A Cold Dark Place (20 page)

Walker beamed as letter after letter was passed through
the bars.

"This is stupid," he said. "You should just give me the
damn bag"

"You know the rules. They consider you a suicide risk.
The drawstrings might be too tempting for a guy like you"

"Tempting? Why would I ever want to hurt myself? I've
never felt more wanted in my life." He topped off his revelation with a big smile.

I'll bet you do, you psycho, Boomer thought. Instead he
said, "That's it for today. Better get busy. The mail train from
Seattle's running tonight. You're getting another load tomorrow, hot stuff."

Emily knew the name, Angel's Nest, because it had been
in the news intermittently when she was a student at the University of Washington in the early 1980s. In the almost
twenty years since then, she hadn't given it a single thought.
She turned on the teakettle and waited for the whistle.
Angels Nest. What was that all about? Cary had said it was
a "blast from the past." She remembered that the agency had
been in the news. There had been some kind of scandal. When
the boiling water rumbled, and then whistled, she dropped a
bag of chamomile and a squeeze of honey from a plastic
teddy bear bottle into a cup. Steam rose up from the spout as
she poured. Everything that could be wrong, was just that,
wrong. She was still jittery and angry at Cary, heartbroken
that Jenna wouldn't just come home, and a wreck over the
whole idea that she didn't know her daughter as well as she
thought she had. How could she have been so blind? How
can they seem so close one day, and the next be separated by
a triple homicide? Herbal tea, something her mother pre scribed for everything from a broken date to a hysterectomy,
sounded good.

She sipped it from the cup Jenna had painted at the Ceramic Castle; orange poppies spun around the rim. She was
unsure exactly what had been the source of the agency's
troubles. She'd called David to see if he remembered anything,
but she got his answering machine-his voice sounding puffed
up and all-important, even when he wasn't there to speak.
She left a message. Next she did a quick search of the Internet, which only turned up the scantest of information. Angel's
Nest was an adoption agency shut down in the mid-1980s
over charges that its president had not only misappropriated
funds but also somehow snipped through government regulations when it brought babies into the country. One woman
from Tacoma even had to give her baby back.

But how would Nick Martin have been involved with this
agency, anyway?

Taking her steaming cup down the hall to her office,
Emily lingered in the doorway of Jenna's bedroom. Her old
bedroom. The screensaver on the Mac was a digital aquarium with a pair of pink kissing Gouramis doing what they
did best, over and over. Emily flopped herself on the pineapplepost bed, patting the pink-and-yellow quilt her grandmother
had made. Memories of her daughter flooded the room. She
could smell Jenna's Vanilla Fields perfume, a gift from Shali
that Christmas. Over the bed was a framed print of The
Little Mermaid, a souvenir from a trip to Disneyland. Beanie
Babies left over from the long-abandoned collecting craze
took refuge on a shelf. A purple Princess Diana teddy bear
was the prize, a plastic "tag protector" dangled from its paw.
So innocent then. All of us were. Jenna was smart. She was
capable. She cared about doing the right thing. Emily sat still,
breathing in her daughter, then went to her office and sat in
front of her computer.

You'll be home soon, she thought. I'll never be too busy to
listen.

The screen snapped to life and she typed in the web address for a Seattle daily paper and clicked on the link for the
archives. She typed in "Angel's Nest," hit Search, and two
small items popped up. One was a brief mention in a column, quoting a detective who had worked a homicide case
that had tangential ties to Angel's Nest. The other was an
item that indicated that all the assets seized by the government had been dispersed at auction, five years after the scandal. Emily thought there would be more; it had seemed like a
bigger story. She searched again, but nothing more came up.
It was then that she noticed the archives only went back to
1990.

What was it?

She tapped out the name of the detective quoted in the article: Olga Morris.

