A Cold Dark Place (23 page)

"First off, she's not his wife. And second, what did she
say?" Emily parked the Accord in front of a shady driveway that led up a steep, fern-fanned incline to a faux chateau
huddled next to a tennis court and pool.

"She said she was concerned for her safety. Jenna and
Nick had showed up and she felt uneasy, you know, scared."

"Jesus," was all Emily could say. If she needed another
reason to hate Dani Brewer, she had one now.

Gloria sighed sympathetically. "Anyway, I said that you
were en route to Seattle and you'd handle things. I told her,
`isn't it better to keep things in the family?"'

"That was good" Emily was still fuming, but she'd take care
of Dani soon enough. She put the car back into drive and got
ready to exit back onto the road. "Okay, what about Nick?"

"The FBI's being cagey-you know how they are all
I've been able to pick up is that the killings match the signature of some other family murders out of state"

"Did they say how?"

"I'm the dispatcher, remember. All I get around here is
what I pick up on the radio or when Kip is telling me to
bring him coffee or a Payday bar."

"I know. I'm sorry. Have him call me. One more favor,
okay?"

Gloria let out an exaggerated sigh. "You want coffee, too?"

Emily laughed. "Do me a favor. Contact Parole and find
out where Dylan Walker is living now."

"Kip told me about Walker. Kind of blew me away. You
know, that he got out of the Jersey prison after that prison
bed swap completely under the radar," Gloria said. "I'll dial
up Parole and see where's he's at ""

She thanked Gloria and looked at the directions she'd
printed from the hotel's front desk computer. Another turn
and she'd be at David's.

"Take it easy, Emily. Hang in there. Dani fits the profile,
you know. A second wife is always a bitch. I ought to know.
I'm one myself."

Emily laughed a little more, said good-bye, and snapped
her cell phone shut. Gloria had already married Dani off to
Dave.

Dani? Let see. Serial killer. New wife. Serial killer. New
wife. Toss-up.

Dani Brewer opened the front door with a stenciled-on
smile that could have not been more false. Lancome Retro
Rouge? Emily suspected that Dani had seen her car pull up
and hurried to the mirror to see what kind of affect she should
wear on her reasonably pretty face. She had long brown hair,
tousled in a messy bun. In all fairness, her pregnancy did
give her the characteristic glow that made plain women appear pretty, and already pretty women undeniably ravishing.

She's somewhere between pretty and beautiful on her
very best day.

"Oh, Emily, please come in," Dani said, stepping back
and letting the door skim her bulging belly. "I talked to your
office. They said you were over here"

Emily hadn't really waited for the invitation; she was already inside. The foyer was cold gray stone, slate. Cold like
Dani.

"Is Jenna here? Nick? How about David?" Emily's words
were rifle shot and she scarcely allowed a breath to intercede.

"David's at the hospital." Dani closed the door. "The kids
came and went. Coffee? A soda?"

"This isn't a social call."

"Can't we just get along?"

"Get along? I couldn't care less about getting along. I want
to find my daughter. She was here. Now where did she go?"

Dani frowned and for a second Emily thought she'd rolled
her eyes in annoyance. "I thought we were past that"

"Dani, don't mess with me. I'm a mother, and I also carry
a gun."

Dani led Emily into the kitchen. The stainless gleamed. A
set of chef knives stuck in an oak butcher block. "Are you
threatening me?" Her eyes were filled with what Emily was
sure was an exaggerated affect of terror.

Emily turned her anger down a notch. She'd pushed too
hard. "No, I'm sorry. I just want to find Jenna"

"Okay. I'm not a mother yet, but I get that. Mineral water?"

"No thanks" Enough with the refreshments! Where's Jenna?
"Where are the kids?"

"I think they went to the library or something. Maybe an
Internet cafe. They had that car, the one from Jenna's friend.
They were full of questions about Angel's Nest. David told
them what he remembered"

"Are they staying here with you?"

"Yes."

"And you expect them back later."

Dani nodded.

