The Gift of the Darkness

by Valentina Giambanco

  Madison opened her mouth to speak.

  “You’re going to be flying under the radar,” he continued. “Brown started something, and, as much as I wish I could dismiss it, I can’t. You have nothing—you have less than nothing—because you’re not going to tell anybody what you’re doing.”

  Madison nodded.

  “You’re just going to be clearing up your notes on the case, make a few calls, maybe talk to a few people. Can you do that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You understand what I’m telling you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Tell me you understand.”

  “I understand.”

  “The next time you come to me on the record, you are going to give me some honest-to-God proof, ’cause I’m going to keep looking for John Cameron, and if I find him, I’m going to have to bring him in. And the son of a bitch probably won’t come easy.”

  “I understand.”

  “Good.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Lieutenant Fynn shook his head. “There’s people outside who want to show their support. Are you ready for it?”

  They came out of the room together, and there was an instant murmur from the crowd assembled. Many of the officers Madison knew; many she didn’t. They walked through, Fynn first, edging toward the elevators. Everybody had something to say or a nod or a pat on the back to offer. Madison just wanted to get the hell out. Whatever anybody else might think, they were cheering the biggest mistake of her career.

  Brown was still in surgery. Nobody could tell them anything except to take a seat and wait. They found a sofa and chairs, a small corner made comfortable with a coffee table and magazines. Fynn sank into a chair, and Madison perched on the edge of the sofa, her eyes following every doctor and nurse who walked past.

  It was after 2:00 a.m. when Spencer and Dunne joined them. They had dirt on their shoes, and their ties in their jacket pockets.

  “Hey,” Spencer said to Madison, his voice quiet. “You kicked ass. The lab guys are picking up all sorts of evidence from the scene. Any news yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “We need to do your interview, the sooner the better.”

  “Let’s do it now.”

  “Sure?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Okay.”

  Madison told them what she could, Fynn watching in silence. Spencer and Dunne left after 3:00 a.m.; there was still no news. The corridors were pretty much deserted. Madison sat back, counting the square gray ceiling tiles. She must have dozed off for a moment, because she woke up with a start. A doctor was padding toward them, and the wall clock read 5:55 a.m. They stood up.

  Dr. Taylor turned out to be a woman in her fifties with cropped salt-and-pepper hair and small blue eyes.

  “How is he?”

  “Your partner is in the recovery room right now.”

  “That’s good.”

  “He is a very resilient man, and, technically, the surgery was a success. We repaired most of the damage to his chest, and, by some kind of miracle, even with the swelling due to the trauma, the bullet had not penetrated the outer layer of the brain. But his heart stopped beating during the operation. He was down for a little while.” She let them take it in. “We have revived him, and he is on a respirator to help him breathe, but it’s too early to say anything except for wait and see.”

  “When is he going to wake up?” Madison asked her.

  “We don’t know. We’re going to have to take it an hour at a time.” She looked at Madison, the cut on her brow a vivid red against her ashen face. “You should go home and get some rest. I’ll have a nurse call you if there’s any news.” She left.

  “I’m going to stay here until Brown’s sister arrives,” Fynn said. “Someone is going to drive you home.” He made a call on his cell phone, and a couple of uniformed officers from their precinct appeared.

  “I’ll call you in the morning.”

  Madison didn’t move.

  “Go,” he said.

  Six-thirty a.m., in the beam of the headlights, snowflakes swam across the road. Behind them, Three Oaks was still asleep. Madison sat in the passenger seat of the blue-and-white; one of the two officers followed in her car.

  She had asked them to go via the precinct so that she could pick up a few things. In the corridors nobody stopped her; hardly anybody was there.

  She opened the door to their office. Everything was as they had left it seven hours earlier, the takeout cartons still on their desks.

  Her duffel was hanging on the back of the chair. She grabbed it and quickly unzipped the main section. Her papers were in stacks everywhere: she reached for the library notes and the newspaper clippings and stuffed them in together with a notepad. Cameron’s photograph from the Sinclair boy’s birthday party was tacked to the wall—she took that, too.

  Then she searched Brown’s desk for Fred Kamen’s number. Madison, the rucksack hanging from her good arm, flipped through the black Rolodex, couldn’t find the card, and bent down. The rucksack fell on the ground, hands shaking now and her sight suddenly blurred.

  She grabbed the Rolodex, shoved it hard into the bag, and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

  One last look around and Madison left, turning the light off as she closed the door.

  It was the last Saturday before Christmas.

  They turned into Madison’s driveway, and a patrol car was parked by the front door. Officer Giordano, who had been the first at the Sinclair crime scene, climbed out.

  “The boss said you don’t want a car sitting on your place. I just wanted to let you know, we’ll be looking in from time to time, should you need anything.” They waited until Madison was inside and then left, turning slowly into the slippery road.

  Madison dropped the duffel by the door. She kicked off her shoes and padded into the kitchen. She poured herself a glass of orange juice and downed two painkillers. She would call Kamen in a couple of hours.

  She didn’t expect visitors. The man could have shot her there and then but hadn’t. The reason, she thought, would probably reveal itself soon enough, like many another dark and twisted thing.

