The Gift of the Darkness (10 page)

Abruptly he got up and walked to the window. It looked out on the parking lot, just a lot of cars and thin rain. He stood with his back to them, and when he spoke, the words held no emotion.

“I am John Cameron's attorney. Anything he has said to me is, therefore, privileged. You may not ask me about it or about anything else regarding our relationship.”

“Well, what do you suppose we should do about that? Your silence won't make you or your client or your late partner look very good. There you sit, right between both men, possibly withholding useful evidence. Doesn't that strike you as a pretty serious conflict of interest right about now, too?”

Quinn took out his cell phone. “I'll prepare an affidavit and pass on all the duties of the Sinclairs' estate to Bob Greenhut, at Greenhut, Lowell. He can be the executor until a judge deems that there is no further conflict of interest. Then, and only then, it will revert to me. Is that acceptable to you?”

“If that's what you want,” Brown said.

“I assure you, none of this is what I want. I'll call Bob right now and start on the paperwork. Then we can talk about what you want from my client.”

Quinn dialed the call, and Brown and Madison left the room.

“So much for their partnership,” Madison said.

Brown shrugged. “He made his choice. We need to get Klein in for the rest of the interview. By the way, how did you know he'd seen Cameron?”

“It's what I would have done.”

“Quinn didn't tell us how Cameron ‘took the news,' but you got him thinking about it.”

Lieutenant Fynn took their news less than well when they got to his office. “We haven't picked up the guy yet, and you got him lawyered up already?”

“I'm only sitting in to make sure you all play nice.” Sarah Klein, the Assistant County Prosecutor, leaned back in her chair as she addressed the group of four.

“You don't have enough to indict my client; you don't have enough to pick up my client. You try to sneak into his house again”—Quinn looked straight at Madison—“you'll get slapped with a suit. This is me being nice, Sarah.”

Thank you very much, Mr. Clyde Phillips
. Way to be neighborly, Madison thought.

“Cameron needs to come in,” Brown said. “I mean today. Along with his prints, we have DNA from the crime scene. He gives us a blood sample for comparison, and we can all go home. If you're so sure of yourself, you'll get on the phone to him right now.”

There was a knock on the door. The department PA passed a message to Madison. It was from Detective Spencer. She read it and passed
it to Brown. She must remember to buy Spencer a drink tonight—his timing had been perfect.

Brown read the message and put it to one side.

“We now have a witness. A neighbor saw a black Ford pickup truck parked by the Sinclairs' house in the early hours of Sunday morning. What does John Cameron drive, Counselor?” Brown turned to Klein. “Enough?”

She nodded.

They had more than they needed to proceed, and Quinn knew it.

“We're done here.” He stood up and gathered his papers.

“Nathan.” Sarah Klein was also standing now. “He's going to be arrested, and you know the grand jury will indict. If you are withholding information, if you know where he is—”

They were all aware of the legal consequences.

“I don't know where he is.”

“And if you knew . . .” Brown continued.

“You'd be my first phone call, of course.”

“Where did you meet him yesterday?” Madison asked.

Quinn stopped with one hand on the doorknob. “You put a tail on me or tap my phones, and we're going to have us a fun day in court. Good to see you, Sarah.”

He left.

That response was nowhere near good enough for Madison. She caught up with him on the stairs.

“Mr. Quinn.”

One plainclothes and one uniformed officer were coming up; she let them pass.

“You were in the Prosecuting Attorney's Office once. You were a prosecutor.”

“A long time ago.”

“I'm interested. With the evidence you know we have, how would
you
investigate and prosecute this case?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I think there's a world of things about it you're not willing to share with us. It's a shame, but there you have it. Still, you do have a personal interest in seeing the killer caught, don't you?”

She wasn't sure why she had come right out and said it, but she believed it was the truth.

“Impossible as it might seem to you now, there is one thing much, much worse than finding out John Cameron did this,” he said as they exited the building.

“What's that?”

“Knowing that he didn't. As for my personal interest in this case, Detective, I do what I have to. My reasons are not for your files.”

His car was parked not far from the entrance to the precinct. As he drove past her, Madison couldn't tell whether he was already speaking on his cell phone. Her instincts told her that between legal wrangles and his wall of silence lay some half-truth, and she would rather find it than let it disappear with the fading daylight.

Detective Sergeant Brown and Assistant County Prosecutor Sarah Klein were in Lieutenant Fynn's office. Madison joined them. They needed a judge to sign off on a warrant to arrest John Cameron and another to search his house.

