Quinn sat in his parked car, his thoughts running away from him, unable to simply get out and go into his house. Two months ago, in the diner.
“What are we talking about here?”
“What if you didn’t even have enough on the woman to charge her, but you knew she’d done it?”
“Then you go back to the drawing board, and you find the evidence you need.”
“Still, sometimes you don’t.”
“Sometimes you don’t.”
“What would you have done then?”
“In this case?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know. Sometimes, however hard you work the case, it just doesn’t happen.”
“What about eyewitness testimony?”
“In theory?”
“In theory.”
“Without evidence?”
“Yes.”
“It would be very difficult. A good defense attorney would tear the witness apart.”
Quinn saw Cameron in the lockup, the boy’s eyes dead and glazed and his voice saying over and over, “It’s done, Nathan. It’s over. It’s done now.” He hadn’t understood then. The spring air was sweet as Quinn left his car. He lay on his bed in his suit and tie, only kicking off his shoes as he turned and wrapped himself in the bedspread.
The understanding of what Cameron had done and why he had done it had reached into his chest like smoke; it burned and choked him. When dawn came, his decision had been made. He showered, put on a fresh suit, and went to the office. His letter of resignation was a surprise to all his colleagues; then again, it wasn’t the first time someone as good as Quinn left to make some proper money in the private sector. Two days later, Quinn and Cameron met for lunch in the diner.
“Hikers found a dead body in the woods—guy fell in a hole and was killed by wooden spikes.”
Cameron didn’t so much as blink. “It’s called a trapping pit—they’re used for bears. Maybe the poor guy was a careless hunter.”
“No, he was a cheap, boorish enforcer. A bad guy. I knew of him.”
The waitress came, and Cameron ordered pie. He took out a schedule of the Sonics games and pushed it toward Quinn. “Get busy and decide which ones you want to see. Pie’s great today.” Cameron’s eyes were bright and held Quinn whole. “Try some.”
A quiet kid. A beer or maybe coffee with a shot. Trying to look older than he was, you know, but looking like he was passing razor blades half the time. Oh, yeah, I remember thinking there was something odd with one of his hands, always in his pocket. I notice things like that—it passes the time.
Quinn circled a few dates with his pen. Jack would never say, would never tell him, so he would never have to know that the legal system Nathan believed in—the life he had carved out of his grief—would have failed him again in the only way that mattered. Gilman had been one of the kidnappers, one of the men who had taken David away and lost him in the woods forever, and Jack would carry Gilman alone.
Quinn opened his private practice a few weeks later. His colleagues were right: it would be hugely successful.
Chapter 40
The call came in from an early commuter into Seattle, driving past and noticing the eerie light behind the trees. A neighbor would later say she thought she’d heard an explosion around 1:00 a.m. The Everett Fire Marshall’s Office engines raced to the isolated property; the flames were still high beyond the firs in the distance. A circle of bare ground had spread out and around the house, the snow withdrawing to the tree line.
A row of firefighters in full gear stood and watched the burning hell. No one had made it out of the house: they had checked the perimeter, sweeping the gritty snow with their flashlights where the light of the flames didn’t reach.
The second floor had collapsed into the first, which had folded into itself and crashed into the basement. A wooden house built at the beginning of the last century, like so much tinder waiting for a spark. The fire had burned hot and fast. The crisscrossing jets of water did what little they could, but by the dawn’s first light Harry Salinger’s house was no more than blackened stumps and a pile of ashes.
Madison grabbed the phone on the second ring and automatically swung her bare feet onto the cold wooden floor.
“Hello.”
“Madison.”
It was Spencer.
“I’m here.”
“Listen. The hotline got a call from San Diego last night: a woman says she’s Salinger’s aunt, saw him on the news, gave us a lead. His grandparents left him a house in Everett while he was in jail; he just never bothered to register the property in his own name.”
Madison was already walking to the bathroom to shower. She froze midstep.
“Tell me you have an address.” She flashed to a sudden memory of green, Everett’s Forest Park in spring.
“Slow down, Madison. We’re all about five hours too late.”
“What—”
“There was a fire. The house has burned down to nothing; there might have been accelerants involved. Right now we know diddly-squat. The FMO investigators are already all over it.”
“Spencer, we can’t let ourselves believe he was inside the house. Life is just not that kind.”
“I know. But apparently there was an explosion. We can at least hope.”
“Hope—I could go for a little of that.”
Madison held the cell in her hand for a minute after the call ended, still slightly dazed by broken sleep and new information. This was unexpected; this was a turn in the road.
She checked the time. 6:10 a.m. She was due to meet Quinn in a little less than an hour and a half to pick up the notes. Spencer had mentioned accelerants: that meant either Salinger had quite literally burned his bridges behind him and moved on to the next thing on his to-do list, or he had accelerants around the house, and they had blown up on him.
She turned on the cold water and stepped into the shower. In her experience, life was definitely not that fair.
