“You can take him back to Mrs. Edwards,” Sorensen said to Deputy Hockley. “She’ll want to have him back as soon as possible.”
From their vantage point the rows of homes and storefronts were framed by the mountains behind them. The white trim of the roofs was sharp against the blue green of the forest and the umber of the naked earth. Smoke from the chimneys rose in thin coils. It was a model train’s toy town, and Madison tracked the line of lights until they were swallowed up by the shadows. Above them birds of prey were gliding high, high above the town, watching and waiting.
“The state patrol put roadblocks on the highway within minutes of the call,” Madison said, looking away from the sweeping birds and picking up a cigarette butt that could have been left two hours earlier by the shooter or six hours earlier by a dog walker.
“Do you think he hightailed it outta here as soon as he was done shooting?” Sorensen replied.
“Nope, I think he’s in town—possibly in the Tavern—yakking it up with the other locals like he didn’t just kill a man he’d known all his life.”
Sorensen paused. “That’s cold.”
“You don’t really think that one or two strangers decided to stop by and start killing locals?”
Madison’s cell started vibrating and she reached for it inside her coveralls.
“Oh, shoot . . . oh, boy.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I have to take this . . . ,” Madison said, and walked a little way from the crime scene. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly into the cell when she was far enough away from Sorensen. “Honestly.”
Chapter 22
Two days earlier, in Seattle, Alice Madison had returned home after the meeting with Lieutenant Fynn and her run on Alki Beach. She had peeled off her sweats, stuffed them into the laundry hamper, and taken a shower. The logs in the fire were hissing when Madison came back with her hair still damp and wearing a terry cloth robe. It was a peaceful, elemental sound and it soothed away the worst of her day.
Madison checked her cell and set the table for two. What she wanted was a quiet evening before the early flight, with the warmth of the fire on her skin, a glass of red wine, and the crackle of the logs to send her to sleep.
She heard the car pull into her driveway and the door slam, and she opened the door. Nathan Quinn—tall, dark, still in his immaculate suit with the maroon tie perfectly knotted—looked exactly as he had hours earlier.
“Counselor,” Madison said.
“Detective,” he replied. “I heard you’d had a tough day and I thought you might like company.”
“Where did you hear it?” Madison said, and she leaned against the door frame. He was so much more than handsome—behind the finely drawn features lived the heart of the bravest man she had ever known, as hidden as it had been unexpected.
Quinn shrugged. “I have my ways.”
“You sure do.”
“I heard that some sonofabitch from the US Attorney’s Office is sending you across the state on a stupid scheme that a bureaucrat thought up in his lunch hour.”
“No one is sending me anywhere. I volunteered.”
“But he is a sonofabitch.”
“Only when needed.”
He was close now and his black eyes held Madison’s. She laid her hand on his cool cheek in a familiar gesture. He looked the same as hours earlier and yet completely different: he looked the way he looked when they were alone.
They had met on Madison’s first case in Homicide, when Quinn had been the prime suspect’s attorney. The case, and their acquaintance, had become more complex, and alliances had shifted and changed. Nathan Quinn had saved the life of her godson, and Alice Madison had found the man who had ordered the death of Quinn’s younger brother when he was a child. They had been together and they had been apart, and together was much, much better.
At the time their loyalties had been incompatible, and Madison had taken a step back before they could be irrevocably questioned. Two months earlier, though, Quinn had arrived on her doorstep and she’d asked him to stay for dinner; he had stayed the night, and almost every night since. Occasionally they would spend a few evenings each in their own home, because it just wouldn’t do to always be together—not when they were careful not to admit to each other and to themselves what was happening, what had already happened.
Nathan Quinn had grown up in the kitchen of the restaurant his father had owned and passed on to him, and he cooked with pleasure. The glow of the fire was quite enough as they picked at their steaks, sitting on the rug with their backs against the sofa and the plates on their laps. Quinn’s jacket and tie had been swiftly removed and his shirt was unbuttoned. In the half-light Madison could not see the thin, silvery scars that twisted around his chest but she knew they were there—almost invisible after two years, and still the mark of his courage and his strength.
Madison took the plates into the kitchen and returned with two glasses of wine. She pulled his shirttails out and settled with her arms around him under the fabric and against his bare skin.
When he had called himself a sonofabitch it had hurt her in a way she could not begin to tell him. He knew his own reputation in the police department, he knew he had enemies because he had been a brilliant and ruthless defense attorney. Madison would have gladly punched the detective at today’s meeting who didn’t know, or didn’t care about, this man’s heart, about his honor and his spirit. The fact that she couldn’t was the price she paid for their silence: no one knew about them, not even Madison’s best friend, Rachel, whose son Quinn had saved; not even Brown, whom she trusted with her life every day. Their silence made her days sometimes harder to navigate, and yet it kept it—whatever it was—safe and private. His arms around her and the warmth of his skin in the quiet room were worth it.
“I have accidentally discovered the nickname my staff have bestowed on me,” Quinn said.