Klein was keen to go absolutely by the book. In her words, if you got screwed in front of a jury by inadmissible evidence, it wasn't pretty to see, and they never forgot it.

“Then there's the question of Quinn,” Brown said to Lieutenant Fynn.

“What's that?”

“Well, he might very well have information that would get us our guy; he's just not telling. There might be things that fall outside attorney-client privilege.”

“What do you mean?” Klein asked.

“You know what I mean.”

“You mean
subpoena
Nathan Quinn?” Klein said.

“Yes.”

“And you think a judge is going to go for that?”

“If you push for it, explain the circumstances, maybe.”

“Black-letter law is pretty clear on privilege,” Madison said. “No judge is going to jump at the chance to make history with this.”

“I know. But Quinn clearly met with Cameron recently, and I'm betting the house he's on the phone to him as we speak.”

“Point taken. As long as we all know that it'll never work, and the judge will likely throw me out just for trying, I'll run it by my boss,” Klein said. “About Cameron's house, make sure you're clear about what you want. You're looking for telephone bills, travel itineraries, the works, so specify small spaces, drawers, shoeboxes. Whatever.”

“A murder weapon would be nice,” Lieutenant Fynn said to no one in particular.

“I'm on that.” Madison knew what Sarah meant: they were looking for anything that might give them a clue about Cameron's recent activities. If they didn't specifically mention the smallest item on their wanted list, their search warrant might be limited to what was in plain view. Which, if his house was as tidy as the crime scene, might be nothing.

Somehow, between hearsay and myth, that was how Madison imagined Cameron's life—tidy and out of sight.

Chapter 15

The uniformed police officer pressed the boy's right index finger onto the ink pad, careful not to brush his own shirt cuff against it. He got him to roll the finger gently left to right on the index card, leaving a perfect imprint.

He felt a little sorry for the boy; he hadn't been completely innocent of driving with a cold one himself when he was his age. Most other drunk teenagers would give him a certain amount of lip while they were being printed, just to prop up their failing courage, but this one had been polite and courteous. Hard to believe he had been found half soaked in beer, with an empty bottle in his hand and a car that wouldn't start.

“You got your phone call?” he asked the kid.

“Yes, thank you,” John Cameron, eighteen, replied.

The officer saw the scars on the back of his hand. Somebody had really gone to work with a blade there, but they looked years old.

“Ever been in trouble before?”

“No, sir.”

John Cameron took a tissue and slowly rubbed the ink off each finger in turn. It didn't do much good. He looked around and took in the room. Four-thirty in the morning, four officers. Two picking
at slices from a pizza, another by the door, one on the phone. A man sitting up on a bench, cuffed and asleep.

There were chemical smells beyond the alcohol that hung on him like a cloud; there was a flash from the camera taking his mug shots. He could still feel the white light on his face moments later.

They took him to a holding cell. Bleach had been used there recently; a bucket and a mop still stood in a corner at the end of the corridor. A lightbulb flickered through the glass of a closed door as the whole building seemed to struggle to stay awake.

The holding cell was square and had bars on two sides; the floor was concrete. Two men were sleeping on the bunk beds; they had covered themselves with their coats and snored softly. Another was sitting on a bench, leaning back against the wall.

“You be good now, Larry,” the guard said, pointing his finger at the man.

When the metal door slammed shut behind the boy, Larry straightened up and took a long, measured look at the kid in the sheepskin jacket. Cameron could smell him from where he was. The man was about six foot and heavy, not much muscle there but a lot of extra weight. His eyes were glazed from drink.

Cameron walked across the cell and leaned against the bars on the opposite side, crossed his arms, and looked at the round wall clock. Minutes inched forward.

Larry stood uncertainly and staggered close enough to slap his mitten on the boy's shoulder. “Hey,” he croaked.

Cameron looked up. It had been the second-longest night of his life, and whatever it had left in his eyes, the man didn't like what he saw. He didn't like it at all.

The man's mouth moved, but nothing came out. No, he didn't like this kid at all. Something fluttered in his throat. Larry wiped his hands against the sides of his jeans and took one step back. He found his seat, never turning his back on Cameron, and sat down. He looked suddenly sober and thirsty, the worst combination.

“Jack.”

The guard opened the metal door. Nathan Quinn, David's older brother, stood there, his coat open over the clothes he'd thrown on after the phone call, a couple of snowflakes melting on the bill of his baseball cap.

Cameron walked out of the holding cell, and Quinn grabbed him in a quick hug.

