The Gift of the Darkness (38 page)

“Relatively speaking.”

“That's all I have for you today, I'm afraid.”

“I'll see you there.”

Madison flew north on 509. She was driving on automatic pilot, barely aware of the commuter traffic. Since the last time she had spoken to Fynn, she had deliberately warned their prime suspect that a couple of dozen armed officers were about to pour onto his boat. As it happened, Cameron had already left by then, and Rosario could swear to it, but her betrayal remained.

In the light of day, it was difficult to understand how she had ever thought she was doing the right thing, and yet not even twenty-four hours later they might be withdrawing Cameron's arrest warrant and
issuing one for Harry Salinger. How would she be feeling if police officers had lost their lives trying to catch a snake, only to set him free in the morning?

She wished she could talk about it with Brown. When it came down to it, it was pretty simple: no officer would ever serve next to her again if they knew what she had done, her boss would gladly hand her over to the Office of Professional Responsibility, and her future in the department would be measured in nanoseconds. Well, Madison thought, that was the cost of doing business, and she almost missed her turn off the highway.

The door of Lieutenant Fynn's office was ajar, and Madison had managed to get to it without stopping to chat with anybody on the floor. She had heard Spencer and Dunne's voices from the rec room, and, a small blessing, Kelly was nowhere to be seen. She knocked and waited.

“Come in.”

Fynn was seated at his desk—he looked like three hours on the corner sofa and yesterday's suit. He had been watching a monitor on a steel trolley that had been wheeled into the corner. It was black-and-white, and he had paused it.

“I was about to call you,” he said without small talk. “Take a look at this.” He pressed Play.

“What is it?”

“Just watch.”

As far as Madison could make out, it was CCTV: some kind of reception desk, a woman sitting behind it answering the phone, talking briefly. She put down the receiver and took a sip from a mug on the desk.

“What am I looking at?”

“Wait.”

Two men came in from outside at the same time. The first signed a visitors' book and exited the frame; the other handed the woman an envelope and turned to leave, giving the camera one good shot of his face. Fynn paused the video.

“Do you know him?”

The definition was poor, but Madison nodded. “Where was this taken?” she asked.

“Who is he?” Fynn asked in turn.

“His name is Harry Salinger,” she said.

Fynn sat back in his chair.

“It's CCTV from the reception desk of the
Washington Star
. OPR has been after the leak to the reporter from the beginning. First they thought it was a cop, but then they managed to squeeze out of Fred Tully how he got the details of the crime scene. The little turd was sent a picture—turns out it was hand-delivered. OPR thought we might like to know who delivered it.” Fynn threw across his desk a photograph in a transparent plastic folder. “We had this enhanced. Check the time on the bedside clock.”

Madison's eyes swept over the slain bodies. The digital clock read 2:15: the picture must have been taken minutes after James Sinclair had died. Madison found a chair and sat down.

“Start from the beginning,” Fynn said, and she did.

Twenty minutes later he beckoned Spencer and Dunne into the office. Madison felt their eyes on her as they came in. Fynn closed the door behind them.

The timeline had started with Salinger's rejection from the Police Academy; two days after that he was arrested for assault and ultimately convicted. While he was in prison, an inmate was murdered and posed exactly as the Sinclairs had been. On his release on parole he had started working at The Rock, where he had come into contact with John Cameron, James Sinclair, and Nathan Quinn. He stayed there long enough to finish his probation, then resigned. Days before the Sinclairs' murder he rented a Ford pickup identical to Cameron's, using the alias Peter Welsh.

Once the murders had been discovered, he made sure that the
Washington Star
had a picture of the crime scene and enough on John Cameron to guarantee a guilty verdict. Those were undisputed facts.

“What about crime-scene evidence?” Spencer asked.

“He got what he needed when he was working in the restaurant: a glass with Cameron's prints and the hairs he put in the ligature knot around Sinclair's wrists.”

“This is the man who shot Brown?” Dunne said.

“Yes.”

“You're positive?”

“I don't know why or what he wants, but I know it was him.”

“The weapon that shot Brown is the same that shot the Sinclairs. That's enough to pick him up.”

“Klein is on her way.”

“What about
Thirteen Days
?”

“We don't have much time. Today's Monday. Thirteen days takes us to Friday.” Fynn turned to Madison. “Find out if the date means something special to Salinger—an anniversary, a funeral, anything that might help us anticipate what he's got planned.”

Spencer and Dunne were quiet; it was a massive change of perspective to adjust to, and there were questions that only time would answer.

“First, I want a picture of Salinger distributed around the hospital, and I want the officers guarding Brown to tape it to the inside of their eyelids,” Fynn said.

“What about Erroll Sanders?” Spencer asked Madison.

“Cameron killed Sanders.”

“Revenge for the Sinclairs?”

