The Gift of the Darkness (24 page)

“Want to keep me company?” he asked.

“Thank you,” John Cameron replied.

The blinds were drawn, and the pool of light on the table was the only brightness in the room. Cameron sat on the leather settee in the corner. He wore a black turtleneck over dark brown pants, his hair was back to its natural color, and the goatee was gone.

Quinn poured two generous measures. Cameron stood to take one of the glasses, and, under the light, the scars on his hand glistened. Quinn didn't usually notice them. Tonight, though, he saw them pale against his skin.

Quinn's home had always been one of the few places in the world where Cameron would feel completely at ease. They sat down at the table, because that was where they had always come together, and their silence was comfortable.

“How was your day?” Cameron said, taking a sip.

Quinn smiled. Above the rim of the glass, Cameron's eyes were a couple of shades darker than amber.

The last time they had sat at the table, Quinn had told him their friends had been murdered. They raised their glasses and drained them. Cameron poured another round.

“I have a witness to a homicide with very strong similarities,” Quinn said.

Cameron nodded slowly.

“McCoy State Prison. Three and a half years ago. They put it on a lifer who's still inside, but the witness has doubts.”

“Ex-con?”

“Yes. He never reported it.”

“What's his name?”

“Billy Rain.”

“Billy Rain.”

“You two ever met?”

“No, but I know of him.”

“He read about the reward and came forward. He thought, correctly, that I might act with more urgency than the police on this matter.”

“He's not lying?”

“I don't think so.”

“Okay.”

“Hollis is going to follow it up.”

“Hollis?”

“We'll do what we have to.”

A beat between them.

“Tell me about the prison killing.”

Quinn told him everything. Cameron listened. Neither touched their drink.

“He was in jail one hour away from here,” Cameron said when Quinn was done.

“The detectives must have put it through VICAP but came up empty. A homicide inside a jail, where they're already holding the culprit, isn't going to make it into the database. We're going to narrow the parameters by what kind of crime our man would have been doing time for and when he was paroled, and we'll find him.”

“I'd like to talk to Hollis.”

“I don't think so.”

“Nathan—”

“We're going to take it to the judge and get them to drop the case against you. That is my priority.”

“I understand. Do you know why this guy went after Jimmy?”

Quinn didn't reply.

“To get my attention.” Cameron paused. “Do you know why he went after the detectives?”

Quinn didn't reply.

“To give them a murder weapon. As we speak, I'm pretty sure Ballistics is matching the casings to the ones they found in Jimmy's house. And, just like that, I have shot one cop, maybe even fatally, and assaulted another. You can take
that
to the judge.” Cameron took a sip. “I think you should get out of town for a while.”

“No.”

“This man I want to meet so badly will surely come after you. We don't know what's going to happen when the thirteen days run out.”

“He hasn't told me what he wants yet. He'll finish what he started with the notes.”

“May I see them?”

Quinn got them, then placed them on the table between them.

Cameron did not touch the plastic. He followed the contours of the notes, one by one. He spoke quietly, looking at the cards.

“I think you should leave town for a while,” he repeated.

“I'm not in any danger.”

“Jimmy didn't think he was, either. He wants you
here
, Nathan. He wants you where he can get to you.”

“I'll take my chances.”

“That's not good enough.”

“It'll have to do.”

Cameron knew better than to try to change Nathan's mind. He stood up. “You want something to eat? I'll cook.”

A few minutes later Cameron put two steaks on to broil, medium rare, a streak of red in the middle.

“Who's taken over the case?” he asked Quinn.

“Mike Fynn, Homicide. He's the shift commander of the two who were hit.”

“You know him?”

“No. I only dealt with the detectives.”

“I saw the woman—you know, at Jimmy's.”

“Detective Madison. When?”

“Tuesday night late. I went by the house.”

Quinn put down his knife and fork. “You
went by the house
? When every officer in Washington State has your picture tacked on their dash?”

“Yes, and you would have done the same.”

“You were inside the house?”

“Yes.”

Quinn had seen the crime-scene photographs and the devastation contained within the glossy white borders of Jimmy and Annie's bedroom.

“What was she doing?”

“She was watching their home videos.”

“Why?”

“She was probably looking for pictures.”

“Pictures of you?”

“Most likely.”

“Did she find any?”

“Nothing useful, I'm sure.”

“Tuesday night late,” Quinn said. “Where were you on Tuesday?”

Cameron wiped his mouth with the white linen napkin.

“I was in LA. What do you want to know?”

“Is there anything I need to know?”

“I had some good sushi, and the weather was lovely.”

“What did you do in LA?”

“Don't do this to yourself.”

“What did you do?”

“It's not polite to talk about business at the dinner table. My mother was always quite firm about that.”

“What did you do?”

“I killed three men. The bodyguards were in the garden, watching a soap on one of those tiny TV sets.. The dealer was in the house—he didn't have much to say for himself except that he'd shake the hand of the man who put any friend of mine under the ground. I could argue self-defense, but, when it comes down to it, they just needed killing.”

Quinn held his gaze. “What about Erroll Sanders?”

“Erroll. Erroll liked black Formica tables and white shag carpets. Erroll was a preemptive strike, in case he'd developed any misguided sense of loyalty to his boss. I'm sure the world is a darker place now that they're not in it anymore.”

Cameron folded his napkin and put it on the table. He stood up. “Check the windows, and set the alarm. It was good to see you, as always, and thank you for dinner.”

He walked out the front door, and the lock clicked shut behind him. After a few minutes, Quinn heard a distant car start and drive off. It might have been Cameron's, it might not.

