A Cold Dark Place (28 page)

David eyed his office door. He wasn't entirely convinced,
but he was willing to consider what Emily was saying. His
assistant Lindsay dropped off some correspondence. She
smiled at David. It was a slightly flirtatious smile, not quite
come hither, but far past cordial.

The look for a single doctor. Emily figured she didn't
know that Dani was at home, pregnant and destined to be the
doctor's wife.

After she left, David spoke.

"Okay, the printer is next to Lindsay's workstation. I'll
tell her you are printing out some tax stuff for us, and to
keep people clear of the printer. She'll listen."

"Yeah, she's in love with you."

David blushed slightly, but he didn't deny it. "Just do
what you need to do. For Jenna" He left his expansive office, letting the door shut slowly behind him.

Emily stared at the screen and began to type: Angel's
Nest + Agency. The system's hourglass timer began to spin
as the computer worked through the thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of records. Emily looked around and noticed for the first time a photo of Jenna and David taken at
the Grand Canyon. She was missing from the shot. Not because she'd held the camera-as she did on most of their
travels but because he'd cropped her out. She could still
see the shadowy form of her arm over Jenna's shoulder. Emily
shook her head. The computer kept grinding. Through the frosted glass panels alongside his office door, Emily could
see Lindsay's silhouette moving around her cubicle.

The search screen popped up.

What the-?

It was packed with entries for Angel's Nest. Bonnie Jeffries's name leapt off a few of the citations. There must have
been more than a hundred. Emily started scanning them
when Lindsay decided she needed to come in with a mug of
stale hospital coffee.

"Want some? Dr. Kenyon told me you're his ex-wife," she
said, though there was no reason except the medical assistant's apparent need to confirm what her boss had told her.

"I'm fine," Emily said. "I'm printing out some private tax
records"

"David told me," she said.

David? Hmmm. Poor Dani. I almost feel sorry for her. Almost.

"I'll get those pages for you"

"No," Emily said firmly. "I'll get them. They are, after all,
private."

"Oh that's okay," the assistant said with a smile. "David
trusts me with all of his private affairs."

"But I don't." Emily got up, pushed past the dumbstruck
young woman and went to the printer. She guarded it as page
after page rolled out. Finally, a moment or two passed, and
the machine stopped. She retrieved the stack and started for
the elevator.

Lindsay stood there with her hands on her hips. She was
talking to another medical staff member. Emily could read
just one word on her lips.

"Bitch."

You don't know the meaning of the word, Emily thought.
But Dani will teach you.

It was very late afternoon when Emily returned to her
hotel room. She'd practically lived on her cell phone since
leaving David's office with the medical records tucked into a
Macy's shopping bag next to Lindsay-in-love's desk. She'd
talked with Gloria at the sheriff's office back home. No
news. She left a message for Olga. She had even talked with
Dani to try to patch things up. The conversation played in
her mind and she felt her anger rise.

"I am sorry," Emily had said, gritting her teeth somewhat,
but making a valiant effort. An outboard motor went by.
Dani was out on the deck overlooking the lake.

"I'd like to believe you," Dani responded, coolly. "For
Jenna's sake"

Why do you insist on being such a bitch? You've got the
view home. You got the surgeon. You can have all of that. Just
don't bring up my daughter's name like she means a damn
thing to you.

"That's right," Emily said, swallowing the bile in her
throat, "for Jenna"

She slipped out of her shoes and made a beeline for the
minibar, which to her dismay didn't have a drop of tequila.
She'd had a taste for the Mexican booze all day. She settled
for gin and tonic. After talking with Dani Brewer, it just seemed
especially good right for the moment. She noticed the light
on the hotel phone blinking and she punched in the code for
the message center. There were two. Both from Christopher
Collier.

"Hi Emily. Chris here. Dinner tonight? I've tried your cell
twice. You must be out of range. Call me and let me know if
you want to meet up at your hotel." Drinks had become dinner. That was fine with her. A kind face would be a welcome
change.

The second call was a hang-up.

She dialed Christopher's number, this time getting the
Seattle Police detective's voice mail. In a way it was a relief.
She felt anxious, foolish, tired. But she was also lonely and
in need of company. Maybe even in need of validation that
she hadn't screwed up her entire life or lost her daughter.

Hadn't been the victim of bad karma.

"Chris, dinner tonight sounds lovely. How about eight?
See you here at the Westfield."

Seeing Christopher, she knew, was something she had to
do. She sipped her drink and remembered what until Jenna's
disappearance, had been the worst episode of her life. It was
long ago and Christopher had been there.

The summer wind blew cool moist air over the driftwood
along the Pacific shore. A few seabirds dove into the surf,
and about a hundred yards down the beach, a couple of beach combers looked for their elusive prize-Japanese glass fishing floats. Emily Kenyon was alone; her partner Christopher
Collier was searching the area from the south side of the
beach. She wore street clothes khakis, open-toed shoes,
and white cotton blouse. A heavy woolen sweater concealed
her weapon. Sand and beach grit found its way inside and
was grinding the soles of Emily's feet. She cursed the fact
that she wore those completely impractical shoes.

She and Christopher were looking for a little girl named
Kristi Cooper. The Northwest had been riveted by the story
of the little girl, who had last been seen by her mother in one
of those gigantic bins of multicolored plastic balls at a Seattle fast food restaurant. Last seen. It had been a while. Kristi
had been missing for almost three weeks. She was blond and
pretty. She was also small for her age. In a media-driven world
that had embraced the concept of bland American adorable,
Kristi fit the bill to a T. Her picture was everywhere-newspapers, flyers, even a billboard along the interstate just north
of Olympia. Certainly her face was a key reason that Kristi
captivated the hearts and minds of residents around Washington State. But it wasn't the only reason. She also was the
daughter of a wealthy car dealer-one who made his fame
by appearing on cheap TV commercials smashing cars with
a sledgehammer and screaming that only his insanity could
explain the low prices he offered.

