Emily Kenyon 01 - A Cold Dark Place

goddamn riffraff. Tina Winston was smitten with Walker, and he was playing her for all she was worth, which was considerable. She went back to reading the note. She breathed in, catching a slight whiff of cologne, which surprised her. She didn’t think prisoners were allowed to wear cologne.
    … you are lovely, if you don’t mind my saying so. You also look like the kind of person who can see into someone’s soul. I long for a friendship with someone like you. I’ve added your name to the visitation list. If you come, please tell them you are a lifelong friend. I am not allowed to meet with anyone I didn’t know before my arrest. I hate to ask you to lie, but it is the only way. Fridays are good. I’ll be here another month before being transferred to the prison in Shelton.
    Peace, Dylan Walker
    Bonnie took off her glasses and shifted her quilted bulk. The couch creaked. She was fatter than she’d ever been and she hated herself for it. She looked into her friend’s eyes with utter disbelief. Tina was a stunner. She had a successful business. Her figure? She loathed it when Tina showed up in some crop top and shorts in the summertime weather. Her legs were impossibly long. She actually had ankles. As far as Bonnie Jeffries could imagine, there was no one on the planet who had more going for her than her friend, Tina Winston.
    “I’m uneasy about this,” Bonnie finally said. “I don’t think this is a good idea whatsoever.”
    “Are you judging me?”
    “No, I’m worried about you”
    “Worried or jealous?”
    “Jealous of your relationship with a serial killer? Jesus, Tina.”
    Tina reached for the envelope and Bonnie handed it over.
    “Look, I’m going up to see Dylan and I need your support. I’ve been there for you, haven’t I? When you had problems with your car, who picked you up and drove you to the grocery store?”
    “That’s hardly the same thing,” Bonnie sniffed. “We’re talking about hanging out at a jail, not going to Safeway’s frozen-food aisle.”
    Tina giggled. “Come on,” she said. “It’ll be so fun”
    “I can see it will be fun for you. But what do I get out of it?”
    “Lunch at the new restaurant … and better yet, you get to live vicariously through me”
    The last words almost made Bonnie cry. She’d lived vicariously through Tina Winston for most of her adult life. But the promise of the advertised ninety-nine-item salad bar won out over her good sense and bruised ego.
    “Okay. Okay. I’ll go with you”
    Tina flashed her disarming smile. “You won’t regret it,” she said. “I promise.”
    The jail trusty was a man in his fifties who had practically made a second home of the Whatcom County Jail. He’d never done anything that sent him up to Washington’s prisons in Walla Walla, Monroe, McNeil Island, or Shelton. He was what the jail called the ultimate boomerang. In time, he was known merely as Boomer, a name that was laughable considering his rail-thin frame. Sticks or even Humpback would have been more apropos. He pushed a metal librarystyle cart with the day’s mail from one cell to the next, passing out love letters, legal missives, and even the penny shopper.
    “Want this magazine?” He said to a hollow-eyed kid in on a drug possession charge, a misdemeanor.
    The kid accepted the rolled-up magazine, a copy of Discover. “Hell no, I don’t like that shit. Science kept me from my GED. Besides, isn’t that a federal offense?”
    “Huh?” Boomer said, his cart now squarely in front of the punk’s cell.
    The kid poked the magazine back through the bars. “Giving out someone’s mail, man?”
    Boomer let out big laugh. “What are they going to do? Send me to jail?” The kid had set him up with a joke. Nice.
    “All that shit for Walker?” The kid pointed to a bloated canvas bag resting on the bottom shelf of the cart.
    Boomer nodded. “Yeah, Mr. Hollywood gets more fan mail than that twink Tom Cruise. Sends out more than anyone here, too. Should probably have a personal postmark by now. Maybe even a stamp with his mug on it?”
    The kid did his best to look cool and tough. He was neither. “Yeah, you lick the back of it and die.”
    Halfway down the corridor, Dylan Walker could hear the exchange between the trusty and the young inmate. It didn’t make him angry, though if he was in closer range and he thought Boomer and the punk knew he heard them, he’d have put up some kind of a fight. But not then. Instead, he hurried to