A Cold Dark Place (35 page)

"Hi Tina," she said, as she stood in front of a floor-to-ceiling
painting, an abstract of a waterfall, at the Winter Gallery,
where the former prison-groupie-turned-society-babe volunteered two days a week.

"Do I know you?" Tina looked blankly right into Olga's
penetrating eyes. She was scanning for recognition. A party
perhaps? Probably not, the jewelry's from Macy 's. A patron? No, the shoes are cheap. She tilted her head and looked suitably confused.

Tina looked as good as though only a few years had
passed, not so many more. Olga put on a reasonably warm
smile. It wasn't easy, but it was necessary. They were in a
public place. "We met years ago," she said, "through a mutual friend, Dylan Walker. I'm Olga Cerrino. I used to be Detective Olga Morris."

Tina's flinty eyes flitted nervously around the gallery. Patrons stood in front of enormous contemporary paintings
that mimicked the splattered work of Jackson Pollock. They
stared as if there was meaning in the chaos of the artist's
wanton spray.

Olga said, "Is there a place we can talk? Or should we just
do it here?"

"Oh no," Tina said quickly. "Let's go back to the docent's
office"

"Then you do remember me?"

"Yes," Tina said, leading her past the sculpture gallery
and into a long white-walled corridor. Her Pradas smacked
hard on the marble.

Olga didn't say anything as Tina took a brass key and
turned the lock on an office door. Some African tribal figures
stared from one corner. Supplies nearby indicated that they
were in some state of repair. One of them was a large woman
with a protruding belly. She was obviously some kind of fertility goddess.

"I call her Trader Vicki," Tina said, noticing how transfixed Olga had been by the statue, "I think she belongs in a
bar and not a museum" She smiled nervously.

Olga didn't see the need for small talk. "Look, I know
about you and Bonnie and Dylan."

Tina turned away from the carved ebony goddess and faced her interrogator. "You're going to ruin my life, aren't
you?"

Olga remained expressionless. "I don't know what you're
talking about"

"I see the way you look at me, judge me, envy me"

"Trust me, I don't envy you."

Tina looked away. "Whatever."

"Listen, Tina, I just want to know what you really know.
Not what you think you can get away with withholding to
keep your own involvement minimized."

"Involvement with what?"

"You know," Olga said, though, of course she really didn't.
God, this feels good, she thought. It had been so long since
she'd had the opportunity to face off with someone who had
something more precious than gold-pieces to a puzzle.

"Did you know Bonnie was dead? Murdered?"

Tina looked frightened. "Yes. It was on TV. But if you
think I had anything to do with Bonnie's murder, you're
crazy."

"I didn't say that. But I do think you know more about
what Bonnie was actually up to"

Tina was less nervous now. "You do? Well, then, good for
you "

"My friend at the Times would love to know."

"Are you blackmailing me? I have the best law firm in
town on my side."

The haughtiness might work ifyou didn't know this lady
backstory, Olga thought. She decided to press Tina, hard.

"Are you so incredibly self-centered that you don't care
about a dead woman?"

"What do you want to know? Am I supposed to stand
here and spill my guts? Is that how you want it?"

"Be truthful." Olga paused for emphasis. "About Dylan,
Bonnie, and Angel's Nest"

"I knew this day would come," Tina said, tears welling up
in her eyes, "When Bonnie came here a month ago ... "

Tina Esposito almost didn't recognize Bonnie Jeffries
when she accosted her outside of the gallery, earlier that spring.
So many years had passed and they hadn't been kind to Bonnie. She was older, and dumpier. Seeing Bonnie was like revisiting a bad dream, one she'd finally been able to suppress.

"You've done well for yourself. I hope you've been happy,"
Bonnie said. Her voice was cheerful and overcharged, like
the phony inflections of teenage girls who act as if they are
so so so happy to see each other.

Tina barely put on a smile. "Thank you. I can't complain.
You look well, too" She lied. "I'm late for an appointment,"
she lied once more.

