Emily Kenyon 01 - A Cold Dark Place

of the tattered brown bungalow. She found herself wishing she was invisible.
    But she wasn’t.
    What in the world? Emily stood in Bonnie’s overstuffed living room and tried to catch her breath. She shut her eyes tightly and opened them. Something so bewildering it couldn’t be real. She couldn’t believe her eyes. The coin purse on the credenza was pink and beaded with the design of a flamingo standing on one leg. It was so familiar. The flamingo was missing its eye. Couldn’t be. She picked and pulled on the zipper and opened it. The missing eye bead was still inside.
    Jenna was here.
    Emily steadied herself, resting the palm of her hand on the back of the oak desk chair. She felt the floor move a little. It was the sensation that she’d endured during the Cooper case so many years ago. She hadn’t felt the shifting floor like that in years. Not a panic attack. Her throat felt constricted and her breathing grew shallow. What happened here? Her sense of control fluttered. It was like the days after Kristi when she couldn’t move, couldn’t even drive. It was all she could do to get behind the wheel of a car back then, only to find she couldn’t turn the key. No one who’d ever experienced a panic attack could ever understand how powerful it could be. Get over it. Pull yourself together. None of that worked.
    As Christopher Collier started down the hall, Emily did the only thing that came to her fragile mind just then. She put the tiny coin purse in her jacket pocket. She breathed in deeply. She heard Christopher and the other detectives as they moved about the back bedroom. She heard a photographer taking pictures. What had happened here? What had Nick and Jenna done? She closed her eyes.
    “You all right?” It was Christopher. His voice snapped her back.
    “Fine. Thanks”
    “You look as pale as a ghost.”
    Emily tried to shake it off. “I don’t know. I guess you just never really get used to this stuff. Not if you’re human,” she said. The pink edge of the purse protruded slightly from her pocket, and she gently pushed it out of sight. Her heart was a bass drum. She felt sweat work its way down her temples.
    “Hear, hear.” Christopher tilted his head in the direction of the front door. “Let’s get you some air.”
    “Thanks. Turn up anything back there?” she asked.
    “Yeah. One thing. The kill was fresh. Probably within the last hour or so. The ME will know better. I’m just stating the obvious of course. The blood on the floor had barely coagulated. Slippery mess in there”
    Emily didn’t say anything. She didn’t know what to say.
    “When did you get here?” Christopher picked up the slack in the conversation, the light of a sunny day now flooding the yard in front of the dull brown house. A flowering cherry tree Emily hadn’t noticed was like a mushroom cloud of pink over the garage. “About what time?” His tone wasn’t exactly accusatory, but it bothered her. But not for the reason Christopher Collier would have dared to imagine. She thought of the coin purse. When had Jenna and Nick been there?
    “I was here no more than five minutes before Cen Comm took my 911 call for help.”
    “That’s what I thought. Sure is something that you’d find another body when looking for answers to those three back in Cherrystone.”
    “Yes, I guess so ” She didn’t know what else to say. He was right.
    “Are you going to be okay?”
    She nodded.
    “Drink later? I have to stay and process the scene”
    Emily didn’t want to, but saying no right then might appear like she was pushing him away. Better to have him close just then.
    “At the Westerfield downtown. Call me there,” she said.
    Emily put her car in gear and started to leave, and watched the scene in her rearview mirror. Christopher Collier walked back inside. Four more cops and techs had arrived, as had the tricked-out truck of the local 24/7 radio news crew. The TV people would probably be next on the scene. Yellow plastic tape now stretched across the front of the house like a banner for a soldier’s homecoming from Iraq. Emily had no intention of going back to the hotel. Not now Now more than ever, she needed to find her daughter. No more mistakes. She drove east to David’s house on Mercer Island. The image indicating a new message played on the tiny LCD screen of her phone. A text message from Sheriff Kip that nearly caused a pile up on the 1-5 and 1-90 interchange.
    Walker released last year. Returned to