`I'll smash up this car to make a deal with you!"

It was a clear case of kidnapping when a $250,000 ransom demand quickly followed. That, of course, made it a federal case handled under the auspices of the FBI, with help
from the Seattle Police Department. Seattle PD was stuck in
a supporting role, while taking most of the heat from the
media as the story unfolded. Rick Cooper, Kristi's used-carmagnate father, followed the FBI's request to withhold the
ransom while they tracked hundreds of potential leads. None, however, seemed to get any traction. A week after it started,
the kidnapper stopped calling.

Emily, who up until that point had peripheral involvement
in the case, volunteered for extra duty the day of the beach
search-another low priority follow-up from an anonymous
tipster.

Those days always played in her mind like a bad dream.
There were many images that came to mind. The girl, of
course. But the one that held the tightest grip was the face of
her father. Emily could never forget seeing his bitterness, his
deep hurt, his complete and unmitigated rage.

All of it had been directed toward her.

"Does she know what she's done?" Rick Cooper asked a
local TV reporter, the microphone so close to his angry mouth
that he could have swallowed it in one gulp. "We don't know
where Kristi is and Emily Kenyon is the reason why."

The reason. The cause.

Emily didn't reach for the bottle like some cops who'd
made mistakes they could easily live with. She did see a doctor and took some meds for anxiety, but only for a short
time. She didn't fall apart, at least not outwardly so. She had
a husband and daughter who needed her. There was an investigation over what happened in the Cooper case. There
were more media reports. She gave up her shield for thirty
days. She tried to keep her mind on Jenna and David, but a
girl she never met would not leave her mind. Even when she
was engaged in a conversation with David, thoughts unspooled. She had screwed up. She hadn't meant to, of course.
But when she looked down at her hands, she knew they had
been the inadvertent instrument of a little girl's demise.

God, please forgive me. God, give me the chance to make
this right.

Reynard Tuttle was wheezing, his lungs pierced by a single bullet from Emily Kenyon's police-issue gun. It had all
happened so fast --a racing speed that allowed not a second
for introspection about what had just occurred. A dark spot
of blood bloomed on his food- and sweat-stained white cotton T-shirt, and then oozed crimson to the cabin floor. He
was only twenty or so, barely a man. Emily knelt beside him.
He was trying to speak. She pushed his gun away and she
leaned close.

"Shouldn't have done that," he said, barely able to form
his words.

"Where's Kristi?"

"That's for me to know and you to find out" His voice
was a soft rasp.

Emily knew he was dying, but his death went far beyond
the tragedy of his own wasted life. He had to live to tell her
what she needed to know. Adrenaline pulsed. She shook
him. "Don't fuck with me ""

"You'll never find her." Tuttle turned his head slightly and
looked up. His eyes were beginning to roll.

"Don't leave!" she said. "Stay with me. You don't want
this to be what you're remembered for. You don't want to
hurt Kristi. Where is she?"

Collier rushed through the opened doorway. "Jesus, Emily,
are you all right?"

She glanced over her shoulder and with one quick nod,
indicated she was unhurt. When she looked back down at
Tuttle, his eyes had been emptied of life. They were the eyes
of a cold, dead animal.

"Come back here!" she said, tugging on his shoulders.
"Goddamn you!" His head thumped on the cabin's planked
flooring. Hard. "Where is the girl?"

"Emily, stop!"

She couldn't and Tuttle's head smacked against the floor
over and over. But he was gone. So was Kristi.

A helicopter outfitted with an infrared camera worked a
precise grid of forest and beachfront acreage in the vicinity
of the Tuttle shooting. Tourists and homeowners watched the
sky as the aircraft's whirling blades rattled their windows.
Everyone knew what the Seattle Police and FBI were looking for the telltale hot spot that indicated Kristi Cooper,
dead or alive. At one point, a team was dispatched for followup on a glow of red picked up near Foster's Pond. Working
shoulder to shoulder in a squared-off line, almost fifty FBI
agents, police, and Boy Scouts trained in a process of a detailed grid search marched lockstep toward the hot spot.

"Anything and everything gets tagged," a Seattle sergeant
yelled across the front of the line as the teams began to walk.
One kid dropped a marker at a smoked cigarette; another
found a rotted sleeping bag.

"Tag it!"

About twenty-five minutes into the march, a female volunteer caught an acrid whiff of the instantly recognizable
scent of death. She started coughing. She was sure that she'd
found Kristi Cooper's remains. Any hope that she was alive
was erased by that terrible smell. That stench could only
mean one thing. It was over.

"Over here, my end of line," the young searcher called.
Two CSIs moved methodically toward the call for help. They
stepped on the existing tracks of the search team. Each step
was a shadow behind those who'd walked ahead.

In front of the young woman, now doubled over in anticipation of vomiting, was a mass of undulating maggots.

A CSI in a dark blue jumpsuit, bent down. "Dead fawn," he said, not masking his disappointment. "No tag, but steer
clear. Damn it. This must be our hot spot"

For nearly two years, the dead deer was the closest anyone really got to finding Kristi. Emily had left the Seattle Police Department by then, moving David and Jenna into the
old house on Orchard Avenue. She'd told everyone that her
parents were ailing, but the truth was she could no longer
face the reminders of what she'd done. Being exonerated by
the department's Internal Affairs meant nothing.