The Gift of the Darkness (31 page)

He didn't think about his family or his friends; he didn't even think about David. He focused on the street ahead, the thin snow, which
wouldn't last the night, the cars in the distance on Eastlake Avenue, something small scurrying across the alley behind him.

Cameron heard Gilman before he saw him. The man appeared around the corner, and Cameron pulled down his black ski mask. He let Gilman reach the door with the peeling red paint, saw him pull out the key from his pocket. He covered the distance between them in seconds, the sand-filled sap already in his right hand. He hit Gilman once hard on the back of the head, and the man fell heavily without a sound. Cameron stood over him, breathing fast inside the wool, and looked around. Nobody and no one. He had to be quick.
Be quick or be dead.

He rolled Gilman onto his front and tied his wrists firmly with a length of plastic rope. He tied his feet in the same way, fast and careful, his hands working in the thin leather gloves. From his pocket he took out a black plastic bag, fitted it over Gilman's head, and tied it loosely around his neck. The last thing he wanted was for the guy to choke right there.

Cameron looked up. Nobody. He backed the car out of the alley and, close to Gilman, popped the trunk open and grabbed the man under the arms. He lifted him like a firefighter across his back and slid him in, made sure hands and feet were well inside the trunk, and then shut it gently. He scanned the street, pavements, windows. It was all clear. John Cameron got into the car and drove off, at the legal speed limit, out of the city and toward Mount Rainier National Park.

Chapter 31

“Wake up.”

Timothy Gilman opened his eyes. He was sitting with his legs straight out in front of him and his back resting against a tree. His hands had been tied and rested on his belly. He was disoriented, and his head was killing him. He tried clumsily to get his legs under him and get up.

“Don't do that.”

Around his neck, something tightened slightly, then released. He couldn't have stood anyway; he flopped back down.

“What is this?” he mumbled.

“Are you thirsty?”

“What?”

“There's a bottle of water by your side.”

His mouth was dry, and he was thirsty enough to risk it. He found it, unscrewed the top, and drank deeply. Maybe that would buy him a little time to understand just what the hell was going on. He took another small sip and another after that. He looked around, his eyes narrowing in the effort to get everything into focus.

The only light came from the beams of a car parked some few yards away. They cut through the clearing and disappeared into the
firs. About ten feet in front of him, a man sat on his heels, slim build, a black ski mask covering his face. A mask was good, Gilman thought. It meant the guy didn't want to be recognized, which meant he was planning to let him go at some point, which was going to be a big mistake.

A length of the same rope he had been bound with was coiled around the man's left hand. Gilman followed it. It went straight up into the tree he was leaning against, wrapped itself once around a heavy branch, and came down to end with a noose around his own neck. Enough slack to let him turn his head but tight enough not to let him slip out.

His eyes went back to the man crouching. He looked fairly slight; still, with all his weight behind it, the bastard might just be able to hang him sitting down.

His throat was scratchy, and his voice came out in a low rasp. “You're dead,” Gilman said.

John Cameron stood up, took the slack in the rope, and wrapped it slowly around his forearm. His heart was punching its way out of his chest, and his breathing inside the mask was faster than he would have liked, but there they were now, the two of them, and the voice that came from him was hardly his own.

“I don't think so. Not tonight,” he said.

“Is this a joke?”

“No, it's not.”

“'Cause I'm freezing my butt.” Gilman shifted on the ground. “And I'm just about ready to break your neck, if you don't tell me what's going on.”

John Cameron had rehearsed this moment so many times in his mind, he knew the words by heart—what he would say, what he would do. Yet as he stood in front of Gilman, holding his life at the end of a rope, everything felt wrong and pointless. He opened his mouth, and nothing came out. He was suffocating inside that mask.

“What do you want?” Gilman demanded.

His left hand holding the rope firmly, John Cameron took the ski mask off with his right and put it in the pocket of his jacket.

Gilman leaned forward to get a better look. “What the—”

Feeding the slack as he moved, Cameron crouched again so their eyes would be level, and he waited for Gilman's thoughts to come together.

“You're the kid from the bar.” Gilman was incredulous. He was being held hostage by a boy. He got his legs under him and started to get up.

“Sit.” Cameron gave the rope a sharp yank, and Gilman fell back down. He stared at the slight figure almost within reach. “Are you insane?” he rasped.

“My name is John Cameron.”

“I don't give a shit what your name is. Are you out of your mind?”

