A Cold Dark Place (15 page)

"A couple of weeks ago, my parents told me that my birth
mother had wanted to meet me when I turned eighteen next
month. She -I guess through a lawyer-contacted my dad
through a lawyer here in Cherrystone-Cary McConnell."

"I know Cary," Jenna said, a disgusted look now on her
face. "He's a jerk"

"You told me about your mom and him hooking up, so I
didn't want to say anything to you. Basically I didn't want
any part of this. I love my mom and dad. Sure I'm not exactly what they wanted, I guess. They are my parents. Not
some woman who gave me up for adoption. Some guy who
knocked her up and left her. Whatever her lame story is, I
don't care. I told my dad that"

"Your mom and dad really loved you."

"My dad saved me"

"He called you his angel."

Another tear rolled down his cheek. Nick didn't bother to wipe it. He was lost in his thoughts. His father, mother,
brother. All gone.

"What are we going to do?" he asked.

"My mom. My mom will help."

"She thinks I did this," he said.

"I'll tell her what happened."

"I don't trust her. I don't know what my dad wanted me
to do."

"Let's talk to her. Let me call her."

Emily could not believe her ears. She was dripping wet
from the shower and she risked an electric shock to turn up
the volume on her bathroom radio. Candace Kane was reporting on the news that Jenna was on the run with a suspected killer. She didn't use her name, but might as well
have.

"We're not identifying the girl, because she's a juvenile
and out of respect for her mother, a county sheriff's employee,"
Kane said. "A source close to the investigation says that the
girl disappeared the day after the Martin murders were discovered."

I'll kill her Emily thought. Why is she reporting this?
How does this help any of us?

Water pooled where her feet were planted on the slippery
ceramic tiles. Emily just stood there, frozen, taking in each
word and growing angrier by the nanosecond.

Candace went on, "Classmates at Cherrystone High said
the girl and Nick Martin were close."

Static followed for a second, then the voice of a teenage
boy came through the speaker.

"Yeah, they were both artsy. He was kind of a Goth, I
guess. She's probably one of those goody goodies that like to
hang with the bad boys. Pretty common knowledge around
here they were seeing each other."

Another voice cut in. This time it was a girl.

"It was like Romeo and Juliet. It was like both parents
didn't want them to date and maybe that's why he offed his
family."

Emily reached for a towel. Her body was shivering, but
mentally she was numb with anger at Candace Kane and her
so-called news station. Her daughter was not "on the run"
and there would be no more "updates to come" As far as
Emily knew, there had been no Romeo and Juliet love affair.
Not on Jenna's part. These kids were taking a tragedy and
working it into some kind of overwrought teen romance.
Jenna might care for the boy, but if she was in love with Nick
Martin, she'd have told her mother. Just what was going on?

The calls had been coming in all morning. They were
stinging wasps that couldn't be knocked away with a sledgehammer. One after another. Some were friends and family,
worried about Jenna and where she was. Those came out of
concern, but Emily Kenyon wished she'd been able to say
more than, "Thank you for your concern, your love." It felt
so useless, so damned weak. But the vast majority of inquiries flooding every phone line at the sheriff's office were
from media jackals looking for a story. The story. Some got
through to Kip and Jason, and by mid-morning the beleaguered dispatcher, Gloria, stopped patching anyone through.
Lavender Post-it notes encircled the screen of Emily's computer monitor like a feather boa. Call. Urgent. Third time. Important tip want to share. Emily made a stupid mistake on
that last one, calling back only to find that the reporter wanted
a tip, he didn't have one.

Thank you, Candace Kane, for your fantastic story, Emily
thought. You've made my life even worse than it was. No
small feat. Maybe you should be promoted to TV?

Around noon, Gloria-the-dispatcher buzzed Emily on the
intercom, a communications system so poor a shout down
the hall would have worked better in most instances.

"Call for you, Emily. Line three," she said, her voice crackling under the strain of the failing speakers.

Emily jabbed at the answer button. "Message please, Gloria. I can't work with all this. Give the call to Kip or better
yet, my detective in training, Jason." Her tone was decidedly
sarcastic, which she regretted right away. "Sorry. Just take a
message."

"Trust me, you'll want this one. Emily, I think it's Jenna "

Emily stared at the blinking white light on her phone.
"Jenna?"

Gloria's usual cool demeanor ("gunshot vie on line two ...
incest perp calling again about computer ... lawyer wants
police report") ratcheted up ten times to over-the-top excited. "I think so, Emily. Talk to her. Pick it up!"

Emily pushed the flashing button and put the phone next
to her ear. The room seemed suddenly small and dark. Closed
in. The blinking light was now a solid glow. Just her and the
phone, a lifeline to her daughter. Before she spoke, she heard
Jenna's breath against the mouthpiece. It was soft and sweet.
A mother knows when her baby is close. But where was she?

"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.

"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 office
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?"