by Gregg Olsen
“Honey?”
“Mom? I’m sorry!”
“Jenna!”
“You’re not mad at me, are you?”
“Of course not,” Emily said, searching for a word that carried some measure of her pain. “Worried. I’m worried about you. Honey, where are you?”
Jenna fought to hold it together, but her grip on her emotions was spiderweb weak. “I’m all right,” she said, her voice breaking. “I can’t say where I am. But I’m safe. I’m fine. I told Dad to tell you that I’m okay.”
A noise coming from the hallway cut into the conversation, and with the phone tight to her ear, Emily shut the door. “He told me, but why didn’t you call me? I am your mother.”
Jenna was crying softly into the phone. “Mom, you know how you get. Nick needed my help.”
Hold your anger. Keep calm. Jenna’s okay.
Emily heard a car with a bad muffler in the background; it seemed to pass near wherever Jenna was calling from. She could hear other voices, too. She wondered if Jenna was at a pay phone, maybe at a gas station or store.
“Nick needed you?” she asked. “Nick is in a world of trouble.”
Another car passed by. Was she outdoors?
“I know what you’re thinking, Mom. That’s why I didn’t call you first. You are always too quick to judge. Nick didn’t do what they’re saying—what you’re saying.”
Emily wanted to yell into the phone for her daughter to get a grip. The boy was dangerous, unbalanced, any number of adjectives zoomed through her mind, but she knew better than to use any of them. “Jenna, you don’t know what happened,” she said.
Silence.
“Jenna?”
“I do, mom. Nick told me. He didn’t do this. He isn’t capable of anything like this. I know him.” Jenna’s words shattered into pieces and she stopped to compose herself. “He’s scared, Mom. I’m scared.”
Emily had never felt so helpless in her life. Jenna was her baby. She thought their bond had been stronger than anything she could imagine. From her side, it was. But there she was, about to beg her scared little girl to come back to her. The idea of such a plea would have seemed beyond inconceivable a week ago. But the world had turned over since the storm. Nothing was as it had been.
“Come home, Jenna. Both of you. This isn’t safe. Don’t you know that the FBI is within a hairbreadth of getting involved? They’re thinking kidnapping here.”
“Kidnapping?” Jenna wasn’t crying anymore. Her mood had shifted. She was angry. “You wouldn’t let them do that. You know I went with Nick willingly. I went to help him. I care about him.”
“I realize that,” Emily said, now lying. She hadn’t even heard Jenna mention Nick Martin’s name up until that phone call. She wondered how well she knew her only child.
Jenna went on. “I told Shali to tell you the truth, but she didn’t think she could get through to you. That you wouldn’t listen to her.” Her voice now showed traces of exasperation. It was probably abundantly clear that Shali didn’t tell her mom anything.
“You talked to her, too?” Emily felt foolish to feel hurt over that, but the feeling grabbed her too quickly for her to assess it and set it aside. “Dad, Shali? Finally, you call me?”
“Mom,” she said, “Don’t be like that.”
“All right. Now tell me where you are.”
“I can’t do that. I’m okay. That’s all I’m saying right now.”
“Jenna,” Emily again struggled to keep cool. “Do you know what you’re doing here? This is not right. His family is dead and he—”
“He didn’t do it. I know him.”
By then Emily was sure if she pressed the point any harder, her daughter—the real love of her life—would hang up. She’d get in some car with Nick Martin and disappear for a while. Emily had to think like an investigator, just then, not like a mother.
“Okay. Maybe I can help. I want to help. Can I talk to him?”
Emily heard Jenna put her hand over the phone and say something, though it was too muffled to make out.
Jenna got back on the line. “No, not now. But I can tell you what he told me.”
“All right, honey, tell me. Take your time.”
Jenna went on to describe how Nick had come home from school because of a supposed family emergency. He had searched the living room, kitchen, the yard, everywhere, but found absolutely no sign of his parents.
