Madison wanted to say that in Seattle causing upsets was practically a job description for a whole group of alienated citizens who never went on to kill but who slowly, carefully self-destructed using drugs and alcohol. She didn’t say it, though, feeling that any sentence that started with “in Seattle” or “in our experience” wouldn’t go down too well in the room.
“You’re sure you know what you’re doing?” the sheriff asked Brown.
“Yes, I do,” he replied.
“Hope so.” He smiled. “Hope so.”
The party broke up, and Brown and Madison walked back across the street, where Sorensen was at work in the back room, harnessing the might of her portable lab to find the story hidden in a few dozen specimens.
They didn’t interrupt her but left a candy bar for her on the edge of her table—the owner of Ludlow Sweets down the road had delivered a bowlful to the police station after they’d closed, as a thank-you for their day’s work.
It had been a mutual, if unspoken, decision between them: Brown and Madison would remain at the senior center as long as Sorensen was running her tests, and they would all leave together at the end of the day—however late that might turn out to be. It was a chance to go over notes, file reports online, or simply sit quietly and consider the extent of the mess they had walked into—while, in the next room, Sorensen’s devices ticked and hummed.
Madison sent a text to her best friend, Rachel, in Seattle—who might have seen the news—to reassure her that she was okay and would call when she had a chance. Rachel was not just a friend, she was a sister in all but blood, and Madison found solace in thinking of her at home with her family, far away from a crazy man who had taken shots at a mourning crowd. The thought of Rachel and her family always had a steadying effect on Madison, and she needed it now when she found her thoughts returning to Ty Edwards. It’s okay, sweetheart.
“You saved a person’s life today,” Brown said, as if he’d sensed the hue of Madison’s silence.
“Doesn’t really feel like it.”
“What does it feel like?”
“Like I failed to help a man who was standing right next to me.”
“Would it have helped if you had been shot?”
“What do you mean?”
“Would it have helped if, while you were protecting Mrs. Edwards and making sure everybody else got away safely, you were also shot? Something minor that wouldn’t cause too much trouble but wouldn’t make you feel like you cheated your way out of all the bullets that a maniac shot at you?”
Madison smiled. “Perhaps, a little. Then again, I don’t think I was ever in any real danger—and neither was anyone else.”
Brown nodded. He had used the word maniac but they both understood that whatever madness had sparked off the murders, there was a degree of cunning that was far from frantic or hysterical.
“He didn’t hurt the dog,” Madison said.
“No, he didn’t. But I wouldn’t let that guide our thinking in how best to find him and trap him.”
Madison didn’t know what kind of thinking was needed to find and trap the killer. She felt pulled in different directions, and she longed for solid, unequivocal evidence to show her the way. It was a tapestry of events that shouldn’t belong together, and yet they did. Help us. The words flashed before her, and she only just heard Brown beginning to brief Lieutenant Fynn in Seattle about the morning plan.
Lee Edwards was born and raised a Catholic and, even though she had not been inside a Catholic church for longer than she could remember, there was a kind of genetic memory that seemed to swing into action when needed, a religious fight-or-flight gene that was lurking in her Irish background, waiting for a suitable moment to reemerge.
That night, while her girlfriend was making dinner, Lee excused herself and sat on her bed—it had been their bed only that morning. She would have knelt, but her knees would not allow it, and she contented herself with bowing her head and joining her hands the way she did when she was a little girl. What was she supposed to ask for now?
The words of the prayer came to her unbidden, and when she reached “forgive us our trespasses,” her breath caught. She prayed for Ty’s soul with words she had not used in years, and though she had known—even as a child—that some wishes would not be granted, she continued to pray until her friend knocked on the door.
Every other thought seemed to have been washed clear out of her mind. All that was left was prayer and shock and grief so profound that it felt like she would crack in two.
Angel of God, my Guardian dear . . . The words reached far back into her past, but she found no comfort there either.
