The Gift of the Darkness (9 page)

“No.” Brown tapped the steering wheel. “It wasn't about that. It was personal to those three boys and their families. Except, of course, nobody was saying diddly-squat to us. Also, we didn't have the forensics we have today. The crime scene was no good to anybody.”

“Quinn is Jewish,” Madison said after a pause. “The custom is to hold the funeral as soon as possible after a death.”

The flat gray waters of Lake Union were a blur past Madison's eyes.

“They buried some of the earth from the place where they think he died,” she said.

“Hell.”

Madison didn't know whether Brown meant it as a comment or a state of mind, but it didn't matter; it fit too well one way or the other.

“The thing with Quinn,” he said, “either he doesn't know what Cameron has been up to all these years, which is unlikely, or he does know and is involved.”

“There's another possibility. He does know, and he's not involved.”

“He's an attorney, an officer of the court. Knowledge of a criminal act implies involvement.”

“Cameron doesn't have any known associates. He's never had a crew. He's never had
people
.”

“A smart man.” Brown put his foot down hard on the gas. “It's time for Mr. Quinn to make an in-case-of-emergency phone call.”

The first drops of rain hit the windshield as they flew back toward Elliott Bay and downtown Seattle, surrounded by water and defined by it. Cameron's house was on fire.

Chapter 14

Brown and Madison once again stood in the offices of Quinn, Locke & Associates, waiting to meet with Nathan Quinn. Paralegals were once again rushing around, envelopes were being delivered by couriers, and expensive art still hung on the walls. And yet nothing was the same, nor would it ever be. Flowers had replaced the Christmas decorations; every client and every business in the building had sent condolence bouquets. There were looks when the detectives walked in.

Downstairs, they had met Tommy Saltzman, on loan from Treasury, who would be going over the tax returns James Sinclair had filed for John Cameron.

Saltzman, a tall, pale, forty-something who looked as if a stiff breeze would blow him over, was enjoying this diversion from his routine. All he had been told was that one of the Three Oaks homicide victims was a tax attorney, and would he run a check on some work he'd done? He'd jumped at the chance.

Carl Doyle walked over to them, immaculate in a charcoal suit and black silk tie. He looked as if he'd had, maybe, three hours' sleep. Brown shook hands with him, his eyes found Madison's, and they nodded hello.

The first time they'd met, the pair had brought unbearable news; today they had come with a legal crowbar.

During the elevator ride Brown had left it to Madison to answer Saltzman's many questions. He knew all too well that a warrant was only a blunt tool if they didn't get Quinn on their side: fraud was small potatoes when the top prize was murder in the first.

Quinn waved them into his office and closed the door behind them. His attention was focused on Brown, and he barely registered the others. They were not asked to sit.

“What do you have?” Quinn said.

“We have a lead.” Brown went straight to the point. “Evidence was found at the crime scene that might link the murders with one of James Sinclair's clients.”

“Who?”

Brown ignored the question.

“The evidence implies that there might have been financial impropriety on Mr. Sinclair's part,” he said.

“Impossible.” Quinn's tone was contained but unequivocal, his reaction strong enough that Madison felt Saltzman shrink a little.

“We have a warrant.” Brown offered it to him.

Quinn took it without looking. “Understand this: James was never less than completely straight in everything he ever did. If your lead suggests otherwise, you're wasting your time. Who's the client?” he asked again.

Again the detective ignored the question. “What I ‘understand' is that we have evidence we must pursue. This is a warrant. Help us clear this up now, and things will go a hell of a lot faster. Mr. Saltzman, here, is going to look at the relevant files.”

Quinn's eyes did not acknowledge anybody but Brown. “What evidence?” he asked.

“We'd like for you to come down to the precinct. We'll talk about it there. It's the best thing you can do for your friends now.”

Quinn had spent years in front of juries, judges, and opposing counsel. He scanned the warrant for less than a second, called Doyle
on the intercom, and set up an associate to help Saltzman find the files he needed.

Doyle unlocked the door to Sinclair's office and turned on the light. It was a space suitable for a partner in a successful law firm. His vast desk, larger than Quinn's, was covered in well-organized piles of papers. To the left of the door a whole wall was occupied by a bookcase; legal reference tomes lined every shelf.