The reader of the newspaper wadded it up and threw it
into an airport trash receptacle. A teenage girl chatted with
her boyfriend on her cell phone. A woman scrounged through
her purse to come up with enough change for an Orange
Julius. A businessman's fingers worked over the keyboard on
his laptop, something apparently so important that it couldn't
wait. Amid the blase world of the airport concourse, the reader
of the newspaper wanted to scream. The article that so enraged the reader was an account of the Cherrystone murders,
discovered after the tornado had swept through parts of the
eastern Washington town. The story recounted how Mark
and Peg Martin, and their son, Donovan, had been shot and
left for dead. The storm had taken what was likely a family
rampage and twisted it into a perfect crime.

Perfect crime? Not even close. Perfect screwup was the
real truth.

Missing from what had once been the Martin family home
was the eldest boy, Nicholas. Also missing was the chief detective's daughter, Jenna.

Find the cop's daughter. Find the boy. Finish the job.

Running a rototiller at fifty-one was not easy. with a
smile on her face, Olga Morris-Cerrino cursed her late husband's idea that they should move out to the country, till the
land, raise exotic sheep.

"It will make us more interesting," Tony Cerrino had joked
when he sold her on the idea of the mini farm on the outskirts of Whatcom County. "You know ... gentleman farmer
types ""

Easy for you to say, she thought back then. Even more so
now.

Olga brushed the sweat from her brow, leaving a muddy
streak on her already tanned forehead. How she missed him.
How she wished that he hadn't taken that business trip that
icy November.

"Damn you," she said softly, standing in the cookie-batter
soil of what would have been her husband's best year ever
gardening. "I loved you so much" Her arms ached, but she
wasn't unhappy about what she'd accomplished. Her eyes
ran over the plot of creased earth behind her. The rows were
perfectly straight.

"No need for strings if you have a good eye," he had told
her that first day they'd planted. "And you have a good eye,
my dear."

She'd sowed popcorn, sweet corn, and a brand-new variety of buttercup squash that early evening. She'd planted more than she could use. That was by design. She knew the old
women at the Whatcom Food Bank would be pleased when
harvest came that fall. She'd arrive with a red wagon of produce fit for the tables of the finest restaurants in the county.
But it would be for those who really needed it. Doing that
would be hard this fall. It would be the first without him.

Olga Morris-Cerrino watched the sun dip below her white
clapboard house, as a chilling breeze worked its way across
the meadow, then closer, to the garden where she stood. She
zipped up her jacket and checked the tiller for gas. It was
getting dark, but once she got going it was hard to stop.
Evenings in the country were like that. Tony knew it. He
loved it. And despite everything she had once thought about
herself, she'd grown to love it, too. Yet the breeze right then
was like an icy hand on her neck. When she heard the phone
ring she set the tiller down and used the intrusion as the excuse she needed to go inside.

She swung open the gingerbread-framed screen door and
went to the antique wall phone that Tony had re-outfitted for
the modern age. The change kept with the integrity of the
home, he'd say. But it was wall mounted and hard to get to.
So much for modern.

"Hello?" Olga said, into the mouthpiece, out of breath.

"Olga Morris?"

She pulled the zipper on her jacket. "Who's calling?"

"I'm Emily Kenyon, sheriff's detective, Cherrystone"

Sliding off one sleeve, then the other, Olga sighed. "Oh,
I'm sorry, but I've already made my donations for the year."

"Detective Morris, I'm not collecting for anything. I'm
calling for your help."

"It's Cerrino now, and I'm retired." The cat jumped on the
kitchen counter and Olga frantically shooed it down. "Down,
Felix!"

"Huh?"

"The cat. Never mind. You're calling about?"

"It's about an old case you worked," Emily said. "Do you
have a moment?"

The cat was now on the floor, and Olga was at ease. She
took a seat on the old oak stool and absentmindedly started
straightening the paper clips, tape holders, and scrap paper
she kept by the phone. Felix yowled, his Siamese lineage
coming through loud and clear.

"They're all old cases," Olga continued. "I'm retired, as I
said. Now is not the best time, can you give me a few? I have
a cat here that if she doesn't eat she'll scratch a bloody
groove through my leg."

Emily laughed. "I know the type. I'll call you in say, a
half hour?"

