A Cold Dark Place

by Gregg Olsen

  “Oh God no,” he answered flatly. “Not at all. Flip to the next one.”

  The headline on the next page was an absolute screamer. The letters were at least two inches tall, centered smack under the masthead of the Nampa, Idaho, Daily Express. The words were utterly heartbreaking. Emily touched her lips, as if doing so would stop her from tears as she read.

  STEFFI MILLER’S MOTHER: WHY DID GOD ALLOW THIS?

  The article was about the disappearance of a teenage girl from a religious camp on a lake near Nampa. A couple of campers were quoted about how much Steffi had enjoyed canoeing and theorized that perhaps she’d suffered a fatal accident. But the reporter pretty much put that to bed with a quote from the ever-PR-minded camp director: “If she took a spill in the lake, she did it without a canoe. All of our canoes and skiffs are accounted for. We just don’t know where she went.” A photograph of a half dozen boys and girls sitting around a campfire had been the interest of at least one person. In red pencil, someone wrote: “Me” with an arrow pointing to the back of one of the boy’s heads.

  Emily met Christopher’s knowing stare. He half smiled in that way cops do when something really devious is about to be sprung on an unsuspecting partner. Emily felt like a partner, back in the old days . . . and right then, too.

  “Are you having fun yet?” he asked.

  “Actually, I’m not.” She frowned, knowing that he knew more and was holding out on her. “You know how I hate it when anyone withholds information.”

  “I remember,” he said. “Oh yeah, I remember. The Miller case was never solved. No body ever found. Turn the page.”

  There were additional clippings. These featured a Seattle woman named Tanya Sutter. The name seemed somewhat familiar to Emily, but she couldn’t quite place it. According to the news articles—and there were four pages of them—Tanya’s body was discovered by a roadside cleanup crew one week after her disappearance. She was swathed in a plastic wrapping and dumped near an off-ramp outside of Tacoma.

  The light went on. Emily pointed a slender finger at Tanya’s photo. “Didn’t they tag Dylan Walker for this one?”

  “Bingo.”

  She scanned the articles and was reminded about Olga Cerrino and how she’d told her that the plastic wrapping had been a signature of Walker’s. Since the other victims’ bodies were never recovered, no one could say for sure if they’d been murdered, how the killer had done it, or if Walker had indeed been the killer. The bodies were the missing evidence.

  “Are Shelley Marie Smith and Lorrie Ann Warner in here?” she asked.

  “Yup. But that’s not why I brought this to you.”

  Emily looked at him, puzzled. She started flipping toward the back of the book.

  “Stop! Back up,” he said. “You know better than to read the back of a book first.”

  Startled by his initial command, Emily missed the playful sarcasm of his last words. She started going backward, page by page; the headlines replayed the story of the Meridian murders from conviction to the discovery of the bodies. It was like a videotape on rewind. Pictures of Dylan Walker looking snarky and charming, handsome and devious. The high school photos of the victims showed them in all their youthful glory. Long hair. Braces. Wide smiles. Hand-wringing headlines covered every aspect of the story. An image of Olga Morris-Cerrino caught her eye and Emily lingered on the photo. She was so lovely then. So young. So unaware that she’d marry and be a widow before fifty-five. Emily started flipping the pages once more.

  “There,” Christopher said. “Right there.”

  She stopped. The black pages framed four news clippings. Emily put her hand to her chest. Her eyes were fastened to the pages in utter horror. She felt the air rush out of the room. She could barely breathe. The photos and words were so familiar, but the context of the book that someone had created was all wrong.

  “What in the world?” she finally said. Her eyes glistened with the beginning of tears. “Chris?”

  He leaned closer to her and put his hand on her knee.

  “I know. I thought the same thing.”

  Emily started to cry. It was more than she could take in. “You know what this could mean?”

  “I know and I’m sorry. But it might be wrong, a hoax. A mistake. Maybe wishful thinking on the part of Bonnie Jeffries. Maybe she wanted Walker to be responsible for every unsolved murder case.”

