A puff of cold air woke her—that’s what she thought at first. Her eyes blinked open as the cool scent of the night outside brushed her cheek. Sometime while she slept she had lain down, as if she were at home on her own sofa. Then she heard the lock of the French doors click shut, and the hairs on her arms stood up.
She lay on the sofa, her body frozen in place and her breath caught in her throat. She felt more than heard the presence in the room, someone standing behind the high back of the sofa, who could neither see her nor be seen.
There was movement a few feet behind her, maybe someone taking a couple of steps. Madison tried to relax her stiff muscles, but even her stillness had a sound, a humming of blood in her ears that washed over almost everything else. She wanted to gather herself and get her brain to stop racing and just listen.
She was safe where she was. She had the advantage: she was armed and ready to tussle. Never mind that the gun was behind her, pressed against the sofa. Just be quiet and listen. The person wasn’t moving; he was standing five to six feet behind her. All her senses were telling her was that someone was standing there, looking around.
Only two men in the whole world had any reason to be there. That knowledge bore into her with piercing and sudden clarity: “Officer Mason” might be standing close enough for her to reach out and touch, or, if she was lucky, it was John Cameron, alleged murderer of nine.
Then, with a sound no louder than a whisper, the person started to move away. First, he was in the hall, and from there he went into the kitchen.
Madison stirred. The adrenaline made her chest ache, and she was glad to find the floor under her feet as she slid off the sofa. In one movement her hand found the .45, flicked the safety latch off, and cleared leather.
A beam of light danced on the ceiling in the hall, falling on the alarm panel by the door.
Madison, the gun pointed to the floor, leaned forward from behind the armrest, her eyes barely clearing the fabric: the man was examining the panel, his back to her, dark clothes, dark hair. He had a small flashlight in one hand, his left, and the other was on the panel. No weapons—at least none that she could see. If she got to him now, unprepared and unarmed, she could have him on the floor in seconds.
Madison narrowed her eyes; it was difficult to see in the gloom. What was the man doing? Never mind, she could ask him later, once he was cuffed in the back of a blue-and-white, thank you very much. Now—it had to be now. She had to do it before he turned around.
Madison stood straight up and spoke in a clear, unequivocal voice. “Seattle PD. Don’t move.”
The man didn’t so much as flinch. Madison came around from behind the sofa, left arm straight out, front sight at the center of the man’s back.
“Do exactly as I say when I say it, and we’ll be just fine. Do you understand?”
The man did not reply. He stood with his back to Madison, his arms slightly raised as if he had chosen to stop at that moment in time.
With her right hand, Madison found the switch for the overhead light in the hall. She flicked it on.
“Do you understand?” she repeated slowly and clearly.
The man did not reply. There was at least ten feet between them, and two thoughts occurred to Madison: the first was that the last time she had been up close and personal with Officer Mason, things hadn’t gone so well for the home team. The second was that John Cameron had been close enough to slash Erroll Sanders’s throat, and the guy had probably never even seen the knife before it came for him.
Whoever it was she was speaking to, the wise thing to do was to keep a polite distance.
“Okay, not a big talker. I don’t care. This is what I want you to do, and it is not optional. I know you can hear me—”
He was a dark-haired man, broad shoulders. Gloves—he was wearing black leather gloves.
Madison edged to one side but still couldn’t see his face.
“—and you can understand me. I want you to put your hands over your head and drop to your knees. Do it, or you will not get out of this in one piece.”
Her voice was steady, her hand dead still. The man did not move.
Madison flashed back: getting out of the car, the police officer meeting her and Brown, walking together toward the house. The sense of him, his height and body shape, before the attack.
Well, here goes nothing, Madison thought.
“John Cameron, do as I—”
It was the first sign of life, the tiniest flinch when she said his name. Then, in the silence of 2:00 a.m., the fridge in the kitchen rumbled to life with a shudder and hum, and for one split second Madison was startled enough to look away. And he was gone.
“Hey!” Madison had never seen anyone move so fast; he was up the stairs before she knew it, and her choice was either to shoot him in the back or to follow. She followed.
She didn’t even have time to swear: he was going for the master bedroom, and she had to get there before he reached a window and was out across the lawn.
Madison was already halfway up the stairs when she realized there was no way on this earth she would catch him. She spun around and ran back down: if she couldn’t catch him, she’d wait for him at the other end.
She made the turn into the living room, sliding on the wooden floor, and bumped into the French doors. She grabbed the handle and turned it. Dammit. They were locked, and the keys were nowhere to be seen.
Without thinking, Madison backed up a few steps, passed the .45 into her right hand, and lunged against the doors with her left shoulder, her face covered in the crook of her arm. She crashed through and hit the patio with her side on a bed of glass.
John Cameron touched the ground at the same time and became a fast-moving shadow in the darkness. Madison staggered up and gave chase. The lawn was surrounded by trees on two sides and sloped to the water on the third, the ground frosty and slick under her feet. She ran, following the blur at the end of the lawn. She heard him land with two feet on the pebble beach below—he must have jumped the six-foot drop. If he’s got a weapon, he’s got it out by now.