"Fine. And what case was it?"

"Angel's Nest"

There was a long silence and for a second Emily assumed
that Olga Morris-Cerrino had hung up.

"You still there?" she asked.

Again a short pause.

"Yes," Olga answered, sounding a little rattled. "I'm here.
Yes, call me. I don't know how I can help you, but I'm glad
that someone is looking into that mess"

Olga Morris-Cerrino was still all that she had been years
ago. She was still blond without the help of a bottle. She was
still tiny, with a trim figure unchanged by childbirth or bad
eating habits. Faint lines collected at the corners of each eye,
but no one really noticed them. How could they? When her
eyes sparkled as they always did, no one saw anything else.
She fed the cat and took a Diet Coke from the refrigerator,
popped the top, and filled a water glass. She sliced a lime
and dropped it in; fizzy pop bloomed over the sides. The call
hadn't really surprised her. She had no idea what case the
detective from Cherrystone was working just then, but she never thought Angel's Nest or any of the people associated
with it would just fade into dust.

The world just doesn't work that way, she thought. Evil
doesn't really die.

While she waited for the phone to ring, Olga meandered
around the first floor, a space filled with antique furniture
and carpets. Over a settee with a pin-point gallery light on
timer was her husband's most prized possession an original Norman Rockwell portrait. It was a schoolgirl standing
outside of a gymnasium as a group of cheerleaders practiced. It was called Dreamer. It was the image of his mother,
who had posed for Rockwell when she was a girl in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. The painting had been a family heirloom and was worth tens of thousands.

Olga pushed the pager button for the cordless phone she
kept in the den-the one thing she'd done that defied her
husband's wishes, but he was gone and there would be no arguing about being "true to the house" The phone handset
called out to her from a sofa cushion in the living room. She
fished it out, put her feet up on an ottoman, and waited for
the earthquake that was sure to come when the phone rang
again.

It had been only a matter of time.

Jenna finished the conversation with her father, cut short
by a cheap cell phone they'd stolen from a man at the counter
of the minimart. The theft was completely impulsive, but
after being called a murderer, a kidnapper, and an "artsy"
high school student, just about anything went by then. Jenna
looked at Nick with disapproving eyes. His new look would
take some getting used to. Nick had shaved his head earlier
this morning and a slight rash had developed, making his
pasty white scalp look something like a bruised strawberry. He sat glumly on the curb, the light of day eclipsed by the
hour.

"My dad said my mom called about us," she said.

"No surprise there. I knew we couldn't trust her."

"She's my mom. And we can trust her. She called my dad,
not the FBI"

Nick lit a cigarette, his last one. "As far as you know."

That hurt a little and Jenna didn't try to hide it. "Don't be
like that. Look, both my parents say the same thing. We need
to turn ourselves in. We didn't do anything wrong"

Nick wasn't buying any of that. He slumped back down
on the sofa. The mine building was rancid, creaky, and drafty.
His family was gone, his house was gone. His life was over.

"Nobody's calling you a killer," he said.

Jenna pushed her long dark hair over her shoulder. He
had a point. Words were so stupid, so hurtful, and at that
time, so useless. They could hurt, but not calm.

"In her message," she said, finally, "my mom asked my
dad if he knew anything about Angel's Nest."

Nick exhaled and his eyes followed Jenna as she moved
closer and sat next to him. He turned his gaze to the grimy
floor and searched for words.

"My dad warned me about that," he said while patting his
irritated scalp. "He said to me ... before he died .... Nick
let himself to go back to that upstairs bedroom, back into the
depths of the worst memory he'd ever hold.

"Get out ... son ... go. Not safe. Angel here. Hide. You're
in danger Won't stop until you're dead."

"Angel?" Jenna asked. "He called you angel?"

"He never called me that. He called me NickNack, but
not Angel. I thought it was some weird comment, you know,
like seeing an angel before you die."

Jenna couldn't make the connection. "What do you think
he was saying?"

"I don't know, but I thought he was warning me about an
angel now."