Emily Kenyon 01 - A Cold Dark Place

became of her. She hasn’t filed a tax return for years” Olga looked through her notes, faintly yellowed with the passage of so much time. “I do remember one thing; she had a cohort that came with her to the trial. Let’s see. I have the name here somewhere” She kept looking, flipping pages and at times getting lost in the memories of the case.
    Emily could not have been more disappointed. It seemed so thin. But it was all she was going to get.
    “Tina Winston. That’s her.” She tapped her finger on a page. “I remember reading about her a few years ago. Almost wanted to call her husband when I read in Seattle Magazine they had gotten married. In fact, I clipped the article.”
    “Who is he?”
    “Rod Esposito. The software guy. Big bucks. Wonder if he knows that she was once smitten with a serial killer?”
    Emily’s mood lifted; a slight smile came to her face. It was the part of detective work she loved the most-finding the leverage needed to get someone to talk.
    “Let’s see,” she said, letting her smile fade as Jenna’s whereabouts pulsed once more. “I have to make a stop at my ex-husband’s. Never fun, but I have a feeling he’s got a houseguest “
    Saturday, 4:00 n.M., on the interstate just outside of Seattle
    Kip was Meeting with the FBI-a male and female agent from the Seattle field office-who had been the first to arrive to help with the Martin investigation. Gloria, stuck at the phones while all the excitement unfolded around her, assured Emily that he’d call as soon as he could break free.
    “They’re all over him like a dirty shirt,” she said, mimicking one of the sheriff’s favorite sayings.
    “Is Jason around?” Emily asked, wishing she had a hands-free phone as she dodged the Seattle traffic.
    “Nope. He’s hanging around the FBI, too. Says it’s a golden `training’ opportunity.”
    Emily turned off on the second Mercer Island exit, and drove south. Everything about the island said money. She couldn’t imagine David actually wanting to live there among the train of Mercedes and Lamborghinis that snaked along the surprisingly forested roads that passed from one McMansion to the next. His values had flipped. Long gone were the days when he measured success with the lives he’d saved, not the money he made.
    “Gloria, do you know if an APB went out on Shali’s car?”
    “Didn’t David tell you? His squeeze Dani called earlier. Said the kids were with them and she’d see that they were brought in. The APB is out, but Kip said we’d follow David’s lead. The FBI lady says they don’t think the Martin boy was the shooter.”
    “She said what?” The mention of David’s bride-to-be stung more than it should have. Emily thought she was over it. She looked for a place to pull over. What made her angry just then wasn’t the comment about Nick Martin not being the killer of his parents and brother, though she’d get to that. It was Dani’s interference in their lives.
    “First off, she’s not his wife. And second, what did she say?” Emily parked the Accord in front of a shady driveway that led up a steep, fern-fanned incline to a faux chateau huddled next to a tennis court and pool.
    “She said she was concerned for her safety. Jenna and Nick had showed up and she felt uneasy, you know, scared.”
    “Jesus,” was all Emily could say. If she needed another reason to hate Dani Brewer, she had one now.
    Gloria sighed sympathetically. “Anyway, I said that you were en route to Seattle and you’d handle things. I told her, `isn’t it better to keep things in the family?”’
    “That was good” Emily was still fuming, but she’d take care of Dani soon enough. She put the car back into drive and got ready to exit back onto the road. “Okay, what about Nick?”
    “The FBI’s being cagey-you know how they are all I’ve been able to pick up is that the killings match the signature of some other family murders out of state”
    “Did they say how?”
    “I’m the dispatcher, remember. All I get around here is what I pick up on the radio or when Kip is telling me to bring him coffee or a Payday bar.”
    “I know. I’m sorry. Have him call me. One more favor, okay?”
    Gloria let out an exaggerated sigh. “You want coffee, too?”
    Emily laughed. “Do me a favor. Contact Parole and find out where Dylan Walker is living now.”
    “Kip told me about Walker. Kind of blew me away. You know, that he got out of the Jersey prison after that prison bed