The Gift of the Darkness (8 page)

“They were old friends.”

“Whatever. Money's what brought down Capone.”

“Taxes?”

“Taxes.”

Klein turned as she was leaving. Madison had already picked up the receiver to dial out. The attorney held out her right thumb and index finger a fraction of an inch apart.

“Thin ice,” she said.

“I know,” Madison replied.

Neither of them was thinking about warrants.

Ten minutes later Madison returned to her desk with the printout from the DMV. Her eyes went to the photograph first: as old as the one on the arrest sheet—a serious-looking young man in a sheepskin coat.

There was an address, the same they already had from his drunk-driving charge. How good that was going to be twenty years later, they would soon find out. Apparently John Cameron had owned a series of identical black Ford pickup trucks. Brownie points for loyalty there.

Madison dropped the pages onto Brown's desk—he was on the phone. Before him, the affidavit was almost complete.

The clerk from the IRS called Madison back. By the time they finished talking, she realized she had filled three pages of her notebook.

“Things are a tad more complicated than we thought,” Madison said.

“Did the IRS come through?”

“It sure did. Except that now we have more questions than answers.”

“Go on.”

“Sinclair was Cameron's tax attorney. And quite scrupulous, too. He filed a tax return for him every year since forever.”

“How very proper of him. Where, exactly, is Cameron's income coming from?”

“That's the kicker. Their fathers owned a restaurant together, The Rock, on Alki Beach, and some real estate around it, and they left it to their sons.”

“Left it to Cameron and Sinclair.”

“Nope. To Cameron, Sinclair,
and
Quinn. Their fathers started the restaurant together in the early 1960s. I checked with the State Licensing Board; they hold the license. Somebody runs it for them, but they still own it.”

“And pay taxes on it.”

“Like clockwork. They're going to send us a copy of the file.”

“Well, what do you know.” Brown stood up and picked up the affidavit. “Judge Martin is in chambers now; let's go ruin her day. Where's Quinn?”

“In court all morning.”

As they walked past the desk sergeant downstairs, he motioned Brown with his head, his hand covering the receiver.

“Fred Tully from the
Star
,” he said.

Brown shook his head.

“Sorry, Fred, he's not in the building.” Jenner rolled his eyes. “No, I don't think so.”

“Third time today,” Brown said.

Outside, the sunlight was unsure of itself. A photographer, waiting on the steps for somebody else, recognized Brown and Madison from the recent television footage and snapped them once, the flash brighter than the sun.

Chapter 13

Judge Claire Martin signed the warrant for Sinclair's tax files with a flourish and a look that said,
Don't mess this one up
.

They were waiting for the elevator when Brown stuck his hands deep in the pockets of his raincoat and looked at Madison.

“Something came up at the lab. That's what the call was before. It might be nothing; it might be something. Fellman is checking it out.”

“Please tell me it's not the DNA.”

“It's the ligature from the man's wrists.”

“He had deep cuts and bruising.”

A couple of lawyers were lingering by the water cooler. Brown waited until they walked past, their heels clicking on the tiles.

“That's the problem. The blood and cells on it are not consistent with Sinclair's injuries.”

The elevator arrived, and they stepped in, grateful that they had no company on the ride down.

“In what way?”

“The cuts went deep into muscle tissue, but there's relatively little blood on the ligature. Not enough for the fight Sinclair put up.”

“We found him tightly bound. Hands behind his back.”

“I know. Even so, given the friction, there should have been more wearing of the leather, too.”

They came out of the King County Courthouse on Fourth and James. Fresh drizzle carried the roar of I-5, more like a veil of dampness they breathed through than real rain.

Madison leaned her elbows on the roof of their Ford sedan.

“Are we actually saying that the perp replaced the ligature
after
Sinclair died?”

“I don't know what we're saying yet. But that's what it looks like.”

Madison got into the passenger seat; nobody ever drove Brown around.

“He changed the ligature,” she repeated.

“Lucky for us. If he hadn't, we wouldn't have his DNA.”

“After,” she said, more to herself than to Brown. It was a half-remembered thought, not even a question yet. Somewhere in Madison's mind a small round pebble dropped into a pool.

There was a coffee place on Cherry Street; they pulled up to it and got a few cups to go.

Brown had been watching Madison for weeks: how she had walked into the squad room the very first day, the way she had handled herself at crime scenes. Two nights ago, the kid in the grocery store—Brown knew she had had to decide quickly whether the girl was going to take a shot at him or not. Her judgment had been sound, and they were all still alive and well.

Madison sipped her coffee without any apparent need for conversation. Brown liked that about her. Whatever had happened in the four weeks since she had joined Homicide, it was just a prelude to this: driving in the slow Christmas traffic, their Kevlar vests in the trunk, on their way to John Cameron's house.

