Read Emily Kenyon 01 - A Cold Dark Place for Free Online

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