since leaving David's office with the medical records tucked into a Macy's shopping bag next to Lindsay-in-love's desk. She'd talked with Gloria at the sheriff's office back home. No news. She left a message for Olga. She had even talked with Dani to try to patch things up. The conversation played in her mind and she felt her anger rise.
'I am sorry,' Emily had said, gritting her teeth somewhat, but making a valiant effort. An outboard motor went by. Dani was out on the deck overlooking the lake.
'I'd like to believe you,' Dani responded, coolly. 'For Jenna's sake'
Why do you insist on being such a bitch? You've got the view home. You got the surgeon. You can have all of that. Just don't bring up my daughter's name like she means a damn thing to you.
'That's right,' Emily said, swallowing the bile in her throat, 'for Jenna'
She slipped out of her shoes and made a beeline for the minibar, which to her dismay didn't have a drop of tequila. She'd had a taste for the Mexican booze all day. She settled for gin and tonic. After talking with Dani Brewer, it just seemed especially good right for the moment. She noticed the light on the hotel phone blinking and she punched in the code for the message center. There were two. Both from Christopher Collier.
'Hi Emily. Chris here. Dinner tonight? I've tried your cell twice. You must be out of range. Call me and let me know if you want to meet up at your hotel.' Drinks had become dinner. That was fine with her. A kind face would be a welcome change.
The second call was a hang-up.
She dialed Christopher's number, this time getting the Seattle Police detective's voice mail. In a way it was a relief. She felt anxious, foolish, tired. But she was also lonely and in need of company. Maybe even in need of validation that she hadn't screwed up her entire life or lost her daughter.
Hadn't been the victim of bad karma.
'Chris, dinner tonight sounds lovely. How about eight? See you here at the Westfield.'
Seeing Christopher, she knew, was something she had to do. She sipped her drink and remembered what until Jenna's disappearance, had been the worst episode of her life. It was long ago and Christopher had been there.
Long before the tornado, on the Washington coast
The summer wind blew cool moist air over the driftwood along the Pacific shore. A few seabirds dove into the surf, and about a hundred yards down the beach, a couple of beach combers looked for their elusive prize-Japanese glass fishing floats. Emily Kenyon was alone; her partner Christopher Collier was searching the area from the south side of the beach. She wore street clothes khakis, open-toed shoes, and white cotton blouse. A heavy woolen sweater concealed her weapon. Sand and beach grit found its way inside and was grinding the soles of Emily's feet. She cursed the fact that she wore those completely impractical shoes.
She and Christopher were looking for a little girl named Kristi Cooper. The Northwest had been riveted by the story of the little girl, who had last been seen by her mother in one of those gigantic bins of multicolored plastic balls at a Seattle fast food restaurant. Last seen. It had been a while. Kristi had been missing for almost three weeks. She was blond and pretty. She was also small for her age. In a media-driven world that had embraced the concept of bland American adorable, Kristi fit the bill to a T. Her picture was everywhere-newspapers, flyers, even a billboard along the interstate just north of Olympia. Certainly her face was a key reason that Kristi captivated the hearts and minds of residents around Washington State. But it wasn't the only reason. She also was the daughter of a wealthy car dealer-one who made his fame by appearing on cheap TV commercials smashing cars with a sledgehammer and screaming that only his insanity could explain the low prices he offered.
`I'll smash up this car to make a deal with you!'
It was a clear case of kidnapping when a $250,000 ransom demand quickly followed. That, of course, made it a federal case handled under the auspices of the FBI, with help from the Seattle Police Department. Seattle PD was stuck in a supporting role, while taking most of the heat from the media as the story unfolded. Rick Cooper, Kristi's used-carmagnate father, followed the FBI's request to withhold the ransom while they tracked hundreds of potential leads. None, however, seemed to get any traction. A week after it started, the kidnapper stopped calling.
Emily, who up until that point had peripheral involvement in the case, volunteered for extra duty the day of the beach search-another low priority follow-up from an anonymous tipster.