They drove north on Fourth Avenue and east on University Street, got stuck like everybody else at the Convention Center, and finally joined I-5. They sped past Lake Union and Capitol Hill, through Eastlake's new commercial developments, and into the university district.

Madison saw nothing they passed. She was back on Blue Ridge, trying to fathom the mind of a man who had thought it necessary to change the ligature on a dead human being, who had dipped his finger into his victim's blood to draw a cross with it.

There was a straight line that connected the victims to the motive and the evidence to the suspect. It was simple enough. However, walking into their bedroom and seeing the slain children between their parents—that was beyond description.

This wasn't just payback; it was vengeance of inhuman proportions. The sins of the fathers visited upon the children, an example to fear and remember for all those who would ever deal with the man.

Madison knew that the address they were going to visit in Laurelhurst was on John Cameron's driver's license and his tax returns. It was the house where his family had moved after he had been kidnapped as a boy and that, years later, he had inherited from his parents.

It was his only legal address. Madison had no doubt in her mind that he did not live there, any more than he actually drove the black pickup truck that was registered to him. But it was
his
house nevertheless, the place where they might pick up the scent. Of course, they didn't have a warrant to enter the premises as yet.

When she was in uniform, Madison had apprehended many suspects climbing out a back window while her partner was knocking on the front door. This was not going to be one of those times.

Laurelhurst was a wealthy neighborhood with well-kept houses and lawns. The Parent-Teacher Association meetings were as wild as it ever got in the community, and that's just how the residents there liked it.

They turned into one of the smaller streets, trees lining both sides. The houses there were not as big or as far from one another. Christmas decorations were discreet, and there were a fair number of cars in the driveways. Not everybody was at work.

Cameron's house stood halfway down the street: wood and brick, a sloped roof that probably concealed an attic with a skylight in the back. There was no car parked in the driveway; Brown pulled up to the curb.

The curtains were drawn, and there was no light from behind the glass panel in the front door. Brown turned off the engine, and for a minute they both sat there, still and quiet. It wasn't that different from her grandparents' house, Madison thought, and in spite of herself she was glad of the weight of the holster on her right hip.

“If we sit here any longer, someone's bound to call the cops on us,” Brown joked, and he got out of the car.

Madison stepped onto the lawn and felt the frosted earth crack slightly under her feet. She inhaled deeply—the air was cold and clean. Thin smoke from some of the neighboring chimneys twisted up into the pale sky. Pretty as a picture. Her fingers brushed the speed-loader on her belt.

They walked up the concrete driveway. The garage was wide enough to accommodate a pickup truck and one other vehicle, if necessary.

They got to the front door and looked at each other—for one crazy second Madison expected it to open. Brown rang the bell, just as if he had been dropping in on any old friend. They waited. No sound or movement at all from inside. After about one minute, Brown rang the bell again. Nothing.

“I'm going to look around,” Madison said. She stepped back and examined the front of the house. There were three windows on the second floor and not a flicker from the cream-colored curtains. On the right side of the house the garage extended out, flanked by red maples. On the left was a six-foot wooden fence with a gate. She took the right side.

Hours before, driving past it, the Sinclairs' place, empty for fewer than a couple of days, had felt desolate. Here, before the arrest, before the
Nostromo
, before all the other unthinkable deeds, John Cameron had come back after a day at school, sat down, and done his homework like any other kid. Madison felt his presence like a trick of the light.

The bushes, about shoulder height and barren, grew quite close to the garage wall. She squeezed by them and stood on tiptoe to look
inside the narrow window—it was safely shut and shaded. Madison kept walking, close to the wall. Her jacket got caught on a branch, which snapped off sharply.

Suddenly, there was a shuffle above her and to the side, behind a maple. Madison froze. The smell hit her, and she knew instantly what it came from.

She stepped forward. The bushes were behind her, and she was standing by the long side of the house. There were no windows there; on the far corner the fence started and carried on till the bottom of a garden. There was about ten feet between the wall and the trees.

The putrid smell was distinct even in the winter chill. Madison saw the wing of the gull behind the tree roots; it shuffled out of sight, and its feathers rustled against dry leaves. She walked around the tree and saw it. The gull squawked. The cat was dead—it must have crawled there after being hit by a car, or maybe it had just been old or sick. She couldn't tell. The gull had been feeding on it for a while—the fur had once been gray and black.

“Damn!” she said, not loud enough for even the bird to hear. She stepped closer, and the gull hopped backward, not yet ready to leave his find.

