darkness.
'What in the world?'
Emily Kenyon could barely believe her eyes the Martin house was gone.
Before the tornado, exact time and place unknown
Those who saw it later considered it to be a scrapbook of horror, a dark album of so much that could never be forgotten. Why memorialize such things? Affixed to each black paper page were the yellowed clippings of his unspeakable crimes. The most notorious among the nine he claimed were the ones for which he was convicted Shelley Marie Smith and Lorrie Ann Warner. They were college roommates from Cascade University in Meridian, a midsize port city in the extreme northwestern corner of the state. Both girls worked at a store that specialized in hardware and garden supplies. Shelley had wanted to save the world one child at a time; elementary education was her major. Lorrie Ann had been less sure of her future than her roommate. She'd bounced from major to major, unable to decide her life's calling. She told her parents that she was still 'searching for a passion.'
The young women were found bound, shot in the back of the head, dumped along a sandbar along the Nooksack River late in the summer. An unlucky kayaker had found the dead young women some three months after they'd been reported missing. Their bodies were badly decomposed, but the telltale evidence of their horrific last hours had not been obliterated by the warm summer days or the icy mountain waters. They had been sexually violated and tortured. It was the most disturbing crime ever reported on the pages of the Meridian Herald.
Yet they were not his first victims. Certainly not his last. Even so, they held the distinction of commanding a full ten pages of Herald clippings in the black memory album. It might have been because there were two victims or because they were so young. But when their photos and clippings were pasted into the book, it told a story.
No one knew it, but it was a love story.
In turning the pages it was easy to see there was more to come.
Chapter Two
Monday, 10:48 n.M., Cherrystone, Washington
The temperature had dropped and Emily Kenyon felt the chill of a late spring breeze nip at her. The strobe of blue from the police light made her shudder and she grabbed a jacket as she got out of the car. Jason Howard, his flashlight like a light saber, raced toward her. Broken glass and splinters of wood were everywhere. It was like the heavens had opened and snowed fragments of the Martin house all around them.
'Glad you're here,' Jason said, his flashlight's beam aimed at Emily's face, making her look even more tired and almost ghoulish. She blinked back the light and made a quick nod. 'I think I found Mrs. Martin,' he said. Emily caught the fear in his voice. She also saw it in his deep-set dark eyes, burrowed into his head under a characteristic knitted brow. The kid is scared shitless.
Before she could say anything calming, her eyes followed the swift movement of the young deputy's flashlight beam.
'She's over here,' he said.
Amid the darkness, the light fluttered over the ground like a moth. Emily's heart sank when a white figure popped against the darkened backdrop.
'Oh, dear, there she is,' she said, her voice catching slightly.
'I'm pretty sure she's dead.'
'I can see that, Deputy.'
Margaret 'Peg' Martin was splayed out nude; her clothes appeared ripped from her body by the fury of the storm. She was facedown in the mud. Kitchenware was scattered helter skelter. Broken dishes. Fiestaware, Emily thought. Shards of glass glittered around her chalky frame. Pieces of fabric and slivers of paper fluttered as the wind passed through the gully that once held the pretty home. It was as if a bomb had gone off. It was Bosnia. It was Baghdad.
It was Cherrystone, Washington.
'Jesus,' Emily said, stooping next Mrs. Martin's lifeless body. 'We need some help out here. We need to find Mark Martin and the kids.'
Jason stood frozen, his brown eyes dilated to near black. Perspiration rolled from under his thick, wavy hair.
'I heard that one time a chicken was plucked by a twister in Arkansas,' he said, a non sequitor that came from a nervous mind.
Emily knew he was rattled, so instead of saying, 'What the hell are you talking about?' she shrugged, and said, 'Heard the same thing.' She retrieved a Maglite of her own and pointed its beam over the wreckage, noticing for the first time that the roof had been ripped from the house and planted some twenty yards away. The walls had fallen like dominos, one on top of the next. The light swept back over to the naked body. Emily leaned closer and touched Peg's neck. It was a formality, of course, but it had to be done. She was, very sadly and very completely, dead.
'Calling the sheriff, now,' Jason said, now with the cruiser's radio in hand. A cat meowed, something shifted somewhere in the dark, and Emily steadied herself. She turned toward the noise. Glass crunched under her feet.
She couldn't think of the little Martin boy's name, but she called out the others.
'Mark? Nicholas? Anyone? Can you hear me? Try to move something, say something.'
She stood still, but nothing. Again the cat yowled and Emily found herself wishing the poor thing would stop.
Shhhh kitty, kitty, she thought.
'Ambulance is coming,' Jason announced, inching his way back toward the corpse.
Emily nodded. 'The others have to be around here somewhere ''
'Mr. Martin?' Jason said, his voice thick with dread. He ran his light over the debris field. 'Are you here? Can you hear me?'
Emily moved her light methodically over the remains of the house. With each pass from north to south, she covered a bit more ground. And with each swipe of the light, more of what had once been was revealed. A chair. A tabletop. A child's toy. Her heart nearly stopped when the light passed over the blank-eyed stare of another woman. It was so fleeting that it took a second for it to register.
A magazine cover.
'I've heard of people surviving in India after an earthquake for up to ten days or more,' Jason said from the other side of the remains of the house.
'I've heard the same thing. Let's hope that they are that lucky.'
'Yeah, luckier than Mrs. Martin,' he said.
'That goes without saying, Jason. You know, sometimes you just don't have to say the obvious.'
As soon as she said the words, she regretted it. She was tired. So damned tired from the last couple of days. She had done more than double duty. She was on edge.
'Sorry, Ms. Kenyon,' he said. His apology was so genuine, so much like the way he was, that Emily felt like she had kicked a puppy or something.
'No apologies needed. Been a long last few days, hasn't it?'
'Yeah. I haven't slept more than four hours since Sunday.'
They continued to scour all that remained of the house, but it was useless. There was so much of it and their flashlights were too weak for the task.
'We need to cordon off the area and look at first light,' Emily said.
'Okay. Will do'
Emily looked down at her watch. First light was in five hours.
'I hate to do this to you Jason, but after we transport Mrs. Martin to the morgue, I'm out of here. I have to get home to Jenna'
Jason didn't look happy about it, but he couldn't say anything. Motherhood was more important than hanging around an accident scene. At least he figured his mother would say so-and he still lived with her.
'Fine by me,' he said. 'I'll manage'
