Emily Kenyon 01 - A Cold Dark Place

knew when to keep her mouth shut. Sometimes the less a detective says, the more she’ll get in an interview. The tactic always served her well. Let the subject fill in all the uncomfortable gaps in a conversation.
    “You just have to promise me that you’ll keep me out of any of this,” Tina went on. For a woman who had a purse worth more than Emily’s monthly salary, her tone was surprisingly pleading. “I have a pretty good life now. I can’t ruin it.”
    Emily felt sorry for her. “If you haven’t been a party to any criminal activity” she said, pausing slightly for emphasis, “I’d say that’s a promise I can keep”
    “Criminal activity? Good God, no. I’m guilty of one thing. Being stupid.” She finished the last of her martini. “Really, supremely stupid.”
    “We’ve all done stupid things,” Emily said, thinking of Cary McConnell. At least Tina’s stupidity was decades, not hours, old. “Tell me. Tell me about you, Dylan Walker, and Bonnie Jeffries.”
    “All right,” she said. “But be prepared. I warn you. It’s pretty messy.”
    Ensconced behind prison walls, Dylan Walker hardly faded into oblivion, as the prosecutors and detractors had predicted following his trial for the murders of Shelley Marie Smith and Lorrie Ann Warner. He wasn’t lonely, either. He had a full roster of visitors and an endless supply of pen pals.
    Tina Winston started making the drive to the prison two months after Walker was convicted. She’d wanted to go right away, but she had to wait until after the state ran him through diagnostics and a battery of sessions with a counselor to determine how he’d fit into the prison population. Even more to the point, how he’d survive. He was considered “high profile” which really meant “high target”
    Walker wrote to Tina a week after he’d been moved from Administrative Segregation or Ad Seg, to his “permanent” cell in Block D. His cell mate, a firebug from suburban Seattle, was the perfect fit. He was younger and a follower. That was good. A narcissist like Dylan Walker preferred being the star of his own show. Everyone else was a supporting player. That meant his cell mate, and those who wrote to him, like Tina.
    Tina didn’t know it, of course, but she was being played. He wrote to her that his loneliness and need for her understanding heart and unconditional love was the only thing that kept him alive. She alone could free him from the mental torture of his prison sentence.
    I sit here, alone, and desperate. I feel broken. Not for what I’ve been accused of doing. Not for what the world thinks of me. I feel broken because you are so far away. The walls that hold us apart seem insurmountable. You might think that I’m counting the days to my appeal, but really, I only count the days until I see you.
    Tina always stayed at the Windsong Inn, only ten minutes from the prison. It was a sterile little motel room with cardboard-thin walls and a lamp that was bolted to the nightstand. She could have afforded better accommodations, of course, if there had been better. Despite the jittery and excited feelings the kind that come with a first date-that came with seeing Dylan, she knew it wasn’t a real romance. She also knew her visits were not to a resort town. The prison town was stark, lonely, and bitter.
    Tina arrived in town Friday night, so she’d be dressed and ready at the prison by 8:00 A.M. Saturday. It took about an hour to get through the examination process to ensure she wasn’t smuggling anything in. By 9:15, her heart would stop when she first saw him line up in the visitation room. His dark eyes sparked with recognition. Even in the drab attire of an inmate’s daily wear-a T-shirt and jeans he was godlike. If the clothes just hung on the SOBs that other women were there to see, they clung to his ripped body like a second skin. If he hadn’t been a prisoner, a convicted murderer, no less, Dylan Walker could have been a male model or film star. He sauntered to the table, a big white-toothed smile set off by dimples chiseled into that unequivocally handsome face.
    They’d kiss and sit down. Quick and passionate. The second kiss would have to wait until the conclusion of a “date” Tina never wanted to end.
    “I hate that we can only be together twice a month,” she said on more than one occasion.
    He leaned as close as the guards would allow. “I feel the same way.”
    And so each visit went. Tina promised to stand by Dylan. He