"What is it?"
The voice was Jason Howard's. The earnest deputy could see that Emily was frozen in her tracks. Stiff. Intent on something in the remains of the house.
"He's over there," she said, indicating the drywall.
Jason walked closer, but didn't see what Emily had discovered.
"Help me move this," she said. The pair bent over and lifted the chalky board. It was like turning a rock at the beach to see what might scurry out to get away from the exposure of the light of day. Yet nothing moved.
"It's Donovan, I think. Maybe Nicholas," she said. "I saw the tips of his fingers"
"Jesus, Detective," Jason said, remembering how touchy Emily had been. The boy was in jeans and a button-down shirt. Remarkably, he was intact. Even his face, which struck Emily as resembling his mother's so much that it was disconcerting, was untouched. It was almost like he was asleep.
"I know him," Jason said. "He's in my little brother's Cub Scout troop. Nice kid."
Emily waved the techies over. "Let's process this area as best as we can and get a board over here and get him out of here ""
"He looks so peaceful," Jason said.
Photo flashes ricocheted off the boy's pale skin. Two coroner's employees hoisted him on to the stretcher, which they had spread with a midnight-blue body bag. Handles for easy transfer flapped in the wind.
"Wonder if he died of internal injuries related to the storm," Jason added.
Emily was wondering the same thing, but not for long. The two coroner assistants, both young men from Spokane, set the body on the bag and started zipping, working from the feet toward Donovan's angelic face, white and calm.
"What?" the younger of the two said to his partner, as his gloved fingertips slipped from the zipper.
"Your hands are covered in blood," Emily said. "Where did all that come from?"
She stared at the dead boy.
"Roll him over."
"We'll look at him in the lab," the other said.
"You'll roll him now."
"Not protocol, sorry."
"Maybe you don't hear too well up in Spokane," she said, almost amused with herself that she'd now felt more of a kinship with the tiniest of law enforcement operations.
"This is our scene, my scene, and you'll follow my orders"
"Someone's cranky." It was Sheriff Brian Kiplinger, lumbering his meaty frame across the debris field. Emily and Jason were so involved with what they were doing that neither had heard him arrive. He just appeared in the morning light.
Emily acknowledged her boss with a nod.
"Someone hasn't had a good night's sleep for I don't know how long," she answered. She shifted her weight and waited for the sheriff to blast her, but he didn't.
"Tell me about it." He fixed his steely eyes on the coroner's assistant with the bloody glove and the bad attitude. "I was speaking to him"
The young man sank into the mud.
"I'm trying to preserve the evidence." He was embarrassed and defensive.
"What evidence? This is a goddamn disaster zone. If the lady ... If my chief detective wants to see the backside of this kid, she's gonna"
The chief was a nice save from the "lady" comment. She was the only detective in the office.
It flashed in the young man's mind to roll his eyes, but he refrained. Instead he rolled the body to the side.
"Good enough?" He fought once more to suppress a smirk. Lucky for him, his effort worked.
"Yes, thank you"
With the sheriff, Jason, and the two interlopers from Spokane looking on, Emily lowered her gaze to the darkened backside of Donovan Martin. His shirt was stiff and shiny. It was soaked in blood.
"Can't say for sure," she said. "But it looks like we've got another homicide victim here"
"Jesus, that makes three"
"Or four?"
"Depending on where we find Nicholas's body."
Sheriff Kiplinger watched as Emily followed the dead boy to the coroner's van. The panel doors were open. A set of steel racks filled the back end. There were no seats. It was more a hearse with a lab destination than a family vacation van headed to Yellowstone, which it closely resembled. A mountain scene was painted on the spare tire cover. The Spokane County coroner approved the secondhand purchase of the van and liked the airbrushed painting. Not only did the coroner have a bad eye for artwork, he was cheap to boot.
By 10:15 A.M., it was tragically clear that there were no bodies left in the wreckage of the home. Dogs had been used in the surrounding field and back wooded area that fed off the creek. But nothing was found. No sign of anyone. No sign of Nicholas Martin.
Sheriff Kiplinger pulled his smokes from his breast pocket. "I hate to say it, Emily, but it looks like Nick Martin has some explaining to do"
An hour later, Sheriff Kiplinger and Emily Kenyon stood in front of a pair of cameras from two of the three Spokane TV stations. For the second time in a week, Cherrystone had made the news. First the tornado and now a triple homicide.
Twenty years of nothing happening around here and now this, Emily thought as she stood next to the sheriff and the cameras recorded the story for the evening news. The attention was unwanted for a couple of reasons. One deeply personal. The other had to do with pride. Both were rooted in an incident that had shaken the foundation of her life and sent her to Cherrystone to start over. To hide. And if this story gets picked up by the Spokane station's sister station in Seattle they'll think I've let myself go.
"We don't know exactly what happened or even when it happened," the sheriff said. "It appears Mark and Margaret Martin and their son Donovan are the victims of a brutal homicide."
"What about Nicholas? The oldest Martin boy?" The reporter shoved her microphone as if it were a fire poker. She wanted Kiplinger to spill some major news.
"Is he a suspect?"
Emily took that one. "No. We do, however, consider him a person of interest. If anyone knows of his whereabouts, please contact the sheriff's department"
Tuesday, 12:25 RM., Cherrystone, Washington
It was the biggest mistake of a very long day and Emily knew it when she absentmindedly answered her cell phone without looking at the caller ID panel. She just flipped it open and there he was. It was Cary McConnell's husky voice. Her heart plunged.
"I thought you were avoiding me," he said.
"I've just been busy," Emily lied.
"I know. I saw you on the Spokane news" He paused. "Twice"
There was an awkward beat of silence as Emily toyed with pretending that she had a bad cell and couldn't hear him. She was more direct than that and as much as she was beginning to loathe Cary McConnell, he deserved to know the truth.
"Yeah. Brian's hooked up with Diane Sawyer and I'm stuck with Spokane TV talking to a reporter just out of communications school." She tried to inject a friendly tone in her voice, but mostly Emily just wanted the call to be over. She knew what he was after. But she was too tired to be quick with an excuse as to why she had to cut the call short.
"Are you busy tomorrow night?"
Damn it, he asked.
"Now isn't a good time," she said, wishing she'd been more direct and used "never is a good time."
"We have something, you know."
She found her footing. "No, Cary, we don't. We dated. It didn't work out. And now the best we can be is good friends."
"We're not friends. Last time I looked, friends don't mess around like we did."
Her skin crawled. Sleeping with any man who still used the term "messing around" for making love was confirmation that she had, in fact, really made a mistake.
"Listen, Cary, I don't want to hurt you any more than I apparently have. I didn't mean for things to go so far."
"So far?"
His voice became tight and she could imagine the veins on his neck popping like night crawlers on a rainy pavement.