“Mom,” Jenna started to sob again, “he went upstairs and found his parents and brother . . . they were all dead and stuff. I mean, his dad wasn’t dead, but he was hurt real bad. He told Nick to get out. To run away. That there was someone that wanted to kill him.”
Both ends of the line grew quiet for a moment. Another car passed by.
“Jenna? Are you still there?”
“I’m here, Mom,” she said. “Oh, Mom, he’s scared. He said his mom and dad and brother . . . they were all shot.”
Emily wished she could reach through the phone line and put her arms around her daughter.
“Oh God, honey. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Is Nick all right?”
“He’s a mess, mom. He’s scared spitless. We’re both scared. Whoever is out there wants to kill him.”
“Kill him? Why? Why in the world would anyone want to kill his mother and father and little brother, and then him?”
Jenna paused. She was collecting her thoughts, but Emily felt as if her daughter was sifting out what to tell and what to hold close.
“Nick thinks it has something to do with the adoption,” Jenna said. “Ask Cary about it.”
The name was a knife in Emily’s heart right then. Maybe to her back, she wasn’t sure.
“Cary?” She was incredulous. “What does he have to do with any of this?”
“I knew that would piss you off, Mom. Glad you dumped him. Nick says that Cary talked with his dad. Made his dad really, really mad. Something about the agency or the birth mother wanting to see Nick, but Nick’s dad didn’t want anything to do with it. Nick and his dad fought about that.”
Emily put her fingers to her lips. It just didn’t compute. “But Cary? I don’t understand how he was involved?”
A young man’s voice said, “Let’s go.”
It seemed to distract Jenna for a second. “I don’t know,” she finally answered. “Nick said something about how Cary and his dad got into it one night, over the adoption. But he doesn’t know.”
“I’ll find out. Now come home.”
“No. We can’t. Mom, we saw what you said in the paper. You said Nick’s a killer. Everyone says so. But he didn’t do it. And we aren’t coming back until you know who did. Bye, Mom. I love you.”
The line went silent so fast that Emily didn’t have a second to plead for her daughter to stay put. Help will come. I’ll take back what I said. I love you. Don’t do this. Don’t be gone. Her hand still frozen on the receiver, the room swelled back to its normal size. Gloria was at the door.
“Is she okay?” she asked, sticking her head inside.
Emily set the phone down. She turned to Gloria and nodded. “I think so. Gloria, see if you can get this call traced. Right away.”
Gloria stood there expecting more conversation, maybe some details that could set her own worried mind at ease, but Emily didn’t offer anything. Instead she scooped up some files, and put them in a drawer. Next she grabbed her purse and coat and started for the door.
“Where are you going?” Gloria asked, moving aside.
“I’m off to see a scumbag lawyer,” Emily said, disappearing in the whirlwind of her exit.
Friday, 1:14 P.M.
“Where’s Cary?” Emily Kenyon refused to wait for a response from the latest in a long line of front desk girls at McConnell’s over-ferned law office in the Old Mill Building. This one was blond and pretty, like the others. She was also completely out of her league when she tried to stop Emily. The detective would not be denied a meeting. Appointment or not. She kept walking toward McConnell’s corner off
ice in one of those industrial edifices tastefully reimagined by architects and interior designers into office space that said its occupants were hip and cool and cared about the history of their communities.
Without knocking, Emily pushed the office door open. It smacked into the doorstop with a loud thud. Cary McConnell, who was on the phone staring out the window at the street scene below, swung his burgundy leather chair around at the intrusion.
“Oh baby,” he said. Seeing it was Emily, he put on a smile. His perfect teeth were blazingly white against his tanned face. “Miss me?”
“Miss you?” Emily wanted to lunge for him. “I could goddamn kill you.”
Cary told the caller on the phone that “an upset client” had just arrived. “Unannounced. I’ll call you later.” He put the phone down, got up and shut the door behind Emily. She was seething.
“What’s going on? Why are you angry at me?”