"This won't take long," Bonnie said, her own smile now
waning. If she had expected there was a happy reunion of
old friends, she'd been mistaken. She stood in front of Tina,
almost blocking her.

"Obviously," Tina said, "we can't talk here." She directed
her back to the docent's office. "Five minutes. But then I really
have to go-a benefit tonight."

"I knew you were up there," Bonnie said, seemingly impressed. "I've seen your picture in Seattle magazine."

Tina nodded, but she didn't smile. She didn't want to give
Bonnie Jeffries any more insight into her life. The magazine
article had been a risk, and until just then, no one from her
past had come after her. The article was as close as she wanted
Bonnie to get.

"I'm a custodian for South Seattle schools," Bonnie said.
"After the trial, no one wanted to hire me. Thought I was a
whistle-blower. But all I was doing was coming forward to
protect us"

"Us?"

"When I made the deal with the prosecution, they agreed
to keep my pregnancies out of the papers"

"Your pregnancies?"

"And yours"

Tina appeared mystified. "I didn't know you had a baby."

Bonnie's lips curled to a smile. "I had three "" There was
more than a hint of pride in her voice.

"I don't understand. I never knew." Tina Esposito was a
good actress, she'd been playing rich and happy for years.
But even she couldn't suppress her surprise just then. Who
could?

"Jesus, Bonnie," Tina said. "I don't know what to say. Except, why are you telling me this now? What does it have to
do with me?"

"My babies are your daughter's brothers"

The look on Tina's face was shock, then horror. "Dylan?"

"Yes. When you left him, he took me on as his soul mate.
It was the happiest time of my life. I was continuing on with
something you started, bringing life and love to a world that
needed it."

"What I did was not about life and love. It was about
being foolish and desperate"

"Call it what you want." She took some breath mints out
of her purse and extended her hand to Tina.

"No thanks," she said. "Now that you've ruined my day,
my life, what do you want?"

Olga sat breathless, only just believing all that she heard.
The idea that these women had conspired to have a murderer's babies was beyond comprehension, though she knew
other women had done it. She recalled how serial killer
poster boy Ted Bundy managed to get a woman pregnant while he was incarcerated in Florida. A California student
nurse who'd been caring for Charles Manson made headlines when she revealed she'd had the Helter Skelter killer's
boy/girl twins six years after he'd been sent away for life.

"What was her visit all about? What did she want?"

"At first I thought maybe she was lonely. Maybe she had a
boring life and she read about me in one of those magazines
and thought I had a more glamorous one and wanted to
rekindle a friendship. You'd be surprised how many people
read those stupid publications. But not Bonnie. She didn't
want to look me up to be best pals. For Bonnie, it was always
about Dylan. I guess she wanted to reconnect with me because
Dylan had been our connection. And she wanted to tell me
we were connected through his babies, too" Tina sighed.
"She never saw through him. She'd been convinced that he'd
been innocent of the murders of those girls in Meridian."

"Lorrie and Shelly," Olga said. "They had names, you
know."

"Don't you think I know that?" said Tina, suddenly angry.
"And I know Dylan Walker killed them, too. I know because
he told me so"

The prison visiting room had been their sanctuary, a
place where they could cement their love. Talking for hours,
making plans that never really had to come to fruition. But
in a very real sense, it had also been a tomb. There was no
escaping it. It was in that vault that crying mothers, angry
fathers, and deceived wives met with the men who had done
humanity the greatest harm. It was a sad little play that repeated itself every week. Tina Winston never really saw herself as one of the foolish. The tricked. She viewed herself as
woman enough to love a man she couldn't ever really have.
It was a great and beautiful sacrifice.

But all of that changed one Saturday afternoon when he
told her.

"I know people-reporters, cops, people-talk about me,"
Dylan said over a microwave-heated burrito that she bought
with four quarters. "They don't always get it right, you understand "

"Certainly," Tina answered, "I know that"

"Do you?" His surprise was exaggerated.

