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

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