Behind the desk, on the right of the leather chair, was a small antique table. On it were three framed pictures of Sinclair's wife and children: one of the whole family, two school pictures. A vase, with wilting white freesia doing its best. Madison noticed footprints in the pale blue carpet around the desk—maybe the overnight cleaner's, maybe Sinclair's own.

There was a conference table by the windows. Doyle asked Saltzman if he needed anything, his voice as polite as if he had been talking to a guest in his own home. Polite, and as warm as a January shower. Madison liked him a lot.

“Let's go,” Brown said to her once Saltzman was settled.

They went to the elevator.

When Doyle had shown them to Sinclair's desk, Quinn had not come to look into his late friend's office; Madison had a feeling he still hadn't ventured in there.

“He didn't really look at the warrant,” she said quietly.

“No.”

It was a bad sign: it meant that Nathan Quinn truly believed that there was nothing for them to find. If Sinclair's conscience had been lily-white, then it followed that so was Cameron's. And that, they knew, was impossible.

“Hungry?” Brown asked.

“Starving,” Madison replied.

They had about thirty minutes to spare; Quinn needed time to brief the partner who would take over his afternoon meetings. There was a deli on Fourth just past Seneca—they had long enough for a quick bite.

Madison couldn't remember whether she had had any breakfast. She loaded a plastic salad box with everything minus sliced cucumber and beets, which she didn't like, grabbed a bread roll, and took a seat in a booth by the window.

Brown was working quickly through a smoked-salmon-and-cream-cheese bagel.

Neither of them said a word; they ate their lunch and drank juices from the bar. They had eaten lunch together most days since Madison had joined Homicide. She knew he liked chicken but not beef, fish but not shellfish, and drank at least as much coffee as she did. On the other hand, before yesterday, she wasn't sure he could have picked her out of a lineup.

Brown wiped his fingers on a napkin. Lieutenant Fynn had called him into his office earlier that morning, before the briefing, and closed the door. He had asked him if he thought Madison would do okay on the case or whether he wanted a more experienced partner to back him up. It was a straight-up question: there was no time for on-the-job training on this one. Madison would just take a less prominent position, that was all.

Brown balled up his napkin and put it on his plate.

She'll be fine
, he had said.

Twenty minutes later they walked into the precinct together. Madison picked up a small pile of messages from the desk sergeant and handed a few to Brown. While they waited for Nathan Quinn to arrive, Madison asked Brown how he wanted to run the interview, if he thought they could get to Quinn their first time around.

Brown's reply was terse. “I want him to forget what he thinks he knows.”

When it came down to it, it was a question of turf: they could have questioned Quinn in his office, but in any other situation, a witness would be brought into the precinct so that he would feel the importance of the proceedings and the formality of the occasion. A trick of the trade, so to speak. Nathan Quinn, however, was not likely to be intimidated by a drab room with a two-way mirror. They didn't think
his answers would change with the location. Still, it was the way the game was played, and they all knew the rules.

Standing by the desk sergeant's raised position, two detectives stared long and hard at Nathan Quinn when he arrived, their eyes staying on his back as he walked past them to join Madison and Brown. He didn't have many friends in the police precinct. He didn't exactly ignore them—they weren't even blips on his radar.

They found an empty interview room on the second floor.

Madison turned the doorknob. “We can go in here,” she said.

Quinn glanced in. A square room, a table with some chairs around it, and a two-way mirror concealing an observation box for officers and DAs. He turned to Madison.

“How many people will I be talking to today?” he asked, nodding to the mirror.

“Just the two of us,” Madison replied.

“That's good. I like that,” he said. “Let's find somewhere else.”

He was there at his own discretion—plenty of time to get him cranky later on. They took over the rec room.

Brown excused himself for a couple of minutes with the pretext of checking up on a message. He went to Lieutenant Fynn to bring him up to speed.

“What is he? A material witness, emergency contact of the victims
and
of the prime suspect?” Fynn asked.

“Right now he might be sitting on the fence between them, but he's going to have to jump one way or the other. Where he lands will tell us a lot.”

“You think?”

“I hope.”

For the first time Madison was alone with Nathan Quinn, and it suddenly struck her that she had probably said no more than five words to him since they had met, maybe not even that.

He sat across the table from her, his coat neatly folded on the back of his chair, a glass of water by his right hand. He flicked an invisible speck of dust off his sleeve. His dark eyes glowed without warmth as he silently considered Madison.