She could barely take her eyes off his. It was that way
whenever he spoke. She nodded and sipped her Coke from a
paper cup.

"You are the only woman who really knows me to my
soul, aren't you?"

"Of course" She adored how he leaned on her, confided
his deepest feelings. He completely trusted her.

Dylan looked over at her pregnant belly. At four months,
she was starting to show. "You've proven your love," he said.
He couldn't touch her just then. Kissing and hugging were
reserved solely for the hello greeting and the good-bye. He
put his hands on the table, just a whisper from hers. She
could almost feel the heat from his fingertips.

"I did it," his words coming to her like the soft, sexy talk
of a lover. But the content didn't match the tone. Not at all.
"I killed Lorrie and Shelley," he said. "Neither of them understood me. Not really. I mean, not the way that you do"

In a split second of clarity, Tina Winston understood for
the first time that Dylan Daniel Walker was a monster. She
said nothing more to him that day or any other day. She
knew that whatever she carried inside her was the spawn of
evil, a child she could never love. A mistake she could never
obliterate.

Olga listened intently as the words tumbled from Tina's
trembling lips. She stopped and blotted her eyes, careful not
to smudge her makeup. "You know, that's the first time I've
said his name in all these years. With Bonnie I just used
`him' or Dash. I didn't want to give his name life, he was so
dead to me after what he'd done"

"But that's not all," Tina went on. "He said there had been
others. Others no one you, the police didn't know about"

"Did he say who?"

Tina shook her head. Droplets of her tears hit the shiny
marble floor. "No. And I didn't ask. I just wanted to get out
of there and throw up"

Olga waited for Tina to get a grip. It would take a while.
Tina had gone from stunning and confident to haggard and
limp like a wrung-out dishrag in about a half hour. Her eyes
were puffy. Her nose was red. Every wrinkle on her face had
suddenly etched itself deeper.

Something nagged at Olga. Something Tina had said before she had told her story. That's it. When she d asked why
Bonnie had sought her out shed said `At first. At first I
thought."

"Why did Bonnie come and find you?" she asked.

Tina took a deep breath and swallowed hard. Her eyes
looked downward. "She said Dylan had gotten out of prison
and was back in the Northwest. He was in Tacoma. She'd
waited for him and he for her. She came to me to gloat, I
guess. She was rather smug. As if we'd been in some competition and she'd finally had the upper hand. She'd been the
chosen one. She'd been the one all along. You know what her
last words to me were?"

Olga didn't have a clue and said so.

"Our son-that's what she said-our son and Dash and I
are going to be a family."

"Anything else?"

"Yes, she used the phrase, `there are some flies in the
ointment' and she said she was sorry."

Jenna Kenyon had worked her hands free. The release of
her wrists and arms sent a quake of pain through her body.
She expected that she'd feel her pain diminish, but the opposite had been true. She let out a little, soft cry and called over
to Nick.

"I think I can get loose now," she said. "Nick, how are
you coming?"

When she didn't hear anything, she pulled herself up, and
moved her feet like she was dolphin kicking at the Cherrystone community pool. At last the cords that held her ankles
together slipped to the earthen floor. It was too dark to see,
so Jenna crawled on her hands and knees to where she'd last
heard Nick's voice. She touched the floor lightly, timidly. No
broken glass. Thank God. She didn't want to allow the thought
to take hold, but it managed to slip inside her brain: What if
he's not asleep? What if he's not drugged? What if he's dead?

She wondered where her mother was, if she was looking
for her at all. She found herself praying to God and Jesus
that she'd be able to wake Nick up, and they'd get out of the
cruel darkness and she'd find her mother. My mom will get us
out of here. My mom won't let whoever is doing this get away
with it. My mom is the toughest woman I know The thin line
of light in the black, which she now assumed was a doorway,
had been dimmed. It seemed so far away.