"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 considered the combination of sugar and caffeine as a necessary elixir given her past few days, she'd have tossed the paper cup out the window. Damn the city's littering ordinance.
Her cell rang. It was David.
"Emily, we have to talk," he said, without so much as a hello.
"David," she answered, her voice slightly brittle, "we don't have anything to talk about. At least not now."
"Yeah, we do. We need to talk about Jenna. I don't want her growing up in some Podunk town"
Her brow narrowed and she rolled her eyes. "Thanks. I grew up here, David."
"No offense, but I'm sure you'll agree that Jenna deserves more opportunity."
"She'll get that opportunity when she goes to college. I did. We all did." Given the circumstances of the last few hours, she couldn't bring up her old argument that Cherrystone was a safe haven. Seattle had a rave culture. Cherrystone was still 4-H. Certainly there were drugs in the town that David derided as "no more than a pockmark on the map," but Emily knew more kids were concerned about showing how high their sunflowers grew than how high they got. Seattle teens got beaten and murdered and abused everyday of the week.
And now Cherrystone had a murder times three. The idea pounded at her cranium. Was it lack of sleep or the realization that some kid had slaughtered his family for no apparent reason?
"Really, David, I can't talk about this right now."
"Someone's dog loose? Cow get out of a pasture?" David could be cutting and never missed the chance to remind Emily that she was slumming in Cherrystone.
Her head pounded. "I'd answer that, and since you'll probably relay everything back to Dani, I'd better use small words so she'll understand" The second they spewed from her lips, Emily wished she hadn't been so harsh and could pluck them from the air before David heard them. If she hadn't been under so much pressure because of the storm and now the Martin murders, she'd have held it together.
"Now, I remember why I couldn't stand being around ' you.
His words cut to the bone. She knew they'd been deserved, but she hated the idea of their entire life together being cast in an odious light. They did, after all, have a few good years earlier in their marriage. Maybe even more good years than bad. And they did have Jenna.
"Sorry," she said. "I do have to go. David, I'll call you. But for now, please understand that Jenna is going to see you this summer-for the two weeks we've agreed upon in the parenting plan. Nothing more"
"Dani and I think she's old enough to change her mind-"
Dani was David's girlfriend and Emily couldn't stand it that she was closer in age to Jenna than she was to David. They'd met once, not long after the divorce was final. Dani had seemed nice enough. She wasn't particularly beautiful. She wasn't even blond. And her chest? Just average for a second wife, or at least what most men tend to go for when they trade up. Emily hated the age disparity. It just seemed wrong, ugly, and predictable. David was a lot of things in their marriage, many of them annoying, but he'd never been predictable.
"I didn't call you to argue," he said, his voice icy. "I wanted to tell you that I've been talking with Jenna and she wants to live with me for the summer. The hospital PR department says she could help out on the Web site. It would be a good opportunity."
Emily was stunned, but she tried to keep cool. Why would Jenna collude with her father? Wasn't she happy? "She said so?" she asked, before she thought better of it, and laid the blame at David. "Or is this something you've cooked up?"
"I'm her dad. She needs her dad. Studies say that girls grow into stronger, more self-actualized women if they have close relationships with their fathers" He was superior, cool, and oddly detached; it was as if he was reading his words out of some journal that Dani probably nabbed off the Internet.