Emily Kenyon 01 - A Cold Dark Place

employed while cozying up to a suspect she wanted to win over, “I admit I’m under stress. Okay? I concede that point. But I know I can do my job. Jason’s not ready and since when did we ever want to get Spokane involved in our affairs? And-” She hesitated, realizing that she was on dangerous ground again. “I’m sorry. Give me a break, Okay?”
    Kip groped for a pack of cigarettes in his jacket, and put an unlit cigarette in his mouth. It dangled from his lip as he started to speak, “I will. You deserve it. I’m going outside to puff and think. Let’s talk about the case when I get back”
    Emily turned her attention back to her notes and the file. “All right. I’ll be ready.” She knew a few moments cooling off were a gift and she was going to take advantage of it. She opened her case notebook and looked at her notes when the phone rang.
    It was a reporter from a Spokane radio station.
    “We’ve had a couple of sightings of the Martin boy,” the young woman, with the unfortunate name, Candace Kane, said. “Care to comment? I’m recording now. Okay?”
    “No, not okay,” Emily said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about and I don’t comment on anything I don’t know about”
    Candace barely took a breath, and then started chirping again. “But I need a quote for the news. Here’s what we know. We got a call from a couple listeners who saw him shopping at the Riverside Mall at the Nordstrom”
    Emily wanted desperately for it to be true but she didn’t even attempt to hide her skepticism. “I doubt it’s Nick Mar tin,” she said. “Frankly, he doesn’t impress me as the Nordstrom type”
    There was silence from the other end of the line.
    “Ms. Kane, are you still there?”
    “Sorry. Yes. I was writing that down. Old school, since you won’t let me record your comments for our air. Anyhow, that’s what I thought about the Martin boy, too. The photo they ran of him in the paper made him look like a real space case. More grungy Mervyns than Nordstrom”
    Emily didn’t know that a photo had made it into the media. “Spokane paper?” she asked.
    “Yeah, you can see it online. Pull it up on your computer. Just go to www dot-“
    “Thanks,” Emily said, but she was already tapping the keyboard as Candace Kane offered a minitutorial on how to access the station’s Web site. She pulled down her “favorites” menu on her toolbar and clicked on the Spokane paper. An image of Nick in what obviously was a yearbook photo, the same thing that had appeared on Good Morning America when the sheriff stammered his way through that interview, popped into view. The portrait had a “painterly” background and the harsh flash of a photographer working on an assembly line. Nick’s skin looked so pale, his hair nearly black. Emily leaned closer to the screen. Was he wearing eyeliner? Didn’t Jenna and Shali call it guyliner? The quality of the image was pretty good, but she couldn’t be sure. Her eyes progressed to the headline: SEARCH IS ON FOR KILLER. But then something else caught her eye. There was a sidebar to the main article: WHEN A BOY KILLS HIS FAMILY.
    “You still there?” It was the voice of the radio reporter who interrupted Emily’s immersion in the article. Her eyes continued to scan the content flickering on her computer screen.
    “Yes, but I have to go,” she said. “If I can make a statement later, I’ll make it on your air first.”
    She didn’t wait for the reporter to answer. She hung up the phone and looked back at the screen. It wasn’t the main story that intrigued her-it was a mishmash of what neighbors had to say about how “things like that don’t happen around Cherrystone” and some reminiscences about how kind Peg Martin had been to so many people. It fit what Emily knew to be true, not one of those post-death do-overs of someone’s character. Emily didn’t know Peg raised champion Russian Blues. Mark was a watercolorist. Donny had been named Cub Scout of the month by his pack, three times. None of that riveted her like the accompanying story. The editors had packaged the Nick Martin story with a broader theme: Boys Who Are Bad. They highlighted a case in Des Moines, Iowa, where, a month prior, a boy named Aaron Collins had shot and killed his parents before raising the barrel of a gun to his own temple. Emily remembered the story. There had been great controversy about the Collins case because school officials had seen some warning signs,