The Gift of the Darkness (19 page)

“What?”

“Explorers.”

“One hundred and six thousand,” she replied flatly.

“Okay.”

“We can eliminate all those in colors other than black, those registered to women or men other than Caucasian or older than, say, fifty.”

“We'll take it from there. Quinn was told about the hearing yesterday morning, so Cameron might have dumped it in the last twenty-four hours. You have a car you want to get rid of, somewhere it's not going to attract attention and nobody's going to come looking for the owner. Somewhere a car is expected to be sitting unused for a while.”

“Long-term parking.”

“We'll check downtown and the airport first.”

Calls were made, and a good number of people whose job was to sit in a booth and watch the world go by had to get up fast and reluctantly join in the general rush.

A couple of hours later, Dunne put his head around the door.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” Madison replied.

They had wheeled a small television with a video player into the room, and Madison sat at her desk, flanked by a tall pile of tapes. Something played on the monitor, a black-and-white shot that didn't seem to change. Madison stared at it.

“What's up?”

“Security tapes from Sea-Tac. I'm going backward from the most recent to—I don't know—as far as the pile goes.”

Dunne picked up a copy of Cameron's photograph from her desk and looked at the screen. In it, people were coming and going, with and without bags and cases, some with hats, some with hats and scarves.

“You think you can see him in the middle of all that?”

“I might. Thing is, I'm actually hoping I don't. If he managed to get a plane out, it will be ten times more difficult to get him back.”

“You're looking for someone, but you hope not to find him.”

“Pretty much.”

Madison kept her eyes on the screen. When there was no one in the frame, she would fast-forward it until there was someone walking past.

“Sounds like fun,” Dunne said.

“You bet,” she replied.

“What are you doing for Christmas?” he asked her.

“I'll be sitting right here with a turkey sandwich in one hand and the remote in the other. How about you?”

“I'm going to see my folks in Portland.”

Madison pressed the Fast-Forward button, stopped, and pressed it again.

“You're going to miss the big snow,” she said absentmindedly.

“In any way I can,” he replied. “Where's the sarge?”

Brown was not at his desk.

“Around.” She looked up. “He's checking out some calls from the hotline.”

Madison stopped the video, stood up, and stretched. “What are you guys up to?”

“We're going to get roped in the hotline, I think. Did you hear about OPR?”

“No.”

“They managed to get Tully to admit that he had received the information from an anonymous source and that no money had changed hands.”

“They believe him?”

“If you take away the money, what else is there?”

“I know.”

Madison went back to the tapes. Nobody looked even remotely like the man they were after. Somehow that was a good thing.

Somewhere in the fourth hour, she began to see stories unfolding: the couple arguing, the guy who tried to jump the security queue, the kid who got lost. She also saw a woman who tried to steal another woman's wallet and got caught, and a guy who lifted a briefcase, who didn't.

It was sometime past the end of the shift and before the depths of night when Brown came in and put a pizza box on her desk. They each took a slice—it was olives and anchovies. Anchovies were something Brown and Madison had always been in agreement about.

Brown's desk phone rang, and he picked up. He listened and then took down a number.

“Try this,” he said, and he passed Madison the piece of paper. “It's a black Explorer—the sticker says it's been in Sea-Tac long-term parking since yesterday afternoon at about 2:20 p.m.”

He saw her thoughts in her eyes. “It doesn't mean he's gone; he could have just left it there.”

“I hope so,” she said, and she went to work on her computer.

It took her two minutes to find that the owner of the car was one Mr. Roger Kay of Bellingham, a Caucasian male.

Brown stood behind her, looking at the screen. “Right age, right color. Doesn't look anything like him.”

Roger Kay had limp brown hair and a face you instantly forgot. Both Brown and Madison leaned into the screen.

“The eyes are half closed, and the mouth looks different,” he said.

“The chin and the jawline are different, too. We can call the number we have for Mr. Kay, but if his car is in long-term parking, chances are he won't be home.”

“Try anyway.”

Madison dialed. It rang for a while, and nobody picked up.

“See if he's got a record.”

It took her a minute.

“Nope,” she said. “No rap sheet.”

“Okay. What's his home address?”

“It's in Bellingham.”

Brown sat at his desk. “I'm going to keep a man on the Explorer while we get someone to check the residence.”

“I'll get going on the warrant,” Madison said. Judge Martin was off the clock, but Judge Kramer, also known as Dial-a-Warrant, was on call. Lucky for them.

Twenty minutes later Brown's phone rang. It was a uniformed officer from the Bellingham Police Department.

“I'm standing right in front of the address,” he said. “It's an empty warehouse. Door's been boarded up. Nobody lives here but rats.”

“Okay,” Brown said after he replaced the receiver. “You want to register your car to someone other than yourself, what do you do?”

“Fake driver's license?”

“It's too easy.”

Madison took another slice of pizza. “It's just a few dozen dollars, a birth certificate, ID, and a couple of letters from the bank for proof of residence. To get a birth certificate, just check the records for a child death, find someone who would be your age now, and pay your dollars online. Way too easy.”

She tapped on her keyboard. “Let me try something,” she said.

“What?”

“Social Security Death Records. If Roger Kay is an assumed identity, and Cameron got it going through records of infant deaths—if, for whatever reason, the original death was registered—then it would turn up in there.”

“Why?”

“Say his parents were receiving benefits or something.”

“Lord, I hope they were.”

Madison waited for the answer to come back on the screen. The pizza was getting cold, and she wished she had a Coke to go with it. There was a beep.

“I got him. Roger Kay died when he was eight years old.”

“I'll call the Crime Scene Unit,” Brown said, and within five minutes they were out and driving.

