Sheriff Kiplinger pulled his smokes from his breast pocket. 'I hate to say it, Emily, but it looks like Nick Martin has some explaining to do'
An hour later, Sheriff Kiplinger and Emily Kenyon stood in front of a pair of cameras from two of the three Spokane TV stations. For the second time in a week, Cherrystone had made the news. First the tornado and now a triple homicide.
Twenty years of nothing happening around here and now this, Emily thought as she stood next to the sheriff and the cameras recorded the story for the evening news. The attention was unwanted for a couple of reasons. One deeply personal. The other had to do with pride. Both were rooted in an incident that had shaken the foundation of her life and sent her to Cherrystone to start over. To hide. And if this story gets picked up by the Spokane station's sister station in Seattle they'll think I've let myself go.
'We don't know exactly what happened or even when it happened,' the sheriff said. 'It appears Mark and Margaret Martin and their son Donovan are the victims of a brutal homicide.'
'What about Nicholas? The oldest Martin boy?' The reporter shoved her microphone as if it were a fire poker. She wanted Kiplinger to spill some major news.
'Is he a suspect?'
Emily took that one. 'No. We do, however, consider him a person of interest. If anyone knows of his whereabouts, please contact the sheriff's department'
Tuesday, 12:25 RM., Cherrystone, Washington
It was the biggest mistake of a very long day and Emily knew it when she absentmindedly answered her cell phone without looking at the caller ID panel. She just flipped it open and there he was. It was Cary McConnell's husky voice. Her heart plunged.
'I thought you were avoiding me,' he said.
'I've just been busy,' Emily lied.
'I know. I saw you on the Spokane news' He paused. 'Twice'
There was an awkward beat of silence as Emily toyed with pretending that she had a bad cell and couldn't hear him. She was more direct than that and as much as she was beginning to loathe Cary McConnell, he deserved to know the truth.
'Yeah. Brian's hooked up with Diane Sawyer and I'm stuck with Spokane TV talking to a reporter just out of communications school.' She tried to inject a friendly tone in her voice, but mostly Emily just wanted the call to be over. She knew what he was after. But she was too tired to be quick with an excuse as to why she had to cut the call short.
'Are you busy tomorrow night?'
Damn it, he asked.
'Now isn't a good time,' she said, wishing she'd been more direct and used 'never is a good time.'
'We have something, you know.'
She found her footing. 'No, Cary, we don't. We dated. It didn't work out. And now the best we can be is good friends.'
'We're not friends. Last time I looked, friends don't mess around like we did.'
Her skin crawled. Sleeping with any man who still used the term 'messing around' for making love was confirmation that she had, in fact, really made a mistake.
'Listen, Cary, I don't want to hurt you any more than I apparently have. I didn't mean for things to go so far.'
'So far?'
His voice became tight and she could imagine the veins on his neck popping like night crawlers on a rainy pavement.
'You know what I mean. I'm not ready for a relation ship.' Again, Emily censored herself. She didn't add the last bit that passed through her mind: 'with you. Ever.'
'Don't do this. Let's talk.'
'We already have'
'Let's work it out. Let's have a drink tonight so we can talk.'
Emily lost it. She felt like their roles had been reversed. She was operating on logic and rational thought and he was fluttering around with hurt feelings, treading water in a stormy sea of emotions.
'I can't talk,' she said. 'Hear me on this. I don't want to talk. I don't want to see you. It was a mistake, Cary. Let it go.'
'I can't stop thinking about you,' he said. 'We had something and I'm not going to let it go. Why should I?'
'What do you mean? Are you forcing me to get a restraining order? Jesus, Cary. You're a goddamn lawyer. You know you can't harass me'
She pulled the phone from her ear as Cary's voice carried like a gunshot to the side of her head.
'You are a stupid bitch and you can't do this to me. You belong to me.. .'
She pressed the CALL END button.
Chapter Five
Tuesday, 2:00 n.M., Cherrystone, Washington
Java the Hut loomed like a mirage and Emily pulled in and absentmindedly ordered the special of the day-a doubletall white chocolate mocha. She wondered about the wisdom of making a mocha with white chocolate anyway. Was white chocolate really chocolate after all?
The young woman at the window took her order.
'Make it a triple shot,' Emily said. 'And no whip.'
Emily stared out the window and mentally sorted the preliminary findings phoned in from Spokane County's coroner's office. The coroner's assistant talked with the dispassionate voice of someone who worked with violence every day. She rattled off the findings, laundry-list style, without taking a single breath. None of what she said was earth-shattering, but it was good that what Emily had seen at the crime scene matched what the techies were finding in the dank, cramped, and acrid-smelling basement lab. Observation and science went hand in hand in the courtroom provided they ever got that far. It appeared that both of the parents had been shot at close range, nearly execution style. The youngest victim was shot in the back from some distance, perhaps indicating flight. Maybe Donny had come across Nicholas as he fired away at his parents? And in running to get help or save his own life, he had been blasted by Nick with the shotgun? Their dressor lack of it-suggested evening or early morning as the time of attack. Then again it could have been the raging fury of the tornado, ripping off their clothes. Jason's plucked- chicken comment came to mind.
The barista attempted to make small talk as the espresso machine sent a cloud of steam into the interior of what had once been a Fotomat.
'Busy day?'
'Absolutely killer,' Emily said without an iota of sarcasm.
The young woman smiled and shrugged as the steam forced its way through the tamped coffee.
'Tell me about it,' she said. 'I had to make seven drinks for a lady who was taking them to her office. My lineup of regulars was madder than you-know-what'
Emily smiled. She didn't say anything about the stupid white chocolate coffee she was going to drink. She didn't say anything about what she'd seen at the Martin place. Or who she was looking for. People would find out soon enough. Cherrystone, which had just dodged a bullet with the tornado in terms of no loss of human life, was about to be put on the map as the hometown of a gruesome and frightening family murder.
Emily paid and drove over to the school. She told Sheriff Kiplinger that she'd talk to the principal at Cherrystone High about Nick Martin. The Spokane media was already swarming, and reporters from Seattle were also making inquiries about hotel rooms. A triple homicide was big, fat, unbeliev able news. It was after lunchtime, and the usually tidy streets of Cherrystone were oddly quiet, given the coming of the second storm in a week the media storm.
Emily sipped her mocha and nearly gagged. It was sickeningly, almost throat burning, sweet. If she hadn't
