The Gift of the Darkness

by Valentina Giambanco

“You bet,” Madison replied.

  “There you go,” he said to his partner. Kelly ignored him.

  “What did you hope to find? We’ve been through this place with a nits comb.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe something I missed the first time.”

  “Will you give her a break? Her partner is in ICU, and she had to do something.” Rosario smiled at Kelly. “I’m sure you’d do the same for me.”

  “Not necessarily. You didn’t see his face at all?”

  “No.”

  “You have no idea who it was?”

  “No.”

  “But you had to chase him through glass doors?”

  “Yes.”

  She gave them a description. Accurate, as it happens, but one that would fit about a quarter of the population. Kelly took it all down, Madison saw that he was itching to start an argument, and she didn’t exactly feel shy herself. Sooner or later she would have to confront him. It had little to do with Kelly and everything to do with her place within the precinct.

  Kelly didn’t like her. It had been an immediate thing with him, and Madison didn’t really think gender had played a part. He just didn’t like her. He smiled tightly and was about to say something, when Rosario stepped in.

  “You said the guy was wearing gloves?”

  “Yes.”

  Madison and Kelly didn’t break eye contact.

  “No prints, then,” Rosario continued.

  “I guess not.”

  “All-righty.”

  “How’s Sanders going?” Madison asked Kelly.

  “We’re working it,” Rosario replied.

  It meant they had zero leads aside from Cameron’s print on the axle and no way to link him to the crime scene.

  Kelly lit up. “There’s a rumor going around that you got cold feet about hunting down Cameron.”

  “Meaning?”

  “That you lost your nerve after last night and are coming up with all sorts of screwed-up theories. You’ve been with Homicide, what, a month? A rookie mistake: pressure got to you, and you couldn’t protect your partner.”

  Madison took a step forward, and in one totally unexpected moment of clarity she knew that she was about to lose it.

  “What?” Kelly said in her face.

  It would have been so sweet to let him have it, to wipe the board clean after four weeks of his yard-dog manners and the stench of cheap cigars that hung on his clothes. Kelly straightened up and shut his mouth, the cigar clamped between his lips.

  Everybody had stopped what they were doing. It had to be now, and Madison spoke quietly, because she knew she didn’t need to shout.

  “You know, of all the awful things that have happened this week, you don’t even make the top ten: you are somewhere between I forgot to pick up the dry cleaning and I should gas up the car. You are less than an inconvenience, and I don’t care what you think, because you are nothing but a bad smell. You are lint in the toilet bowl I wouldn’t bother to flush. Now, are we done here?”

  Kelly blinked.

  Rosario came to his rescue. “My feeling is maybe we can call it quits,” he muttered.

  “Sure.”

  “Kelly?”

  Kelly nodded.

  “Okay, then, boys and girls, we’re done here.” He clapped his partner on the shoulder. “Let’s go.” Kelly didn’t move. Rosario took his arm. “Let’s go.”

  Madison wanted everybody out so that she could have one last walk-about. The uniformed officers had boarded up the broken door.

  “We’ll wait and drop you off,” Rosario said.

  “No, thanks. I feel like walking.”

  “It’s 4:00 a.m.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “You’ll drop off the keys tomorrow?”

  “Sure thing.”

  He lowered his voice. “Get some rest. We don’t know each other real well, but I’m betting your natural color is not green.”

  Everybody left, and then it was just Madison in the empty house, and she didn’t know whether she’d rather have a shot of bourbon to end the day or a coffee to start it. She walked from room to room, too tired for inspiration, just letting her brain record what her eyes were seeing.

  Given the state she was in, walking was better than getting into a car with Kelly, even if by the time she got home she had to peel off her clothes with shaking hands and put herself under a hot shower. The anger coursing through her had nothing to do with Kelly—he was just noise. She had to remember that.

  Madison stayed under the water, as hot as she could take it, until it started to turn cold. In her white robe and bunny slippers she padded into the kitchen. With the possible exception of her hair, everything ached. She poured herself a glass of milk, shook a couple of painkillers into the palm of her hand, and downed them in one go. She had no trouble falling asleep.

  Chapter 29

  John Cameron drove his deep green Jeep Cherokee at exactly the speed limit as he left Three Oaks. At 4:00 on a Sunday morning, it would have been nice to slam his foot down on the gas pedal, but there was snow on the ground and patrol cars with his face taped to the dash. It had already been a good night in some unexpected ways; he wasn’t about to force his luck.

  He had gone to Blue Ridge looking for a connection that would put Jimmy and his family together with the man who had taken their lives, the man who apparently had plied his trade in prison. Instead, he had found something entirely different and, possibly, equally useful. He checked the clock; the digits glowed pale green. It was too early and too late to call Nathan; he owed him at least another three hours’ sleep.

  Cameron understood Quinn’s reluctance to let him talk to Hollis. They both knew that once the investigator came up with a name, the life-span expectancy of that person would be dramatically reduced. Quinn had his way of doing things, and so did Cameron.

