Emily Kenyon 01 - A Cold Dark Place

next best thing to NASCAR-his real dream. He parked next to the cruiser and two paramedics, sisters Anna and Gina Marino, jumped out of the vehicle.
    “Where’s the vie?” Anna asked. She grabbed her bag and swung around looking into the rubble pile that had once been such a pretty house. Something caught her eye. The running horse weathervane had managed to stay put on the cupola, which had been tossed aside like baggage in the underbelly of an airplane.
    “Better question,” her sister, Gina, the older of the pair, a petite young blonde, mused, “is where on God’s green Earth is the house?”
    Her sister, who wore her curly dark hair short, almost a white woman’s ‘fro, answered back.
    “It’s this pile of junk, all over the place. God, Gina, use your head”
    “Twister touched down here,” Emily interrupted. She waved over the darkened terrain. “You can see the path of destruction. It must have landed here, then pulled up and touched down right at the house and plowed across the field like a sonofabitch.”
    “Anna, you can be such a bitch. Nobody said a damn thing about the tornado when they dispatched us. They said the victim was a woman with serious injuries. Life threatening.”
    “It’s all right,” Emily said. She liked the girls, but she was tired and their ceaseless banter grated. “I’ll take you to Mrs. Martin. And she’s not a vic. She’s not a patient. She’s a corpse”
    Anna Marino bent over the body, while her sister, Emily, and Jason hovered like fireflies, their lights brushing the im mediate area. With the increased illumination, Emily could see that Mrs. Martin hadn’t been covered in mud after all. The dark brown coloring over much of her torso was dried blood. As Anna lifted her arm it was apparent that she’d been dead awhile; rigor had come and gone.
    And there was something else.
    “Gina, let’s roll her on the board and get her out of here”
    “Okay.”
    “Just a second,” Emily said, bending closer, her beam trained on a darkened circle of bloody flesh.
    “What’s that?” Jason asked.
    “She probably got poked by wood splinter or something during the storm,” Anna said. “I’ve heard of nails flying through the air and being embedded into a tree”
    “I was telling Emily about a chicken that got plucked by a tornado “
    “Say that five times real fast,” Gina said. The other two laughed, letting off a little tension. No one meant to be disrespectful but it was the middle of the night, cold, creepy.
    Ignoring their banter, Emily was on her knees now, pitched over the dead woman and staring intently. She was so close to Mrs. Martin’s body that a nudge would have pushed her face down into the wound that had captured her interest.
    “I don’t think so” She looked up at Jason and indicated the circular tear in Mrs. Martin’s chest. “We can’t move her. The tornado didn’t kill her.”
    “Huh?” Jason was confused. He had no idea what she was talking about.
    “Jason, secure the scene. It looks like Mrs. Martin was shot.”
    “Shot?”
    “You need me to repeat it? I’m so tired I don’t think I can, but yes, shot. Close range, too. GSR burns around the wound here”
    She pointed to the smudged edges of the injury.
    “I see it,” he said.
    Gina looked at her sister. “Shit, we haven’t had a murder in Cherrystone since we were kids.” “
    “That was a suicide,” Anna corrected, referring to the case of a local pet shop owner who had been poisoned to death.
    Gina made a face. She’d had this argument before. She spoke a bit louder so Jason and Emily could hear.
    I never was so sure about that. I mean, he died of arsenic and that’s a slow death. His wife said he had Parkinson’s for years. Sounded a little feeble to me”
    “Some things are never meant to be known,” Jason said.
    Emily stood up, glad she’d put on a pair of jeans. Her knees were muddy and hurt like hell.
    “That won’t be the case here,” she said. “We will find out what happened to her and her family.”
    Jason went to the radio for backup. Photos would have to be taken. The debris had to be searched, piece by piece. Mrs. Martin was dead, but there were other potential victims, too.
    “Tell the sheriff I’ve gone home. I’ll be back at first light,” Emily said. She looked at the illuminated face on her gold watch. It was after midnight. “See you in a few. Nobody touches anything. Where I come from this is a crime scene”
    To avoid puncturing