In a split second of clarity, Tina Winston understood for the first time that Dylan Daniel Walker was a monster. She said nothing more to him that day or any other day. She knew that whatever she carried inside her was the spawn of evil, a child she could never love. A mistake she could never obliterate.
Olga listened intently as the words tumbled from Tina's trembling lips. She stopped and blotted her eyes, careful not to smudge her makeup. 'You know, that's the first time I've said his name in all these years. With Bonnie I just used `him' or Dash. I didn't want to give his name life, he was so dead to me after what he'd done'
'But that's not all,' Tina went on. 'He said there had been others. Others no one you, the police didn't know about'
'Did he say who?'
Tina shook her head. Droplets of her tears hit the shiny marble floor. 'No. And I didn't ask. I just wanted to get out of there and throw up'
Olga waited for Tina to get a grip. It would take a while. Tina had gone from stunning and confident to haggard and limp like a wrung-out dishrag in about a half hour. Her eyes were puffy. Her nose was red. Every wrinkle on her face had suddenly etched itself deeper.
Something nagged at Olga. Something Tina had said before she had told her story. That's it. When she d asked why Bonnie had sought her out shed said `At first. At first I thought.'
'Why did Bonnie come and find you?' she asked.
Tina took a deep breath and swallowed hard. Her eyes looked downward. 'She said Dylan had gotten out of prison and was back in the Northwest. He was in Tacoma. She'd waited for him and he for her. She came to me to gloat, I guess. She was rather smug. As if we'd been in some competition and she'd finally had the upper hand. She'd been the chosen one. She'd been the one all along. You know what her last words to me were?'
Olga didn't have a clue and said so.
'Our son-that's what she said-our son and Dash and I are going to be a family.'
'Anything else?'
'Yes, she used the phrase, `there are some flies in the ointment' and she said she was sorry.'
Monday, exact time and place unknown
Jenna Kenyon had worked her hands free. The release of her wrists and arms sent a quake of pain through her body. She expected that she'd feel her pain diminish, but the opposite had been true. She let out a little, soft cry and called over to Nick.
'I think I can get loose now,' she said. 'Nick, how are you coming?'
When she didn't hear anything, she pulled herself up, and moved her feet like she was dolphin kicking at the Cherrystone community pool. At last the cords that held her ankles together slipped to the earthen floor. It was too dark to see, so Jenna crawled on her hands and knees to where she'd last heard Nick's voice. She touched the floor lightly, timidly. No broken glass. Thank God. She didn't want to allow the thought to take hold, but it managed to slip inside her brain: What if he's not asleep? What if he's not drugged? What if he's dead?
She wondered where her mother was, if she was looking for her at all. She found herself praying to God and Jesus that she'd be able to wake Nick up, and they'd get out of the cruel darkness and she'd find her mother. My mom will get us out of here. My mom won't let whoever is doing this get away with it. My mom is the toughest woman I know The thin line of light in the black, which she now assumed was a doorway, had been dimmed. It seemed so far away.
On her stomach, feeling the hard, muddy floor, she slithered in the direction where she had last heard Nick's voice. Groping. Reaching. She put her hands out, touching a damp, soiled blanket. Her fingers were extended like claws. She was Helen Keller, probing with her fingertips to find something. To find Nick.
'Where are you? God, Nick, where are you?'
But once more, no answer. Jenna could feel her heart pounding deep inside her chest. It was thumping hard. But there was nothing to answer it back. No call for her to be calm. 'Where are you?' She spun around and called in every direction, but nothing.
Jenna Kenyon was completely alone.
Monday, 7:45 EM., near Meridian, Washington
Olga Morris-Cerrino returned to her farmhouse, fed Felix, and put the teakettle on. She'd dialed Emily three times, but kept getting 'customer out of service area' She turned on her computer and let the old PC rumble to a live screen. She logged on and the dial-up connection choked and coughed before she could log on to the archived files of the Retired Police Officers Association of the Northwest and put in her password.
She found Reynard Tuttle and started printing. Olga never doubted that Dylan Walker was a killer, despite her failure to have him put away for the rest of his life. It hadn't been her failure alone. The police in Seattle, Tacoma, and Nampa, Idaho, had also come up with nothing. Even the FBI had been unable to do what was needed to catch a killer. But no one, not a single law enforcement organization, had thought that the Reynard Tuttle/Kristi Cooper case had been related to Dylan Walker. In many ways, it didn't really seem to fit. None of the victims had been held captive anyplace-at least not that they were aware. When Olga pondered the Idaho case of Steffi Miller, she wondered if the girl hadn't been found because she'd been hidden somewhere. Somewhere besides a grave. Kristi had likely been disregarded be cause she'd been so young. But Olga knew that Walker was a cross-generational killer. He killed women of all ages.
She began seeping the Tuttle printouts. Now it was her turn to see photographs of Emily Kenyon when she was younger, before her downfall. There was no mention of Walker, of course, but there was a very small detail that leapt off the laser-printed page. The address of the McDonald's where Kristi Cooper had last been seen: 513 Winchester Avenue. Olga almost did a double take and then immediately went to the phone.
'Answer. Answer,' she said, as Emily's phone rang and went to voice mail. 'Damn it.'
She waited for Emily's greeting to give way to the beep. At least she could leave a message, all staccato and full of excitement. 'Emily, Olga. I've been poking around some. Got some interesting info from our favorite society gal, Tina Esposito. Bonnie had three kids, at least that's what Tina says. Three by Walker. Ugh. Anyway, call me. Also, found something interesting about Walker and your Cooper case. He lived a block from the restaurant .. .'
Olga wanted to say more, but the phone connection failed. Cheap piece of garbage, she thought. Hope she got all of that.
Chapter Thirty-five
Monday, 8:35 EM., on the Pacific coast of Washington
It had started raining early in the day and hadn't let up. Couldn't let up. The sky was a pewter lid smacked down over the ocean and the coast. Dunes with cockscombs of sea grasses held off the foamy surf. Rain pelted the windshield with relentless force as Emily followed the two-lane seaside road to the address on the card. She turned on her wipers to maximum speed, but she could barely see. The defroster was blowing at full bore, but it couldn't keep up with the damp air that circulated through the soggy Accord. Emily opened the driver's-side window to suck out the warm, moist air, but it just sent needles of rain against her left cheek. With her eyes fixed on the road, she leaned over and pulled some tissues from the glove box and started to wipe. Better. A sign flashed by the window: WELCOME TO WASHINGTON'S COAST. She looked in the rearview mirror and squinted at the bright headlights that had trailed her since she left Seattle.
I'll need to tell Christopher to get those lights adjusted.
Whenever Emily thought of Kristi Cooper, she thought of Reynard Tuttle. That was long before she had any inkling that Dylan Walker could have been involved. So sure was she of Tuttle's guilt that she completely dismissed the Tuttle's family's feeble protestations that he was innocent. Reynard Tuttle's sister and ex-wife were united in their insistence that Tuttle, who was diagnosed as schizophrenic when he was twenty-two, was innocent of the Cooper kidnapping. 'He's not capable of hurting an innocent little girl,' Delilah Tuttle Lewis, his sister, told a TV reporter not long after the shooting. 'He was crazy, but a gentle crazy.'
Tuttle's background had suggested as much. He'd been arrested only once for loitering in front of the King County courthouse. With the ACLU by his side, the charges were dismissed. His lawyers said that since he usually was seen holding a placard espousing hatred for the police whom he accused of conspiring against him, he'd been unfairly and unjustly singled out for prosecution. The day they picked him up was the only day anyone could recall in
