A Cold Dark Place

by Gregg Olsen

  “I had the proverbial day from hell,” Emily said. She slipped off her shoes and took a seat on one of the kitchen barstools while Jenna dumped a box of pasta into the water.

  “Did you salt it?” she asked.

  Jenna nodded. “Yes. And I already heard about your day. Everybody at school is talking about the Martins.”

  The merlot in Emily’s hand swirled in the crystal globe of the stemware, coating the sides and flowing back into a deep pool of garnet. The blood she’d seen at the Martin house flashed in her mind. She set down the glass.

  “I’ll bet. Seems like the whole world has literally turned over since the tornado.” Emily swiveled the barstool to face her daughter, now stirring the pasta with a wooden spoon as it foamed, nearly boiling over. “You know Nick Martin, don’t you, honey?”

  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.”

  Wednesday, 6:39 A.M.

  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 job—and 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 something. 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 lovingly 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.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Wednesday, 9:15 A.M., Cherrystone, Washington

  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.

  Her cell phone rang. It was her ex-husband.

  “David,” she said, doing her best to remain calm, “have you heard anything? Has your mom gotten a call from Jenna?”

  “No. Not a word. Anything there? Should we really be alarmed?”

  “You know something? I don’t know why you even bothered calling. Or maybe you dialed me by mistake. FYI, your daughter is missing. You know, the cute little girl you left behind when you went off with what’s her name?”

  “Do you really want to go there?” David was ice. It was a practiced affect. He used to be a different kind of man, gentle, caring, even loving.

  “Go where? I just want to find out where Jenna is.”

  “She’s my daughter, too.” David kept his answer curt. “And I love her.”

  Emily softened a little. She hated herself for badgering him. After all he didn’t take her. He didn’t know a thing about her whereabouts. It sputtered through her mind that he might know, but she set the idea aside as beyond cruel. Even for David. Ultimately, Emily didn’t think he’d stoop so low as to conspire with Jenna to get her back to Seattle.

  “I
know,” she said. Her teeth were clenched and her eyes hurt from crying.

  Sheriff Kiplinger appeared in the doorway. He motioned to Emily that he needed to speak with her. He mouthed the words: “It’s important.”

  “I have to go,” Emily said into the phone. “Call me if you hear anything. I’ll do the same.” She looked up, clutching her cell phone tightly against her breast.

  “What is it?” she said, almost daring the sheriff to tell her. She could barely read the man. She had no clue what was coming.

  “There’s someone here to see you.”

  It passed though her mind that Jenna was there. Thank God! I’ll read her the riot act, but thank sweet Jesus that she’s all right. But as the sheriff motioned around the corner, another young girl appeared in the doorway.

  It was Shali Patterson. She’d obviously been crying. Her usually somewhat heavy-handed makeup had left a pair of mascara tributaries down her cheeks. Kiplinger ushered her into Emily’s office.

  Emily stood up, and then froze, reading Shali’s face like a search warrant. “What’s going on? What is it? Have you heard from Jenna?”

  Kiplinger backed off toward the doorway, removing his hand from Shali’s shoulder, now visibly shaking. The teen shook her head in an exaggerated “no” indicating that she wasn’t bringing any news. She looked like a ten-year-old, not the reckless driver who terrorized the neighborhood with a too-fast VW bug.

  “Mrs. Kenyon, I’ve been thinking a lot.” Tears had already fallen, but her big eyes threatened a deluge. “And I think I remember one thing about Nick and Jenna.”

  Emily moved closer. “What was it, Shali?”

  “It’s about Nick Martin.” She hesitated.

  “What about Nick?”

  “I know that he’d talked a lot about like finding his real dad. That he and his adopted dad weren’t that close. His dad was an engineer and he was, you know, artsy. His dad just didn’t get him, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t.” Emily wondered if the scenario that had played out before the tornado held something even darker than she could imagine.