“Do tell,” Madison said.
Quinn sighed. “Loki.”
“The Norse god?”
“He was a maleficent shape shifter who changed sides.”
“I’m sure they mean it as a compliment.”
“I work them to the bone. I suppose they’ve earned the right to call me what they want behind my back.”
For a few minutes there was only the fire and the wind shaking the trees outside.
“Do you really think it’s going to work? Sending strangers into a situation, into a place they know nothing about?” Madison said.
“The best chance we have of helping the town is sending them the best we have. And that’s you, and Brown, and Sorensen.”
“Thank you for the endorsement, but I’m not sure it’s the way to go. The state should make sure the town has a larger police unit, better trained, better equipped.”
“I agree, but that’s not going to happen. The town funds the department and they just don’t have the money to spend on it. It’s happening everywhere.”
Madison turned to look at him. “Everywhere?”
“It’s a pilot scheme and we’re the guinea pigs. If it works here they’ll roll it out nationwide.”
“What’s your place in it?”
“I answer to the US attorney and to the governor.”
“That’s tricky.”
Quinn held her closer. “No more than usual.”
Madison smiled.
“What?” he said softly.
“I guess this is our version of pillow talk.”
“Pillow talk is supposed to happen after, while dirty talk happens before.”
“A subtle and possibly confusing distinction.”
“I sense a challenge.”
The log was little more than embers in the hearth by then, but she could feel his smile. “Try me,” she said.
“As you wish,” he replied.
Quinn woke up hours later on the sofa, disentangled himself from Madison’s arms, and went into her bedroom. He returned with her comforter and lay back down next to her, making sure s
he was tucked in.
In the morning—so early it was still night—they had coffee together and then Madison left for Boeing Field to catch a small red plane that would take her across mountains and fields and water to the other end of the state. Quinn drove back to his home in Seward Park, changed his clothes, and went to work.
The day felt empty, and an unfamiliar heavy kind of hollowness dogged his steps.
Sometime on Saturday he would see on the news the footage from Colville County: a Seattle detective being shot at while protecting a woman on the ground, and the same detective returning fire. In spite of the distance and the poor quality of the images there was really no doubt in his mind.
Madison.
Chapter 23
“I’m sorry,” Madison said into her cell when she was far enough away from Sorensen. “Honestly.”
“Were you hit?” Quinn’s voice was dark with worry.
“No, I’m fine.”
“Have you been checked?”
“Yes,” she replied a tad too quickly. “I have.”
Quinn sighed. “No, you haven’t. Just make sure that you’re okay. Sometimes the adrenaline and the shock can mask an injury.”
There was no point in arguing. “I’ll make sure.”
“Madison,” his voice was low and tense. “I found out watching the news.”
“I know, and I’m so sorry. In the middle of it I didn’t realize you would . . . that the camera guy was there and . . .”
How would she have felt had she found out on the one o’clock news?
“What happened?” Quinn said after a moment.
She told him, and the horror of it and the woman’s screams came back to her. What was her name? Lee. Lee Edwards.
“It was a hit,” she said, and she knew it without question. “The sniper had made sure that they would come close, that they would be exposed. And he wanted to do it in front of the whole town.”
“That’s—”
“Insane?”
“I was going to say organized.”
“That too.”
“Two murders in three days?”
“Yes.”
“What are the chances that they’re unrelated?”
“Completely different MOs, but, yes, it would be a nasty kind of coincidence, and I really don’t believe in those. The town is on lockdown.”
A beat of silence.
“Are you wearing your vest?” Quinn said.
Madison rolled her eyes—it made her feel childish, but she couldn’t help it. He meant her Seattle Police Department ballistic vest, and there was no point in lying. “No, I’m not.”
“Would you mind stopping your crime scene work for a moment and putting the damn vest on?”
Madison’s memory flashed back to two years earlier, to a black night in the woods and forcing Quinn to wear her own Kevlar vest for protection.
“I’ll put it on,” she conceded, and couldn’t help adding, “The kind of distance we were, the way he grouped the hits—if he wanted to shoot me too, he’d have done it there and then.”
“Well, give him a chance to get to know you.”
“Thanks. By the way, we need those warrants.”
“A trooper is on his way to deliver them as we speak.”
“At last.”
“Look, I just wanted to make sure you weren’t hurt, and I wanted to apologize.”
“Apologize?”
“I wasn’t expecting Judy—the US attorney—to be in the office today, and when you called—”
“It’s all right. It happens.”
“We’ll speak later. Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
They said good-bye—a tiny light at the end of their day—and Madison returned to Sorensen. The crime scene investigator didn’t ask what the call had been about, because she wasn’t that kind of person, and Madison didn’t volunteer the information.
Two minutes later, Brown called her: the warrants had arrived.
The door of Robert Dennen’s office in the Medical Center was made of plain blond wood, and Madison had been staring at the patterns on the grain for twenty seconds, reflecting that she must have been crazy to think that five courses in criminalistics taken—how long ago was it?—qualified her for what she was about to do.
