"There was a note"
"A note?" From Jenna? "I don't understand"
"We'll figure it out. I'm turning in to the garage now." Silence followed and Christopher thought maybe the phone had lost its cell.
"Emily?"
"Yes. Yes," she repeated.
"You need to know something. The note was addressed to you.
Emily put her hand out for the card. There was a slight tremor in her grasp, but she kept her eyes riveted on Christopher Collier as he entered her hotel room. There was a strange look on his face, and she couldn't quite determine what it was. Look at me, her dark brown eyes pleaded. Show me. She took the card. It was plain, white, and carried in a clear glassine envelope.
On its slick surface it read:
EMILYKENYON: YOUR TURNNOW
The words were handwritten, with a distinct and printing cursive combination that looked like what they'd seen at Tina Esposito's house and in the black album. She noticed some smudges on the other side. It had already been processed for latents by the crime lab.
"When did you get this?" she asked.
"Two hours ago. Yes, it's been processed. Unfortunately, it's clean."
Still holding the card, Emily sat down. "How could you? Why didn't you call me right away?"
Christopher moved closer. "We think it's about Jenna's disappearance."
The air was sucked out of her lungs, and she could barely speak. She forced the words from her lips. "No. No it's not."
Christopher shook his head and tenderly took her hand. "Look, Em, it seems to be. The card came for me. It was in my mail slot downtown. No one saw who brought it. It had no envelope, just the card" He could see that Emily was crying then, though she was doing it silently, in that way that he came to know when they worked together. When the case went bad. When the murder scene involved children. She was tough and smart, but she had her breaking point. A lot of cops did. Some reached for the bottle. Some smoked like there was no tomorrow. Emily Kenyon cried it out, very quietly.
"Look, there's something else you should know," he said. "The blood in the car was Bonnie's and another person's"
"Jenna's?" Her face froze.
He shook his head. "We typed her through your old HR records. Not her. We think Nick Martin's, but that's just a stab in the dark" He regretted his word choice right away and backpedaled. "You know, just preliminary. Could be anyone"
Emily got up and opened a bottle of water. She took a couple of aspirins.
"All right," she said. "The card is the same as the one we saw at Tina's. The writing is the same"
He nodded and let her talk.
"Someone wants to hurt me, right?"
"That's what I'm thinking. That's likely the message here, about it being your turn"
"Right. My turn to suffer? My turn to die?"
"Maybe. But we don't know."
"But we do know one thing. My daughter is missing. Some sicko is playing some game with me. I don't know if it is Nick or Dylan or Tina's husband or who might want to do this."
She went for the crumpled Macy's bag and pulled out the papers she'd smuggled from the hospital. It was all she had. Doing something always won out over tears and frustration. She and Christopher spread them out on the hastily made bed.
"I've started dividing by year," he said, "I found the one with Tina Winston's daughter listed." He held up a printout. "Says the father is Eddy Bunt, thirty-three, born in Tacoma"
Emily took her notebook to Christopher and wrote down the name. She reached for one of the papers and started scanning.
"We'll figure this mess out. We always could, you know."
She looked up and smiled. "I know. I just want to know where my daughter is."
"Me, too"
Her eyes stopped cold on one of the printouts. The mother's name was listed as Bonita Jeffries. The father was Herb La Sift. But that wasn't what nearly cut off her air supply. The birthday was Columbus Day, October 12, the same year as Nick Martin's birth date.
She pointed to the document. "This could be Nick. Same birthday. I know that from the school records I looked at "
"No shit? There's another here. Bonita Jeffries is the mother and Johnny "Ace" Wage is the father. Same DOB as La Sift."
"Boy? Girl?"
"This one's a boy."
Emily set down her pen, her eyes fastened on Christopher's. "There's someone else with that birthday, you know."
He nodded. "Dylan Walker."
"That's right."
"What a lonely woman won't do for love."
The remark made Emily bristle slightly. She'd made some bad choices, too. "What a cruel game a sick manipulator like Dylan Walker plays with a lonely woman"
Christopher seemed to understand. "The only problem with this is that Bonnie Jeffries never had any kids of her own. Black market babies?"
"I'm not sure. But she did have those baby pictures. Remember? There were photos of kids that meant something to her."
"A lot of adoption agency people keep a wall of fame. You know the place where they can stick up all the photos so they can feel good about what they've done"
"Yes, but this was at her home. That makes it even more personal"
Emily looked down at the names in her notebook: Herb La Sift, Eddy Bunt, Johnny "Ace" Wage. "Maybe there is a little game of sorts going on here" She and Jenna had played Scrabble every night when Jenna was in seventh grade and going through that awkward "no one likes me" phase that afflicts so many prepubescent girls. That all changed, good or bad, when Shali Patterson decided to make Jenna her "new" best friend.
"Eddy Bunt is an anagram for Ted Bundy," Emily said.
Bundy, of course, was the superstar serial killer of the 1970s, having been the prime suspect in dozens of murders of pretty young women from the Northwest, Colorado, and eventually Florida where he met his fate strapped into Old Sparky, the electric chair. She glanced over at Christopher, who had a dumbstruck look on his face. "Remember her book collection? How her reading material seemed to indicate a preoccupation with serial killers?"
He did-the mostly red and black volumes filled the dead woman's shelves-Lethal This, Deadly That, Fatal Whatever. "To know one is to love one, I guess. And yes, I remember. You get that by just looking at the letters?"
Emily shrugged; it wasn't exactly a gift, but merely a practiced ability.
"Yes, but the others are more difficult. Nothing's popping out at me. She tore some squares of paper and wrote one of each letter of Johnny "Ace" Wage's name. "You work this one"
He took the pieces of paper and stretched them out on the floor.
"I'll do Herb La Sift," she said.
"You're not going to time me, are you?"
He grinned. "Good, because I'm not a right-brain guy."
"I know." Two minutes later, Emily had her puzzle figured out. "I think I took the easy one," she said. "This one's Albert Fish."
"Fish?" Christopher looked at her blankly. "Doesn't ring a bell."
"He should. Think fava beans and a nice Chianti."
"Hannibal Lecter?"
"Yeah, the original. He was convicted in the thirties. Killed a dozen or more boys and ate them"
"Lovely."
She looked over Christopher's shoulder. "I ought to be on Wheel of Fortune or something. I've got yours done"
"Thanks for nothing," he said. "Who's this gem?"
"John Wayne Gacy."
"Jesus, everyone's favorite clown, that one"
He was right. At least every psycho's favorite clown. Gacy was the suburban Chicago serial killer who had raped and murdered thirty-three young men and boys. While he was hobnobbing with the Jaycees and donning his clown costume he wore to visit sick children, he was burying body after body in his crawl space.
"Seems like Bonnie was the creative type," Emily said.
Christopher scooped up the slips of paper. "More like deranged ""
Emily searched Christopher's dark eyes. If she was looking for comfort, she found it. Understanding, too. But she also felt something just then that she hadn't counted on. For the first time, she saw him as man, not a coworker. A supporter, not a colleague helping her because he'd been paid to do so. She knew the rest of the world viewed law enforcement as one big club bound forever in blue, but that wasn't always so. As in any profession, insecurities, competitiveness, and jealousies play a role in how those with a badge treat one another.