A Cold Dark Place (24 page)

It was the smell coming from 4242 Foster Avenue in
Ogden, Utah, that finally got local police inside the beautiful
home with the tall paneled doors. It wasn't the pile of newspapers on the stoop, or the concerns of a fourteen-year-old
paper delivery kid. Just the fetid stink that cops knew immediately as the scent of decomposing human flesh. Maggie and
Jim Chapman, and their daughter, Misty, a freshman at BYU,
were found in a back bedroom, bound, gagged, and strangled
to death. The cord from a miniblind from the laundry room
had been used to asphyxiate the daughter. Mrs. Chapman
had been strangled with a phone cord, and it appeared that
Mr. Chapman had died from the pressure of his own necktie.
The autopsy conducted by the medical examiner's office
downtown would make the determination, of course.

The Salt Lake City Tribune ran the story on the front
page. The article was picked up by the Associated Press and
dispatched across the country:

PARENTS, GIRL, SLAIN BY INTRUDER IN OGDEN

CNN ran a video version the next day, flashing images of
the murder house and the neighborhood. One viewer in Seattle paid particular attention, satisfied that the mission had
been accomplished.

There was Ogden, Des Moines, the Cherrystone screwup,
and the last one close to home.

Armed with their stack of damp microfiche printouts and
a genuine need to get away from the Johnny-on-the-spot research librarian, Jenna and Nick retreated from the basement
and found a quiet corner and some soft upholstered chairs
on the third floor. A trio of engineering students studied for a
test nearby. Otherwise, they were alone.

"What exactly are we looking for?" Jenna whispered.

Nick divided the copies in half and handed a stack to
Jenna. "I'm not the detective's daughter."

"Thanks," she said, her tone anything but thankful.

"Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean anything by it. Really. I
guess we're just looking for whatever we can find about
Angel's Nest"

As they worked their way through the material, they learned
that the agency had a sterling record for its first decade or so
back in the 1960s. Randall Wilson had helped reinvent the
whole concept of adoption. At least, according to one article,
prior to Wilson agencies were often viewed as shameful
dumping grounds for unwanted babies. Wilson's brilliance
was marketing. Through ads on TV he was able to turn that
thinking on its ear, and make an unplanned pregnancy something positive and heartwarming. Wilson, a genial fellow of
forty, saw adoption as "a golden opportunity to build new
families." Instead of selling the idea of taking in an unwanted baby, he sold hard to the birth mothers, making them
feel like cherished heroines instead of shameful losers.

A photo of Wilson showed him outside the building on
Stone Way. He had his arms crossed over his chest and a
broad smile on his face. "No child is really unwanted," says Wilson. "They just need to find their way into the right family. That's my job."

"What's the big deal?" Nick asked. "I mean, I'm adopted.
My parents wanted me ""

Jenna looked up from the papers. "You're a guy. You
wouldn't get it. But back when our parents were young, getting pregnant out of marriage was the biggest sin of all. Not
like today when every movie star has a baby without ever
getting a husband. In the 1960s women actually went away
and hid out until their babies came"

"So?" Nick pushed his chair back from the table. "Big
deal."

The remark surprised Jenna. "So? This was huge. Wilson
was one of the first to turn that thinking around, I guess. He
helped promote the idea that having a baby and giving it to
someone else was a great gift."

Nick shook it off. He put his head down and kneaded his
eyes with the palms of his hands. He seemed exhausted and
hurt. But he wasn't about to cry in front of Jenna again.

"When I was a kid, my mom and dad told me I was
adopted," he said. "They said that they had `chosen' me. I
guess that was good enough for me. I never thought of myself as a bastard or anything like that"

"I'd hope not" Jenna continued scanning the page in
front of her. "But what if it wasn't good enough for your
birth mother or father?"

Riffling through the stacks of news stories quickly, the
headlines told the story. By the 1980s, the agency was buying babies from shady operators overseas and selling them
to rich, childless couples. There were also hints in the story
that they were also buying babies from girls here in the
United States and selling them in quickie private adoptions.