Emily glanced down at Dani's bulge. Anger had given
way to worry. "I guess Jenna found out about your baby."

Dani turned away and opened and poured a San Pelle-
grino. "I thought you would have told her about it."

"You asked me not to," Emily said. "You and David wanted
to break the news yourself."

"I know I-we-said that, but I thought for sure you'd let
the cat out of the bag. I would have"

"Good to know," Emily said. "It was on my mind, but I
just never found the time."

"Well, she knows"

"How'd she take it?" Emily asked, though she hated any
assessment coming from Dani.

"She's angry. She'll get over it." The remark was so glib,
so unaware of how a teenage girl would deal with the reali ties that her father, her idol, had impregnated another woman
before marriage.

Emily couldn't let it go. "Look, Dani, you and I don't
need to be friends. We don't have to spend any time together
whatsoever. I'll probably never see you again-except at my
daughter's wedding."

Dani set her glass down and looked out at Lake Washington. The water was ice blue. She shook her head slightly,
looking wounded. "I don't know why you hate me so much"

God, you're better than I thought. David's in for a wonderful life with you.

"I don't hate you," said Emily. "But I don't imagine I'll
ever have warm feelings toward you. That's just the way it
is."

"I'm sure all of this is hard for you" Dan had let a softer
tone into her voice.

I don't want your sympathy. I used to babysit kids older
than you.

"Thanks," Emily said, stiffening as she set aside the urge
to shove a pregnant woman.

She started for the door, planning to find David at the
hospital. Suddenly she noticed that the house was decorated
in a kind of spare, contemporary way, with stark, simple
lines and a lot of leather and chrome. David hated contemporary furnishings. She allowed a slight smile to come to her
face.

Good. He's getting everything he never wanted.

On her way to the car, she tried to calm down. At some
point, Emily knew she could never really forgive David for
the affair. She wanted to. Even though the marriage was "irretrievably broken" as the lawyers said, she knew they were
connected forever. Although they'd be apart, they had a little
girl to raise and love. It hurt so deeply that they would not do
that together. Her vision for her life had been the same one she'd grown up with in Cherrystone. Two parents. A stable
home. A place where birthdays would be celebrated. Holidays observed. Memories made together as a family. But that
was all fractured when he betrayed her with a student nurse.

"She meant nothing," he had said at first. "I screwed up ""

As Emily's anger grew, his story changed. Soon after the
impetus for the affair belonged to her. "You weren't there for
me"'

To some degree, he'd had a point. That crushed her. Playing a role in the disintegration of her family was almost impossible to bear. The only joy she could allow herself was
when she learned that he'd cheated on his girlfriend with a
young office assistant, Dani. Once a cheater always a cheater.

As Emily slid behind the wheel, Dani called out, "Emily,
I really do want us to be friends." Her voice was intentionally loud enough for her well-heeled neighbors to pick up on
her troubles. Dani liked a little drama, it seemed.

Emily pretended not to hear. She just slammed the car
door shut. There was no need to fan the flames, and nothing
out of her mouth would seem anything but venomous. She
glanced over her shoulder as she backed out. Dani was there
by the front door, holding her mineral water, and looking either sad or mad. It was hard to say.

Her phone rang as she pulled away. It was Olga's number.

"Hi there," Olga said, her voice cheerful. "I've got something for you. I set up a dinner date for you"

For a moment it flashed through Emily's mind that she'd
probably talked too much about not having found a decent
man. She was like bloody chum tossed in a shark cage. Desperation must have oozed from every pore.

"A dinner date," she said, sighing. "I don't know. .

Olga laughed. "Not that kind of a date, my dear. A date
with Tina Winston. You're seeing her at Embers on Stewart
downtown"

"Oh really?"

"Yes. Tonight."

"Tonight?"

"Yes. And one more thing."

Emily hung on Olga's words. This is going to be big. Olga
knows something.

"Order the fish."

That's when it had been the home to Angel's Nest, an
adoption agency.

