A Cold Dark Place

by Gregg Olsen

  “Did his father hurt him?” she asked.

  The question seemed to stun Shali. She shook her head. “No, not that I know of.”

  “Then what? Was it worse?”

  “No. Not that. It was just that he wanted to find his real dad.”

  “Was he actively looking?”

  The girl nodded. “He registered on one of those Web sites.” She reached for a tissue box, and Emily pulled one out and passed it to her. Shali was pulling herself together. There was guilt there, of some kind, but it wasn’t so sinister as Emily had imagined.

  Emily prodded her. “And?”

  Shali wiped her eyes. Her tissue was black. “Not that I know about, but it really wasn’t my thing. Jenna was helping him because she felt bad about her dad.”

  “Her dad?” Emily had no idea where this was going, or if Shali was even paying attention to her best friend’s status. “She wasn’t adopted.”

  “I know that, Mrs. Kenyon. What I mean is that Jenna was mad at her dad and didn’t think she could be that close to him after what he did to you and her. You know. Like the new girlfriend, Dani.”

  Emily winced. It seemed like this teenager that peppered her entire speech pattern with extraneous “likes” was getting a little personal. The conversation wasn’t going in that direction. Not even an inch.

  “All right.” Better just to acknowledge what she said and move on.

  “She and Nick kind of bonded over that. I think once she got to know him, you know, once she got to see that there was a reason for him acting all sad and artistic, you know.”

  None of this was tracking. None of it was making sense. What did Jenna’s disappearance have to do with Nick not knowing his biological father?

  “I’m sorry. I’m afraid I don’t understand, honey.”

  The word “honey” seemed to help. Shali found her footing.

  “Well, that she could help him. Get to know him. Maybe once she got to know him, she could like him. You know, like, hook up.”

  It was a shot to the heart. No mother likes to hear that they’ve been excluded from their child’s life in some small way. Emily had no idea about Nick and Jenna. No clue whatsoever that there’d even been a potential boyfriend lurking somewhere in the background. Hooking up? Never. Jenna would have told her. She and Jenna were close.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it. Jenna was missing and Shali had held out information. Emily knew by reading Shali’s face more was about to come.

  She was right.

  “Mrs. Kenyon, I’m sorry. I lied to you about something else.” She started crying so hard, that whatever she tried to convey, was lost in her sobs. “Sorry . . .”

  “It’s all right,” Emily said. “Take your time. What do you know? Where is Jenna? Do you know where she is?”

  “No. That’s not it,” she said. “I don’t know where she is now.”

  Emily pulled back a little, looking into her eyes, her face calm. Her daughter was gone and Shali Patterson was about to actually be helpful. This was good. Unexpected. Joyful. But good.

  Shali held out a wrinkled piece of copier paper folded in quarters.

  “I let her use my computer before the storm. I found this a day or so later, but with the storm and everything I just didn’t ask her about it. I don’t know why she’d write this kind of a message. If it was for English class, I missed the assignment.”

  “Let me see,” Emily said, her eyes still riveted on Shali. Shali pressed the paper into her outstretched palm, and she carefully unfolded it.

  The detective looked down and read:

  Do you think it is possible that someone could really possess another? Do you think that a love could be so powerful as to be sick? So good it could become bad? Tell me how you feel? How you want to possess me as I want to possess you. Never be lonely again. Never.

  She looked up at Shali, her disbelieving eyes now full of even greater worry than she’d ever felt possible.

  “I don’t think she wrote this either,” she said. “Who do you think did? Who do you think it came from?”

  Sniffing for a second tissue, Shali nodded. She pulled her feet up to her chair and tucked them under. She looked small and scared.

  “Batboy88,” Emily answered for her. “Do you know who this is?”

  “I think it’s Nick Martin,” she said. “He liked Jenna.”

