Emily Kenyon 01 - A Cold Dark Place

her robe and stared hard. She was fifty pounds overweight, with a roadmap of stretch marks across her abdomen. In the dim light of evening, she tried to imagine herself as someone prettier. Like Tina. But Bonnie knew that the god of good genes had saddled her with her mother’s nondescript fea tures and her father’s big-boned frame. She had a plain face, pleasant brown eyes, and dark curly hair. Tina was pencil thin and strawberry blond. Whenever they went out together, men gravitated toward Tina. Bonnie had tried all diets from Weight Watchers to a liquid protein shake to the Scarsdale diet. She’d try in earnest for a couple of weeks, but in the end she’d give up. She’d been to so many free makeovers at cosmetic counters across downtown Seattle that she probably could work for any of the big makeup manufacturers. She hated how she looked. Part of her also hated Tina.
    What does one wear to a murder trial? Bonnie Jeffries mulled it over for a minute, searching for control top underwear and her best bra. She selected a pair of black slacks and an aqua blouse; both were loose enough to make her have that just-lost-weight sensation that she welcomed above anything. Loose clothing was like dieting without having to do without. Bonnie was barely thirty, but she looked like someone’s middle-age mother. She stacked up her clothes for the next morning on her dresser and trotted off to the kitchen. Rum Raisin ice cream out of the carton sounded so good.

Chapter Twenty-one
    12:25, twenty-one years ago, Meridian, Washington
    It was as difficult a call as a detective can ever make, aside, of course, from the bone-chilling one that comes in the middle of the night and begins with, “I’m sorry to be phoning you with this news. Your child was involved in a very serious car accident …”
    Olga Morris had never imagined the verdict would have been split, though the four long days of deliberation had sent a surge of worry through her system to the point of near overload. Dylan Walker was guilty; she knew it with every fiber of her being. He was a cold-blooded killer. He was a killing machine in an appealing package. Dylan Walker was no more human than that. He’d been found guilty, thank God, but despite the best efforts of a prosecution that had done its homework, he was only convicted of a lesser chargetwo counts of second-degree murder.
    This is ludicrous, Olga thought. Since when did binding a couple of women with wire, wrapping their bodies like pupae, and dumping them in a river to escape detection look like anything but first-degree murder? The TV and newspaper pundits exalted the defense for punching holes in the case by bringing in the other possible suspect, but even more so for getting it into the heads of some jurors that Dylan Walker had never planned to murder anyone. That it was some kind of accident. What were they thinking?
    When the jury filed in, Olga nearly did a double take in the defendant’s direction.
    For a nanosecond she was all but certain that Walker had winked at juror number 4, a leggy brunette who drank in the defendant with her big blue eyes.
    What in the world is going on here?
    That and the verdict were a sucker punch to the gut.
    How did this happen?
    Olga didn’t speak to any of the reporters hovering around the courthouse stairwell. Not that any really wanted to speak with her. After the flurry of gasps and running for the doors, those with mics and notebooks wanted to talk to the defense-not anyone associated with the prosecution. The man with the trail of dead beauties was a bona fide star, the big media “get”
    Olga retreated to her office on the first floor of the Meridian Police Department. She was almost in tears and she pulled out the Walker case file. It was thick, dog-eared, and dirty a year after she’d compiled most of its contents. The pictures of the bodies as they were first found along the sandbar still roiled her stomach. It was all so utterly senseless. Inside, she found Shelley’s mother’s phone number in Olympia. Mrs. Smith was shaky when she got on the line.
    “I’m afraid the news is mixed, Mrs. Smith. I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t want you to hear it on the TV first”
    There was a long pause. Olga could hear the mother of a dead girl brace herself by sitting down. It was a good idea.
    “I heard they came back with a verdict,” Shelley’s mom said. “What did they say?”
    Olga Morris felt like a complete loser, like she’d failed the woman