  Emily swallowed hard. It was quick gulp for air. She looked once more at the headlines. They were knives stabbing at her eyes, but she couldn’t turn away.

  GIRL ABDUCTED FROM RESTAURANT

  Search Continues For Kristi Cooper

  COP KILLS KIDNAPPER

  Girl Still Missing

  BOY, 12, FINDS MISSING GIRL’S BODY

  The last article brought a torrent of memories. None of which had ever been anywhere but just beneath the surface. The slightest scratch, a twitch, the wrong word brought her back to the autumn of Kristi’s discovery. With Christopher holding her close, Emily spun her way back to that day.

  In every way, Christopher Collier was there, too.

  The vine maples were on fire, colors so deep red and bright orange they looked like some set decorator’s fantasy of what autumn should look like in a 1950s movie musical. All that had transpired was indelible, a memory tattoo.

  Two Bentonville, Washington, boys with a new BB gun worked their way through a trail as they searched for squirrels and birds to shoot. The older of the two, Tyler Preston, was fourteen and the gun was a birthday present from his father. The other boy was twelve-year-old Mason Davidson.

  “When am I going to get to shoot?” Mason asked for what must have been the tenth time.

  “Not very patient, are you? I guess you can have a turn,” Tyler said, finally handing over the BB gun. “You know how to shoot? See that robin over there?” He jabbed his finger at a bird about twenty-five yards away, a close enough target for him to hit, but not for the younger boy.

  “Yeah.”

  “Watch this.” Mason aimed, fired, and to Tyler Preston’s sheer amazement, the robin fell from the branch. He looked over at his buddy with a gleeful smile and handed back the rifle.

  “That’s how it’s done, bud!”

  He ran to get the fallen bird. Tyler looked down at the shiny barrel of the BB gun and shook his head. Beginner’s luck. He heard a noise and looked up, but Mason was nowhere to be seen.

  “Mason?” he called. “Where are you, bro?”

  A faint cry came from twenty yards away. “In here!”

  Tyler set the gun down and ran. He ran to what appeared to be a big hole in the ground. A well? A sinkhole? He leaned over to get a better look.

  “Tyler! Get me out of here!” Mason didn’t sound hurt, but he sounded scared spitless.

  “Hold on, dude!” Tyler looked for a branch or something he could use to extricate his buddy from the darkness below. “Hang on!”

  “Get me out of here! Tyler!”

  As his eyes adjusted to the dim and dank surroundings, Mason’s terror escalated. He was unsure of what he saw at first. Was it real? Was it a joke? He moved closer and gasped.

  “There’s a bed down here and some other stuff. Hey, I think there’s a dead body down here.”

  “No shit?”

  “Yeah, there are bones,” he said, cupping his hands to amplify his voice in the darkness. The makeshift covering of rotting boards shoved aside, a stream of light found its way to the floor of the twelve-foot-deep hole. “There’s blond hair, too!”

  “Whoa! Cool!”

  “You wouldn’t think so if you were stuck down here. Come on!”

  Mason Davidson didn’t know it right then, of course, but he’d solved a mystery that had haunted the Pacific Northwest for two years.

  He’d found Kristi Cooper.

  Sunday, 11:00 P.M.

  In the same red pencil Emily noticed that someone had underlined Reynard Tuttle’s name in an article that detailed how Emily had shot him in the ill-fated raid on the c
abin. There was also an annotation. The words were tiny and in grammar school–perfect script: Poor Dope.

  Emily found her footing and spoke. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “I don’t know what any of these means,” Christopher said, releasing his slight embrace. “And you know how much I hate to admit that.”

  “I’ll never forget the day those boys found her.”

  “I know. Whenever I see fall colors, I think of her, too.”

  “Whoever wrote in this book—Bonnie, I guess—wants us to think that Tuttle wasn’t Kristi’s captor.”

  “But he was,” Christopher insisted.

  Emily had always had her doubts. It was something she never spoke about to anyone, not David, not Christopher. It was the small voice she’d heard in the back of her head whenever she thought of Kristi and how she died. The voice she heard was never answered out loud. To do so, would bring home what she’d done.