“Probably he just wanted to. Anything good from Rosario?”

“Nothing useful. He didn't see anything, and the Crime Scene Unit drew a blank.”

“Something else,” Fynn said. “Cameron knows, and we can expect he is
actively
looking for Salinger.”

Dunne rolled his eyes. “How do you know he knows?” he asked Madison.

“Nathan Quinn told me.”

“You've been in contact with Quinn?”

“Yes. It was his investigator who came up with the truck lead, and Quinn gave me the restaurant records that got us Salinger's name.”

Fynn watched Madison closely. “That would have been last night?” he said.

“Yes.”

“How did Cameron find out?”

“He worked it out the same way I had.”

“Quinn didn't tell him?”

“No, I don't think he did.”

Fynn stood up. “All right, I want that car turned inside out. Our man is still in the city: he's got to be living, sleeping, shopping, putting gas in his car. He doesn't know we're looking for him, and I'm not planning to tell him: we're still after Cameron, and his plan is ticking on beautifully. Klein can talk to Quinn, but nobody is going to talk to the press.”

Spencer and Dunne left to get the ball rolling.

“I feel like I've been using somebody else's toothbrush,” Dunne muttered to himself.

Salinger was still frozen on the screen.

“Madison,” Fynn said.

“Sir.”

“Officially, you are still on medical leave; I can't have you on the street with that hand. You got it this far with forensics, and you can follow up anything Sorensen finds out. That's as far as it goes. And you're going to have to talk to a counselor.”

“About what?”

“The ambush, Brown's shooting.”

“Can that wait a few days?”

“The sooner, the better.”

Madison nodded.

“You got Quinn to help you without contesting the warrant,” he said. “That was good work.”

Madison didn't say anything; she knew that there was more to come.

“He did what was best for his client, and he would have dropped you in the glue without a second thought,” he continued.

“I'm sure he would have.”

“You don't need to explain. I put you in a corner, and you did what you had to. By the way—” Fynn took a printed sheet out of a folder, crumpled it up, and threw it into his wastebasket.

“That was the report on your behavioral
difficulties
after the ambush.”

It meant there would be nothing on her record about endangering the investigation; even better, there would be no compulsory psych evaluation.

“Now I need to call the Chief and spread the joy,” Fynn said.

Madison left him to his work. In the two hours that followed, she saw the news spread through the precinct, making the horror of the crime worse than anybody thought possible and the reality of the investigation a nightmare. The notion that there was a man out there who had baited John Cameron, ambushed two of their own, and was conceivably biding his time before taking somebody else's life apart was almost unbearable. She was at her desk when Sarah Klein found her.

“Judge Martin wants everyone in her chambers when she signs Salinger's arrest warrant,” she said.

Madison looked up. “Everyone?”

“Everyone.”

“Why?”

“Because she can.”

Chapter 37

The silence in Judge Martin's chambers pushed against the small group gathered there. Spencer and Dunne were next to each other at the back, Lieutenant Fynn and Sarah Klein in front and by the desk. Madison stood to one side; in her pocket her hand was tight around her cell phone, willing Sorensen to call back with the result of the DNA test. They all waited on the judge as she read through the warrant's application, her fountain pen already in hand.

Somewhere to Madison's left, away from the others, Nathan Quinn had watched them file in together, his face betraying no emotion as the judge prepared to lift the warrant for John Cameron's arrest and issue one for Salinger's. Madison had felt a single sting of guilt remembering their exchange earlier that day; she had swiftly suppressed it and reminded herself that the man had, maybe even there in his Italian leather briefcase, the means to yank her out of the only place she had ever wanted to be, should he wish to, now that she was no longer the only other person on the face of the planet believing in his client's innocence. Quinn seemed entirely unaware of her presence or anybody else's.

“A lesser man might indulge in a small amount of gloating, Nathan,” Judge Martin said as she signed the warrant, “considering
that last Thursday we were all ready to throw your attorney-client privilege to the dogs.”

“With what I had, I'd do the same today, Your Honor,” Sarah Klein interjected.

“With what you had, you'd have the same results, Miss Klein,” the judge replied. “Lieutenant, what are the chances of locating Mr. Salinger with more success than you had with Mr. Cameron?”

“We have just started looking, Your Honor. His last known address has been vacant since he went to jail; after his probation was done, he went to ground. He has no family and no ties to the city. We don't even know for sure that he's still in Washington State.”

“He's still here,” Nathan Quinn said. “Someone tipped you off about the boat. It wasn't the Kitsap County Tourist Board.”

“It was an anonymous tip on the hotline from a public phone in Poulsbo Harbor,” Fynn continued. “The area is not covered by any CCTV. We have local officers canvassing the shops, but I'm not holding my breath. He has had a lot of time to set this up; he's not going to get sloppy now.”