Two men in airport police uniforms paced up and down and stomped their feet to keep themselves warm. When Brown and Madison drove up, one of them came to their car and checked their badges while the other stayed with the Explorer.

Brown thanked them both and made sure they were glad they had helped out. “Either one of you touched it?” he asked without making a thing of it.

“I might have when I was looking to see if there was anything in view inside,” one of them replied.

“Okay, we're going to have CSU here in a few minutes. Your prints will already be on record. Thanks for the heads-up.”

The men left.

Madison wore gloves and had a heavy-duty flashlight in her right hand. The car looked spotless on the outside. She got close and shone the beam of light around the seats. Brown did the same on the other side. They moved from the front to the back.

Madison crouched a little, cutting her light sideways. The beams crossed and parted as they checked the black-carpeted floor.

“Nothing,” she said.

“Nothing.”

Brown turned off his flashlight.

“We don't know it's him yet,” he said to her quietly. “Not for absolutely sure.”

“It's him,” Madison replied.

“That a hunch?”

“Yes. I'm on a roll today.” She kneeled by the back and shone her light on the underside.

The Crime Scene Unit van arrived, and Madison was pleased to see Amy Sorensen shrug into her jacket and snap her gloves on.

“Sorry I missed the scene on Monday,” Sorensen said as she joined them. “Had my appendix out, and they put me on forced bed rest. A waste of time, if you ask me. What have we got?”

Amy Sorensen was a striking five-foot-eleven redhead in her forties. Her father had been a cop, her husband was a cop, one of her two younger sisters was a detective in Vice, the other had just made plainclothes. The family was a legend in the department. She had a mind you could cut glass with and the dirtiest laugh in King County. Madison knew she could use both right now.

They briefed her quickly, and she went to work. Her partner was a junior officer Madison had seen around a few times. They set up a couple of strong lights and busied themselves around the Explorer.

“It's been here since yesterday afternoon,” Sorensen said as she examined the concrete around the tires. “I tell you what we're going to do. We're going to take a peek at what the inside has to offer, with minimal intrusion: I don't want to disturb any trace evidence we might find. Then we'll take it back and do things properly.”

Her partner called the truck that would move the Explorer off the lot while Sorensen got the driver's door open in less than twenty seconds.

“You're pretty good at that,” Brown said.

“Best in town,” she replied. She picked up a portable lantern and shone it around and above the seats.

“Smell it?” she asked them. “Wood polish and that flowery crap they put in Dustbusters.”

She checked the mirrors and under the steering wheel. She clicked the glove compartment open and peered in, the bright light reaching into every corner. It was empty.

She shook her head. “Okay, the longer it stays here, the bigger the chance it might get contaminated.”

“It's a dump job,” Brown ventured.

“Oh, yes, and someone had a pretty good go at detailing it.”

“Too clean for trace evidence?” Madison asked.

“We'll see about that.”

Once the tow truck arrived, they maneuvered the Explorer onto it. After they drove off, Brown and Madison stood in the empty space where John Cameron had been only eighteen hours before. Without the lanterns, it had gone back to a chilly gloom.

“I want to check the hotline,” Madison said, tapping her cell phone.

“Wait,” Brown said. He was only a few feet away, his back to her, looking at the rough, uneven concrete. “There's something I want to run by you.”

Madison put her phone away and sank her hands into her pockets. Brown examined the oil-stained surface.

“What is it?” Madison asked.

“What do you think we'll get from the car?” Brown asked her.

Madison was getting used to his habit of leading her into a new thought by asking her a question about something entirely unrelated.

“Sorensen will find something—if there's anything there to find. How much closer that will get us to Cameron, I don't know, but everything counts. He doesn't know that this identity is blown; he might use it again. Something is going to shake loose.”

“And the evidence will lead us to him,” he said.

“Sooner or later. The sooner the better.”

“We have four bodies in the morgue. Sanders makes five. We have a lot of
how
and
what
; we have almost zero
why
. Explain that.” He said it as if it was a mathematical issue. Brown seemed entirely unaware of the cold, the late hour, and the desolate place they were standing in.

Madison's eyes felt gritty. “That's what they told us at the Academy: you get a lot of one, you'll get none of the other. Murphy's Second Law. So, we have a possible motive for the Sinclairs but not for Sanders. We have evidence that Sinclair stole from Cameron but not why. Cameron left the drugs and the money in Sanders's house but no trace evidence. We've got plenty of that at the Sinclairs' but nothing to match it to with the Sanders scene.” Madison could see that was not what Brown had in mind.

“We need to stand back and see the whole picture.”

“He's been two steps ahead of us all the way,” she retorted. “How much further back do we need to be?”

“Right now, how far are you prepared to go to find the man who killed those children?”

“As far as necessary. What exactly are you saying?”

“We'll find him when we see what he sees.”

“For crying out loud!” Madison heard herself say, suddenly losing her brain-to-mouth filter. “Are you holding back on me? Because this Yoda-in-a-raincoat thing is not working.”

A beat of silence passed between them. Madison did not know what to say—she was as surprised as he was. Then, slowly, like some rare geological event, Brown smiled.

“I don't know any more about this than you do,” he said quietly.

His phone rang: it was Fynn. As Brown briefed him, they got into the car. The people they needed to interview at Sea-Tac would be back with the morning shift.

Madison sat looking straight ahead, not knowing exactly what her next words should be. Brown drove fast toward the lab. After he ended his call, he was still smiling.

The night shift was going about its business and didn't give Brown and Madison a second glance as they wandered down the quiet corridors, their “visitor” badges hanging on their coats.

The vending machine had drinks and snacks. The neon light above was unforgiving, and a wave of tiredness hit Madison like a load of bricks. She chose a can of Coke and hoped the caffeine would kick in before she fell asleep on her feet. She popped the top and drank and paced.