“Cary, look at my face. This isn’t mad. This is furious. Why didn’t you tell me you had information about the Martin case?” She felt her hands clench. She wasn’t a person who ever thought of hitting anyone, but at that moment Cary McConnell nearly had it coming. If anyone ever did.
“Look, I can’t talk about it,” he said. “Anything I know is privileged.”
“Privileged? My daughter is out there and you’re going to use that law crap on me?”
“Emily,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders.
“Don’t even think about touching me.”
He removed his hands and took a step backward. He looked through the floor-to-ceiling sidelight next to his door. The young blonde was watching from the receptionist’s desk. Cary slid out of view.
“I wanted to tell you, but you know I can’t. You wouldn’t respect me if I did.”
“Respect you? I hate you. I can’t believe that I slept with you again. That’s a joke. I’m so stupid. God, I really know how to pick them.”
“Let’s not get personal,” he said.
Wrong words, Emily thought.
“Personal? My daughter is off with some creepy kid. You know something about what’s going on in his family. And you don’t tell me? No. In fact you take me out for a couple of drinks and go back to my house . . . God, I’m so stupid!”
The blonde was standing up by then. She held the phone up and pointed at it, signaling to Cary that she could call someone if he gave her the word. She mouthed: “Police?”
Emily almost laughed at that. Emily was the police.
“You’re not stupid,” Cary said. “And I am sorry. You know me better than that. I care about you. I care about Jenna.”
Emily could see this was going nowhere. Everything he said now was some cheap way of trying to calm her so he could get rid of her. Get on with his day. Make some important deal. Screw the blonde. Whatever.
“Okay,” she said. “Can you at least confirm something?”
“Maybe. Try me.”
“Was Nick’s dad your client?”
Cary shook his head.
“Did another client talk to you about Nick’s adoption?”
Cary, now sitting on the edge of his enormous mahogany desk, looked down at the floor. His face was completely grim. Saying anything was a breach of legal ethics.
“All right. I’ll tell you this. My client is another lawyer, working for another party. I don’t know the name. I can’t give you the lawyer’s name, either. But yes, it was about the adoption.”
Emily moved closer. “Cary, please.” She stared at him, imploring with her eyes to tell her what she needed to know.
“I don’t know the client. But I’ll tell you this. I think it has something to do with Angel’s Nest in Seattle.”
“Angel’s Nest?” The name was vaguely familiar. Emily ran it through her memory. “Angel’s Nest?”
“Yeah. Can you believe that? Talk about a blast from the past. That’s all I can tell you I know.”
Emily turned for the door. The fact that he held information that could have helped the case, could have shed light on Jenna’s whereabouts, was bad enough. That he was so damn weak that he caved in and told her anything at all, was proof positive he was the biggest loser she’d ever slept with.
“Dinner tonight?” Cary asked.
Emily stopped and spun around and stood there. If ever she needed Botox it would be from the hostile glance she gave Cary McConnell. She held it longer than any expression she’d ever directed at anyone.
Finally she spoke. “Go screw yourself,” she said.
BOOK TWO
A Desperate Love
Chapter Eighteen
3:15 P.M., twenty-one years ago, northern Washington
It began like most grisly discoveries. A hapless individual wanders upon the unthinkable in a place where nothing sinister has ever transpired, where it is completely unexpected. The heart skips a beat. The eyes strain to see through the mind’s protective shield of disbelief.
It was that way for Jeremy Landon, a seventeen-year-old from Meridian, Washington. He was paddling the Nooksack River, a meandering waterway that ran lazily from the crispedged Northern Cascades to Puget Sound, when a flash of white against a gray sandbar caught his eye. He paddled closer and maneuvered around a fallen cedar that dipped into the icy and swift-moving waters. Incredulity kicked in and adrenaline pumped like a spigot cranked on all the way. Jeremy knew what he’d seen before he poked the large plastic cocoon with a paddle. Hair protruded from an opening on one end. It was long and blond. A mahogany hand with fingertips still accented by cherry-red nail polish fell from a tear in the midsection of the cocoon. He rocked the large bundle with his paddle and yelled, this time, even louder.