Chapter 28
“It’s not Dennen’s blood.” Sorensen emerged from her back-room lab and snapped off her latex gloves.
“The blood from the car crime scene?” Madison said.
“Yup, it’s not Dennen’s.”
“So we have the killer’s DNA,” Brown said, and he was at the business end of a hard look from Sorensen.
“What we have is blood collected at the car crime scene. We don’t know it was the killer’s,” she said.
“What are the chances that someone else was out and about?” Madison said.
“What are the chances that if I eat a blue M&M I’ll turn into a Smurf?” Sorensen replied.
“Roughly the same that Jeb Tanner will say yes to a DNA test without a warrant,” Brown said.
Alice Madison stepped out onto Main Street with Brown and Sorensen a little after midnight and lifted the collar of her coat against the chill. Her breath was puffs of white and her ungloved right hand rested on the butt of her sidearm. The evidence that should have been locked away in the police safe had been delivered to Chief Sangster, and Sorensen had just called it a day.
The road that stretched ahead of them was a line of shadows, of blacks and grays of various depths fading into the distance, and yet above them the sky was wide and full of stars, brighter than she had ever seen them, so bright and so many. It was miraculous in a place that had known such horror only twelve hours earlier. A memory tugged at Madison’s sleeve, but she couldn’t quite grasp it.
Their steps were soft on the icy pavement as they headed back toward the Miller house. None of them felt like talking. A couple of state police officers posted at one end of the road followed their journey and radioed their colleagues at the other end, by the Magpie Diner, that the detectives were on their way. Madison thought of Hockley and Kupitz, the young local deputies who had done so well on such a difficult day, and she hoped that they were in their beds—hopefully asleep, though in all probability awake.
“Scrambled eggs on toast?” Madison said as they walked in and Brown locked the front door behind them.
“Is this dinner or breakfast?” Sorensen replied.
“Does it matter?”
They ate quickly. And while, in any other company, it would have seemed rude to bolt down their food without chitchat, they all understood that after midnight, exhaustion wins over manners every time. Then each withdrew to their rooms, leaving the plates in the sink.
Madison put a single log on the hearth and lit a handful of kindling to get it going. She needed the flickering light almost as much as she needed the warmth.
Once she was under the covers, her head on the pillow and her eyes on the shifting flame, she dialed Nathan Quinn’s number. He picked up on the first ring. He had already spoken with Lieutenant Fynn and knew what facts there were to know.
“When I was a criminal defense attorney,” he said, and his voice was a low rumble in her ear, “there were at least five good, solid stressors that I could use to switch a charge from first-degree murder to a diminished responsibility plea. And any prosecutor would have had to argue their case twice as hard if I could find just one juror who could sympathize with the defendant.”
“I know, and they still love you for it.”
“What I mean is that, if you have a farmer trying to bring up a family in the middle of nowhere, living u
nder all kinds of pressures until he finally snaps, some people—some jurors—might have a degree of compassion for him.”
“Not in this case, I assure you. If Tanner is the killer, he murdered the beloved town doctor and a sweet guy who let him buy on credit. He lured the couple out of the crowd so that he could shoot the man. Not even you could make him out to be a poor, distraught farmer who snapped due to the geofinancial pressures of the modern world.”
“You’d be surprised at what a determined defense lawyer will try, and what an incompetent jury will believe.”
“I know,” Madison said. “I’ve seen it.”
“Eyewitnesses and a murder weapon would be nice.”
“They always are,” Madison said. “It’s just that we don’t really get many of those, do we?”
“Be careful tomorrow,” Quinn said.
“I will. And I’ll be sure to let you know ASAP if I get shot at.”
It was a bad joke, and Madison instantly regretted it. “Tanner’s got kids up there,” she said. “I don’t know what we’re going to find. The chief told Brown that Tanner’s wife divorced him years ago and left him alone with the children on the mountain. We need to get him to talk to us without it turning into an incident.”