“What the hell!” He led him to a table where they could talk. “Thanks, Jeff,” Quinn said to the guard.

“No problem.”

They were left alone.

“Are you all right?” Quinn took off his coat and put it on the table. Cameron noticed he would need to shave again soon, and his curly hair was getting too long for the County Prosecutor's Office.

Quinn was talking to him, but John Cameron was still breathing in the icy air in his car, waiting for the patrol officers to pick him up on the side of the road. The cold burned in his chest. Blurred lights from oncoming traffic washed over the windshield, and his hands were so frozen, he couldn't grip the steering wheel. He popped the top off the bottle, took a long swig, and spat it out. Spilled some on the front of his mountain jacket and a few drops on the empty passenger seat. He pulled the choke and flooded the engine.

The beam of the policeman's flashlight found him as he was trying to start the car for the hundredth time. Finally.

“What happened?” Quinn looked concerned now. Then again, he always did, Cameron thought. “You're going to be arraigned at night court. Bernie Rhodes from the Public Defender's office is coming over—he owes me one. You'll plead ‘not guilty,' and I'll bail you out.”

Quinn's kind, dark eyes swept over the boy. He was going to take him home to get him straightened up, or John's mom would have a fit.

“What happened?” he asked again.

“It's done now.”

“How much have you had to drink?”

“Enough,” Cameron said. “It's done, Nathan. It's over.”

“You're going to be all right.”

Bernie Rhodes approached them, the guard holding a cup of coffee and laughing at the end of a knock-knock joke.

Cameron leaned toward Quinn, his voice hollow and cracked. “It's done.”

Quinn put his hand on Cameron's shoulder. “It's okay. Let's go.”

It took a few months for Quinn to understand what Cameron had meant. By then, spring had gone to work on the winter snow, and it was too late for everybody.

Chapter 16

They rode in two cars. Brown and Madison first, already wearing their vests, the warrants in Brown's jacket pocket. Spencer and Dunne followed.

By the time they got there, it was early evening, and Laurelhurst was getting ready for dinner. Brown stole a sideways glance at Madison; she wore the Kevlar over her shirt and under her blazer. The vest's outside layer was midnight blue, the texture coarse. Madison rubbed the side of her thumb against it, the rest of her utterly still.

Windows were lit in Clyde Phillips's place. Across the street, Cameron's house sat in complete darkness. They left the cars by the curb before the turn into the driveway; a few trees stood between them and the house. A patrol car was parked, lights off, fifty yards away. When they saw the detectives, two uniformed officers approached on foot.

“No one went in or came out in the last hour.” Officer Buchman was short and wide, all shoulders and cropped hair. His partner, Officer Glaiser, nodded hello to Dunne. There were maybe five people in the whole of the Seattle Police Department Dunne didn't know well enough to say “hey” to.

“There's no sign of life in the house,” Brown said. “But I want standard operating procedure anyway. We're going in ‘as if.'”

“I'll cover the back,” Madison said. “I was there earlier today. Give us three minutes to get into place.”

Madison was glad she had seen the house in daylight. Followed by Spencer, she walked into the deeper shadows under the trees and quickly found herself by the small heap of leaves. Spencer sniffed the air.

“What in the name of—” he whispered.

“Dead cat,” Madison replied, and she unholstered her weapon.

They reached the side of the fence. She peeked. All was as she had left it, doors and windows shut and dark. It was much quieter now that they had left the main road. Her heart was drumming a little, but that was normal.

She was going to need both hands to get over the fence. She put her piece back into the holster and automatically secured the thin leather safety strap on it.

Madison and Spencer exchanged a look and, without a word, both of them vaulted over the fence and landed quietly on the inside of Cameron's yard. Weapon in hand and pointed at the ground, Madison crossed the dead grass, keeping close to the edges. In five seconds they had all the entrances and exits covered.

Now
, she said to herself.

Brown was about to step into the driveway. A car came down the street. He wanted to wait for it to pass. When the car had almost reached them, Brown heard it brake, and he turned toward it. The car stopped.

A young man in a suit and tie rolled down the window. “Detective Brown?”

That was really not what he wanted to hear, and he sensed that things were about to go south from there.

“My name is Benny Craig. I'm from Quinn, Locke. Nathan Quinn sent me. You are about to execute a search warrant on this address. He thought you might want to have these.”

Benny Craig stepped out of the car and extended his right hand to Brown. A key ring twinkled in the dim light.

“He said this way you won't have to break down the door, and he won't have to fix it.”

If Benny was smiling at all, Brown couldn't really tell.

“May I see your warrant?”