“What's our best chance?” Judge Martin replaced the cap on the fountain pen.

“Blanket coverage. We put Salinger's face everywhere from Seattle to the Florida Keys. We build a profile, and we keep looking until we find him. This thing is hours old—we still barely know the man.”

“That should make you happy, Nathan. Your client is now only the second most wanted.”

Quinn did not reply.

“Are we done here?” Judge Martin extended the warrant for Salinger's arrest to Fynn.

Madison's cell started vibrating, and she took the call.

“Yes. Thank you. We are there right now.” Madison flipped her phone shut. “The small amount of coagulated blood found on the Sinclair crime scene matches the basic markers of DNA we have for Salinger. He was there. He shot them, and he shot Brown with the same .22.”

It was a start. The group moved to leave.

“Detective Madison, Nathan, a word if you please.” The judge waited until they were alone. “I am not entirely sure that I understand the sequence of events that brought Harry Salinger's name to our attention, but my gut is telling me that there were a number of conversations and actions that your superiors were not in any way aware of, Detective. And you, Nathan, have done everything in your power to aid that line of inquiry. Now, I'm all for this—shall we call it—strained and unwanted cooperation if it leads to the arrest of a wanted felon. However, if anything you do on my watch forces me to throw out the prosecution's case because
you
have a partner in ICU and
you
have a client with blood on his hands, were I in your place, I'd just pack up and move to another state—better still, make it the other side of the country.”

Judge Martin slipped on her navy coat and tied a silk scarf around her neck, the light blue pattern doing nothing to soften the steel in her voice. “That's all. Have a lovely evening.”

Alice Madison and Nathan Quinn left the chambers. They managed the ride down in the elevator without exchanging a word, and it was only as they reached the main entrance that Madison turned to Quinn.

“Am I right in assuming that Cameron has already asked you to leave the city for a while?”

“He might have.”

“It's good advice. Salinger's face will be everywhere in a matter of hours. He still wants to get to Cameron, and you're close enough to him to be in as much danger as the Sinclairs were. The
Thirteen Days
thing might get shortened to thirteen hours if he feels hounded and under pressure. And, believe me, he will feel hounded and under pressure.”

“You don't know what he wants.”

“He wants to destroy Cameron, and he almost succeeded.”

Nathan Quinn thought of the notes on the heavy cream paper.
82885.

“I wish it were that simple,” he replied. “I wasn't the one he went after last week. You are as much of a target as I am.”

“I am alive because he let me be. I don't say this lightly—he could have had us both if that was what he wanted. He's not going to come after me again, whatever his reasons and his plans. You are the only person on the planet who is seemingly able to contact John Cameron, and he is the only one who might have any idea why any of this is happening. I need to talk to him, and I need you to tell him that.”

There were shadows under Quinn's eyes, and under the harsh public-building lighting Madison could see just how pale he was.

“You are very frank, Detective. Your thoughts seem to just flow out without much consideration for circumstance or propriety. If I put you in a room with John Cameron, both of you curiously unencumbered by the slightest regard for consequence, what are the chances that you will say something, he will say something, and fifteen other open cases from here to LA will suddenly come into play? How many people will read every word of your report, pore over the details, look for admissions and confessions and every scrap of information they can scavenge? And you, won't you be looking for a little of that currency yourself?”

“There will be no report. I'll take notes, and they will be for me alone. It will be in a place of your choice, and you can check that I will not be wearing a wire. This is what I'm interested in—Salinger and the Sinclairs' murder and my partner's shooting. The rest is for another day. I'm not saying I will not investigate other cases to the best of my abilities and hunt Cameron down with everything I have, should it come to that. But, right now, this is what I have—Salinger and the Sinclairs and my partner. The rest is not my business, not today.”

“Do you know what you're asking me?”

“I'm asking you to trust me, while we are doing this in the name of people you cared for and in the name of a man I would gladly trade places with.”

Quinn's eyes glittered with something akin to humor—Madison didn't know him well enough to be sure.

“How much is it costing you to ask me for this, this tiny little thing, given the recent history of our acquaintance?”

“More than you'll ever know,” Madison admitted. The time to be coy had come and gone.

“I can believe that.”

“We're on the clock, and this has to happen as soon as possible.”

“And here you are, asking me to barter the future of my client and put my trust in someone whose career I could put a final stop to with one phone call—someone who despises what I do and how I do it.”

Madison had no answer to that; she held his burning gaze for as long as he held hers. The things she had said would not be taken back, and an apology would be tacky and insincere. On the other hand, what he'd do with the tape was not something she could let herself think about too much.

“I would still make the call, Quinn, even knowing what I know now. Do with it what you like.”