It was after her second cup of coffee that Madison realized that she hadn’t told Spencer about Quinn and Cameron dropping by. Then again, only the mugs in the sink confirmed beyond doubt what, even a few days ago, she would have filed away under surreal dream.
There was no way around it, the fire had deprived them of a wealth of details about Harry Salinger: how he lived his days and how those days had sometimes been measured by hours filled with death and horror. Madison adjusted her holster and tightened the strap. If the house had held evidence that could connect him to the John Does, that evidence was gone, too. Forever.
Spencer’s call came just as she was getting into her car.
“They found a body inside the house. Everett FMO is making sure the site is safe, but they have definitely seen human remains.”
Madison leaned her head against the steering wheel. For one brief, sickening moment a dead body in a burned-down house had felt like a good thing. Was that where she was now? Because the only thing worse than that would have been to pretend it hadn’t happened. Madison wound down the car window and breathed deeply. She wasn’t going to turn away from it; she had been glad a body had been found, and she had hoped it was the man whose work she had witnessed in the photographs from Pierce County.
It occurred to her that if she had been at that house when the fire started, in the twisted way our hearts turn, she would have tried to get Salinger out.
She turned on the ignition, and the familiar purr broke the silence, a bird flapped away from the branch above her, and a handful of snow drifted onto the windshield.
If the fire had gotten to Salinger before the King County Prosecutor’s Office, before John Cameron and his judgment, then maybe fire was a more appropriate resolution.
Madison was on 509 when the cell started vibrating on the seat next to her.
“Make that three sets of unidentified human remains,” Spencer said, his voice rough from lack of sleep.
She didn’t quite know how to respond: if he had blown himself
to hell, then he had taken company.
“Spencer, wait. I have to drop something off at the lab first, and then I’m going to brief Fynn. You really want to be there.”
“Brief him about what?” He yawned.
“I met Cameron last night. We had a chat. Anyway, I guess that’s one way to describe what happened.”
“You do keep things interesting, don’t you? Yeah, I’ll be there.”
Madison stepped on the gas. What she really wanted was to drive straight to Salinger’s house and go through the smoking ruins on her hands and knees and find something, anything, that would confirm he’d been there. Instead, there were more victims to identify, more relatives to inform, and all she could do was wait for DNA testing and the will of a Fate that, quite frankly, had been pissing on their shoes lately.
Just as she recognized that schoolyard swearing was oddly comforting, she also knew that at some point that day she would be standing on the edge of the snow looking into the wreckage for an answer she wouldn’t get, and, without a doubt, Quinn and Cameron would do the same.
Nathan Quinn came out of his Jeep as Madison pulled into the precinct parking lot. A large padded envelope changed hands, and she took it without looking inside.
“Thank you,” she said.
He nodded.
“You know what to do if you receive another one.”
“There might not be another one.”
“You heard.”
“Yes, an hour ago.”
Madison didn’t ask how he knew. “Three dead in the house so far,” she said.
“Three?”
That he hadn’t known. Good news and bad. Madison watched her very own reaction play on his face.
“How long will it take for the tests?”
“I don’t know. It depends on so many variables.”
Quinn sank his hands into his coat pockets; snowflakes touched and melted on his shoulders.
“When you want to kill a search in court, you send your opponent a blizzard of paperwork. Every document they ever requested in triplicate and everything even vaguely mentioned in discovery. Before they can find what they’re looking for, they’re drowning in paper.”
“He sent us a blizzard.”
“Do you believe our luck would have him blow himself up?”
“Not this week.”
“Exactly.” He started to move away.
“You know what to do if you receive another one.”
Quinn’s eyes found hers for the briefest moment.
“Absolutely.”
Madison groaned inwardly. It wasn’t so much that Quinn couldn’t even bother to lie effectively—there had been a flash of something there, and, way down the line, it would be trouble.
“I thought we were working on the presumption of transparency,” she said to his back.
“I’ve never lied to you, Detective, and I’m not about to start now.”
“Why is that no comfort to me whatsoever?”
“Because you’re wise beyond your years.”
“If he’s still alive, he will write again.”
Quinn didn’t reply.
“You get another one of these, you get on the phone to me like your life depends on it. Which it does.”
Quinn didn’t reply.
“Last night it was Cameron who mentioned the notes, not you. Since when is he the one with common sense in the partnership?”
“Don’t you have a briefing to go to?”
“I expect there will be a certain interest, yes.”
Quinn turned on his car’s ignition, and the engine came to life. “Have fun.”
Considering all they had gone through in the last week, Quinn should have been at least moderately relieved that now they were getting close to the real killer. Madison had seen no trace of that.
In a small pool of bright light Sorensen’s tweezers gave a flash of steel as the first envelope revealed the card inside. Their heads bent above the table, Sorensen’s red hair held back in a ponytail and Madison’s under the collar of her blazer, the rest of the room was in darkness.
