The summer wind blew cool moist air over the driftwood along the Pacific shore. A few seabirds dove into the surf, and about a hundred yards down the beach, a couple of beach combers looked for their elusive prize-Japanese glass fishing floats. Emily Kenyon was alone; her partner Christopher Collier was searching the area from the south side of the beach. She wore street clothes khakis, open-toed shoes, and white cotton blouse. A heavy woolen sweater concealed her weapon. Sand and beach grit found its way inside and was grinding the soles of Emily's feet. She cursed the fact that she wore those completely impractical shoes.
She and Christopher were looking for a little girl named Kristi Cooper. The Northwest had been riveted by the story of the little girl, who had last been seen by her mother in one of those gigantic bins of multicolored plastic balls at a Seattle fast food restaurant. Last seen. It had been a while. Kristi had been missing for almost three weeks. She was blond and pretty. She was also small for her age. In a media-driven world that had embraced the concept of bland American adorable, Kristi fit the bill to a T. Her picture was everywhere-newspapers, flyers, even a billboard along the interstate just north of Olympia. Certainly her face was a key reason that Kristi captivated the hearts and minds of residents around Washington State. But it wasn't the only reason. She also was the daughter of a wealthy car dealer-one who made his fame by appearing on cheap TV commercials smashing cars with a sledgehammer and screaming that only his insanity could explain the low prices he offered.
`I'll smash up this car to make a deal with you!"
It was a clear case of kidnapping when a $250,000 ransom demand quickly followed. That, of course, made it a federal case handled under the auspices of the FBI, with help from the Seattle Police Department. Seattle PD was stuck in a supporting role, while taking most of the heat from the media as the story unfolded. Rick Cooper, Kristi's used-carmagnate father, followed the FBI's request to withhold the ransom while they tracked hundreds of potential leads. None, however, seemed to get any traction. A week after it started, the kidnapper stopped calling.
Emily, who up until that point had peripheral involvement in the case, volunteered for extra duty the day of the beach search-another low priority follow-up from an anonymous tipster.
Those days always played in her mind like a bad dream. There were many images that came to mind. The girl, of course. But the one that held the tightest grip was the face of her father. Emily could never forget seeing his bitterness, his deep hurt, his complete and unmitigated rage.
All of it had been directed toward her.
"Does she know what she's done?" Rick Cooper asked a local TV reporter, the microphone so close to his angry mouth that he could have swallowed it in one gulp. "We don't know where Kristi is and Emily Kenyon is the reason why."
The reason. The cause.
Emily didn't reach for the bottle like some cops who'd made mistakes they could easily live with. She did see a doctor and took some meds for anxiety, but only for a short time. She didn't fall apart, at least not outwardly so. She had a husband and daughter who needed her. There was an investigation over what happened in the Cooper case. There were more media reports. She gave up her shield for thirty days. She tried to keep her mind on Jenna and David, but a girl she never met would not leave her mind. Even when she was engaged in a conversation with David, thoughts unspooled. She had screwed up. She hadn't meant to, of course. But when she looked down at her hands, she knew they had been the inadvertent instrument of a little girl's demise.
God, please forgive me. God, give me the chance to make this right.
Reynard Tuttle was wheezing, his lungs pierced by a single bullet from Emily Kenyon's police-issue gun. It had all happened so fast --a racing speed that allowed not a second for introspection about what had just occurred. A dark spot of blood bloomed on his food- and sweat-stained white cotton T-shirt, and then oozed crimson to the cabin floor. He was only twenty or so, barely a man. Emily knelt beside him. He was trying to speak. She pushed his gun away and she leaned close.
"Shouldn't have done that," he said, barely able to form his words.
"Where's Kristi?"
"That's for me to know and you to find out" His voice was a soft rasp.
Emily knew he was dying, but his death went far beyond the tragedy of his own wasted life. He had to live to tell her what she needed to know. Adrenaline pulsed. She shook him. "Don't fuck with me ""
"You'll never find her." Tuttle turned his head slightly and looked up. His eyes were beginning to roll.
"Don't leave!" she said. "Stay with me. You don't want this to be what you're remembered for. You don't want to hurt Kristi. Where is she?"
Collier rushed through the opened doorway. "Jesus, Emily, are you all right?"
She glanced over her shoulder and with one quick nod, indicated she was unhurt. When she looked back down at Tuttle, his eyes had been emptied of life. They were the eyes of a cold, dead animal.
"Come back here!" she said, tugging on his shoulders. "Goddamn you!" His head thumped on the cabin's planked flooring. Hard. "Where is the girl?"
"Emily, stop!"
She couldn't and Tuttle's head smacked against the floor over and over. But he was gone. So was Kristi.
A helicopter outfitted with an infrared camera worked a precise grid of forest and beachfront acreage in the vicinity of the Tuttle shooting. Tourists and homeowners watched the sky as the aircraft's whirling blades rattled their windows. Everyone knew what the Seattle Police and FBI were looking for the telltale hot spot that indicated Kristi Cooper, dead or alive. At one point, a team was dispatched for followup on a glow of red picked up near Foster's Pond. Working shoulder to shoulder in a squared-off line, almost fifty FBI agents, police, and Boy Scouts trained in a process of a detailed grid search marched lockstep toward the hot spot.
"Anything and everything gets tagged," a Seattle sergeant yelled across the front of the line as the teams began to walk. One kid dropped a marker at a smoked cigarette; another found a rotted sleeping bag.
"Tag it!"
About twenty-five minutes into the march, a female volunteer caught an acrid whiff of the instantly recognizable scent of death. She started coughing. She was sure that she'd found Kristi Cooper's remains. Any hope that she was alive was erased by that terrible smell. That stench could only mean one thing. It was over.
"Over here, my end of line," the young searcher called. Two CSIs moved methodically toward the call for help. They stepped on the existing tracks of the search team. Each step was a shadow behind those who'd walked ahead.
In front of the young woman, now doubled over in anticipation of vomiting, was a mass of undulating maggots.
A CSI in a dark blue jumpsuit, bent down. "Dead fawn," he said, not masking his disappointment. "No tag, but steer clear. Damn it. This must be our hot spot"
For nearly two years, the dead deer was the closest anyone really got to finding Kristi. Emily had left the Seattle Police Department by then, moving David and Jenna into the old house on Orchard Avenue. She'd told everyone that her parents were ailing, but the truth was she could no longer face the reminders of what she'd done. Being exonerated by the department's Internal Affairs meant nothing.
Not when a missing girl with blond hair and blue eyes haunted every dream.
Sunday, 7:10 n.M., Seattle
Emily finished a drink from the minibar and looked in the mirror. All the makeup in the world wouldn't make her beautiful just now. Christopher Collier would have to see her for what she was-a middle-aged mother heartbroken with worry about her only child. Where was Jenna? What had happened at Bonnie 's? She filled the sink and splashed cool water on her face. She'd hoped it would reduce the puffiness of her eyes, but she doubted it. She patted herself dry and put on a touch of makeup and some lip color. She was about to try something with her hair when the hotel phone rang.