"I guess this is where I came from," he said.

Jenna, still angry at her father about keeping Dani's pregnancy secret, stood quietly before saying, "Let's go to the library."

Her father had said that Angel's Nest had been in the
news in the early 1980s. He had rounds to conduct "or I'd go
with you"

Jenna saw that as just another lie. When she pleaded to let
her and Nick try to find out a little information before turning themselves in, she lied, too.

"Dad, we'll go to the police this afternoon. All of us.
When you get back from hospital rounds"

David Kenyon took the bait then. Too easily, she thought.
Jenna knew that he had already crossed over that invisible
line between new family and old. He didn't care about her.
Maybe Dani wouldn't let him care. She was pregnant. She
was young. She held all the cards.

"I promise, Dad. See you later," she said.

"Okay, later then," he said

Much later, Dad. Like never, she thought.

The basement of the Sullivan Library on the campus of
the University of Washington is one of those cavernous
spaces where footsteps echo like thunder. After negotiating a
labyrinth of shelving, Nick Martin and Jenna Kenyon spoke
with a librarian in the research periodicals department, a
cheerful man of about fifty with a soup-strainer moustache
who agreed that it was silly that no newspapers of the 1980s
were yet archived in a searchable electronic format.

"If it didn't happen after 1992," he said with a wink, "it
just flat didn't happen. Writing a paper?"

"Yes," Jenna said, "We're from West Seattle High and our
teacher sent us here. We're doing a team project" She was
proud of her quick response and Nick shot her a quick
glance indicating he, too, was impressed.

The librarian smiled. "What's the subject? We have an excellent reader's guide to our periodical collections."

"Angel's Nest," Nick said, testing the notoriety of the name.

The man didn't flinch. "Oh, that one. Should be interesting."

He directed them to a massive row of gunmetal-gray cabinets, and they searched under Adoption, Seattle Scandals,
and Criminal Cases of Puget Sound. After twenty minutes of
digging, they only found only one scrap of ephemera on the
subject.

It was a postcard mailed to college campuses in the 1970s. It showed a picture of a pregnant young woman, sitting on a
swing in a playground. Underneath her name it carried the
words: "Make a Future. Make a Family. Give Your Baby to
Angel's Nest"

"That's creepy," Jenna said. "The girl looks like she wants
to jump off that swing, ditch the baby, and get back to class."

Nick didn't know what to make of it. "Why didn't she just
get an abortion when she could?"

"Times have changed," said the librarian, still hovering
nearby. "You two are bound to find more info on the microfiche rolls of the paper." He jotted down some suggested
dates and pointed to the south end of the building. "If you
have any trouble working the equipment, let me know."

Nick had threaded the first tape and began to spool
through the images of the 1980s as presented in the pages of
the Seattle Times. Jenna pulled up a chair and retrieved a pad
and pen from her purse.

"I think this is the part where they play some cheesy elec-
tronica," she said.

Nick glanced over at her, a blank look on his face. He didn't
have a clue about what she was talking about.

"You know, as we zip through the pages, a loud instrumental track plays," she said. "God, Nick, like CSI, don't
you ever watch TV?"

Nick grinned. It was the first time Jenna had seen him
smile in days. Since it happened. For a fleeting moment, it
gave her just a little hope. We'll be okay. We'll all be okay.

Jenna put her hand on Nick's shoulder as the grainy images of the microfiche flew through the reader. Every once
in a while, she'd drop a quarter into the coin box and push
the button. A slightly damp photocopy of the worst possible
quality came from the printer. Headlines were gray instead
of black. Photos were milky. One headline, despite its ghostly
shading, screamed for attention:

ADOPTION COORDINATOR:
NO IDEA WHAT WILSON WAS DOING"

It was accompanied by an artist's sketch of a plump
woman with long dark hair. She was in the witness box testifying. The caption read: Defense lawyers tried to discredit
Bonnie Jeffries by questioning her about her pen-pal friendship with noted serial killer Dylan Walker.