicy. When he was masturbating, it was her soft hand stroking his penis. Faster, slower, down his hard shaft. Only she knew how to touch him. When the wind blew softly over his ears, it was her voice whispering for him to try harder. She loved him. He alone understood her. As she alone understood him.

  The memory faded. His face grew hot. He could feel his disappointment, then anger and rage well up in his throat. It tightened and burned. He wanted to scream at her for ruining everything by choosing the wrong man. And what a stupid choice. She could never be to the other man what she could be to him. He alone could love her. He could cherish every goddamn inch of her body.

  Stupid bitch, he thought as he tore up one of the copies of the letters that he’d saved. It had once been so precious. But no more. Shards of paper fell like confetti, all over the floor. He looked down at the mess. It seemed so perfect in its destruction. She’d cost him everything.

  He started to weep and it made him hate her more. Even then, after all that he’d done for her, after she’d unceremoniously dumped him when he told her how he felt, his feelings were conflicted. Mixed. A jumble.

  Chapter Seven

  One week before the tornado, 2:45 P.M., Des Moines, Iowa

  Miranda Collins parked her Silver BMW sedan in front of her expansive redbrick home. The house overlooked the pale green waters of Des Moines’s lazy Raccoon River. That quiet Sunday, when the chill of winter had been decidedly chased away with the promise of an early spring, she doubted there was a prettier place in the world. The sun’s rays wove their way through the leafy overhang of the only elms in all of Iowa to survive the Dutch Elm disaster of the 1930s. It was among the most desirable neighborhoods in the city. Droplets of light fell over the lawn and cobblestone walkway to the ten-foot leaded-glass doors that led inside the turn-of-the-century Tudor-style home that Miranda shared with her husband, Karl, and their son, Aaron. She threw her Coach bag over her shoulder and hooked her fingers into the loops of plastic grocery bags holding the ingredients for tonight’s dinner—chicken, button mushrooms, shallots, and a decent bottle of Bordeaux. She knew better than to buy the cheap stuff.

  “Cooking wine should never be anything less than what you’d imbibe from a Baccara
t glass,” Karl had said a time or two. He was only half-kidding, and Miranda had learned not to repeat the remark because it made him seem like such a snob. And a snob he could be.

  He’s a proctologist, for goodness sake, she thought. He’s a success, of course, but bottom line he’s no neurosurgeon. What he knows of wine he’s learned from the pages of Wine Spectator or what I’ve told him.

  An attractive woman with symmetrical features and dark brown hair that had been artfully streaked gray by nature, Miranda balanced the sacks of groceries on her hip as she reached with her key for the doorknob. Her charm bracelet with its collection of miniatures revealing a happy life dangled from her wrist. A baby carriage. A typewriter. Books. Miniature maps of Washington and California. A tiny Space Needle replica had been placed next to the Eiffel Tower and the St. Louis Arch. She considered each memento a keystone in her life.

  The measly pressure of her inserting the key made the door move inward. It wasn’t locked. It wasn’t even shut. It only alarmed her for a second that DJ, the cocker spaniel that had been an unwelcome birthday gift from her son, might have gotten outside. If he hadn’t, he’d have been at the door like a rocket to greet her. The dog saw every shadow through the glass as an opportunity for escape.

  “Karl? Aaron? DJ got out!” she called from the foyer. Her heels clacked against the marble flooring as she moved from stone to carpet.

  No one answered.

  In turning to go down the hall toward the kitchen, Miranda noticed several reddish spots on the surface of the oriental rug that she’d purchased from a street vendor in Iran before the shah lost power. Miranda had been a correspondent for a network affiliate and the carpet, with its intricate pattern of green, cream, and pink, was the one souvenir she’d allowed herself.

  “What?” she said softly. It looked like the dog had gotten into something. She set the groceries on the floor and touched the red spot with her fingertips. Wet. She rubbed the stain between her fingers.