  Looking for the comfort of the ordinary, Madison went to the safe under her bed and took out her off-duty piece. With one hand, she cleaned it, oiled it, and dry-fired it a few times. The weight felt odd in her left hand, the arm twitching with tiredness. She would need to go to the range.

  On the sofa, sitting up with her comforter around her and her eyes wide open, Madison waited to fall asleep.

  Chapter 27

  Nathan Quinn’s house in the Seward Park neighborhood of Seattle had been decorated with much care by its owner, who hardly spent any time in it and, in the last week, had been all but blind to the views of Mercer Island and Lake Washington.

  In his study, on the mahogany table, sealed inside clear plastic envelopes, were the anonymous notes. Quinn expected a third note within the next forty-eight hours, and his guts told him it wouldn’t be a request for money.

  This wasn’t blackmail: the first note had been delivered on Monday morning before the murders were public knowledge, before the case had come to rest at John Cameron’s feet. For reasons known only to himself, the killer had chosen to communicate with him, and Quinn believed that, once you know what someone wants, the thing they need above all else, anybody can be gotten to. Anybody can be dealt with.

  The news on KIRO said that it was 9:00 a.m. Quinn checked his watch automatically—he’d been up for two hours, mostly talking on the phone with Tod Hollis. The private investigator had little to report since their last call the previous evening. The morning call was about the ambush on the detectives and what he had managed to gather from his police contacts.

  Quinn had listened while Hollis told him about Detectives Brown and Madison. Footage of Northwest Hospital had been on each news cycle, and they even had a flash of Madison being driven away in a blue-and-white, her face misty through the glass. The sa
me brand of evil that had visited his life had quite probably crossed theirs.

  He sat at the kitchen table and continued reading the Los Angeles Times, a well-informed piece on the murder of a local drug dealer and his two bodyguards. Quinn scanned the story for what he knew he would find, and there it was, in the last paragraph—the name of his most reclusive client.

  The telephone rang, and he picked up the receiver.

  “Hello.”

  “Is this Nathan Quinn?”

  An unknown voice.

  “Yes. Who is this?”

  “You’ll have my name when I give it to you.”

  Quinn gently replaced the receiver in its cradle. He waited. Five seconds later the telephone rang again.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Who is this?”

  A long silence, traffic in the distant background. A pay phone, Quinn thought; not on a street but nearby—in a restaurant, maybe.

  “My name’s not important.” The attitude was gone. “You have a reward out for information about those murders.” It was a statement.

  “This is not the right number to call. I can give you the right number.”

  “I’m not going through the police—”

  “They’re the ones screening the calls and doing the checks.”

  “They also have a warrant out for your client’s arrest, and what I have they wouldn’t want, believe me.”

  “What do you have?”

  “Something that would help the case for the defense.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “We should meet. It’s not something I want to talk about on the phone.”

  “You might want to give me something now, or we might not meet at all.”

  “Okay, what if I can prove to you that the person who killed the family had killed before? What if I could tell you where and when?”

  “That would be worth a conversation.”

  “I want two things from you: first, your guarantee that my name will never be made known. Second, the minute the cops drop the charges on your guy, that’s cash in my hands. Are we clear?”

  “Crystal.”

  “Pier 52, the ferry to Bainbridge Island, today at three. Walk on, don’t bring your car. Be on the upper deck. I’ll find you.”

  Quinn was about to confirm the instructions, but the line had gone dead.

  He started to dial Cameron’s new beeper number, but his eyes fell on the LA Times, and he replaced the receiver. He had no idea where John was anymore; he only knew for certain where he’d been.

  In downtown Seattle, Billy Rain, standing next to a pay phone, shivered in the pale morning.

  Nathan Quinn paced around in the house for a few hours, found nothing that would hold his attention for more than fifteen seconds, and went to the office. He parked his car in the underground garage and took the elevator to the ninth floor. When he came out, he gave a brief wave to the security guard on the first floor who had picked up his movements on the security cameras.

  The offices were deserted. He deactivated the alarm and let himself in, turned the lights on, and headed for his office.

  Carl Doyle had been doing a great job of keeping everything running smoothly in the past week. He had left a small stack of files on his desk for Quinn to look at. There was a world where those files mattered, and court dates, and judges’ decisions. Quinn sat down and flipped open the first one.

  He worked his way through the pile, glad for the distraction but gladder still when it was time to go. He left the car in the garage and walked down Pike Street, then turned onto Second Avenue and left onto Seneca to the waterfront.

  It was too cold to snow, the sky and the water the same shade of pewter.

  He walked onto the ferry, unarmed and alone, knowing full well that he had probably already been noticed and was being followed. Fine with him—he hoped the man he was to meet knew what he was getting himself into.

  He looked around: the ferry was vast, one of those that carried a couple of hundred cars and at least a couple of thousand passengers. Today, it was quiet. The journey to Bainbridge Island would take thirty-five minutes. By the time it started to move off the pier, Quinn had bought himself a tea and found an empty bench on the upper deck, by a window.