  Emily started for the door. “Stay right here. Don’t move a muscle.” She hurried down the hallway, her heels clacking like gunfire on the linoleum. She held the paper like it was a telegram and she was rushing it to the recipient. But that wasn’t true. Her daughter had been the recipient. The tone was scary. It was as if Nick Martin had a fixation on Jenna. Images of the Martins, Nick, the tornado debris ran through Emily mind. Now a twisted e-mail spoke of good and evil, of love and possessing another.

  Why, Jenna? Why were you nice to him? Didn’t you see the danger? What happened to you? I want you home. Now! Jenna!

  She turned in to Kiplinger’s office and planted the note on his desk.

  The sheriff slid his glasses down the bridge of his nose and set down a newspaper. He’d been scanning USA Today for mention of Cherrystone and the Martin murders or the tornado. But the town was no longer national news. So fast had the media dropped them from page one. A few days before, Diane Sawyer’s people were banging down the door for an interview and now nothing. Zip. He looked at Emily. She was wound tighter than he’d ever seen. There was good reason for it, of course. But he knew that whatever Shali Patterson had told his best—and only—detective it was going to be big. USA Today was merely a diversion as he waited. Emily’s face was red and her eyes bulged. She panted for breath, not because of the hurried gait down the hall, but because of the heartbeat ramming inside her chest.

  “A killer’s got my daughter,” she said.

  Wednesday morning, exact time unknown, at the abandoned mine

  Morning light came throuh the rusty slits in the roof, the same openings that had ensured that the indoor environment was acrid and damp. Jenna lay very still on the stinky sofa, her eyes scanning the ceiling for a clue as to the size of the room that had provided shelter. It had been a moonless night when he brought her there, after hours of walking and hiding. She repositioned herself and rubbed her right knee. She remembered how she’d hurt it from crouching in a weedy ditch as a car went by. Was it her mother?

  At that moment things could have been different. She could have called out. She could have ended everything right then and there. But she didn’t. She just crouched low and waited until the headlights became two red eyes fading into oblivion.

  She felt a breeze blow through the drafty building and she pulled herself together. She was a potato bug. Curled up. Protected from whatever dangers might befall her. Was this a dream? She started to shake. What am I doing here? She saw a rat and let out a scream.

  “Shhhhh! It’s all right. I’m not going to let anything happen to you!”

  It was him. It wasn’t a dream.

  “It’s a rat!”

  “Big mouse,” he said, trying to calm her. “Think a very, very big mouse.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Wednesday, 2:40 P.M., Cherrystone, Washington

  The wind kicked up and blew just enough dust across the parking lot in front of the safety building so as to make the hairs stand up on the back of Emily Kenyon’s neck. Jenna had been missing for thirty-two hours. Thirty-two hours is a lifetime. Life and death. Emily had cried until no more tears were left, but she also put on the kind of brave face that only a person who’d seen the worst humans can do to others can muster. It was a mask, she knew, but somehow it held her steady.

  Sheriff Kiplinger was elated when KREM TV from Spokane called saying the network honchos might want to do a story on the missing detective’s daughter. Emily was oddly ambivalent about the prospect. She’d been the first to jump at the chance when the media came—so concerned, so sincere—to profile a missing person. But not now. It felt more intr
usive than helpful. She tried to explain herself to Kiplinger.

  “I want to find her,” she said, “not embarrass her to death.”

  He didn’t get it. “That’s flat-out stupid, Emily.”

  “Tell me how you’d handle it if it was your daughter?”

  “I’d call out the cavalry,” he said. “You know I would.”

  Emily put that out of her mind. The day had become one of those evidentiary roller coasters or maybe a merry-goround, as it seemed to go in circles with no end. She’d been on the phone with the bank card company. Nope, Jenna hadn’t taken out a dime. She’d called every parent in the PTA phone book, grateful that it was still hard copy and not some goddamn online system. Old ways sometimes worked best. God knew if the Internet hadn’t been invented, her daughter probably wouldn’t be off who-knows-where with Batboy. She hoped, no she prayed, that Jenna had gone willingly.

  Jenna wasn’t Polly Klaas or Elizabeth Smart. No way. Emily hoped that there was some connection that was reckless and wrong, but ultimately less scary. She was living in a fool’s paradise and deep down she knew it. Shali’s printout from her computer was proof enough that something was terribly awry.