The first day of law school they teach you that you never, ever, question your client about guilt or innocence. It would affect your defense, and you might find yourself suborning perjury. Quinn hoped
his client would still be alive come the end of the month; perjury was the least of his concerns.

He took the plates to the sink.

“Nathan?”

Some twenty years earlier, Nathan Quinn's office in the King County Prosecuting Attorney's had been tiny: files were stacked on his desk, and books crammed the shelves. He was a deputy prosecutor in the Criminal Division, and, in spite of appearances, there was a kind of order in the paperwork covering every surface. He had never lost anything—not a file, not a case.

He looked up. John Cameron, eighteen years old, stood by the door. Quinn checked his watch; he had no idea where the morning had gone.

He stood up and reached for the jacket on the back of his chair. “I'm starving. Let's go.”

Every couple of weeks they would have lunch together. Jack would come over to the courthouse, and they would grab a bite nearby. In the past two months the boy's moods had darkened. Quinn knew that to ask a direct question would have been pointless. If Jack wanted to talk about something, he would do so.

They slipped into the corner booth of a deli on Second Avenue, an old-fashioned establishment that had never heard of the ongoing battle against cholesterol. They ordered reubens.

“How's classes?” Quinn asked.

Jack rolled his eyes. He had started at the University of Washington in the fall, and it had not been an immediate success. “I've got the tickets,” he said, and he clinked the ice cubes in his glass.

“You're kidding.”

“Courtside. Dad's guy got them somehow.”

“Jack!”

“I know.” They had been looking forward to the ball game for weeks, unsure if they'd make it.

They devoted themselves for a moment to the plates that had been placed in front of them.

“Are you still on the homicide?” John asked.

Nathan looked up. “Yeah.”

They were about to go to trial against a twenty-one-year-old woman who had shot her boyfriend. She had suffered years of abuse from her parents, left home, fell in with the poorest excuse for a human being ever, and one night, after watching the news with the abusive slob, she had taken his revolver from its drawer and put three bullets into his chest. The neighbors hadn't heard any noises beforehand, and she had admitted they had not fought that evening; the bruises on her arms were turning yellow, and she said she had just had enough.

The public defender had tried to plead the charge down to manslaughter, but, given that her alleged attacker was asleep at the time she shot him, that hadn't really made a dent in the prosecution's case.

“Trial starts in a couple of weeks,” Quinn said.

“Tough case?”

“Yes and no. She shot the guy—nobody questions that. The defense is going to argue that she was provoked by years of abuse; we're going to argue that it wasn't self-defense, that she could have walked right out.”

“But she didn't.”

“She shot him while he was asleep.”

“What's going to happen to her?”

Nathan Quinn wiped his hands on a paper napkin. It wasn't the first time he had ever had this kind of conversation with Jack, about fairness and justice and, from time to time, about the absence of either.

“She's going to do some hard time.”

“Are you going to ask for the death sentence?”

“No. There are mitigating circumstances.”

Around them, the lunchtime clatter continued. Somebody dropped a tray of glasses, and customers whooped and clapped. Cameron seemed oblivious to all of it.

“Under what circumstances would you ask for the death sentence?” Cameron took a bite of his sandwich.

“Why the sudden interest?”

The boy shrugged, but his level gaze stayed on Quinn.

“Well, if you have a homicide with malice, where there was a clear intent to kill or cause great bodily harm. With premeditation, when the person thought about it beforehand. Or if a homicide happened during a dangerous felony, like robbery or arson.”

Or
kidnapping
. The word hung for a moment between them, unsaid.

“What if you didn't have enough to convict?”

“What are we talking about here?”

“What if you didn't even have enough on the woman to charge her, but you knew she'd done it?”

“Then you go back to the drawing board, and you find the evidence you need.”

“Still, sometimes you don't.”

“Sometimes you don't.”

“What would you do then?”

“In this case?”

“Yes.”

Cameron picked up his glass. Quinn wasn't sure what they were talking about, exactly.

“I don't know,” he said, and he meant it. “Sometimes, however hard you work the case, it just doesn't happen.”

“What about eyewitness testimony?”

“In theory?”

“In theory.”

“Without physical evidence?”

“Yes.”

“It would still be very difficult. A good defense attorney would tear the witness apart.”

Cameron nodded.

“But we're the good guys; we wear the white hats, and we put away the guys with the black hats. That's pretty much my job description. You read about the case in the papers?”

“Yes.”

“If you're interested in seeing how things work, you could come to court sometime.”

Cameron smiled a little. “Thank you. It's just that in the papers it looked like there were some reasonable grounds for her to do what she did.”

“
Reasonable grounds?
That's very well put, but here's the thing: she could have walked out. She could have called any of the numbers for the victims of domestic abuse. She didn't have to kill him.”

“Maybe she thought she had to.”

“I think it's a tragedy what happened to her in her life, but it's also a tragedy that a man is dead. One doesn't cancel the other.”

“You believe that, don't you?”

Quinn finished his drink. He had never talked to Jack like he was a kid, even when he was one. “What are we talking about here?”

“What do you call it? A
justifiable homicide
?”

“That's different.”

“Why?”

“In legal terms, a court-ordered execution is a ‘justifiable homicide.' Everything else is murder.”

“A ‘court-ordered' execution.”

“Yes.” Cameron smiled.

“What brought this on?” Quinn asked.

“I don't know.”

“Sure, you do.”

“I don't.” Cameron shrugged.

“Okay.”

As they left the deli, Cameron turned up the collar on his sheepskin coat. The rain was thin at sea level, but it would be snow higher up, a few inches deep over the hard ground.

Fewer than forty-eight hours later, Nathan Quinn would bail him out of a police lockup.