Madison had no doubt she was being measured by parameters she couldn't possibly fathom, and that might prove to be a good thing in the long run. She was aware of others walking around them, footsteps on the marble floors and voices and snatches of conversations. Still, Quinn held her eyes.

“You gave me George Pathune. You knew I would do what I had to do. Let me finish this,” she said.

“I'll think about it.”

“No report, no wire, and you can chaperone the hell out of the meeting.”

“I'd expect nothing less.”

“Remember the thirteen days. Definitively not more, probably much less.”

He looked away then, and the icy draft from the open doors suddenly found her.

“I'll think about it,” he said again.

Quinn walked out into the early evening, his coat whipping around him. Madison felt winded, like after a particularly hard run. She hoped she had done enough, said enough, tried hard enough. There was no way to predict what Quinn would do, and she had to prepare herself to go forward without the benefit of an audience with
his precious client. She felt coarse, like a tool too blunt to do a piece of work that required a subtle edge and a nimble hand.

Fuck it
, she thought. The shortest prayer in the world indeed. Madison screwed up her eyes as she walked outside and into the bitter wind.

Lieutenant Fynn beckoned Madison into his office as she walked into the detectives' room. He closed the door and shrugged on his jacket.

“I'm on my way to the press conference. Joy. What did the judge want with you and Quinn?”

“She was wondering why Quinn hadn't contested the warrant straightaway. She thought there might have been some quid pro quo between us and wanted to make sure we knew that if she had to throw out the prosecution's case against Salinger—because of something I did for Brown or Cameron or the Sinclairs—she'd have our skin. The message was direct and to the point.”

“You might want to have it tattooed on the palm of your hand and read it every hour on the hour.”

“I think I got it, sir.”

“Good. The ME called, but I just don't have time to get back to him. Check in with Dr. Fellman, will you?”

Fynn was already halfway out of the door.

“Lieutenant, I asked Quinn to arrange a meeting with Cameron. He might know something, anything, that could help.”

“What did he say?”

“He said he'd think about it.”

“What do
you
say?”

“I honestly don't know. Quinn is . . .” Madison struggled to find the thread of that image.“He's unpredictable. He hates the idea of the meeting, but he might see the point of it if it gets Salinger off the street before he gets to his client, or vice versa.”

“Why would Cameron have any interest in talking to you about anything?”

“I went a few rounds with Salinger. Cameron will want to know about that.”

Fynn considered it for a moment. “You don't really think it's going to happen, do you?”

“No way. Hell freezing over and all that,” Madison replied. “I'll let you know about Fellman.”

At her desk, Madison looked at Brown's empty chair and neat work surface for a few minutes as she gathered herself. She had no ego about this: if the meeting was going to happen, it should have been Brown who would meet John Cameron. He had years in Homicide; she had five weeks. She'd check in with Fellman and then call Fred Kamen in Quantico: in the extremely unlikely event that Quinn agreed to it, and if, even more unlikely, Cameron agreed to meet someone who had chased him through French doors, she should be as ready as possible.
A good point: how do you prepare to meet an alleged murderer?
She dialed the ME's number.
Speak softly and carry a big instrument designed to measure unobserved constructs.
Psych/Criminology student humor.

“I need to show you something. What's your e-mail address?” Dr. Fellman sounded as if he'd had a very long day. Madison gave him the address.

“I need to ask you,” he continued, “are you at your desk, and is it private? No members of the public coming and going behind you?”

“It's very private, Doctor. We set up here for that reason.” Something cold started to coil itself around Madison's insides. “Why do you ask?”

“The trooper who found the second body lost his breakfast at the scene. I have seen you at autopsies before, but this is not for anybody to walk in on unprepared.”

“All right.”

“I'm sending you two sets of pictures. I'll take you through them as you open the files.”

“Got them.” Madison's hand hovered for less than a second over the key, a fresh new hell about to unfold. She pressed the key and opened the file.

She sat back in her chair and blinked once, slowly.

“What—” Her voice caught. “What am I looking at, Doctor?”
Please don't say it's a human being.

“Unidentified set of human remains. The first of two. Both found in Pierce County in the last three weeks.”

Madison gulped down a sip from a bottle of water in her bag. It was lukewarm.

“Is it an animal attack?”

“We wish. What do you see?”

“Massive tissue damage, deep cuts all over the body, especially the chest. Blood loss would have been fatal, and internal organs would have been affected, too.”

“That's the least damaged of the bodies. Open the other file.”

Madison did. When she hadn't spoken for a while, Fellman's voice came back as if from a great distance.

“Detective.?”

“I'm here.”

“You're looking at the second set of unidentified human remains. Actually, this John Doe was found first, but he died after the other. Both men were killed in the last five weeks, give or take a few days; they were left outdoors, and if it had been summer, the injuries would have been almost impossible to read due to postmortem insect activity. The cold weather worked in our favor for once.”