  Do you think that a love could be so powerful as to be sick?

  The words made Emily’s skin crawl. She knew there was only one answer for such a question: “In your case, yes. Yes. Yes.”

  Jason Howard slipped into her office. He carried a pair of paper cups embedded in a cardboard tray.

  “Latte?”

  Emily barely nodded. “Thank you.”

  She pulled off the plastic lid and sipped.

  “Any news?” he asked.

  She shook her head, swinging her ponytail. It reminded her that she probably looked like garbage. Her hair was oily. Her makeup nonexistent. Looking good wasn’t on her mind. Only Jenna.

  “We’ll find her,” he said. “She’ll be all right.”

  Emily stayed mute. She felt so empty, so devoid of feeling. She never knew how it felt to lose someone in the night. Others had. She always comforted them. But just as no one really knows what it is like to be a mother until she holds her first child, no one who hadn’t felt the sudden loss of a child could ever even approximate the stabbing ache that came with every breath.

  “I know you’re not thinking about the Martin case right now,” he started to say.

  “Oh, but I am.” Emily cut him off, summarily snapping herself out of the pity that had mired her, sucked her down, into the depths of despair.

  “I know,” he said, his bright eyes, now surprisingly compassionate for a young man who couldn’t even begin to understand her pain. “I know . . . if we find Nick, we might find Jenna.”

  “We’ll find her,” she corrected. She looked down at her latte, trying hard not to cry.

  Jason spoke to fill the awkward silence. “Anything more off Shalimar Patterson’s computer? Jenna’s Mac?”

  “Not a goddamn thing. Both girls use something to avoid spyware, viruses, and all the rotten stuff out there. I can’t even tell what sites she visited. She must have cleaned it just before the chat with Batboy.”

  “Nick. Nick Martin.”

  “Right, Nick.” Jason hesitated a moment. “I know I’m just a deputy around here,” he said. “But I did call the Spokane ME about the Martin case. For an update. I know it isn’t my job, but you and the sheriff were so busy with Jenna stuff. Are you mad?”

  Emily sighed and leaned forward. She even managed a little smile. Despite all that was going on Jason Howard was still doing his job. That was good. She regretted how she’d chewed him out at the crime scene. It was like shooting the Easter Bunny.

  “That’s good, Jason. Did they have anything for us?”

  The young man pulled up a chair. He tried to temper his excitement, but he was bursting with the news.

  “Yes, they did. They told me that the victims had probably been tied up before they were shot.”

  With those words, Emily found herself back at the crime scene. The bodies had been such a mess. So battered by the debris of the tornado, she doubted that outside of the gunshot wounds there’d be little in the way of forensics. But this was good. This was real information.

  “Bound? Then murdered?” she asked. Her bloodshot eyes widened. She looked down at her cup, already empty. She hadn’t even remembered drinking it, let alone sucking it down as she apparently had.

  “Yup. That’s what she said. Paperwork’s on its way. Some sick puppy really did a number on that family. They were held captive, like animals. Maybe he tortured them, too. Maybe he made them really, really suffer.”

  Sick puppy. The term was not only at odds with the deed, but it lessened the truth of what the killer had done. A puppy doesn’t rage. A puppy doesn’t do the unthinkable. But a Batboy just might.

  Emily’s thoughts swung back to Jenna. It was like Jason Howard had slammed a door in her face. He didn’t mean it. But she wondered why it hadn’t dawned on him that the so-called sick puppy was Nick Martin. And that the sick puppy might be holding her daughter.

  Jenna! Where are you?

  “I’m going over to the high school,” she said, abruptly rising. “I need—we need—every bit of information we can get about Nick.” She drummed her fingertips on a manila folder on her desk.

  Inside was a copy of Judge Crawford’s subpoena for all of Nick’s school files.

  Wednesday, 3:25 P.M.

