BOY MISSING AFTER FAMILY MURDERED
The article was accompanied by a color photo of the Martins' flattened house-though it would be difficult for anyone to comprehend that the debris scattered on the image had once been a house. Jenna's eyes widened. It looked like it had been bulldozed. A few telltale pieces that indicated that the material had once been fashioned into a home, but not much. She started reading and almost at once, her mother's name jumped off the page. The story said that Emily Kenyon had gone out to the residence after the tornado, only to find that three family members had been shot and the fourth, Nick Martin, was nowhere to be found.
"I can't believe your mother would say that," he said.
"What?" Jenna hadn't made it that far into the article.
"That!" He punched at the newspaper.
"Hey! Knock it off!" Jenna yelled back. "I can't read it if you rip it up" She traced the columns of type with her now greasy finger.
"Of course, we don't know what happened, but we're concerned about Nick. We want to find him before any more harm comes to him or someone else."
"See right there," he said. "She thinks I'm the one" His face was red and rage pooled in every fiber of his being. "Goddamn her!"
"Chill, all right?" Jenna reached her arm around his shoulders, now slumped and shaking. "This isn't good for you. You've been through so much. We just have to tell her what happened"
Nick extricated himself from Jenna's arm. "Your mom will never understand. No one would. This is such a lame mistake, Jenna. All of this is bullshit. My family didn't understand me. Your mom isn't going to, either."
"I'm here," she said. "I get it. I understand"
Nick got up and walked toward the fissure of light around the casing of the door.
"Stop. I'm here for you," she said.
He turned around. He was more handsome than menacing, with dark eyes that sucked the life force out of the room. His hair was curly, dark, almost black, though he'd cajoled his mother, Peg, into using one of those home highlighting kits. The highlights were supposed to be golden, though they looked more like brass. He wore blue jeans low on his hips, revealing the black band of Joe Boxer briefs against his very white skin. A vintage Metallica T-shirt and scruffy black Doc Martens completed the look. A closer examination would reveal twin pinprick scars through his eyebrows; the only reminder of a piercing look that he didn't think was cool anymore. Through the tears on his pallid face, he managed a smile.
"I know. Now and forever," he said. "You're the only one I can count on ""
Jenna pulled him closer. It was tentative. Not in the way that a woman pulls a man closer, but as a girl comforts a brother.
"I have to talk to my mother," she said.
Nick pulled away, and took a step backward. His eyes followed Jenna as she slumped back down on the dirty sofa. "I don't trust your mother. You know what she thinks about me. Everyone thinks that about me"
Jenna Kenyon knew that Nick was right. She wondered how she had gotten herself into such a mess, but more urgently, she worried if she was going to be able to get out of it in time.
Chapter Fourteen
Thursday, noon, Cherrystone, Washington
Emily Kenyon hadn't eaten much in almost a week. Her last real meal had been the pasta that Jenna had made the night before she disappeared. Emily's clothes no longer flattered her figure; they draped limply. Her shoulders were wire hangers now. Aware of this, she smoothed out the wrinkles in the cotton blend skirt she'd put on that morning. But it was more than the forlorn fabric of the outfit that made her such a mess. It was her entire life. Her forever-marriage had been torpedoed by a husband who insisted his needs weren't being met-and found a way to rally in the arms of another, a younger, woman. She'd thought that living in Cherrystone among old friends and familiar surroundings would be a tonic for her troubles. But she was wrong about that, too. Even living in the family home, as lovely and as steeped in cherished memories as it was, had been somewhat of a mistake. Old homes take a lot of new money, and a detective's salary and the child support of a doctor-ex didn't add up to nearly enough.
Worst of all, Jenna was still gone. Emily had finally talked to David. She'd got her old friends in the Seattle PD to check it all out. And she was now convinced that David had been telling the truth. Jenna was on her own. Or worse. She was helping someone, she'd said. Emily knew it had to be Nicholas Martin.
Despite every effort of the sheriff, and of law enforcement all over the state, there was no clue where they were.
Emily had been adamant. She didn't want the public to know that her daughter was with Nick. That would make her personal involvement in the case a liability. It might tempt him to hurt her. So while there was a concerted effort to find Nick and ask him about his dead family, no one in Cherrystone except Shali and a few kids at school knew with certainty that Jenna was missing. Instead Emily had explained she was with her dad for a while.
When Randazzo's office at Cherrystone High demanded to know if Jenna was coming back, Emily said she would let them know what the situation was when she knew, that the family was working through some issues, and that her investigation of the Martin homicides had made the situation even more difficult. Randazzo had had the decency to back off.
So there Emily sat in her office, fishing through messages from the media, amid fermenting latte cups in the trash, and a legal pad headed with "Call Today" on her desk. She tapped her pen against the paper. She felt empty, depressed, and heartbroken. On some level the Martin case would have been a detective's dream-a puzzler that required both wits and work, but she was short on both just then. Her litany of reasons to hate her life was topped off with the deep hurt she felt that Jenna had called David instead of her.
She had been a good mother. She was sure of it. She thought she and Jenna had been exceptionally close, a kind of personification of the old Helen Reddy chestnut, "You and Me Against the World" She wondered how she could be so wrong with her assessment. So blind. What had been going on between them? How could she have missed any warning signs that things were awry? She remembered all the times she'd passed by Jenna's bedroom and saw her typing away on her Mac. Emily had thought Jenna was doing her homework. Was she chatting with Batboy? Why hadn't Jenna told her about him?
She wrote on the pad in front of her: school, friends, teachers, neighbors. Who held the key? Who knew?
There was nothing in Nick Martin's background to indicate he'd be capable of killing his entire family. As Emily now worked her way through the rest of the rather thin green school district file, a reasonably positive picture of the missing teenager came into focus. His grade in Speech Communications was his lowest, a C+. He'd had mostly As and Bs. There were no teacher comments, but to Emily's way of thinking, Nick Martin was probably shy, uncomfortable in front of a group. Most kids were. As Jenna had told her, Nick was artistic; high marks in four different art classes bore witness to the idea that he was one of those creative types that are often ostracized in the high school culture that praised athletes over artists. In fact, nowhere on his transcript could she find that he'd been involved in sports. He wasn't a Columbine kid-one of those disenfranchised malcontents that stormed around the high school campus in a black trench coat bemoaning the world that had kicked him to the curb.
Emily's stomach growled and she pressed the palm of her hand against her abdomen to stifle a noise she was sure Kip could hear in the office down the hall. She'd had nothing but coffee all day. She thought of what Peg Martin's sister, Marina, had said about the problems that had seemed to be brewing between father and son. What was going on at home that caused both Nick and Mark Martin to leave school and work? Had a confrontation between father and son escalated to such a degree that escalated into a bloodbath that wiped out the entire family?