Emily Kenyon 01 - A Cold Dark Place

Walker. If a photo lineup was made of Tom Cruise, a young Robert Redford, or Paul Newman, Dylan Walker, and Ted Bundy and a woman was requested to pull out the most handsome and least handsome in the array, Bundy and Walker would be the ones pulled-and Bundy would be on the losing end of the deal.
    Even though there had been endless discussion about Walker, most of it was based on his looks, not his life. Not much was known about him. He’d been raised by a grandmother in Seattle. He was an only child. He had excelled at school, but barely graduated. He’d been deeply religious. And after those formative years, the trajectory of his life became exceedingly murky. Olga dug in deep but since he never held a job very long, never filed a tax return, didn’t have any credit cards, and never had any close relationships, no one could really track where he lived at any given time.
    Or what he d been doing.
    Olga thought of him as one of those sharks she’d seen at the Vancouver Aquarium about two hours’ drive from Meridian. He commanded the tank with stunning and relentless evil, cold eyes following every twitch of movement in the swirling clear waters of the expansive tank. Slowly he swam, almost bored and disinterested. He worked alone. Quietly. Stealthily. It was as if he wasn’t even paying attention to anything at all. But he was. He did what he was born to do: kill. He did so quickly, effortlessly, and then moved on, crimson staining the water. As if it was nothing. He was an evil thing of beauty; lean and streamlined. That’s what Dylan Walker was, the detective believed, a cunning predator with no attachment to anyone or anything. He was a killing machine.
    7:15 A.M., twenty-one years ago, Seattle
    “You know you want to go with me tomorrow.”
    Tina Winston was shy about going to the Walker trial all by herself. Sure she was an independent woman, but she also knew that joining the media circus was out of character. She thought she could summon the courage only if one of her best friends, Bonnie Jeffries, came along. Plus the long drive, about two hours, would be more fun with Bonnie in tow. She even dangled an offer of dinner at the new restaurant just south of Meridian.
    “Come on,” Tina pleaded. “It will be fun. The place is absolutely spectacular. The chandelier in the lobby is made of one thousand Waterford goblets turned upside down. It sparkles like diamonds against velvet.”
    Bonnie made a face. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “I have a lot to do around here tomorrow.” Carrying her handheld phone, she wandered her living room, and then down the hall to the laundry room as she listened to Tina try to convince her. Even so, her mind was elsewhere. She wondered how one person could make such a mess. She worked four 10-hour days to ensure that she’d have Fridays to get the place ready for the weekend.
    “My days off are precious, you know.”
    Tina pressed Bonnie. “What have you got planned?”
    “Nothing much. I’ve got a ton of cleaning to do”
    “Precious days off? So you want to spend it cleaning your house?”
    Bonnie let out a little laugh. “Not everyone can afford a housekeeper.” It was a bit of a dig. Bonnie was a low-level manager. Tina ran her own gift-basket business and she was making big money doing it, having landed an upscale retailer as a major account.
    “Not fair. You could have joined me, you know,” Tina said referring to her offer of a partnership four years ago.
    “Don’t remind me” She pinned the phone between her chin and shoulder and reached for the laundry basket. She turned on the water.
    “Don’t you ever feel you’re in a rut?” Tina was going for the kill. She knew that Bonnie’s life was work and nothing else. She didn’t have a boyfriend. No kids. No social scene to speak of outside of church.
    Bonnie watched the washer tank fill. She measured the detergent.
    “Okay, you got me,” she said. “I’ll do it. Let’s go check out Dylan Walker. He’s cute for a killer.”
    “Stop that. He’s not convicted. And I don’t think he will be. He’s a victim of an overzealous police department. You know the type that wants to put someone-really anyone behind bars”
    Bonnie dumped her clothes into the washer. The lid bounced shut. “That’s your theory.”
    “Yes, and I’m sticking to it,” Tina said, her mood now elevated because Bonnie had agreed to go. “See you at seven”
    Bonnie looked at herself in the mirror. She dropped