"Yeah"
"Watch this." Mason aimed, fired, and to Tyler Preston's sheer amazement, the robin fell from the branch. He looked over at his buddy with a gleeful smile and handed back the rifle.
"That's how it's done, bud!"
He ran to get the fallen bird. Tyler looked down at the shiny barrel of the BB gun and shook his head. Beginner's luck. He heard a noise and looked up, but Mason was nowhere to be seen.
"Mason?" he called. "Where are you, bro?"
A faint cry came from twenty yards away. "In here!"
Tyler set the gun down and ran. He ran to what appeared to be a big hole in the ground. A well? A sinkhole? He leaned over to get a better look.
"Tyler! Get me out of here!" Mason didn't sound hurt, but he sounded scared spitless.
"Hold on, dude!" Tyler looked for a branch or something he could use to extricate his buddy from the darkness below. "Hang on!"
"Get me out of here! Tyler!"
As his eyes adjusted to the dim and dank surroundings, Mason's terror escalated. He was unsure of what he saw at first. Was it real? Was it a joke? He moved closer and gasped.
"There's a bed down here and some other stuff. Hey, I think there's a dead body down here"
"No shit?"
"Yeah, there are bones," he said, cupping his hands to amplify his voice in the darkness. The makeshift covering of rotting boards shoved aside, a stream of light found its way to the floor of the twelve-foot-deep hole. "There's blond hair, too!"
"Whoa! Cool!"
"You wouldn't think so if you were stuck down here. Come on!"
Mason Davidson didn't know it right then, of course, but he'd solved a mystery that had haunted the Pacific Northwest for two years.
He'd found Kristi Cooper.
Sunday, 11:00 Pm
In the same red pencil Emily noticed that someone had underlined Reynard Tuttle's name in an article that detailed how Emily had shot him in the ill-fated raid on the cabin. There was also an annotation. The words were tiny and in grammar school perfect script: Poor Dope.
Emily found her footing and spoke. "I don't know what to say."
"I don't know what any of these means," Christopher said, releasing his slight embrace. "And you know how much I hate to admit that"
"I'll never forget the day those boys found her"
"I know. Whenever I see fall colors, I think of her, too"
"Whoever wrote in this book-Bonnie, I guess-wants us to think that Tuttle wasn't Kristi's captor."
"But he was," Christopher insisted.
Emily had always had her doubts. It was something she never spoke about to anyone, not David, not Christopher. It was the small voice she'd heard in the back of her head whenever she thought of Kristi and how she died. The voice she heard was never answered out loud. To do so, would bring home what she'd done.
"As far as we knew," she said. "I mean, there was nothing that tied him to the body, once we found her. No trace. No DNA"
His eyes were penetrating. "We can't second-guess what we did now."
"But you've brought this to me for a reason. You think there's something there"
"There's a link between Bonnie and Walker."
"She was his number-one fan," Emily said. "I talked with her girlfriend, Tina Esposito. She said she and Bonnie were best friends and had a major falling-out over Walker. Bonnie basically stole Walker from Tina. God knows why. They hadn't spoken in years"
This clearly interested Christopher. "Fighting over a serial killer?"
"You could put it that way. It wasn't that he was a serial killer. They believed he wasn't. Both of them. In fact, there was a legion of Bonnies and Tinas out there that lined up to see Walker during and after the trial."
He let out a sigh. "Another prison groupie, Jesus. What's with these women?"
Emily narrowed her gaze. "It isn't simple. I fought over a two-timer," she said, letting her guard down a little. "I lost. Some women love a guy they can't have" Emily looked over to the minibar. Another drink was against her better judgment, but the memories of Kristi Cooper and the possibility that she actually hadn't shot her captor called for something to thwart her creeping doubt. She opened the minibar.
"I'11 have what you're having," Christopher said.
She opened a couple of mini Chivas Regal bottles. "No ice. No mix. Okay?"
He agreed and she poured. They sipped the smooth, smoky whiskey. "Perfect," he said. "Now let's get down to business. I've saved the best for the last."
"Better than Kristi?"
"Better"
"What are these?" Emily asked. Christopher was holding several slips of paper that had been kept in the back of the black album as precious souvenirs.
"Letters from Bonnie's boyfriend."
Emily pulled them out and looked at the signature on the last page of the first missive.
"Dylan Walker?"
"Yeah, and it's the typical sick stuff that these creeps send to women on the outside."
"The lonely and desperate or the desperately lonely." Emily started to scan the pages. "The handwriting appears consistent with the penciled notations in the album," she said, flipping back to the "Me" and "Poor Dope" written on the news clippings.
"That's what I thought. I mean, we're not allowed to spec ulate-rush to judge-and everything goes through the lab." He rolled his blue eyes and smiled.
Emily started reading, mostly silently, but as she moved through the pages she caught a few choice lines and looked up at Christopher.
Feel me take off your clothes, one button at time ... lingering as they fall to the floor. Your hunger for my touch, insatiable ... but I try.
"Can you believe these women fall for this?"
"I know. Remember when the Shadow Murderer Bill Canton got married?"
Emily nodded, a disgusted look on her face. "You mean that Baby Jane-type blonde who went all over TV professing her love." "
"Yeah, her love for a man who stalked and killed eight young women and dumped them all over LA like they were garbage"
I guess Bonnie was that type of woman. Willing to believe anything, do anything, for love." She looked down and started reading, cherry-picking another line to read aloud.
... You stare back, longing for us to become one. Your hands slip between my legs ...
Chapter Thirty-one
Monday, 6:45 A.M., Cherrystone, Washington
Jaws dropped to the floorboards as Shali Patterson climbed aboard school bus number 227. She managed to make it to the bus stop that morning when she found her car missing and a message from Jenna Kenyon. One of the kids she'd smoked with her tailpipe every morning couldn't resist making note of the occasion.
"Your ride in the shop, Shah Patterson? Have a seat. Anywhere"
Shali scanned the front, then the back of the bus. This sucks. Right now, she wanted to strangle her supposed best friend. She found a seat next to a freshman girl and slid next to her.
Jenna thinks she s got it bad, but she doesn 't know what bad is.
Monday, 9:00 A.M., Seattle
Christopher Collier's resonant voice filled Emily's ears and jolted her like a slap in the face. She nearly dropped the phone. She'd always been an excellent judge of a witness's veracity. She listened, assessed, and without fail was right on the money when she determined whether or not she could trust someone. She'd believed Tina Esposito when they shared lunch and a smattering of true confessions at Embers restaurant. As far as Emily could see-and her instincts were always flawless Tina was a gracious woman who'd made a horrendous mistake many years ago and suffered for it. Yet she was a survivor, a woman who'd completely extricated herself from Dylan Walker and Bonnie Jeffries. But what Christopher was telling her now indicated all of that was a big lie.