"No. Let's drive away from here"
Without speaking, she put the car in gear and it rolled from the lot to the main street.
"Let's go to the park and talk. And no, I haven't heard anything about Jenna. But that's what I want to talk about"
"You're scaring me," she said, her eyes switching from the road to Kip, then back again.
"Don't be scared. We're just going to talk and we just can't do it at the office. Too many people listening all around"
A spot under a willow that hung over the street like an archway. She parked and they walked over to a picnic table. A couple of preschoolers played nearby on a jungle gym, their mothers fixated on their every flip and twirl. A poodle was tethered to the slide. It barked sharply. It was a sunny morning and for a moment it seemed like any other day.
But that was all about to change. Kip lit up a smoke and faced Emily, his big brown eyes full of concern.
"Look," he said, "I know this is awkward. But I need to know how you and Jenna were getting along."
Emily knew where he was going and she didn't like it one bit.
"How can you even say that to me? You know we got along. Are you trying to suggest that she ran away?"
Kip narrowed his gaze. "That's right. There really isn't anything to suggest that she left against her will. You know that. She wasn't abducted"
"We don't know that. We don't know anything for sure. And where is this coming from?" Emily stood up. She wanted to leave. It felt so insulting that her boss, her friend, a man that she trusted more than just about any other would sit there and utter such a cruel lie.
"I talked to David. He said that Jenna wanted to come live with him. You'd argued about it. Isn't that right?"
The poodle got off his leash and started running through the park. One of the mothers was frantically chasing him, while calling over her shoulder for her daughter to stay put.
The distraction was only momentary, and Emily's anger was a volcano.
"Goddamn that David! What an idiot! He thinks his backbiting comments against me are helpful in his daughter's disappearance? What kind of a man would put his hate toward his ex-wife over the love of his own little girl?"
"David called us. He talked to Jenna late last night. She called him. She's fine. She's-"
It was a molten iron spike to her heart. "What? He talked to her? Why didn't he call me? Where is she? What did she say to him?"
Kip motioned for her to be seated. "Take a breath. One question at a time, all right?"
Emily planted herself on the rough-hewn wooden bench, her heart pounding and sweat dampening her underarms. She was mad and relieved at the same time. Jenna was alive. She wasn't Polly Klaas. Jenna Kenyon was alive!
"Please," Emily said, "tell me everything my daughter said."
Kip exhaled a stream of smoke. "David told us she called last night about midnight. Said she was calling from a pay phone-the caller ID indicated she used a calling card-I knew you would ask. She was a little shaken. She said she'd be home soon. She was helping a friend in trouble."
"What friend?"
"She didn't say. David pressed her for more details and she was pretty adamant that none would be coming. She did say one thing for you, though. `Tell mom, I'm doing the right thing."'
Emily flashed to the sheet metal sign that hung in her daughter's bedroom. It was the same sign that she'd displayed when that room was hers. It was made to look like a NO PARKING sign and read:
DO THE RIGHT THING -EVEN IF IT HURTS.
"What else did she say?"
Kip shook his head. "Nothing. That's all. David said she was on the phone no more than a minute, if that long."
Distrust won over relief. "I don't believe him. That bastard's got her. My daughter is not a runaway." She didn't even care that Kip was right next to her and was going to hear intimate family business.
She flipped open her cell phone and punched the code for David. It rang five times then the recording came on. Jenna must be with him. If she was with anyone else, if that ridiculous story about a mysterious phone call was true, then David would be standing by waiting for another call or even news from Emily in case she had received a similar call. He would pick up right away. Unless he knew where Jenna was safely at his side.
Wednesday, 7:45 RM.
What had happened at the Martin place on the Thursday before the tornado? It was after hours, but there was no going home. There was no reason to. Jenna was gone. The phone was forwarded. And there was the matter of the Martin murders. Emily Kenyon studied the Spokane coroner's autopsy report after it arrived bundled into one of those cheap accordion files. She'd always had a strong stomach and barely winced at the photographs that accompanied such files. But in the case of Mark, Peg, and Donovan Martin, Emily fixed her attention on the coroner's schematics not the photos of their battered, bruised, and bloodied bodies. The schematics, the distillation of reality, were actually more telling. They were impersonal figures, no genitalia, no hair to suggest a woman or man's body. Just delicate black lines in the shape of a human form on a plain white sheet of paper. There were three of them. Mark Martin's wounds were the most severe. His limbs were absent from the schematics. An X drawn by the coroner indicated where he'd been shot in the upper back, probably at relatively close range. Peg Martin was next. Her wounds were beyond comprehension but it was there in black and white. She'd been shot in the chest. There was extensive damage to her torso-postmortem, the coroner noted. Finally there was the youngest, victim, Donovan Martin. Like his dad, Donny had suffered a single gunshot to the back. A big black X marked the spot where the bullet had entered, another where it had exited his frame.
Emily set each of the sheets of paper across her desk. Muzak filtered in from the hallway and footsteps came and went, but never once did she look up. So much of what is routinely learned about what happened to each victim was quite literally gone with the wind. The tornado had swept away any trace evidence-fibers, hairs, even shell casings that had been left behind by the killer. Why had Mrs. Martin been found nude? Labs for the presence of semen came back negative. She hadn't been sexually active that morning, and unless the killer had used a condom, she likely hadn't been raped. The nudity was puzzling, however. Emily just couldn't wrap her brain around what had taken place. Maybe she'd just gotten out of the shower? Or was in her robe? She'd been bound the only one of the three. From what Emily knew, Peg had called the schools and Mark's office with the urgent message to get home. Had the killer used Peg to lure Mark upstairs after he'd placed that call to Mark's office? There was no way of knowing.
But at least one person probably had an inkling, if not a hand in it. Nicholas Martin. And Emily had only two questions to ask him: Why had he done this? And what did her daughter have to do with any of it?
Reluctantly Emily went home to the empty house on Orchard Avenue, full of memories, but missing the one spark of life that was her daughter.
God, where is she?
Chapter Thirteen
Thursday, 8:42 A.M., Cherrystone, Washington
When Marina Wilbur turned to greet Emily Kenyon, it was like seeing a ghost from an unsettled grave. The look of horror on the pretty detective's face could not have been more disconcerting-and tragically obvious.
"I'm sorry," Marina said, standing to acknowledge Emily as she entered her office. "I guess I should have told your boss to warn you. Peg and I are .. ." She caught herself and the tears she had held in check since the ride from the Spokane airport began to rain down her cheeks. "Were," she corrected herself as she fought to regain her shattered composure, "we were identical twins."