Those days always played in her mind like a bad dream. There were many images that came to mind. The girl, of course. But the one that held the tightest grip was the face of her father. Emily could never forget seeing his bitterness, his deep hurt, his complete and unmitigated rage.
All of it had been directed toward her.
'Does she know what she's done?' Rick Cooper asked a local TV reporter, the microphone so close to his angry mouth that he could have swallowed it in one gulp. 'We don't know where Kristi is and Emily Kenyon is the reason why.'
The reason. The cause.
Emily didn't reach for the bottle like some cops who'd made mistakes they could easily live with. She did see a doctor and took some meds for anxiety, but only for a short time. She didn't fall apart, at least not outwardly so. She had a husband and daughter who needed her. There was an investigation over what happened in the Cooper case. There were more media reports. She gave up her shield for thirty days. She tried to keep her mind on Jenna and David, but a girl she never met would not leave her mind. Even when she was engaged in a conversation with David, thoughts unspooled. She had screwed up. She hadn't meant to, of course. But when she looked down at her hands, she knew they had been the inadvertent instrument of a little girl's demise.
God, please forgive me. God, give me the chance to make this right.
Reynard Tuttle was wheezing, his lungs pierced by a single bullet from Emily Kenyon's police-issue gun. It had all happened so fast --a racing speed that allowed not a second for introspection about what had just occurred. A dark spot of blood bloomed on his food- and sweat-stained white cotton T-shirt, and then oozed crimson to the cabin floor. He was only twenty or so, barely a man. Emily knelt beside him. He was trying to speak. She pushed his gun away and she leaned close.
'Shouldn't have done that,' he said, barely able to form his words.
'Where's Kristi?'
'That's for me to know and you to find out' His voice was a soft rasp.
Emily knew he was dying, but his death went far beyond the tragedy of his own wasted life. He had to live to tell her what she needed to know. Adrenaline pulsed. She shook him. 'Don't fuck with me ''
'You'll never find her.' Tuttle turned his head slightly and looked up. His eyes were beginning to roll.
'Don't leave!' she said. 'Stay with me. You don't want this to be what you're remembered for. You don't want to hurt Kristi. Where is she?'
Collier rushed through the opened doorway. 'Jesus, Emily, are you all right?'
She glanced over her shoulder and with one quick nod, indicated she was unhurt. When she looked back down at Tuttle, his eyes had been emptied of life. They were the eyes of a cold, dead animal.
'Come back here!' she said, tugging on his shoulders. 'Goddamn you!' His head thumped on the cabin's planked flooring. Hard. 'Where is the girl?'
'Emily, stop!'
She couldn't and Tuttle's head smacked against the floor over and over. But he was gone. So was Kristi.
A helicopter outfitted with an infrared camera worked a precise grid of forest and beachfront acreage in the vicinity of the Tuttle shooting. Tourists and homeowners watched the sky as the aircraft's whirling blades rattled their windows. Everyone knew what the Seattle Police and FBI were looking for the telltale hot spot that indicated Kristi Cooper, dead or alive. At one point, a team was dispatched for followup on a glow of red picked up near Foster's Pond. Working shoulder to shoulder in a squared-off line, almost fifty FBI agents, police, and Boy Scouts trained in a process of a detailed grid search marched lockstep toward the hot spot.
'Anything and everything gets tagged,' a Seattle sergeant yelled across the front of the line as the teams began to walk. One kid dropped a marker at a smoked cigarette; another found a rotted sleeping bag.
'Tag it!'
About twenty-five minutes into the march, a female volunteer caught an acrid whiff of the instantly recognizable scent of death. She started coughing. She was sure that she'd found Kristi Cooper's remains. Any hope that she was alive was erased by that terrible smell. That stench could only mean one thing. It was over.
'Over here, my end of line,' the young searcher called. Two CSIs moved methodically toward the call for help.