Brown took the keys and started walking briskly up the drive. “Let's go.”

Benny wasn't finished.

“There is no alarm, and I am to have the keys back when you're done.”

Without pausing, Brown fished out the search warrant from his inside pocket and passed it to Benny Craig. Officers Buchman and Glaiser were not quite sure what was going on or why Brown looked as if he was passing razor blades, but they were not altogether unhappy they wouldn't have to force the door open.

“Stay back.” Dunne put his open hand over Benny's chest and gently pushed him out of the way. He pointed about twenty feet to the left and toward the road. Benny retreated.

The four police officers all unholstered their weapons. Brown inserted a key in the bottom lock. It turned easily. He tried the top one and felt the door coming open.

The room was barely lit by the outside glow of the lampposts. They all paused.

“This is the Seattle Police Department . . .” Brown heard all the right words coming out of his mouth.

They turned on lights, walked from room to room calling “Clear!” to one another, and checked every space where a person could hide. Dunne opened the garden door and let in Madison and Spencer.

Benny was now standing by the front door, unsure what to do with himself. Dunne pointed at a bench by the coat rack.

“Sit. Don't touch anything.”

Benny did as he was told.

Madison snapped her latex gloves on and rested her back against the front door. They were inside.

Madison had done searches in more places than she could remember: from large houses to one-room shacks to cars people drove around
in during the day and slept in at night. Every time she felt she knew more about the person after ten minutes of looking at how they lived than after an hour in the box.

She had had good teachers, John Douglas at the Academy and Dave Carbone in uniform. She knew the moves and what they wanted out of that warrant. The .22 that had shot the victims would be nice, and any part of the ligatures that had been used to tie them would be pretty welcome, too. Also, any paperwork that could connect Cameron, Sinclair, and any evidence of embezzlement would be gold for the prosecution's case.

A search, Douglas used to say, is always about more than what is tangible. It's not about the one book on the shelf that's been put back sideways; it's about the last thing a man was reading before he went out to kill somebody.

Madison stood stock still. She was aware of the others talking and working out who was going where and wished they would just shut up for one second.

“What's up?” Brown asked.

“I'm trying to see the room without us in it.”

John Cameron comes home, puts the key in the lock, turns it, and steps in. This is what he sees. This is where he is. He would put his jacket on the coat rack. She ignored Benny Craig. There was a small table with a handsome porcelain dish on it. The keys would go in that. It was empty. The hall opened into a wide and long living room. It had been decorated by Cameron's parents, quite probably. There were two large sofas and two chairs, upholstered with a discreet flowered pattern that felt both old-fashioned and pleasant. Something her grandparents might have chosen.

A couple of ceiling-high bookcases stacked with hardbacks and paperbacks. There were small objects in the spaces in front of the books: someone had collected tobacco tins.

Spencer and Dunne were already at work on the bookcase and the antique rolltop desk in one corner. Madison stood back: the cushions on the sofa and the chairs were puffed and in place. She ran a finger along the table: no dust.

There was a fireplace at the end of the room, on the mantelpiece only one photograph: a couple in their sixties smiling at the camera. Cameron's parents. The picture frame was centered. There was a basket on the right side of the fireplace, four pieces of wood neatly stacked in it. A scent of vanilla from dried petals in a dish on the coffee table.

Madison had a feeling that if she opened the fridge, she would find fresh milk.

“Guys,” she said.

They all turned, and she pointed. On a corner table, a tall glass vase. In the vase, a bunch of white lilies. There were tiny drops of water on the leaves. At the bottom of the vase the powdery residue of flower food had not yet dispersed. He had been there, not even hours before them.

“Sweet,” Spencer said.

“Tell me about the witness at the Sinclair house,” Brown said to him.

“Neighbor in the house opposite came home from a party about two thirty a.m. An office party, by the way, but he was the designated driver—”

“Thank you, God.”

“He happened to glance at the Sinclairs' house and noticed the pickup parked at the top of the drive. Nothing else, just the truck.”

“What's he like?”

“Solid witness. He'll be fine in court.”

Madison found the kitchen. Cameron's father had been the chef of the restaurant, and the kitchen reflected the taste of people who knew about food.

It was larger than average: cupboards and glass-fronted cabinets along two walls and a vast preparation island in the middle. Saucepans hung from hooks on one side, and on the other stood a professional metal stove with two ovens and six burners.