Madison crouched on her heels and lifted the branches under which the cat had sought refuge. There was a deep cut on one of its hind legs. It was curled up. The gull had done a lot of damage to the soft tissue around the face. Madison picked up a small stick and ran it gently along the side of the neck. No collar.

She picked up a handful of leaves and bits of wood and placed them on top of the small body, covering it up completely. The gull stood by.

Madison straightened up and took a quick step toward the bird, and it flew off.

The fence was tall enough to say “
Go away”
without being too unfriendly toward the neighbors. The Camerons had likely wanted safety and privacy for their boy while he was recovering from the ordeal on the Hoh River Trail.

Madison looked left and right: nobody around and completely out of sight from the street. She gripped the top of the fence with both hands and kicked up, straightening her arms at the same time. She leaned forward for balance, half of her over the fence, her hips taking her weight against the wood.

The backyard was large, a patio behind a sunroom, a brick barbecue to the side. It was bare, the grass burned by the frost. Dry leaves carried by the wind had come to rest against the glass door—nobody had pushed it open for some time.

Sometimes places carry a kind of memory of what happened within their walls: this house seemed merely a blank space.

The gull flew above her and perched on the roof, keeping an eye on Madison. She let go and hit the ground easily on the other side of the fence.

“See ya,” she whispered to the gull, and she walked back to the front of the house.

Brown was coming out at the same time from the opposite corner.

“Nothing?” he asked.

“Nope,” she said.

“May I help you?” The voice came from behind them. Brown and Madison swung around quickly.

It was a man in his seventies, with short white hair and a nice red Gore-Tex jacket, a bag of groceries in one arm. The front door of the house across the street was open, and a woman with a matching jacket was carrying in more shopping bags.

“Hello,” Madison said. “We're from the Seattle Police Department.” They showed their badges.

“Clyde Phillips.” The man smiled. “I'm a neighbor. If you're looking for Jack, he's not at home.”

“Mr. Cameron,” Brown said.

“Yes. He's out of town on business. Is it about the burglaries on Surber Drive?”

“No, it's a personal matter. Do you have a couple of minutes?”

“Sure.” He put the bag on the ground by his feet. He was in good shape for his age; his walking boots looked as if he had put some miles on them.

“What, exactly, do you need with Jack?” Although Brown was clearly the senior officer, Clyde Phillips had turned very slightly toward Madison. “Is everything all right?”

She picked up the ball. “We need to talk to him very urgently. Do you know where he is or when he's coming back?”

“And you are . . . ?”

She gave him a reassuring smile. “Detective Sergeant Brown and Detective Madison, Seattle Homicide.”

Phillips moved his head back an inch. Homicide was not a polite word in Laurelhurst.

“Oh,” he said, and then it registered. “Is it about the family in Three Oaks?”

The media were still feasting on it; the same footage was being played over and over again.

“Yes, they were acquaintances of Mr. Cameron's. That's why it's important that we talk to him as soon as possible.”

“Is Jack in some kind of danger?”

Jack.

What would be most helpful? Telling the man that they suspected his neighbor of at least four brutal murders? Would that get them his cooperation?

“He might be in danger; we don't know yet.”

Score one for the pants-on-fire team.

“He comes and goes, but . . . I tell you what. I have a telephone number for a friend of his in case of emergency, for the house. He would know where Jack is. Let me get it for you.”

He came back with a piece of paper. His writing was neat.

“I hope this helps. I hope Jack is going to be all right.”

“I'm sure he will be.”

“Please tell him we send him our best wishes.”

“I will as soon as I see him.” Madison shook his hand, feeling like a thief. “Thank you.”

She turned and started toward the car. Brown was already inside, talking on the radio. She looked at the piece of paper. In red ink and well-spaced letters was Nathan Quinn's work number.

They wove in and out of the traffic, driving south on I-5.

“So, say the house is on fire: Phillips's second call would be to Nathan Quinn,” Brown said.

“Yes.”

“And Quinn knows how to reach Cameron.”

“Yes.” Madison drummed her fingers on the dashboard. “Is Quinn dirty? Has there ever been any talk?”

“It would be easier if he was, wouldn't it? He's a pain in the neck, but as far as I know, he's clean.”

“By the way, I ran a check on both the senior Sinclairs. Neither of them has ever had any arrests.” Madison flipped through the notes she had taken in the library about the Hoh River kidnappings. “In one of the papers from the library, last night, there was a picture of David Quinn's memorial service. The Sinclairs were there.”

“That case was a disaster,” he said. “There were no leads. No ransom demands. The boys wouldn't or couldn't talk about it. There was absolutely nothing to go on. They never even recovered the third boy's body. A total mess.”

“I remember. A lot of parents feared it could be the start of a wave of kidnappings.”