“Brown has a lot of experience diffusing that kind of situation. The chief knows Tanner, and he doesn’t sound like a fool.”
Madison did not reply.
“Something’s troubling you, Detective,” Quinn said.
“If Tanner is the shooter, why did he need the medical file?”
“Why do you read any medical file?”
“To find out something I didn’t know, or to confirm something I already knew.”
The silence between them was comfortable, each deep in their own thoughts. Madison could see Quinn lying on his bed, two pillows behind his head, maybe a Henry James novel open and facedown on the sheets.
“The file and the fact that Ty Edwards was killed are the only things linking the two murders,” Quinn said.
“Yes,” Madison conceded, and she knew what he was about to say.
“It could be a coincidence.”
Madison hated the word. “I don’t think so. I can’t believe everything has been going along peacefully for decades and suddenly we’ve got two different killers on the loose.”
Quinn thought it over. When he spoke, his words surprised her. “Just because the same man kills two people within two days, it doesn’t mean he killed them for the same reason.”
“Maybe.”
Neither wished to end the conversation.
“What’s the town like?” Quinn said.
She smiled. “You would go nuts here: only one restaurant open after 8 p.m., and no sushi. People’s lives are stalked by the weather, and they’re one bad tourist season away from serious trouble . . .”
“And yet?”
“And yet there’s something about living a life so close to the wilderness that I find deeply appealing. It’s harsh and unpredictable and merciless, and yet . . .”
Madison could hear Quinn’s smile. “You would do just fine in the woods. It’s the woods I would worry about. Diana the Huntress.”
The small attic felt too quiet after they hung up, and Madison wondered how it was possible for a voice at the end of a phone to change so fundamentally the nature of a room. She closed her eyes and saw him lying on his bed.
Sleep came as she was making a plan for the following day.
Chapter 29
There would be other times in her life when Alice Madison would experience fear—many of those early in her career in the Seattle PD and some very recently, side by side with Brown. Nevertheless, by that turning in the road, when she was twelve years old, holding on to the handlebars of her red bike as if they were the only thing anchoring her to the planet, Alice felt a jolt of panic that punched right through her. What had she done? How could she have assumed . . . ? Adrenaline scrambled her thoughts, and the pit of her stomach ached with it. Every rotten notion, every frightful idea that she had been holding back since she had snuck out of her house and caught the ferry fell on her like ice.
Alice was alone in the world. She would not go back, and now she didn’t even have a place where she could sit down, rest, think, sleep. Suddenly she wanted to sleep more than anything else; she wanted to fall asleep right there, standing up at the end of the dirt path.
Alice got off her bike—she was shaking, and she knew that she’d fall if she tried to pedal anywhere. I’d get a great big concrete smooch, she thought, as her skateboarding friends back in Friday Harbor would say.
She could walk off to the right or to the left, and it didn’t seem to matter one way or the other. This simple notion was terrifying. Alice reached for any strength she could muster, turned left, and pushed her bike slowly along. Her brain had gone through some kind of short circuit and she found it difficult to get together anything resembling a coherent thought.
After a few minutes she found that she had traced her steps back to the bus stop and the center of the small town. Without any real decision to do it, Alice walked to a bench by the water and sat down. The pretty lake had a name, but she couldn’t remember what the heck it was.
Great, she thought, my life is falling apart and I’m losing my mind, piece by piece. By the end of the week I’ll have forgotten my own name.
The water was a flat sheet of blue, and above it rose a huge mountain of snow and rock. Alice sighed. I should know the name of that.
She sat back against the bench and dug into her pack for the ham sandwiches. She ate them both, watching the people go past, the little kids playing in the fountain, and a dog running after a Frisbee on the grass. She envied the kids, and for a brief, absurd moment she even envied the dog. She went through the bag of Cheetos too, and once she had finished she pressed her index finger into the bottom of it to catch any stray crumbs. Her chocolate milk was not fridge-cold anymore, but she didn’t care—the comfort of that sweetness was all she craved.