  “As far as we knew,” she said. “I mean, there was nothing that tied him to the body, once we found her. No trace. No DNA.”

  His eyes were penetrating. “We can’t second-guess what we did now.”

  “But you’ve brought this to me for a reason. You think there’s something there.”

  “There’s a link between Bonnie and Walker.”

  “She was his number-one fan,” Emily said. “I talked with her girlfriend, Tina Esposito. She said she and Bonnie were best friends and had a major falling-out over Walker. Bonnie basically stole Walker from Tina. God knows why. They hadn’t spoken in years.”

  This clearly interested Christopher. “Fighting over a serial killer?”

  “You could put it that way. It wasn’t that he was a serial killer. They believed he wasn’t. Both of them. In fact, there was a legion of Bonnies and Tinas out there that lined up to see Walker during and after the trial.”

  He let out a sigh. “Another prison groupie, Jesus. What’s with these women?”

  Emily narrowed her gaze. “It isn’t simple. I fought over a two-timer,” she said, letting her guard down a little. “I lost. Some women love a guy they can’t have.” Emily looked over to the minibar. Another drink was against her better judgment, but the memories of Kristi Cooper and the possibility that she actually hadn’t shot her captor called for something to thwart her creeping doubt. She opened the minibar.

  “I’ll have what you’re having,” Christopher said.

  She opened a couple of mini Chivas Regal bottles. “No ice. No mix. Okay?”

  He agreed and she poured. They sipped the smooth, smoky whiskey. “Perfect,” he said. “Now let’s get down to business. I’ve saved the best for the last.”

  “Better than Kristi?”

  “Better.”

  “What are these?” Emily asked. Christopher was holding several slips of paper that had been kept in the back of the black album as precious souvenirs.

  “Letters from Bonnie’s boyfriend.”

  Emily pulled them out and looked at the signature on the last page of the first missive.

  “Dylan Walker?”

  “Yeah, and it’s the typical sick stuff that these creeps send to women on the outside.”

  “The lonely and desperate or the desperately lonely.” Emily started to scan the pages. “The handwriting appears consistent with the penciled notations in the album,” she said, flipping back to the “Me” and “Poor Dope” written on the news clippings.

  “That’s what I thought. I mean, we’re not allowed to speculate— rush to judge—and everything goes through the lab.” He rolled his blue eyes and smiled.

  Emily started reading, mostly silently, but as she moved through the pages she caught a few choice lines and looked up at Christopher.

  Feel me take off your clothes, one button at time . . . lingering as they fall to the floor. Your hunger for my touch, insatiable . . . but I try.

  “Can you believe these women fall for this?”

  “I know. Remember when the Shadow Murderer Bill Canton got married?”

  Emily nodded, a disgusted look on her face. “You mean that Baby Jane–type blonde who went all over TV professing her love.”

  “Yeah, her love for a man who stalked and killed eight young women and dumped them all over LA like they were garbage.”

  “I guess Bonnie was that type of woman. Willing to believe anything, do anything, for love.” She looked down and started reading, cherry-picking another line to read aloud.

  . . . You stare back, longing for us to become one.

  Your hands slip between my legs . . .

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Monday, 6:45 A.M., Cherrystone, Washington

  Jaws dropped to the floorboards as Shali Patterson climbed aboard school bus number 227. She managed to make it to the bus stop that morning when she found her car missing and a message from Jenna Kenyon. One of the kids she’d smoked with her tailpipe every morning couldn’t resist making note of the occasion.

  “Your ride in the shop, Shali Patterson? Have a seat. Anywhere.”

  Shali scanned the front, then the back of the bus. This sucks. Right now, she wanted to strangle her supposed best friend. She found a seat next to a freshman girl and slid next to her.

  Jenna thinks she’s got it bad, but she doesn’t know what bad is.