Randall Wilson had been tried and found guilty. The
agency had been shut down. And apparently the star witness against him had been an employee of Angel's Nest, Bonnie
Jeffries.

"I've read enough," said Nick. "We can get the fine print
later. You have that calling card?"

Jenna pulled it from her purse.

"Let's call your mom's boyfriend. He's the only one who
knows anything."

"Good idea," Jenna said. "But he's not the only one. I'd
say one of these two might know something." She tapped the
top page of her stack of clippings with the eraser end of a
pencil: first the photo of Randall Wilson, and next the courtroom artist's image of Bonnie Jeffries.

"Okay," he said. "They're next."

She had McConnell's office phone number on her speed
dial, from when he and her mom had been dating, and she
gave it to Nick. They walked past the three engineering students, sullen and bored in their studies, and found a bank of
pay phones, relics of the pre-cellular era.

Nick dialed and a law office administrative assistant answered.

"I need to talk with Cary. It's urgent," Nick said, doing his
best approximation of mature and demanding. He'd hoped
his voice carried even a hint that he was a money-paying
client. He wasn't sure what he was trying to be.

"Mr. McConnell is away on business," she answered.
"Can I take a message?"

"When will he be back?"

"He's on the coast," the young woman said, employing
the term those east of the Cascade Range used for the entire
region west of the mountains.

"This is important. I'm working on the Angel's Nest situation. I need to talk to Cary."

"Who's calling?" she asked.

Nick offered the only name that popped into his head-it came from the news clippings. "This is Randall Wilson," he
said. He was sure he didn't sound anything like Randall Wilson. Randall Wilson would be nearly seventy by now. But
given the circumstances, and the lack of any real plan for his
call, it was the best he could do.

The young woman apparently heard the hesitation in his
voice.

"Just who is this and what do you need?"

"I ... I .. " Scared and feeling a little stupid, Nick abruptly
hung up.

"Well, that went great," Jenna said.

Nick would have laughed just then if nothing important
had been at stake.

"No kidding. I totally choked"

Jenna started back to the table. "Okay, let's figure this
out."

Nick looked beat up. His big moment as a macho takecharge guy had fizzled. Jenna nudged him on the shoulder.

"Cary McConnell knows something but he's a lawyer-"

"And a jerk" Nick added, brightening somewhat.

"Right. Trust me, I know!"

Nick stared at the photocopies. He placed his index finger
on the image of Bonnie Jeffries.

"She's the one," he said. Jenna leaned closer to get a better view of the photograph. "She's the one we ought to talk
to. She's kind of a whistle-blower type and they always want
to help."

Jenna agreed. "Let's go see if she's still around. I think we
can get on one of those computers over there"

"If we have enough money," Nick said.

"This is a library," she said with a smile, "some things
just have to be free around here"

"That's a part of my life I don't like to discuss for fairly
obvious reasons," Tina Winston Esposito said, curled up like
a cat in a darkened booth in Embers. When fire flashed from
the restaurant's grill, it lit up her face. She was still thin and
beautiful. Her blond hair was cut in a bob that made her look
chic and rich, which she was. She no longer had her own
business, or the need for one. She'd married a wealthy software executive and lived the good life in a high-rise condo
downtown. Her bag was Prada. So were her shoes.

"I can imagine," Emily Kenyon said. "And I'm sorry for
the intrusion. Thanks for meeting me ""

"I must admit I practically lost it when you mentioned
Dylan's name," Tina said, sipping a Death Valley dry martini
that was delivered to her without so much as a request.

This lady's on home turf

"Water, for me," Emily said. "No lemon, please." Nerves
were getting the best of her. Her stomach growled.

"You know, I hated that detective up in Meridian. Could have scratched out her eyes. Now I wonder why? Everything
about those days seems like a dream. A nightmare, really."

The waiter, a young man with a tattoo bandaged to hide it
from restaurant patrons, returned to take their order. Tina selected the salmon.

"It's wild, not that horrid farm-raised Atlantic fish," she
said.

"Yes, Alaskan," the waiter said, turning his inquisitive
gaze toward Emily.

