Jenna fished for the seat belt, wincing as her fingertips touched an apple core stuck between the door and the seat. Got it. She pulled the belt across her lap. Her mom was a cop and she followed every rule. It irritated some of her friends, but that's the way it had to be.
"I had that art class with him," Jenna said. "He was kind of cool in the obviously tortured-soul-seeking-attention way."
Shali checked her makeup in the rearview mirror, permanently tilted toward her for just that purpose. The blush on her right side was heavier than the left, so she evened it out with her palm.
"What did he do? Meth?" she asked.
Jenna shrugged, but Shali kept pushing for details. She did that even when she didn't know Cherrystone's criminals and losers, but had merely read their names in the paper and knew that Jenna's mom had the dirt on someone.
"I'll bet it was meth" She spat out the words. "Or pot. He comes to school baked half the time. Must have been doing a lot of it if your mom's on the case"
Shali's Volkswagen sped by kids without wheels who'd lined up to catch the bus to the high school a few miles away. A few stared hard at the car as if they could stop it and get a ride. Anything was better than the bus even a ride with Shali Patterson behind the wheel.
"Probably. But I don't know. My mom's been out there all night."
"Yeah? Cool." Shali scrunched her long dark hair, over- gunked with a hair product she'd ordered from a TV shopping channel. She wore a hooded sweatshirt and a baby-T, cropped pants, and chunky gold ankle bracelet (also from the home shopping channel) she had put on in the car. Jenna wore her uniform 7 blue jeans and a sweater. If Shali was the ho' in the video-or at least an all-talk wannabe-Jenna was the good girl who never got any airtime.
Their friendship worked because Jenna was confident about who she was. A friend like Shalimar Patterson could be over-the-top annoying, the type that sought the spotlight whenever she could find it. Jenna wasn't like that. She just didn't feel the need to sell herself so hard. Shali did.
Jenna changed the subject. "Want to get a latte? I could use a boost"
"No kidding. Me, too. A white chocolate soy mocha sounds kind of good"
Shali pressed the pedal to the floor as they drove the short stretch of roadway to the school. They passed a place where the twister had set down. Shali scrunched her hair again and made a face as the splintered house zoomed from view.
"Never liked the color of that house anyway," Shali said. "What were they thinking?"
Jenna nodded in slight agreement, though she hadn't really felt that way. Shali could be such an idiot. The people who owned that house were without far more than good taste. They no longer had a place to live.
"You can be such a bitch," she finally said.
Shali knew that. This almost a game between the two best friends. She smiled.
"You got a problem with that?"
"No. Not really." Jenna hesitated. "Maybe sometimes."
"Make up your mind."
Jenna reached for her coffee card as they pulled up to the window of Java the Hut.
"Just sometimes. Like after a tornado trashed someone's house. Times like that"
"I can be harsh. But that's why you love me"
Jenna looked out the window as Shali gave the kid at the drive-through their espresso orders. Her thoughts had turned back to her mother. She must be beyond frazzled. She got that way every now and then. As cool as her mom could be, she could also unravel. She did that more than once during the divorce. It might have been justified but even so it wasn't pretty. She hated seeing her mother cry or talk bad about herself and her life. It stung deeply. She wished she could run a triple tall latte to her. She'd need it. What was going on over at the Martins'?
Tuesday, 7:46 A.M., Martin farm, east of Cherrystone
The morning sunlight poured itself slowly over the striated hillside like syrup, exposing the shattered ruins of the Martin house and a parking lot of Cherrystone police cars, two aid cars, and assorted sedans, including Emily Kenyon's much-maligned Honda ("an American cop ought to drive an American car," Sheriff Kiplinger had said, but didn't press it further because the officer's car allowance was less costly than leasing a new vehicle). None of the observers of the scene had ever taken in such a disturbing sight as the remains of Mark and Peg Martin's farmhouse.
And it was about to get worse. Far worse.
"Can I get the photog over here?" a call came from one of the Spokane police techies. He was about thirty-five, tall and lanky, and had arrived on the scene with a pristine lab kit and an unmistakable countenance of superiority. The look on his face just then, however, was utter horror. He stood about twenty-five yards into the debris pile on the southwest side of the property.
"Pretty ugly," he said recoiling at what he was seeing. "Looks like his arms were pulled off."
Emily Kenyon balanced herself on a large piece of Formica countertop from what had once been a seventies-era kitchen. It annoyed her that the Spokane tech was taking over the scene. She moved closer, to claim her turf.
Mark Martin had been a handsome man, in good physical condition for someone in his early fifties-lean and muscular. He worked for the local power utility as its chief engineer and was known to bike the dozen miles to the office in the summer. His curly silvering hair was matted with mud. His blank eyes stared into nothingness.
"Let's shoot stills and video and get him with his wife," Emily said, kneeling by the body and studying every inch of its battered form.
Peg Martin's body was already ziplocked and ready for the ambulance and the ride to Spokane where she'd be processed as if she were nothing. Not the bake-sale lady. Not the woman who did everything for the community whenever anyone asked. Peg was an apparent murder victim. Emily looked at Mark Martin's battered and nearly sanded-off skin. He had on boxer shorts and a single sock. He might have had on a shirt, but it was gone with his arms.
She was sure he, too, had been the victim of a gunshot wound. A scenario played in Emily's mind. It was a familiar one. She'd worked at least three cases of similar presentation back in Seattle. She thought about the position of the wounds and whether or not they were dealing with a murder/suicide. She hadn't heard there were any problems between the Martins. She had checked. There had never been a single domestic violence call from their residence to the sheriff's office. Not a single one. They had seemed a happy couple, though they did tend to stick to themselves. Peg did her school stuff like a trooper, but Mark was a more introspective type-the typical engineer.
"The kind that snaps," Emily said to herself.
A gentle breeze blew from the north, picking up a little dust and fiber. The scene was not really the type to yield much in the way of trace forensics. A tornado had likely stripped away any scraps of evidence. The processing going on now was more about documenting that everything had been done properly when the defense got Emily on the stand. She doubted it would ever get that far, though. It seemed like the shooter was dead. The only question was where were the boys?
Emily caught the loose tendrils of her long ponytail and stuck them behind her ear. The wind blew harder. It seemed that time stood still. People were frozen in their duties, digging through the debris, ferrying a body bag to the second victim. Even the flashing lights atop the cruiser seemed to become still. Her heart stopped, too. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something she didn't want to see.
She knew they had to be there.
Where else could they be?
"Please, no," she said softly as the world started to crank back into action, at first in a stop-start fashion like one of those old school filmstrips. Then faster. Then finally at normal speed. She turned her attention to a chunk of drywall with some obvious blood spatter. It was about ten feet from where she stood.