Emily Kenyon 01 - A Cold Dark Place

duties, digging through the debris, ferrying a body bag to the second victim. Even the flashing lights atop the cruiser seemed to become still. Her heart stopped, too. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something she didn’t want to see.
    She knew they had to be there.
    Where else could they be?
    “Please, no,” she said softly as the world started to crank back into action, at first in a stop-start fashion like one of those old school filmstrips. Then faster. Then finally at normal speed. She turned her attention to a chunk of drywall with some obvious blood spatter. It was about ten feet from where she stood.
    “What is it?”
    The voice was Jason Howard’s. The earnest deputy could see that Emily was frozen in her tracks. Stiff. Intent on something in the remains of the house.
    “He’s over there,” she said, indicating the drywall.
    Jason walked closer, but didn’t see what Emily had discovered.
    “Help me move this,” she said. The pair bent over and lifted the chalky board. It was like turning a rock at the beach to see what might scurry out to get away from the exposure of the light of day. Yet nothing moved.
    “It’s Donovan, I think. Maybe Nicholas,” she said. “I saw the tips of his fingers”
    “Jesus, Detective,” Jason said, remembering how touchy Emily had been. The boy was in jeans and a button-down shirt. Remarkably, he was intact. Even his face, which struck Emily as resembling his mother’s so much that it was disconcerting, was untouched. It was almost like he was asleep.
    “I know him,” Jason said. “He’s in my little brother’s Cub Scout troop. Nice kid.”
    Emily waved the techies over. “Let’s process this area as best as we can and get a board over here and get him out of here “
    “He looks so peaceful,” Jason said.
    Photo flashes ricocheted off the boy’s pale skin. Two coroner’s employees hoisted him on to the stretcher, which they had spread with a midnight-blue body bag. Handles for easy transfer flapped in the wind.
    “Wonder if he died of internal injuries related to the storm,” Jason added.
    Emily was wondering the same thing, but not for long. The two coroner assistants, both young men from Spokane, set the body on the bag and started zipping, working from the feet toward Donovan’s angelic face, white and calm.
    “What?” the younger of the two said to his partner, as his gloved fingertips slipped from the zipper.
    “Your hands are covered in blood,” Emily said. “Where did all that come from?”
    She stared at the dead boy.
    “Roll him over.”
    “We’ll look at him in the lab,” the other said.
    “You’ll roll him now.”
    “Not protocol, sorry.”
    “Maybe you don’t hear too well up in Spokane,” she said, almost amused with herself that she’d now felt more of a kinship with the tiniest of law enforcement operations.
    “This is our scene, my scene, and you’ll follow my orders”
    “Someone’s cranky.” It was Sheriff Brian Kiplinger, lumbering his meaty frame across the debris field. Emily and Jason were so involved with what they were doing that neither had heard him arrive. He just appeared in the morning light.
    Emily acknowledged her boss with a nod.
    “Someone hasn’t had a good night’s sleep for I don’t know how long,” she answered. She shifted her weight and waited for the sheriff to blast her, but he didn’t.
    “Tell me about it.” He fixed his steely eyes on the coroner’s assistant with the bloody glove and the bad attitude. “I was speaking to him”
    The young man sank into the mud.
    “I’m trying to preserve the evidence.” He was embarrassed and defensive.
    “What evidence? This is a goddamn disaster zone. If the lady … If my chief detective wants to see the backside of this kid, she’s gonna”
    The chief was a nice save from the “lady” comment. She was the only detective in the office.
    It flashed in the young man’s mind to roll his eyes, but he refrained. Instead he rolled the body to the side.
    “Good enough?” He fought once more to suppress a smirk. Lucky for him, his effort worked.
    “Yes, thank you”
    With the sheriff, Jason, and the two interlopers from Spokane looking on, Emily lowered her gaze to the darkened backside of Donovan Martin. His shirt was stiff and shiny. It was soaked in blood.
    “Can’t say for sure,” she said. “But it looks like we’ve got another homicide victim here”
    “Jesus, that makes three”
    “Or four?”
    “Depending on