She knew he would be familiar with most senior detectives of the Seattle PD; the fact that he had never met her meant only that she hadn't had her gold shield very long.

“Let's get this over with, shall we?” he said as Brown came in.

Madison flipped open her notebook. Brown closed the door, sat down next to her, and put a folder on the table. The rules of the game.

“Your evidence?” Quinn asked.

“Enough to get us a warrant,” Brown replied.

“You're going to have to be a little more specific.”

Brown's right hand was palm down on the file.

“Let's put that aside for a moment and bring you up to speed on our investigation so far. I assume you'd want to know where we are?”

Quinn nodded. “Of course.”

“Well, we have a pretty good idea of the sequence of events on Saturday night.”

Madison knew in that instant that the folder contained the pictures of the bodies at the crime scene.

“Go on,” Quinn said.

“It's not going to be dainty.”

“Go on.”

“All right. Sometime during Saturday night or the early hours of Sunday morning, someone let himself into the Sinclairs' house. I'm saying ‘let himself in' because there is no sign of forced entry. Doors and windows all check out. We think the intruder might have had a key.”

Quinn sat slightly forward in his chair but didn't even blink. Brown paused for a second to let him absorb the information.

“He went to the master bedroom, where he hit James Sinclair in the face with the butt of a gun. Sinclair was likely asleep at the time, then probably passed out for at least a few moments. Then the intruder put his gun to the head of Anne Sinclair and shot her. After that, he went into the children's room. He put his gun to their heads and shot them—the boy in the top bunk first, then the boy in the bottom one.
From the hole in the blankets, it looks like the second kid was trying to hide.”

Brown paused again.

“Then he went back to James Sinclair, blindfolded him, and tied him up with strips of leather. Neck, hands, feet. When the man came to, he couldn't have moved if he tried. And he did. Sinclair knew his family had been attacked, and he fought like hell. The ligatures cut right through his muscles.”

Quinn was completely still.

“The intruder carried the bodies of the children and placed them between Sinclair and his wife. Sinclair is still trying to get himself free but can't do it. Finally, the man pours a few drops of chloroform onto his blindfold, then waits for a few minutes for it to work. James Sinclair dies of cardiac arrest. The intruder leaves.”

Quinn looked at the folder. “Are those your crime scene photos?”

“Yes.” Brown pushed the file toward him and opened it, revealing a wide shot of the bed and the four bodies. Quinn looked at it, then closed the folder and moved his hands away from it.

“That was what we
know
,” Brown continued. “This is what we
have
: we recovered a glass in the kitchen by the sink—the prints on it didn't match any of the victims. Maybe the killer got himself a drink before he left. We also found a torn-up check; the signature on it appears to have been forged.”

“Someone forged James's signature?”

“No. Sinclair signed for somebody else. Only his prints are on it,” Brown replied.

“No. James would never forge anything. He'd simply handled the check at some point, and someone else, wearing gloves, forged a signature.”

“We matched the name he forged on the check to the prints on the glass,” Brown continued. “The prints are John Cameron's.”

Quinn sat back in the chair, holding both of them in his level gaze.

“No,” he said again, slowly and clearly. “John never would have done anything like that.”

“How do you know?” Madison asked.

“I know the man.”

“How do you know what someone is doing twenty-four hours a day? You have to admit, he
could
have done it. Sinclair handled Cameron's affairs. Does John Cameron have a key to the Sinclair house?”

Quinn didn't reply; his eyes went to the closed folder.

“You don't have to believe us,” Brown said. “You just have to believe the evidence.”

“Neither of those prints mean anything. John's likely been inside the Sinclairs' house dozens of times. Can you prove they're from the time of the murders?”

“We're pretty sure they are. How well do you know John Cameron?” Brown flipped the folder open to the first page, the first photograph.

Quinn reached toward the folder without looking and closed it.

“Cheap shots don't suit you, Detective,” he said.

“When was the last time you saw Cameron?”

Quinn didn't answer.

“Yesterday,” Madison said. It had just occurred to her. “You saw him yesterday, when you told him.”

Both men turned to her.

“You didn't want him to find out on the news.” She knew she was right, and she drove the point all the way in. “How did he take it?”

Quinn's eyes held Madison's, the silence a tangible shape stretching between them.