To know in her mind what the notes contained was one thing, but to see Thirteen Days on the handsome cream paper was to see it carved on the door frame of the Sinclairs’ bedroom, the letters pretty against the white gloss, and to see that brought back the heavy scent of flesh decay and wood polish. Madison held her breath.
The room was quiet, the unnatural silence of a number of bodies in a small space; no one dared shift their weight from one foot to the other for fear of missing a single word.
“He was wary but confident,” Madison said an hour into her briefing with Fynn, with Spencer, Dunne, Kelly, and Rosario sitting and standing around them.
Kelly looked ready to burst, the unfairness of the youngest and most inexperienced of the unit briefing them about anything was beyond him; the fact that she’d had coffee with the man who’d broken his partner’s nose two days earlier was beyond belief itself.
Madison had spoken carefully: this was not the place for conjecture, and she was aware that a false sense of familiarity with John Cameron might give any of them something much more serious than a broken nose.
“Sorensen will call when she has any results on the cards,” she concluded.
“Good job,” Fynn said.
I need to tell Brown, Madison thought. Then the briefing will be complete.
Madison sat at her keyboard. Originally her e-mail to Kamen would have only contained the Pierce County pictures; then Quinn had turned up on her doorstep, and twelve hours later she was staring at the blank e-mail in-box, trying to put some order into last night’s revelations, this morning’s fire, and the bone-deep sense that Salinger’s letter-writing days were not done yet.
After she had been typing for a while, she stood up and paced the tiny length of the room her desk and Brown’s still occupied. It felt pretty much like her mind did at the time, crammed but missing something vitally important.
We don’t know why he singled out Quinn, and these cards, this unfinished message, carry the weight of his promises, his hopes for what he wanted to achieve. And unless we understand what that is, if he is still alive, we will not be able to stop him.
Madison signed off on the e-mail, attached the pictures, and pressed Send.
Fynn had been pleased with her unofficial report and had given her the task to walk backward, so to speak, in Salinger’s shoes and build up his background and anything from his past she could dredge up in order to make sense of the present. Every available warm body was out interviewing anybody Salinger had ever met.
Madison set out to build a timeline that started with twin boys learning to walk and ended with one of them shooting people at point-blank range and worse. Her note-taking was interrupted by an appointment with a young man from Records.
On the screen, Cameron’s already altered picture from his twenty-year-old arrest glowed bland and unremarkable.
“You met him, right? How did we do?” the technician asked her, his voice too full of hope for Madison to answer directly.
“Well, he’s a difficult customer, this one. We need to adjust some details.”
“That bad?”
“The aging of the original picture was effective, but the lines here and here are different, and the hairline—”
“Wait. I’ll work in the changes as we go.”
He cracked his knuckles and tightened his blond ponytail. “Let’s start with the hairline.”
Madison closed her eyes and went back to the previous evening, turning around and seeing him for the first time, sitting at the table and studying him, Salinger’s own Rosetta Stone.
A while later, there he was, on the screen.
“Done. Did I get the slant of the eyes right?”
Madison leaned forward.
“Yup,” she replied. “Now, can you take away conscience and morality?”
She left with a few freshly printed copies, put one under a stapler on Spencer’s desk
, and grabbed her car keys.
Madison took 99 northbound and hoped that the Everett Fire Marshall’s office would let her get close enough to Salinger’s house or whatever was left of it. She had to remind herself every mile that there would be no immediate answers, no sudden epiphanies just because she would be physically closer than she had ever been to the man’s life and its mysteries.
The sky was heavy and low, and she drove as fast as legally allowed to get there before daylight began its slow fade.
She found the place easily, emergency vehicles backed up all the way down the drive, the trees hiding the object of her interest. News helicopters circled overhead, and at least a dozen camera crews were trying to frame anything worthy of note in their lenses.
She parked, hooked her badge on her coat’s breast pocket, and left her car with her head down. She pointed at her ID when she reached the police barrier and was waved through. It was the smell that found her first: in the chill it was a sharp blade of acrid and bitter air with every breath she took, underneath it an oily residue that clung to the inside of her mouth.
Her eyes watered, and she wiped them with a sleeve. In a couple of minutes she reached the clearing and the crime-scene tape; beyond that point all the snow had melted, dirt showing through like a ragged gray carpet. A deep flush of anger surprised her: his home, but he was not there; his work, but nothing she could reach through and grab with both hands. Madison walked the perimeter of the tape. A few men in full protective gear were sifting through the ruins, slowly and carefully. Every so often one would pick something up with his gloved hand and place it in an evidence bag.
In the distance, on the other side of the house, Madison saw Dunne in conversation with a fireman. He noticed her and lifted his right hand, the thumb folded in and four fingers straight up. Four sets of human remains. Madison nodded, message understood. The count had gone up to four.
The Gift of the Darkness Page 39