A Cold Dark Place by Gregg Olsen Page A

Jenna and she wants to live with me for the summer. The hospital PR department says she could help out on the Web site. It would be a good opportunity.”
    Emily was stunned, but she tried to keep cool. Why would Jenna collude with her father? Wasn’t she happy? “She said so?” she asked, before she thought better of it, and laid the blame at David. “Or is this something you’ve cooked up?”
    “I’m her dad. She needs her dad. Studies say that girls grow into stronger, more self-actualized women if they have close relationships with their fathers.” He was superior, cool, and oddly detached; it was as if he was reading his words out of some journal that Dani probably nabbed off the Internet.
    “Really? That would have been nice to know when we were all still living together, wouldn’t it?”
    “Okay. This call is going nowhere.”
    “Right.” Like our marriage , Emily thought, though she held it in. “Good-bye, David. I’ll have my lawyer call yours.”
    As she moved the phone from her ear she heard him say, “When are you going to tell him? Tonight in bed—”
    It was a cheap shot and Emily snapped her flip phone shut. An argument with David always ended with a calculated abruptness. Even though it was a pattern that had been repeated ad nauseum during the more difficult times of their marriage, Emily never got used to it. Her face felt hot with anger. Her pulse raced. It was true, Cary McConnell had been her divorce lawyer. She and Cary hadn’t so much as shared a meal until after the divorce was final. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid . The phrase out of the frying pan came to her mind.
    Emily got out of her car in the Cherrystone High School parking lot. A girl sat in her big brother’s blue Nova and smoked a More cigarette. She looked over at Emily, pulled the brown stick from her mouth, and waved. It was a girl who’d visited the house a few times when they first returned to Cherrystone. Emily smiled back. The girl turned her head to exhale a steady stream of smoke. A couple of teenage boys sat on a curb in front of the totem pole that marked the school’s entrance. Both wore holey jeans, wallet chains, and sweatshirts that had seen better days—or at least had been distressed enough to appear so. One was a faux vintage shirt for the band Poison. The other boy had a pair of gold earrings—thick and pretty enough that Emily thought they must have cost a bundle if they were real gold.
    “You here about Nick?” the one with the Poison shirt asked.
    The question caught Emily off guard. She thought for a moment before answering. It shouldn’t have surprised her much. The Spokane TV news had already broadcast the discovery of the three bodies.
    “Do you know him?”
    “Not really. We hung out a few times. Kind of quiet. But cool, too”
    The earring boy looked up; his dark hooded eyes seemed empty when he probably meant to cop a menacing affect.
    “Nick Martin was screwed up. Always has been. His whole family was f’d up.”
    She narrowed her gaze. “That’s quite an endorsement. What do you mean?”
    Golden earrings shrugged, but the other boy answered.
    “Kyle says everyone is screwed up.”
    “Yeah, I guess I do,” Kyle said, nodding in a slow and exaggerated manner, before adding, “I barely knew the guy.”
    Emily thanked them, and handed each a card.
    “Whoa,” Poison said, “you’ve got a business card. Cool.”
    She didn’t know if it was sarcasm or if he was truly impressed by the ivory and black sheriff’s department card, but she smiled nonetheless.
    “Call me if you can think of something that will be helpful, okay?”
    With that, she pitched her coffee cup into a trash can by the front door and made her way to the front office. A wave of silence seemed to follow her. There would be no need for introductions. There was no need to say why she was there. The school was abuzz with the news.
    “Dr. Randazzo is waiting for you,” said the secretary, a cheerful lady with an apricot