  There is a house in the Admiral neighborhood above Alki, almost on top of Duwamish Head—an unassuming three-bedroom set on its own grounds, surrounded by the same trees as every other house in the street, protected by the same wrought-iron gate. No living being has crossed its threshold in seven years except for its owner: the day the workmen finished laying the new wooden floors was the last time anyone other than John Cameron walked among those rooms.

  Cameron opened the gate with a remote and drove the car into a garage on the side of the house. There was enough distance from the street to allow for a sense of privacy without that being the obvious reason for someone to choose that house over any other. It wasn’t its structure in brick and wood that had attracted Cameron. He stepped into the living room and paused: one side was entirely glass, looking out over Elliott Bay, the water black and still and beyond it a handful of flickering lights, downtown Seattle.

  He owned a bungalow in Westwood, Los Angeles, and an apartment in New York, yet this was what he always came back to: a simply furnished house bought in another man’s name. No one, not even Nathan Quinn, knew about it, and nothing inside it had any connection to any part of his life—not a scrap of paper with his name on it, not a family photograph.

  For many years he had lived in a fine balance, the fragments that made the whole close enough but not quite touching. Cameron poured himself a shot of bourbon and sat in a deep leather chair that faced the glass wall; he took a sip and felt the warm rush in his chest. The system had worked until seven days ago.

  Cameron was calm and could think clearly: that privilege had been bought at a price. He knew it in Los Angeles; he knew it as he slashed Erroll Sanders’s throat and put a swift end to his life. There was a point in LA when he had realized that the dealer was not responsible for Jimmy’s death, and he had gone ahead anyway.

  He sipped the bourbon and hoped that there would never come a time when he’d lie to himself about it: Sanders had died because he needed killing and because Cameron knew he would enjoy killing him. It was that simple.

  Earlier that night, as he had walked into Jimmy’s house, one moment of unguarded grief had almost
cost him his freedom, possibly even his life. One razor-sharp memory: James and Annie showing him the home they had just bought, their children not yet born and their lives extending into a bright forever. Cameron drained the glass. He had been distracted, and now he couldn’t even be sure that it wasn’t a composite of other memories, if it had happened at all.

  He stood up to refresh his drink and instead found himself making coffee. He could look at the situation straight on, or he could recriminate and rationalize and damn well put a bow on it, but it wouldn’t change a thing: for all his care and caution, he had drawn the killer to them; he had invited him into their lives. Seven days ago something had followed him home.

  Cameron poured the coffee and took it back to his seat by the window. Detective Madison had surprised him, and that didn’t happen very often. She had known to keep her distance even though she’d followed him like a terrier and wouldn’t have budged if the patrol cops hadn’t turned up. She had put her weapon away—a nice touch—and he had enjoyed that moment. Nevertheless, she was a homicide detective, and that was where her priorities lay. Did she want a collar that would make her name in the ranks? Quite possibly. Did she want to find the killer? Very probably. Did she want to nail the piece of shit who had put her partner in a coma? Absolutely. That’s what he could count on. Strangely enough, he had believed her when she said she knew he hadn’t done it. So the question was really quite simple: what would he have done if the uniforms hadn’t broken up their party? What indeed? Cameron thought. Detective Madison didn’t know about the firebug who had been murdered in jail—however, she must know something. It was worth a conversation, and, the next time they met, he hoped for her sake that she would keep that .45 snug and well secured in its holster.

  He checked his watch: barely 5:00 a.m. He wanted to speak to Nathan; he wanted to get him the hell out of town. Something about Detective Madison, how determined she had looked in the small clearing: she had been standing there with nothing between them except her words and the cold night air. He was not the one she was afraid of; what she was after was altogether different, and they both knew it now.

  Cameron waited for dawn. Without exception, anybody he had ever met in his travels had been moved by a desire for power or money, and, without exception, he had never done anything in his life in pursuit of either. Still, the man who had murdered James and his family was not driven by those hungers: his rewards, Cameron suspected, were measured by darker scales.

  Then we have something in common. Cameron looked down at the scars on the back of his right hand.

  Chapter 30

  John Cameron, eighteen years old, sat across from Nathan Quinn in the corner booth of a deli on Second Avenue. It was stuffy and busy with the lunchtime crowd, the waitresses yelling the orders to the cook above the general din. They ate their reubens, Nathan talking and John listening. He talked about justice and the legal system and the homicide case he was on, and John was a good audience. Truth be told, that day John Cameron was not in the mood to talk; he sat back in the red leather seat and looked his friend over.

  Nathan’s brother, David, had been dead just over five years; the family had been hit hard, and everybody had gotten on with their lives in the best way they could, but it wasn’t as if their loss was ever going to go away. Nathan had been there for him and James; maybe it had helped him a little, too. Before, they were only his kid brother’s friends; after, they were a living reminder of what David might have done, what he might have become, had he lived.

  John nodded at the right points, and Nathan talked on. Nathan was a prosecuting attorney who had come to terms with the fact that his brother’s body would never be found and the men responsible for his death would never be brought to justice.

  It wasn’t peace of mind; it was a fight every God-given day to keep his life straight and good and not let the rage take over. Until recently John had never quite understood how hard that fight could be, but things had changed.