“Possibly. But not in any way that matters right now.” Maybe he had been crazy to take the mask off, but it felt so much better. “My name is John Cameron,” he said again. “I have been looking for you for a very long time.”

Gilman was more stunned than scared: the boy's name sounded familiar, but it still meant nothing to him. His voice cut the air like a blade. “What do you want?”

“I want to know who paid you to kidnap us. I want to know what happened to David.”

Gilman blinked. “What?”

Cameron took off his glove, stuffed it into his pocket, looked at his right hand casually, and flexed his fingers. There was enough light for Gilman to see.

“I want to know who paid you to kidnap us. I want to know what happened to David.”

The change came slowly over Gilman's face. He sat back against the tree, his eyes hard and his breath coming out white and heavy. The rope around his wrists was pulled tight, and his hands closed into fists. He remembered.

“I'm going to take you apart,” he whispered.

“You tried once,” Cameron said quietly. The old fear was nipping at his heels, but there was such an unexpected relief in finally meeting the man face-to-face, each knowing the other. “Tell me about David.”

“And then what?”

“And then I'll let you go.”

The man smiled. “I don't think so. You didn't bring me out here for conversation.”

“If I had wanted to hurt you, I could have done it a hundred times, those nights you came home from the bar alone. Like tonight. If I wanted you dead, you would be dead.” The words felt odd in his mouth. Cameron realized he wasn't lying.

“How did you find me?”

“By chance. I'd been in the bar a few times, and one night I heard your voice.”

“Brought back memories, I guess. By the way, how's the hand?”

“Pretty good. What happened to David?”

The man shook his head. “The kid was dead by the time we cut him loose.”

Cameron went cold. He didn't know whether it was the man's words or the night pressing in. “His name was David Quinn.”

“Whatever,” Gilman said. “You're going to have to untie me if you want to know where we buried him. Wouldn't you want to know?” He held out his wrists.

“Sure,” Cameron said, and he did not move.

“It was an accident—you must realize that. He was sick. It wasn't our fault.”

“You could have helped him.”

“How do you know we didn't try? You were blindfolded.”

Cameron wound the rope around his arm once more and tightened the grip in his hand.

“Do you want to know who paid us? I can tell you. I can take you right to them.” Gilman turned his head left and right. “But you have to take this thing off my neck first.”

A beat of silence. Nothing stirred around them.

“Sure,” Cameron said softly.

“Sure,” Gilman replied. He started to get up. Cameron let him get halfway up and then suddenly yanked on the rope with two hands and almost all his weight. Gilman gasped, trying to grab at it.

“Stay,” Cameron hissed at him.

Gilman slumped back, the noose still taut, his head bent a little sideways, his feet fighting to find the ground.

“Where's David?”

“Nowhere you can find him.”

Cameron pulled the rope tighter. “Where is he?”

Gilman stood on tiptoe. He had only so much breath left in his lungs.

“In the water. We put him in the water.”

“Where?”

“Does it matter?”

Cameron dug his heels in the ground and pulled.

“In the Hoh. We dropped him in the river.”

“Who paid you?”

“I don't know.”

“Don't lie to me.”

“It was a cash order. We never met the client.”

There was a rush through Cameron's blood. He could have hung on to the man till they were both dead, but anything out of the man's mouth was going to be a lie. He had to force his aching arms to move; he gave Gilman some slack, and they both tried to catch their breath.

Gilman looked at Cameron. The boy had more nerve than he'd thought, but he was still just that, a kid. Five years older maybe, but still a kid. Gilman bent double and started coughing hard, as if he couldn't breathe. The irony of it, Cameron thought, and gave him some slack; Gilman bent even lower, measuring the distance between them out of the corner of his eye. Twelve feet.

The boy wasn't armed—there was nothing in his hands. If he had a gun or a knife in his pocket, he would have to reach for it. In his coughing fit Gilman stumbled forward and felt the kid feeding him a little rope. The boy wasn't a killer—maybe he wished he was, but he wasn't, and even with his hands tied, by the time he was done with him, he'd wish he was dead anyway. Ten feet.

John Cameron stood his ground. The rope was slowly coming unwound from his arm. He knew Gilman was getting close, but he wasn't going to pull it while the man was choking all by himself.

“Get back,” he said.

Gilman knew that the farther he got from the tree, the harder it would be for Cameron to yank him back to it. He kept his head down, coughing and inching forward, and raised his hand as if to excuse himself. Cameron took one step back and still fed him the slack. Jesus, the kid was dumb.

Gilman looked up and saw Cameron take another step. Now he was holding the end of the rope in his hand; he would need more than that to stop him.