  As she walked from her car to the school’s administration office, Emily Kenyon was acutely aware of the looks of concern coming at her from in every direction. Kids she didn’t know, but who probably knew Jenna and why her mother the cop was there, were fixated on her. They stared, mouths slack jawed. Only one had the courage to come forward, a boy of about sixteen. He had tiny white shells strung on jute around his neck. A chain dangled from his belt loop to his pocket. He’d been fighting acne and the smell of the ointment he used was heavy.

  “Sorry ’bout Jenna. She’s a good girl,” he said.

  Emily nodded. She could have said something, but she just had no words. Her silence seemed to make the boy step back. He looked suddenly insecure and awkward.

  “Everyone liked her,” the boy added, looking down at the ground.

  “Likes her,” Emily finally said, correcting his tense. “I’ll find her. She’ll be home. She is a good girl.”

  “Yup. Just wanted you to know.”

  Emily swung from mom to detective mode. “Who are you?”

  “Kev Bonners,” he answered, this time, looking her in the eye.

  “Do you know my daughter?”

  He shifted his weight and looked down. “Not really. But she’s talked to me a few times. Nice. Always nice to everyone.”

  “Do you know Nick Martin?”

  “Hell, I mean heck no. The guy’s a freak.”

  Emily stared hard at the boy. His blotchy face. His gangly arms. He was only a notch above Nick Martin on the lowest rung of the high school’s social ladder. Yet in his own somewhat earnest manner, he was trying to help.

  “It’s been awhile since I was here, but all of us have had our turn being a freak,” she said. “That’s just the way high school is, or was.”

  “Guess so,” he said.

  She fake smiled before turning away and walking into the office.

  “I’m back with the court order for Nick Martin’s student file,” Emily told the secretary. She could see the top of Sal Randazzo’s beaconlike pate as he looked up from his desk. He got up and started toward her. His mouth was a straight line. His dark eyes sparked.

  “Let me see that,” he said.

  Emily slid the subpoena across the counter. A couple of girls tabulating the day’s absences pretended to be busy at work. When one looked over and caught Emily’s gaze, she smiled.

  Making Randazzo squirm was fun.

  “Is Jenna going to be okay, Mrs. Kenyon?” said a pretty blonde with a mouthful of metal.

  Emily recognized her from the intramural
basketball team that Jenna had been on a few years ago. She was a nice girl. God, the whole school was filled with nice boys and girls. Why this? Why did her daughter find the only bad apple in the barrel?

  “I’m sure we’ll get it all sorted out,” Emily said. She shifted her attention back to the principal, who by then was done reading the paperwork.

  “I’ll get you the files myself,” he said. With an irritated look on his face, Randazzo vanished around the corner to the file room. He returned with a green folder. A very thin green folder.

  “Is that it?” Emily asked.

  He shrugged, and she opened it. There were no more than ten sheets inside. One was a permission slip from Peg Martin for her son’s participation in a field trip to a dairy outside of the county. A few pages indicated some visits to the nurse. Finally, the basics of his life—his gender was male, he was born in Seattle, his parents’ names and occupations.

  Nothing more. Nothing at all.

  What did I expect? Emily asked herself. He was a kid. He didn’t have a life yet.

  “This is it?” she repeated.

  “’Fraid so,” Randazzo said, impatiently. “We don’t carry a lot of paper on our kids. I’m surprised that the permission slip for the trip to Clover Dale Farms is in there. That should have been purged long ago.”

  Emily looked up from the minidossier on a troubled high school kid. She held her tongue. The pretty blonde looked over. A beat of silence. It wasn’t Randazzo’s fault that he was complete nincompoop. He probably was born that way.

  “Judge says I can take these.” She turned for the door. In doing so she caught the eyes of the girls working at the attendance office one last time and smiled in their direction. It was an invitation for them to come speak to her if they wanted, but they just went back to their work.

  Emily felt the buzz in her purse, and then came the muffled, but familiar ring. She had begun to hate the Elvis Costello ringtone Jenna had downloaded as a surprise. What had once seemed so silly that it made them laugh until their sides ached now seemed derisive and a sad reminder.