Madison could not resist and opened the fridge. It was clean and empty. No milk, no eggs, no leftovers of any kind. She opened the freezer: a single carton of Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey. She smiled
for no real reason. Maybe it was just that the ice cream brought John Cameron a little closer to human. Madison closed the freezer door and looked around the surfaces: there were ladles and spoons in tall, slim canisters.

She heard Brown behind her.

“No knives yet,” she said without turning.

Madison opened and closed drawers until she found what she was looking for: cutlery.

“Cameron's father was the chef of The Rock. Knives are pretty important to a chef, but there's only one photograph on the mantelpiece and no chef's knives in the kitchen.”

She slid the drawer shut with a rattle of the metal inside.

“We are not going to find anything personal here,” she said. “He's emptied the place. He's got another nest somewhere with all the stuff that should be here but isn't. Family photographs and his father's knives.”

“You're cheering me right up.”

“Sorry,” she said as she checked every cupboard and cabinet.

“Saltzman called. He found nothing in the tax lawyer's files. He's going back tomorrow.”

Brown delivered good news and bad news in the same steady voice. Madison saw his pale blue gaze drift unfocused over the room.

“Oh, and the truck is not in the garage.”

“What's in the garage?” Madison asked.

“Absolutely nothing. I'm going upstairs.”

Just as he was leaving the room, the first unmistakable bars of The Clash's “Should I Stay or Should I Go” filled the air.

“Dunne's ‘get to know your perp' theory,” he said.

Madison peeked into the living room: Spencer was running his hands around the sofa cushions, and Dunne was shining a slim flashlight at the space between the bookcase and the wall. Both of them were engrossed in their work.

From the outside it must have looked like some kind of party, lights blazing and The Clash blasting through the speakers. Benny Craig shifted uncomfortably on the bench and, for the first time, appeared seriously concerned.

Madison finished in the kitchen. Her steps creaked on the stairs. The landing opened onto three rooms and a bathroom. Brown was in what seemed to be the study. He sat behind the desk and was cleaning his glasses with his handkerchief.

“Your folks have your graduation picture on the wall?”

“Sure,” Madison said.

“Well, looks like our boy is pretty touchy about getting snapped.”

The walls were bare except for three mountain landscapes. Madison thought of David Quinn's funeral photos.

As the music found its way to them, they worked the room together. The Camerons' life was summed up in utility bills and receipts and fifteen-year-old correspondence with relatives in Scotland.

By the time they were done, the others were in the parents' bedroom, where the shoeboxes in the closet contained only shoes.

The door to what had to be Cameron's room was shut. Madison put her hand on the knob. Brown, Spencer, and Dunne were behind her, as if one of the uniformed officers hadn't already checked and cleared it.

She pushed the door open. Slowly, the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

Bright red blankets covered bunk beds; Mariners and Sonics banners were pinned to the walls, clashing with the delicate pattern of the wallpaper. In the bookcase, sci-fi paperbacks and encyclopedias. A pile of schoolbooks lay in disarray on the desk, and a green windbreaker was draped on the back of the chair. Hung from the ceiling, a model airplane swayed gently. A terrycloth robe was on a hook behind the door. A pair of worn sneakers were half visible under the bed, their laces tangled and mud on the white leather sides. A boy's room.

Dunne exhaled.

“Okay,” Brown said.

“Okay,” Madison replied, and they walked in.

They stood for a moment in the middle of the room. Brown ducked to avoid the airplane.

“Closet.” Madison started on the top shelf, keen to get busy.

Brown went to the desk and flipped through the pages of every book in the pile.

There weren't many clothes hanging in the closet, but those present wouldn't have been worn by an adult. Madison ran her hands over denim jackets and polo shirts, most of which demonstrated an obvious preference for the color blue, and considered that, at most, Cameron had stopped wearing them in his late teens. There was a red high school warm-up jacket with yellow sleeves, a smaller size than most of the other items. Perhaps he had stopped caring about school games after that. Madison didn't know whether he'd gone to college or whether that mattered anyway.

A baseball bat with a leather mitt, the ball still cradled in the pouch, was in a corner behind the clothes. Madison picked up the bat and held it with two hands as a batter would; she angled it and looked at its clean lines. It never ceased to amaze her how good the weight of an ash bat felt in her arms, the swing almost slipping off her, right to left.

Something caught her eye: the wood was unblemished and well taken care of except for one small mark. A sliver of something no thicker than a human fingernail was embedded pretty much dead on the spot where you would expect to hit the ball. She ran her finger over it; even through her glove she could feel the smoothness of the wood. Whatever it was, it was in so deep, you wouldn't know it was there unless you were looking for it.