“We’re here because there’s no one else, and I—in spite of all my magical powers—can’t be in two places at once,” Sorensen had said, and that had been that.
Deputy Hockley had driven Madison and her toolbox to the clinic, and the rest was up to her. She wasn’t going to do any of the actual analysis and identification, of course, but she was capable enough for collection and preservation—if she was careful and followed her training to the letter.
The drive had been quick—the streets were deserted—and Dr. Lynch was in his office waiting for the medical examiner. Thank God it was Saturday and the clinic would have been closed anyway.
“Don’t think like a detective,” Sorensen had told her in a less than helpful manner. “However hard it might be, try to rise above the badge and just see. Don’t push a narrative onto the scene, just observe the scene. Let it talk to you.”
“Detectives don’t push narratives, Sorensen.”
“Rise above the badge and let the scene talk to you.”
Madison had muttered a reply. Given half a chance everyone turned into Yoda, it seemed.
“You okay, Hockley?” Madison had said, skipping over the “Deputy” part and deciding to address him as she would any SPD officer. Especially any young officer who had witnessed something that would stay with him for a very long time.
“Yes,” the young man had replied, looking at the road ahead.
She’d wanted to say that it was normal to be shaken by what had happened, but he was gripping the wheel pretty tight. Maybe it wasn’t the right moment.
“You did good in the square,” she’d said simply.
Hockley had nodded, still looking ahead.
Madison now twisted the key in the lock, without touching the handle, and pushed in.
The room was just as they had left it earlier that day, which meant just as it had been left by the night visitor after the cleaner had done his work.
Begin at the beginning, Madison told herself, and examined the lock. There were no signs of forced entry, and the window looked similarly untouched: whoever had come in after the cleaner had done so with a key. Madison took pictures of both sides of the lock and moved on. She photographed the whole room, including the walls and the different points of entry and exit—one door and one window that opened onto a scrubby yard—wide-angle shots and close-ups.
After placing a “number 1” card next to the wastebasket, Madison took a picture with the tissue still in it. Only when she was satisfied that every inch of the office had been documented did she put the camera away.
Her nerves were still humming under her skin; nevertheless, the repetitive nature of the work had calmed her. She was doing what she had been taught to do, and there was something peculiarly satisfying about that—especially considering that she would never have been given the opportunity in Seattle, where Sorensen’s highly experienced army would have run the scene with military precision.
The tissue—white paper, three-ply—could possibly have come from the box on the windowsill behind the desk, a common brand bought almost certainly locally in bulk. It had been scrunched up, but only slightly, and when Madison lifted it from the basket with her tweezers, it seemed entirely clean. She placed it in a paper bag, and for the sake of chain of custody, she wrote the name, description, date, and location of the tissue on a tag and signed it with her own name, title, and badge number. The tissue box followed into another bag, with the same procedure, for comparison purposes. Both items were entered into a log sheet.
The office—as they had noticed earlier—did not look as if someone had ransacked it, and if the only trace of the night visitor’s presence was a single
tissue, it begged the question of why anyone had broken into the clinic in the first place. Sorensen had been clear about not creating a story where evidence hadn’t given her one; however, as Madison knelt by the door to fingerprint the lock and the area around it, it was impossible not to wonder.
Evidence as truth. Maybe the burglar had removed something that was not immediately obvious to Dr. Lynch. Madison surveyed the wood and decided to use black latent print powder with a regular fiber brush.
It didn’t take her long to pick up a few prints on the lock—smudged ones—and a number of tiny prints a couple of feet up from the floor where young patients had pushed against the door. She worked both sides, though nothing seemed unusual about the location or the type of the latents.
Madison dusted the shelves and the desk for prints—and proved only the excellent standard of work of the clinic’s cleaner.
Next, she walked the rectangular room in an outward spiral from where the wastebasket had been found, looking for anything that might be of significance. Let the scene talk to you. Madison was torn between the street cop’s natural reaction to BS and the belief that scenes do in fact talk—if you know how to listen.
Step after step, she walked the spiral. And yet there was nothing on the floor, on the shelves, or on the furniture that caught her eye. The examining bed with its paper cover looked freshly prepared, and a closer look with a magnifying lens gave up no secrets.
Madison turned her attention to the desk: the warrants had been particular about searching the doctor’s place of work. Areas that were generally accessible were allowed, but anything relevant to doctor-patient confidentiality was excluded. No surprises there, Madison thought.
She sat at the doctor’s desk. The chair was comfortable and she sat back, gazing at the surface before her with her gloved hands on the armrests. What was the scene telling her? There was the door—not forced. The shelves and the bed—seemingly untouched. The desk—as tidy as Dennen had left it. Madison closed her eyes; the view of the room was imprinted like a negative. Someone had come into the room in the middle of the night and they had known how to acquire the object of their interest without making a mess. They had known what, where, and how.
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