Madison reached the drop and stopped with a sideways slide, lay on her front, and looked over the top, left and right. No movement, no sounds. The beach was empty. It was maybe twenty-five feet to the water with a short pier to her right, and next to the pier, bobbing up and down with the tide, a small rowboat.
Whose boat is that? Did the Sinclairs own a boat?
Madison leaned forward, trying to see better. The air stung in her lungs, and the ground under her belly was ice-cold. She propped herself up on her left elbow. What the . . .
She saw it indistinctly at first: two dark patches that were the pier and the boat slowly moving apart, coming together, and then moving a little farther away from each other.
He’s in the boat. Madison’s head came up from behind the grass.
And it was moving.
Madison breathed hard through her mouth. She closed her eyes tightly for a second: what would five minutes of Cameron’s time be worth to her?
She jumped and landed hard, bent her knees, and balanced herself with her right hand on the pebbles. It shot a warning arrow of pain up her arm.
The boat had almost cleared the pier now. Madison straightened up, and just as she was taking the first step, from behind her she heard the clear and unmistakable sound of a branch snapping. She spun around, weapon out, as still as she could be and shivering in the night air in spite of herself. She held her breath and listened.
Out of the corner of her eye she could see the boat bobbing farther on; it had almost cleared the pier. The sound could have been anything.
If she ran now, she could still make it. Madison did not move. It could have been anything, she thought, but it wasn’t. Somewhere above her to her right, something brushed against the trees. Madison turned to see the boat floating away.
Nice try, she thought. He must have climbed back up after he released the boat and gone into the dense patch of trees that separated the p
roperties.
Madison looked around. A rickety wooden ladder stood at the other end of the lawn. It would take too long to get there. She holstered the .45. He knew—the son of a bitch knew about her arm.
She backed up a few steps, then took three quick strides and leaped up. Her left hand found a hold above, and her boot dug into the rocky ground. She swung her leg high and grabbed at the earth with her right hand. She hoisted herself up. She knew the pain would come a half second later, and it did, worse than she had imagined, the full Technicolor version. She groaned and crouched, one knee on the ground, the gun back in her hand. To her right, the Sinclair house shone at the top of the lawn, the light spilling out from the French doors Madison had crashed through. A little of the glow had found the outlines of the trees next to the house; it was too far to reach where she was.
Madison looked straight ahead into the firs and the darkness they held, then stepped into it. The trunks were slightly spaced out, and only minimum light filtered through. She proceeded slowly and carefully on the thin layer of frozen snow, twigs and branches crunching under every step. How much time had passed since she had last heard him? Seconds, minutes? She had to think clearly; her gun hand trembled. She stopped and stretched her right hand out; her fingertips brushed the bark of a fir, and a low branch bent as she trailed her hand along it. She couldn’t hear him. She could barely see one foot in front of her, but she should at least be able to hear him: he couldn’t have gotten clear to the other side or up to the street yet. If she couldn’t hear him, it meant he had stopped, too.
Madison, standing still, tried to make sense of the shapes around her. A drop of sweat ran between her shoulder blades, chilling her skin. She closed her eyes. She heard nothing but the lapping of water on the pebble beach. She wiped her brow and was surprised to find it covered in perspiration. Something stirred deep in the gloom to her left. Madison swung her arm, her eyes narrowed. A soft crunch of snow to her right. She held her breath to listen: something, someone circling in the darkness. She started moving toward the sound.
He was there; he had to be. The question was why. Fast as he was, he could have found a way out, risked her following him, sure, but he could have made it to the street.
Out of the blue, the photograph of the deck of the Nostromo came to her: the wood black and glossy with the blood of the five men slaughtered. She pushed it away. She thought of Sanders crumpled on the floor, arterial blood spray all over the walls. Shit, she whispered, and a puff of white breath drifted before her.
In the house, she had been the one with the advantage—briefly, she had to admit, but she had caught him unaware. Now she was as blind as a bat, waiting for the tiniest click or snap. For the first time Madison realized that she didn’t know what she would have done with him if she had gotten him in the first place. A sobering thought, it quickened the thumping in her chest: she could not take him in. If she arrested him, it would be all over. If they got cuffs on him, not even Nathan Quinn would be able to get them off. Cameron was the only living connection to the killer. If she took him in—if she managed to take him in—they would never know the truth.
She remembered Brown’s words in the airport parking lot after they found the Explorer, her own snappy reply. She had known nothing then, understood nothing. What are you prepared to do?
She saw a small clearing ahead, and the canopy of branches opened above her, enough for shapes to become distinct. She stepped in that direction, careless of the rustle of clothes and branches caught in her movements. Her steps were loud as she left the tangle of roots and shrubs behind her and walked out under a clear patch of sky, a perfect target. Remember Sanders, a thin voice told her. Standing in the middle of the clearing, Madison counted in her head to sixty.
I hope you’re watching, you son of a bitch.