  Monday, 9:00 A.M., Seattle

  Christopher Collier’s resonant voice filled Emily’s ears and jolted her like a slap in the face. She nearly dropped the phone. She’d always been an excellent judge of a witness’s veracity. She listened, assessed, and without fail was right on the money when she determined whether or not she could trust someone. She’d believed Tina Esposito when they shared lunch and a smattering of true confessions at Embers restaurant. As far as Emily could see—and her instincts were always flawless—Tina was a gracious woman who’d made a horrendous mistake many years ago and suffered for it. Yet she was a survivor, a woman who’d completely extricated herself from Dylan Walker and Bonnie Jeffries. But what Christopher was telling her now indicated all of that was a big lie.

  “Five calls this week alone,” he said. “More when we go back a few weeks. There was even a call from Tina the morning Bonnie was murdered.”

  Emily was stunned. “She told me they hadn’t spoken in years.”

  “She’s a liar. I’m going to see her,” he said.

  With the cell phone snug against her ear, Emily looked for her cream-colored jacket. “Not without me, you’re not. I can meet you at her place or you can pick me up and we can go together. Your choice.”

  “I figured that. I’m calling from downstairs.”

  Emily managed a smile. Christopher Collier knew her better than anyone. She liked him, trusted him, but she’d had more lapses in judgment when it came to men. Something about last night bothered her, but she’d had too much to drink to be sure about everything that had transpired. Sunlight streamed between a slit in the hotel curtains she hadn’t remembered drawing. In fact, she hadn’t remembered much of what happened after she’d started pouring the Scotch.

  “Chris?” she asked.

  “Yes?”

  “Last night . . . we didn’t, did we?”

  “God no,” Christopher Collier said. “Do you wish we did?”

  The mosaic of what had transpired the previous evening started coming together. The dinner. The drinks. The revelations. The scrapbook. She noticed that it remained on the desk next to the hotel phone.

  “You left the album,” she said.

  “I know. Bring it when you come downstairs.”

  Five minutes later, Emily was in the lobby. Christopher, looking dapper in a blue blazer and red tie and khakis, was waiting with Starbucks in hand.

  “Vanilla latte?” he said, handing her the hot cup. “I just guessed.”

  “You’re a mind reader, thanks.”

  A moment later, they were in his Audi—where the scent of cigarette smoke could not be refuted. He saw the look on her face.

  “Yeah, I haven’t quit yet.” It wa
s a preemptive strike against Emily’s expected rebuke.

  “I didn’t say anything,” she said.

  They drove from the hotel toward the exclusive waterfront high-rise that Tina Esposito called home, Harbor Court. It was twenty stories tall and had been the source of much resentment from upland locals for blocking their waterfront views. But money and zoning talked. It always did. The Espositos owned the top floor.

  “She’s there,” Christopher said, turning down the hill toward the waterfront. “We have an unmarked car down there with a couple of guys babysitting for me. We wouldn’t want to miss her.”

  “You love this, don’t you?” Emily asked.

  He turned from looking at the street in front of him, his handsome face now overtaken by an almost impish smile. “Don’t you?”

  She had to admit that she did. “Better than a traffic stop in Cherrystone, that’s for sure.” But deep down, she thought that the recent events in Cherrystone had been anything but routine. Mark, Peg, and Donny Martin had been murdered and that was the reason why she was in Seattle.

  Monday, 10:15 A.M.

  “My husband can’t know about any of this” were the first words out of Tina Esposito’s perfectly painted mouth as she opened the penthouse door. She was referring to Rod Esposito, the software developer who had earned millions when he developed a computer program that quickly became the gold standard of the airline industry’s reservation systems. The joke was that he was afraid of flying. “He’s away on business in Vancouver.” She looked at her diamond-encrusted Cartier Santos watch. “His train arrives in three hours.” With a sweeping gesture, she escorted the detectives into a living room with an absolutely breathtaking view of Elliott Bay to the west and Mt. Rainier to the south. Everything about the space was luxe. The carpets were Persian, and not from some flim-flam rug store featuring a two-year going-out-of-business sale.