  The air was warm with the scent of reheated food. There was an old couple a few benches down, a woman alone twenty feet to his left, and a family of four, small children running around. Quinn was sitting with his back to the wall; he sipped his tea and missed nothing.

  He saw the tall man approach and read him like he would a prospective juror in a trial. Late thirties, maybe early forties, with fine lines around the eyes. He was wearing a red Gore-Tex jacket over jeans and work boots. Hair short, clean-shaven. The hands were too rough for a white-collar job, but there was a kind of grace about the man. He slid onto the bench across from Quinn, a table between them.

  “Billy Rain,” he said.

  “Nathan Quinn.”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s get this done.”

  “Okay.”

  Rain had baby-blue eyes; he looked out the window. His fingers drummed lightly on the table. His hands, Quinn noted, were scrupulously clean.

  “We are clear my name is going to stay out of it.”

  “No problem.”

  “And the other thing.”

  “Mr. Rain, I wish nothing more than for you to be right about this.”

  “I know I’m right. Three and a half years ago. Upstate.”

  “McCoy.”

  “I was doing three to five in the Bones.”

  The Bones was what everybody called the McCoy State Prison. It probably started from some Star Trek fan enjoying a stretch of hard time, but nobody knew for sure.

  “I saw something that was very . . .”—he hesitated—“similar to what happened to the family.” Billy Rain’s eyes moved quickly beyond Quinn’s shoulders.

  “A guy got killed in the laundry. The man who did it left him tied up, hands at the front, blindfolded. And he drew . . .”—Billy Rain made the sign of a cross on his brow—“in blood.”

  Nathan Quinn nodded. A prison killing.

  “You were a witness.”

  “I saw it. I was no more than ten feet away.”

  Quinn could see where this was going. “But you didn’t tell anybody.”

  Rain gave him a look. “Have you ever done time? Ever spent any time around cons on the inside?”

  “No.”

  “Then we’ll get back to your question when you have.”

  “What happened after they found the body?”

  “It ended up on the tab of a con called Edward Morgan Rabineau. He was doing life for two counts already. They pinned it on him—I don’t know what evidence they had. I didn’t see anything when I—when I walked past the body. Anyway. Thing is, Ted Rabineau is still inside. And my guess is, he always will be.”

  Billy Rain wished Quinn would speak; there was something unnerving in the man’s silence.

  “Let’s take a walk,” Quinn said, and he stood up. The rest of the conversation he’d rather have outside.

  They turned up their collars and leaned on the railing. Bainbridge Island was approaching fast.

  “Tell me as much as you remember about it,” he told Billy Rain, and Billy did.

  It had been quick and to the point—no accident there. The man had come ready with a blindfold and a ligature for the man’s hands. That in itself was unusual: in prison, if you’re going to take someone down, you put a shiv between his shoulder blades or in the soft tissue under the sternum. Then you walk away.

  “Who was the victim?”

  “An arsonist called George Pathune, young guy. Had been inside maybe three months.”

  “The man you saw with him was Rabineau?”

  Billy Rain looked at the water. Time and time again in his mind he had tried to see the face of the man. It had been seconds, and fear had pretty much wiped out the details.

&
nbsp; “I don’t know,” he said. “If my life depended on it, I still wouldn’t know. Maybe Rabineau was taller and heavier. Anyway, it’s not like he’s the kind of guy you would normally look at, you know what I mean? I’m not sure I’d recognize him today.”

  “Sure you would.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Why would Rabineau want the guy dead?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “The man you saw was not Rabineau?”

  “I don’t know. I know what the body looked like after he was done with it. If your client didn’t do it, and Rabineau didn’t do it, somebody else did.”

  John Cameron had never seen the inside of a state prison, and Edward Morgan Rabineau had not seen the outside of one for many years. There was a trail there, at the very least a glimpse of one.

  “Why didn’t you take this to the police?”

  “They’d have ‘lost’ the call. They want your man so bad, they can taste it. I’m on parole, anyway; I don’t see them working hard on something I give them.”

  “I see. What were you in for?”

  Rain shrugged. “Which time?”

  They were almost docking.

  “You should know,” Rain said, “I’ve written an affidavit, and my attorney will receive it on Monday. Anything happens to me now, or you try to get out of our financial agreement, and he’ll deal with it.”

  “You should know,” Quinn replied, “that I believe what you told me is the truth, but if I ever find out you lied to me for money or held back anything that might have helped, I’ll rip your life apart.”

  Rain nodded. “As long as we know where we stand.”

  “Absolutely.”

  Billy Rain was glad to get off the ferry—his hands were shaking. Nathan Quinn watched the waves slapping against the hull. Now the summer’s in its prime with the flowers sweetly bloomin’.

  Nathan Quinn went back inside, bought another tea, and sat on the same bench. A prison killing. It made sense: the details never would have made the papers. No one would have made a connection between that and the slaying of a family in a wealthy suburb.

  The connections. Blindfolds and leather strips and blood on the pillows. Quinn drank the tea and wished he’d poured a measure of bourbon into it—a double measure.