Emily Kenyon 01 - A Cold Dark Place

She thought he was sweet. “I don’t think we should rush to judgment”
    Shali made a face and put her hand on her hip in mock disgust. “Doesn’t take a Fox news analyst to put two and two together to tell you who did what. I’d say the person who ran away is the one who did the shooting.”
    Jenna tossed Shali the tape gun and stepped down from the table. The banner looked good, but it dawned on her that someone would change TWISTERED to TWISTED before the day was done. She also knew Shali made sense, for once. Even so she knew that Nick Martin didn’t have the soul of a killer. She was sure of that.
    “You don’t know Nick. I do. I sat next to him for half a year. The guy has some weird ideas. He’s been through a lot. But he’s basically decent.”
    “I’ll bet Laci Peterson thought the same thing about her husband Scott”
    Tuesday, 4:45 P.M.
    The City and County Safety building had once been city hall, before a bond was passed in the mid-1960s and a new government office was built. The old brown masonry building with a handsome limestone crown made the building look like a baker’s nightmare with piped-on swirls of white glaze-a wedding cake run amok. It was old, dank, and reeked of Pine-Sol and urinal cakes. Sheriff Brian Kiplinger’s office overlooked Main Street. Next to his was Emily Kenyon’s, a smaller, but serviceable, space that indicated with its lesser dimensions who was the top dog in the office. She kept a spotless library table desk behind which she was seldom seen. She was what the staff called a “walker,” a person who just can’t sit behind a desk. Itchy feet. Short attention span. The truth was Emily had battled lower back pain for years. The only relief was getting up off her butt and moving around. She never mentioned it because she didn’t think it was anyone’s business. Besides, people hated a complainer. She knew she did.
    She nodded at Kiplinger, ensconced in his over-Rotary Clubbed and —Kiwanised space. There wasn’t a bit of room for another plaque touting the sheriff’s relentless community involvement. A two-year-old Easter lily that Emily was sure would bloom a second time if he took care of it sat glumly on a bookcase brimming with the minutia of law enforcement-binders, binders, and more binders. Kiplinger was on the phone, but he waved her in and covered the mouthpiece.
    “It’s Good MorningAmerica,” he mouthed. A broad smile spread across his handsome face. “Guess who’s going to talk to Diane Freaking Sawyer tomorrow?” He beamed.
    Emily smiled back. “That would be you, I’d say.”
    “Be sure to watch. Got a stack of messages on your desk. You can have the next big one,” he said.
    Emily didn’t care about the media, be it Meredith Viera or Matt Lauer. None of them. She cared about two things. Finding out where Nick Martin was and getting a good night’s sleep. She returned to find a deck of pink WHILE YOU WERE OUT slips by her phone. The office secretary, Sammy Jo McGowan, had placed them in perfect chronological order: KREM TV, KING TV, and Northwest Cable News. (Seeing that one, Emily was sure it would be one of the “biggies” that Kiplinger would leave for her to handle once his preening with one of the national TV divas was finished.) The stack went on: Cherrystone High School, Mark Martin’s office, the reporters from the local and Spokane newspapers, and even a guy from a Seattle radio station. The last was a message from Cary McConnell: “Call me! We need to talk!”
    Emily separated the phone message slips into three piles: Call back, give to sheriff, and toss in the trash. McConnell’s note was destined for the third pile. That was easy. The media calls were designated for the sheriff, leaving Emily actual potential leads. She dialed the number for Mark Martin’s office and got his administrative assistant, Maria Gomez, on the line.
    “Detective Kenyon,” Maria said, her fluty voice, suddenly raspy with emotion, “I knew something was wrong. Mr. Martin got a call from home and was told to get there right away. That was on Thursday. He left like a bat out of hell. Friday morning he didn’t come in … and oh, then the storm, and well, I didn’t even think about them until Monday morning.”
    Emily could tell from her voice that Maria had started to cry.
    “It’s all right,” Emily said, “you had no way of knowing.”
    “But I did,” she said. “I knew something was wrong. Mr. Martin has never left like that.