  Six weeks earlier to the day, John had been nursing a beer in a bar in Eastlake, between Yale and Pontius, when a man from a table at the back approached the bar and started giving the bartender a hard time about something John couldn’t quite hear above the music. The bar itself was a low-rent, dank-smelling excuse for a neighborhood joint with a rather relaxed attitude toward fake IDs.

  It was a quiet night, and the bartender was going about his business, washing and drying glasses; the customer, late forties with a lot of muscle turning soft on a six-foot frame, was following him along the bar, getting closer and closer to the stool where John was perched. The bartender was nodding and obviously trying to get away from the conversation, yet the man kept at him. John realized he must have met him somewhere: he didn’t look familiar, but his voice did—the way he just hammered on at the guy.

  Maybe he knew him from The Rock, although there was something unpleasant about him, and he didn’t seem like the type his father would be friends with. Still, he had definitely heard that ranting before.

  Don’t make me do this.

  The hairs on the back of his neck were already standing when his brain caught up.

  Don’t make me do this, you little shit.

  He covered the back of his right hand with his left before he knew what he was doing, and for the first time in years he felt the cold blade resting against his skin. The man got closer, and John looked down into his glass, feeling a mouthful of beer coming back up. He swallowed it and tried to stand, and his legs wouldn’t move. The man was maybe five feet away from him, and John could do nothing but sit there and force himself to breathe in and out. At some point he looked up, because it would have seemed odd if he didn’t. The man was leaning on the bar, propping himself on one elbow; the bartender was refreshing his drink and filling up a bowl of peanuts. The man turned to John as if he’d been part of the conversation.

  “Do you believe this shit?” he said pleasantly. Then he shook his head, picked up his drink—bourbon, straight—and the peanuts and went back to his table. John waited until he could safely get up and walk to the door; he put a bill on the bar, leaving a large tip for the bartender, and found his way out, his legs just about carrying him.

  Out of the door he turned left and walked a dozen yards to where he knew there was a deserted alley. Bent double with his hands on his knees, he threw up between two Dumpsters; then he went back to his car and sat with his head back and his hands shaking on the wheel. There was no doubt in his mind, absolutely none. Sometimes he went a few weeks without thinking about it in detail, and then it would come to him every day for a month. No more than a few seconds, but it was enough.

  August 28, 1985. He was twelve going on thirteen. They were fishing at Jackson Pond. David had nicked three cigarettes from his father, and they were smoking with their feet in the cool water and their bikes in a heap on the ground. They were discussing whether to take off their T-shirts and get bitten by a million mosquitoes or keep them on and suffer the heat. Jimmy had put his head underwater and then shaken it like a dog, and David had told him that his ugly face would scare the fish away. He had trailed a thin gold chain with a tiny St. Nicholas medal on the surface of the water; it was better than bait, he said. The chain was a gift of his father’s Scottish relatives who thought his mother’s Jewishness was not a good reason to deny the boy the protection of the patron saint of Holy Souls. The chain glittered in the water; the fish stayed away.

  So far, so good: the day was glorious, and school was in the distant future. Then the blue van appeared on the path, and things got fuzzy.

  John Cameron came to in the back of the van, blindfolded, hands and feet tied and pinching. He thought he was asleep and dreaming—a hell of a dream, really—but then he bumped against someone lying next to him on the floor and lost consciousness again.

  The next time, men’s voices were whispering nearby, and he lasted a while. It was so hot under the blindfold, he could barely breathe, and it smelled of something awful, like they’d used it to wipe
grease off an engine. His shirt was stuck to him, and when his head started to pound, he knew they were in trouble and it was for real. He wanted to call out for the others, but he lay still, disoriented and rigid with fear until the van came to a rocky stop.

  The blindfold was tight around his face, and he couldn’t see anything above or under it. He felt someone large and strong lifting him clear off the grimy mat on the van floor and out; the fresh air was wonderful, and it was so quiet, they must be somewhere out of the city. The men— three, maybe four of them—worked quickly and spoke little.

  He was pinned against a tree, and a coil of rope was tied around his shoulders and thighs. The grass was cool under his feet, and he remembered they had taken their shoes off at the pond—they must still be there. He heard a rustle of clothes and movement to his left—David and Jimmy. What was happening? They had been kidnapped; he had read about that kind of thing in the newspapers. Last year someone took a kid in Spokane but returned him after a couple of days. Was that it? Thick silence hung over them; he could smell cigarette smoke and hear the suspension in the van creak a little when the men sat down. The clearer his head became, the heavier the sense of dread, as if somebody was kneeling on his chest.

  For the longest time no one said a word; then a man spoke. “Boys, I want you to listen to me and listen good. Say yes.”

  Nobody spoke.

  “Say yes.”

  “Yes.” John heard two faint voices like his own.

  “This is a message for your daddies, I want you to remember it. The message is: it’s not personal, it’s business. You got it? Repeat it.”

  John was blacking out; the ropes were tight, and he couldn’t get his voice to work. He wanted to run, he wanted to be home, he wanted his mother.

  “Repeat it.”

  “It’s not personal, it’s business.”

  He heard David and Jimmy, and he opened his mouth, and nothing came out.

  “Again.”

  “It’s not personal, it’s business.”