"I'll have the same," she said.

The waiter nodded, disappeared, and the kitchen flashed
more fire.

Alone with the detective and her martini, Tina Esposito's
demeanor shifted. The warm, nearly genteel manner turned
to stone.

"Look," she said, "I'll help you any way that I can. I don't
even want to know why you're here. That's your affair. The
less I know the better."

Emily said nothing. She knew when to keep her mouth
shut. Sometimes the less a detective says, the more she'll get
in an interview. The tactic always served her well. Let the
subject fill in all the uncomfortable gaps in a conversation.

"You just have to promise me that you'll keep me out of
any of this," Tina went on. For a woman who had a purse
worth more than Emily's monthly salary, her tone was surprisingly pleading. "I have a pretty good life now. I can't
ruin it."

Emily felt sorry for her. "If you haven't been a party to
any criminal activity" she said, pausing slightly for emphasis, "I'd say that's a promise I can keep"

"Criminal activity? Good God, no. I'm guilty of one thing.
Being stupid." She finished the last of her martini. "Really,
supremely stupid."

"We've all done stupid things," Emily said, thinking of Cary McConnell. At least Tina's stupidity was decades, not
hours, old. "Tell me. Tell me about you, Dylan Walker, and
Bonnie Jeffries."

"All right," she said. "But be prepared. I warn you. It's
pretty messy."

Ensconced behind prison walls, Dylan Walker hardly faded
into oblivion, as the prosecutors and detractors had predicted following his trial for the murders of Shelley Marie
Smith and Lorrie Ann Warner. He wasn't lonely, either. He
had a full roster of visitors and an endless supply of pen pals.

Tina Winston started making the drive to the prison two
months after Walker was convicted. She'd wanted to go right
away, but she had to wait until after the state ran him through
diagnostics and a battery of sessions with a counselor to determine how he'd fit into the prison population. Even more
to the point, how he'd survive. He was considered "high profile" which really meant "high target"

Walker wrote to Tina a week after he'd been moved from
Administrative Segregation or Ad Seg, to his "permanent"
cell in Block D. His cell mate, a firebug from suburban Seattle, was the perfect fit. He was younger and a follower. That
was good. A narcissist like Dylan Walker preferred being the
star of his own show. Everyone else was a supporting player.
That meant his cell mate, and those who wrote to him, like Tina.

Tina didn't know it, of course, but she was being played.
He wrote to her that his loneliness and need for her understanding heart and unconditional love was the only thing that
kept him alive. She alone could free him from the mental
torture of his prison sentence.

I sit here, alone, and desperate. I feel broken. Not for
what I've been accused of doing. Not for what the world thinks of me. I feel broken because you are
so far away. The walls that hold us apart seem
insurmountable. You might think that I'm counting the
days to my appeal, but really, I only count the days
until I see you.

Tina always stayed at the Windsong Inn, only ten minutes
from the prison. It was a sterile little motel room with
cardboard-thin walls and a lamp that was bolted to the nightstand. She could have afforded better accommodations, of
course, if there had been better. Despite the jittery and excited feelings the kind that come with a first date-that
came with seeing Dylan, she knew it wasn't a real romance.
She also knew her visits were not to a resort town. The
prison town was stark, lonely, and bitter.

Tina arrived in town Friday night, so she'd be dressed and
ready at the prison by 8:00 A.M. Saturday. It took about an
hour to get through the examination process to ensure she
wasn't smuggling anything in. By 9:15, her heart would stop
when she first saw him line up in the visitation room. His
dark eyes sparked with recognition. Even in the drab attire
of an inmate's daily wear-a T-shirt and jeans he was godlike. If the clothes just hung on the SOBs that other women
were there to see, they clung to his ripped body like a second
skin. If he hadn't been a prisoner, a convicted murderer, no
less, Dylan Walker could have been a male model or film
star. He sauntered to the table, a big white-toothed smile set
off by dimples chiseled into that unequivocally handsome
face.

They'd kiss and sit down. Quick and passionate. The second kiss would have to wait until the conclusion of a "date"
Tina never wanted to end.