"Confidentiality laws work for criminals, too," Olga said. "Keeps everyone in the dark. Even the grand jury that heard the case was clueless as to how big the scandal was"
"The scandal?"
"Oh yeah, you want the good part."
"And the connection?"
Olga nodded. "Right. I'll jump right to it. Randall Wilson, the president of Angel's Nest, was indicted, and convicted, on procuring babies for a fee. Big fees. He and his office had more demand for their services than babies, so over a six-year period-we don't know for sure-they placed more than twenty babies for big bucks. They sold babies to desperate people."
Emily remembered the name Randall Wilson. "This was the `buy a baby' case?" she asked.
"That was what got the attention from the media. In the end it was true that we-and it was never my case-only convicted on those cases. They were just so much more obvious. The prosecutors in Seattle didn't want to rip apart families that they didn't have to and expose birth mothers who were local girls. It seemed too big and too wrong. Shutting down the agency was the ultimate goal."
"Look, Olga, I get that. What I don't get is how you're involved and how does any of this connect the dots?"
"I'm sorry. I digressed. I don't get many visitors out here"
Emily wished she hadn't been impatient just then and she apologized. "It's just that I'm worried about my daughter."
"I know." She put her hand on Emily's and patted it gently. "I'm sorry," she repeated. It was clear that she meant it. "Okay, when I read about your case, I wasn't thinking Angel's Nest-you brought that up when you called. I was thinking about the signature of the crime. Mrs. Martin, nude, tied up, and shot. Maybe even strangled. It reminded me of my girls."
Her girls, Emily knew, were Lorrie and Shelley.
"I didn't think anything about it until you called."
"But I don't see the connection," Emily finally said.
"During the Dylan Walker trial, and afterward, women from all over the country wrote to him. They came here. They visited him. One of them was a woman named Bonnie Jeffries. I would never have given her a second thought except that she worked for Angel's Nest and was one of the chief witnesses against her boss"
"Where is Bonnie?"
"Not sure. She faded away after the trial. Stopped going to see Dylan Walker at Monroe. She just disappeared. I made a couple of calls before you came, but no one knows what became of her. She hasn't filed a tax return for years" Olga looked through her notes, faintly yellowed with the passage of so much time. "I do remember one thing; she had a cohort that came with her to the trial. Let's see. I have the name here somewhere" She kept looking, flipping pages and at times getting lost in the memories of the case.
Emily could not have been more disappointed. It seemed so thin. But it was all she was going to get.
"Tina Winston. That's her." She tapped her finger on a page. "I remember reading about her a few years ago. Almost wanted to call her husband when I read in Seattle Magazine they had gotten married. In fact, I clipped the article."
"Who is he?"
"Rod Esposito. The software guy. Big bucks. Wonder if he knows that she was once smitten with a serial killer?"
Emily's mood lifted; a slight smile came to her face. It was the part of detective work she loved the most-finding the leverage needed to get someone to talk.
"Let's see," she said, letting her smile fade as Jenna's whereabouts pulsed once more. "I have to make a stop at my ex-husband's. Never fun, but I have a feeling he's got a houseguest ""
Saturday, 4:00 n.M., on the interstate just outside of Seattle
Kip was Meeting with the FBI-a male and female agent from the Seattle field office-who had been the first to arrive to help with the Martin investigation. Gloria, stuck at the phones while all the excitement unfolded around her, assured Emily that he'd call as soon as he could break free.
"They're all over him like a dirty shirt," she said, mimicking one of the sheriff's favorite sayings.
"Is Jason around?" Emily asked, wishing she had a hands-free phone as she dodged the Seattle traffic.
"Nope. He's hanging around the FBI, too. Says it's a golden `training' opportunity."
Emily turned off on the second Mercer Island exit, and drove south. Everything about the island said money. She couldn't imagine David actually wanting to live there among the train of Mercedes and Lamborghinis that snaked along the surprisingly forested roads that passed from one McMansion to the next. His values had flipped. Long gone were the days when he measured success with the lives he'd saved, not the money he made.
"Gloria, do you know if an APB went out on Shali's car?"
"Didn't David tell you? His squeeze Dani called earlier. Said the kids were with them and she'd see that they were brought in. The APB is out, but Kip said we'd follow David's lead. The FBI lady says they don't think the Martin boy was the shooter."
"She said what?" The mention of David's bride-to-be stung more than it should have. Emily thought she was over it. She looked for a place to pull over. What made her angry just then wasn't the comment about Nick Martin not being the killer of his parents and brother, though she'd get to that. It was Dani's interference in their lives.
"First off, she's not his wife. And second, what did she say?" Emily parked the Accord in front of a shady driveway that led up a steep, fern-fanned incline to a faux chateau huddled next to a tennis court and pool.
"She said she was concerned for her safety. Jenna and Nick had showed up and she felt uneasy, you know, scared."
"Jesus," was all Emily could say. If she needed another reason to hate Dani Brewer, she had one now.
Gloria sighed sympathetically. "Anyway, I said that you were en route to Seattle and you'd handle things. I told her, `isn't it better to keep things in the family?"'
"That was good" Emily was still fuming, but she'd take care of Dani soon enough. She put the car back into drive and got ready to exit back onto the road. "Okay, what about Nick?"
"The FBI's being cagey-you know how they are all I've been able to pick up is that the killings match the signature of some other family murders out of state"
"Did they say how?"
"I'm the dispatcher, remember. All I get around here is what I pick up on the radio or when Kip is telling me to bring him coffee or a Payday bar."
"I know. I'm sorry. Have him call me. One more favor, okay?"
Gloria let out an exaggerated sigh. "You want coffee, too?"
Emily laughed. "Do me a favor. Contact Parole and find out where Dylan Walker is living now."
"Kip told me about Walker. Kind of blew me away. You know, that he got out of the Jersey prison after that prison bed swap completely under the radar," Gloria said. "I'll dial up Parole and see where's he's at ""
She thanked Gloria and looked at the directions she'd printed from the hotel's front desk computer. Another turn and she'd be at David's.
"Take it easy, Emily. Hang in there. Dani fits the profile, you know. A second wife is always a bitch. I ought to know. I'm one myself."
Emily laughed a little more, said good-bye, and snapped her cell phone shut. Gloria had already married Dani off to Dave.
Dani? Let see. Serial killer. New wife. Serial killer. New wife. Toss-up.
Dani Brewer opened the front door with a stenciled-on smile that could have not been more false. Lancome Retro Rouge? Emily suspected that Dani had seen her car pull up and hurried to the mirror to see what kind of affect she should wear on her reasonably pretty face. She had long brown hair, tousled in a messy bun. In all fairness, her pregnancy did give her the characteristic glow that made plain women appear pretty, and already pretty women undeniably ravishing.