“You okay?”
His kayak nudged the sandbar, a grating noise of gravel against the fiberglass hull and the rushing water was the only answer. He kept poking and calling out.
But nothing. The plastic-wrapped package just lay there. He knew. He’d found what everyone in the Northwest had been looking for, because it was clear the bundle contained two people. He felt a shiver deep in his bones. It was better than 80 degrees that sunny afternoon, but he was shaking like it was a midwinter snowstorm. The smell of death blew over the water, just under the summer breeze.
“Hey, you all right?” he said, his voice almost a prayer by then. Soft. Pleading. Yet, at the same time, knowing the worst had come to pass.
“Not sure why I called over to them,” he told his dad, crying, some days later. “I know it seems stupid and wrong, but I really didn’t want it to be those girls. I was hoping it was a couple of store mannequins wrapped up in a painter’s tarp.”
Shelley Marie Smith and Lorrie Ann Warner had been found.
Olga Morris moved methodically through apartment 703 in the monolithic redbrick building that Cascade University students called “Bucky Towers” or “BT.” Buchanan Towers was the kind of building that could only have been dreamed up by architects working on a bare-bones state budget. Floors were warrens of studio and double units. Windows were tiny vertical slots and rooms were sparsely furnished with bunk beds, desks, and a pair of chairs. Upholstered love seats dominated the living room/kitchen combinations.
Olga Morris was a detective for the Meridian Police Department and the irony of the task at hand weighed heavily on her. She was there investigating the murder of two coeds, across the hall from the same apartment that she had lived in when she was a student.
Olga was barely five feet tall, a sparkplug of a woman with short-cropped blond hair and a confident presence that always made her seem taller. Even though a decade had passed since she had lived in the building, it felt exceedingly, and painfully, familiar. The faucet dripped in 703 as it had in her apartment. Blue mineral deposits corroded what was supposed to be a stainless steel sink. The ventilation was poor and she cranked open one of the narrow windows. A faint breeze moved the miniblinds.
Morris retreated to the bedroom. Shelley had the bottom bunk; Lorrie, the top. The bedding had been remove
d by the crime scene investigators and had been processed for fibers and hairs. Semen and pubic hairs that weren’t Lorrie’s were found on her sheets, a cheery lemon and orange percale that her mother had bought for her junior year.
Her mother, Morris thought as she pulled a desk drawer open, seemed more upset that her daughter had a boyfriend and was sexually active than the fact she was missing.
But she was no longer missing. She and Shelley, or rather their remains, had been discovered by a kayaker on the Nooksack River.
“Find anything?” It was Tammi Swenson, the resident aide, who apparently had the uncanny ability to come into any room unnoticed. “How’s the case going?”
Olga looked up and managed a smile. She shut the drawer. Tammi was one of those upbeat young women who talked in the peppy cadence of a cheerleader.
“Fine, Tammi. We’ll catch whoever it was that killed the girls. You can count on that.”
Tammi sipped her lemon-flavored Pepsi Lite, her blue eyes widening. “I hope so. I mean, I know you will. I feel like I’m way out of line, but my supervisor wanted me to ask you again—nicely—when you’re gonna release the room. I have two girls on the wait list and they’re really nice. I mean, a good fit for the floor.”
Detective Morris nodded. “I see. Well, tell your manager—” “—he’s just a supervisor. He thinks he’s a manager, though.”
“As I was trying to say,” the diminutive detective continued, “the room is available. We’ve processed everything. Nothing left. This wasn’t the crime scene—be sure to tell the new girls that, okay?”
Light streamed through the slashes of glass and the blinds moved once more. Music rumbled from down the hall. It was Fleetwood Mac with Stevie Nicks doing her best to rock Bucky Towers.
Tammi brightened for a moment. “Good to know. Thanks! Can I ask you a question?”