The sun was warm on Alice’s skin and, little by little, it worked like an icebreaker through her panic. Little by little, drawn in by the food and the quiet, her thinking seemed to come back to her, tentatively, testing that the ground was steady enough to bear logic. Yes, she had run away from home. Yes, the night before she had found out that her father had stolen away the last of her mother’s things for a game of poker. He was a pro who had played in Vegas—but so what? Her mother had died in March, and she wouldn’t buy, make, or touch anything else ever again. All they had was all there would ever be of her. For an instant, standing over him while he slept, Alice had thought that her father did not deserve to draw another breath. For an instant, she almost did something about it. Then the thought had dissipated, she had stabbed his folding knife into his bedside table—two inches deep—and left.
They had been so close when she was little. How long ago could it possibly be? The memory of holding the deck of cards in her tiny hands as he taught her to play—and her mother watched—made her eyes well up and the waterfront blur. Yes, she was sitting on the shore of a lake without a clue about what to do next.
She wiped her eyes with the cotton of her sleeve because her hands were covered in orange Cheetos powder. Yes, sure, I’m in a little trouble. But it doesn’t mean leaving was a bad idea. I just need to think this through and I can’t do it sitting on this bench.
Some weeks earlier, when she had visited with Jessica and her family, they had gone hiking in the area around the house; there were a number of trails there, and some led to very pleasant little spots where Alice could bunk down for the night and not be mistaken for the world’s youngest, neatest hobo.
In a couple of hours the sky would turn violet, and while no one had noticed her sitting by herself in the middle of the day, she had no doubt that someone would see her lying down behind the carnation border at dusk. And in a couple of hours her father would realize that she was not coming back.
Alice returned to the
convenience store and bought more food to take with her and—in a moment of inspiration she was particularly proud of—a flashlight. She tied the shopping bag with a bow to her handlebars and pushed off, back toward Jessica’s house and beyond it.
Reaching the turnoff was a very different feeling from a few hours earlier, and Alice did not look—it would have been almost painful—she just pedaled a little faster until she arrived at the crossroads. And ten minutes after that, she was at the beginning of the trails.
A group of five people was just emerging from one of the paths—three adults, two teenagers, somebody arguing, somebody sulking—and Alice turned her face away and pretended to look into her backpack until they were gone. She waited to be sure and then she took the middle trail—smooth and even—and her bike flew on it.
I only need to work out the next thing I’m going to do, Alice told herself. If I can do that I’ll be all right. She didn’t need to decide everything that very minute, and that reassured her because, going deeper into the woods, the light had already begun to change and she had felt a whisper of the earlier panic. It was still there, it reminded her, waiting behind a locked door, pressing to get out.
When Alice reached a fork in the path, she slipped the bike behind a boulder where overhanging ferns would mask it from view and she left the trail.
It would not occur to the young girl until many hours later that, while she had been scrupulous about hiding her route and had effectively disappeared when she had stepped off the ferry, the problem with disappearing is that no one will come and rescue you when you need to be rescued.
The small clearing was surrounded by firs, pines, and spruces on all sides; Alice had reached it after a few minutes and by then the sky above her had turned into a rich, deep purple streaked with pink. She was glad to be in the open because it was becoming too dark to walk under the canopy, and tree roots had found and snagged her foot twice already. The darker it was, the more twisty they seemed to be.
She picked a corner to set up camp and unshouldered her pack. I can do this, she said to herself. She eyed a couple of fallen branches that carried a bounty of soft needles and dragged them to her corner. Normally there would be a fire in a camp, but Alice paused: she was so close to the trail that if anybody saw the flames and decided to drop by and say hello, they would find her all alone and it would be impossible to explain. No, no fire tonight. If she wanted light she had the flashlight, and her food did not need reheating. She didn’t dwell on the thought that she had only managed to light a fire once while camping, and it had taken three hours of humiliating effort. Tomorrow I’ll buy some matches, she thought.
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