A bird flapped its wings in a nearby tree. When she felt she had given him enough time to follow, she lifted her .45 high above her head, and the muzzle caught a glint of light, the weight of the weapon so familiar and welcome in her hand. First day in Homicide, a lot of hand-shaking, a lot of do-you-know-so-and-sos, Fynn taking her around to meet everybody, keeping Brown for last. They hadn’t shaken hands. The thin voice spoke to her again: If you have to, aim for the middle of the chest. It will bring a man down before he does the same to you.
Madison placed the .45 back in the holster and hooked the leather strap. Then, arms stretched out to the side, she turned around, all the way around, weapon holstered and secured.
There were flakes of frozen condensation in her lashes and particles of glass in her hair and on her shoulders. John Cameron would likely see them catch the light as she stood unarmed under the open sky. It would not be what he had expected, not at all.
“We need to talk,” she said, her voice steadier than she felt.
Madison did not like the empty silence after her words, as if hers was the only heartbeat in the woods. Nothing stirred. Maybe he had made it to the other side, long gone and far away. Still, she waited.
Cameron had known the detective instantly when she had spoken in the house. She was the one who had been looking through the Sinclairs’ videos and the pictures the last time he was there. The one who had been attacked only the night before.
He had read the papers: he knew that she must think he had shot her partner, and he was not going to let her get any closer to him. He had checked the front before going in. No cars—the woman must have walked to the house. And she had fallen asleep. Jesus Christ. More than anything Cameron had been annoyed at himself.
He stood feet away from her and looked her over. Under the black leather gloves, he felt the blade of his knife resting flat against his leg.
Madison waited. If he wasn’t moving, neither was she. If he was taking measure of her, wondering how long her patience would run, how cold she could stand to be, they were in for a long night. She stared into the darkness; he stared right back.
Cameron had enjoyed her crash through the French doors and the chase. The boat had been merely a distraction: he wanted her in the trees; he wanted to take a good look at her. Twenty-four hours ago she had been close enough to touch the one person he was dying to meet. They certainly had a few things to talk about.
There was activity in the top of the trees above them; something flapped and dislodged a handful of snow. It fell in the clearing between them.
It had been a long time since John Cameron had stood that close to a cop. Madison kept her hand well away from her holster.
“Do you have any idea how easy it would have been to shoot you in the back?” she said. “What are the chances that you are carrying a weapon right now? Everybody thinks you shot my partner; how hard do you think they would have looked into a self-defense homicide? They’d just give me a medal.”
She let her words drift between them.
“And the man who murdered your friends would get away.”
Madison wiped her brow, the perspiration on her skin ice-cold. She didn’t know whether she would be able to convince him to talk; she didn’t know whether she’d still be standing in five minutes.
“No more poker nights, no more birthday parties. I saw them in the morgue, Cameron—the children. And Quinn will be next; you must know that.”
If the murdering piece of shit doesn’t take a step forward right now—
Loud voices broke onto the lawn from the house. Madison was startled, and she turned. Someone was on the grass. Voices calling to each other—three, maybe four men. It must be cops, patrol cops. Some helpful neighbor must have called them when they heard glass breaking.
Thank you very much. She couldn’t think of worse timing for the Neighborhood Watch to swing into action. Cops on the lawn. No way Cameron would show himself now. No way.
Madison hesitated; the voices were getting closer. She stared into the pitch-blackness around her.
Cameron had heard the cops, too; he hadn’t moved an inch. Even if five of them combed the wooded patch, he knew he’d get away.
If it came to it, he might just have to make his way out. No problem there. The detective hadn’t made a sound yet to alert the cops.
Madison felt like she was hitting the dregs of her adrenaline. What would happen if she called out to them? Just then it started to snow. Madison looked up; flakes floated to the ground. I must be out of my mind.
“We need to talk,” she said quietly, and she started to make her way toward the lawn. Her eyes unaccustomed to the sudden gloom, she brushed past John Cameron, who stood no more than an arm’s length away, watching her.
She came out on the grass to find four uniforms, three men and a woman, with their pieces out, walking toward her.
She had already taken out her badge and held it in front of her. “Police officer,” she said out loud. They crowded around her.
She turned back once toward the spot she had come from, and only seconds later she thought she heard a car engine coming to life in the street. Good job, she thought bitterly. Brown would have gotten him to show.
Thirty minutes later, Detectives Kelly and Rosario arrived with snow on their shoes. Sure, Madison thought, it could have been Spencer and Dunne, but no, that would have been a whole different day. Kelly looked grim: the Sanders investigation hadn’t thrown up anything solid as yet, and patience was not a notion he lived his life by.
She had already told the story once, to the responding officers, and she went through it again. She showed them exactly what had happened where and walked them out to the pier.
Back in the hall a solitary Crime Scene Unit investigator was dusting the alarm panel.
“You fell asleep?” Kelly snorted.
“Yes.” There was no way around that one, and Madison wouldn’t lie about it.
“You still had the keys,” Kelly said. “Even though you’re on leave.”
“Yes. I realized I had them in the pocket of a jacket at home.”
“You would have brought them back first thing tomorrow,” Rosario said, without any apparent trace of sarcasm.
The Gift of the Darkness Page 27