Now
.

Gilman straightened up, grabbed the noose with his hands, and went forward. John Cameron opened his hand, and the rope flew away. Their eyes met and locked; the boy didn't flinch. Suddenly released, Gilman surged on with a growl. “You're dead.” His voice thick with every ugly memory in Cameron's heart.

The boy moved back as the man lunged forward and the earth gave way: Gilman's foot landed on the thin snow and a layer of leaves and branches, and he felt the void opening under him, but he could not stop himself—he was falling into it, crashing through the slight cover, his feet kicking out for support and his hands scrabbling for a grip. He howled and fell six feet into the hole and screamed when the spikes went clear through his chest and legs. After that, a heavy silence—the kind Cameron had heard only once before in his life.

His legs shaking, John Cameron went back to the car. From the backseat he took a flashlight. He stood over the edge of the hole and flicked it on. Gilman was facedown, completely still. There was very little blood. He ran the beam across the body. He must have died instantly.

John Cameron braced himself for a reaction, of horror, of guilt, but nothing came. As the punch of adrenaline went away, he was calm, and his hands barely shook. He didn't know what he should feel as he stood by the pit that had taken him seven days to dig, almost clawing it out of the hard earth. Yes, he would have been glad to see Gilman fall all the way down into hell. In his heart, if he dared look deeply enough, Cameron hoped he would find a sense of peace, but
maybe that would come later. For now it was done; it was over. Gilman was dead.

As he started to collect branches and greenery to fill as much of the hole as possible, Cameron wondered whether it was a good thing that he had enjoyed that moment, as Gilman was about to fall, quite so much. He covered the body and worked hard with a shovel to put the earth back where it had come from. Timothy Gilman's body had a grave—it was more than David Quinn ever had. The work kept him warm while all around him the snow fell lightly.

Driving back to the city, he stopped by a liquor store and used his fake ID, and by the next dawn, Nathan Quinn would bail him out of a police lockup.

Chapter 32

Harry Salinger trails a finger over his rib cage, following the dark line of the bruise that marks his meeting with Detective Alice Madison on Friday night. He stands bare-chested, mesmerized by the red and purple, in front of a full-size mirror in his bedroom, a Spartan room almost devoid of color.

There it is, the point of contact—he can almost feel her anger radiating out from it. It is fierce, which makes sense to him, because the letter f is purple, just like his bruise. The thing is, he is counting on her anger, and, as he presses lightly on a rib, he flinches at the sharpness of the pain. A little of her spirit has passed into him during the fight; he can feel their connection, and he welcomes it. In her house in Three Oaks, she might be looking at the marks he has left on her, too. She would see them clearly, yet she would miss their meaning.

Harry stretches his arms out to his sides, and the light catches the long, thin scars etched all over his chest and back. Prison scars—dozens of jagged lines made with whatever was at hand as someone held him down. The scars remind him of where he came from and where he's going like his own personal map of hell. He remembers each cut and who gave it to him. His sallow skin will not let him forget even one day of those forty-eight months.

Salinger puts on a clean white shirt and returns to the basement. On the wall, he has taped enlargements of the photographs he gave to Fred Tully at the
Star
. They had gotten the ball rolling on Cameron in the media, yet more than that, he thought they were really good shots, and he was quite proud of them. Especially the black-and-white film, where James Sinclair was still alive and struggling. They might not win any prizes, but he enjoyed looking at them. On the worktop, he has placed the .22 that he used to shoot Anne Sinclair, her children, and Detective Kevin Brown. An Anglepoise lamp is pointed at it, and the metal sings in the light. Salinger has spent a long time polishing it today, delighted by the memories of the muzzle flashes.

He shifts his chair so that he can see the object in the corner of the basement. It has traveled out of his mind and into the sketches on the wall, and now, unbelievable as it is, it sits there. The glass shards on the metal bars catch the light, but it is the steel knife blades that give the cage its very reason for being. Salinger is grateful: he'd expected it to fulfill his purpose, but never in a million years would he have imagined it would be so beautiful.

He turns on one of the monitors and presses the Play button on the remote: out of the evening darkness Alice Madison's windows are bright, the front door opens, and the zoom kicks in, framing three people in the doorway. Madison's cut above the eye and the splint on her arm are clearly visible, and unconsciously Salinger rubs the side where she hit him. Madison says good-bye to the woman and hugs the child tightly. He pauses the video. Madison is hugging the boy: it tells Salinger all he needs to know.