Madison had worked cases of missing children before, and she knew the statistics: almost seventy-five percent of children who were abducted and murdered were dead within the first three hours from the moment of the abduction. Tommy was not a statistic. Tommy was a six-year-old boy who liked to wander off. He is safe, and we will find him.
She was torn between reason and a howling wind in her chest screaming the worst possible scenario. Logic and reason told her over and over again that the original seals were intact and the DNA was a match, and yet the memory of the scent of chloroform filled her nostrils. Nothing, not even the icy air rushing through the open windows, could wash her clean of it.
She picked up her cell from the passenger seat and speed-dialed a number.
“Detective Madison calling for Dr. Fellman. I know he’s busy. I appreciate it. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t an emergency.”
A long silence as her call was put through. Minutes rolled by.
“Detective, I’m in the middle of—”
“Dr. Fellman, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I have a possible child abduction on my hands, and I just need to ask you something.”
“What abduction?”
“A six-year-old boy connected to the Salinger investigation.”
Fellman took that on board. “Ask away.”
“You harvested the DNA from one of the bodies found at the Salinger house. Was it a complete set of human remains?”
“It was.”
“And you tested it yourself. Twice. And twice it came back a match to Harry Salinger?”
“Yes, we used mitochondrial DNA, because it was all we could recover, and it was a match. It survived the high temperature and the destruction of soft tissue.”
“Mitochondrial—that’s DNA only from the mother’s line?”
“Exactly. We could harvest enough for a match. Tested twice, confirmed twice. What is this about, Madison? I thought you guys would be popping corks tonight.”
“Salinger has a pattern of manipulating evidence and going after family members. The missing boy is my godson.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. But not even that murdering piece of—not even he could alter DNA at will.”
“I’ll let you get back to work.”
Madison almost missed his last words as she rang off.
“Good luck.”
Chapter 44
Madison sliced through the rush-hour traffic. There were questions to be answered, and she envisioned a police officer going through the list, following procedure, not knowing whether he was dealing with a wandering child, an abduction, or a parent who had intentionally harmed her six-year-old boy. Has this happened before? How often? How long before you noticed? Was the boy upset? Show me again where it happened . . . They didn’t know Rachel Abramowitz, but Madison did. She ran through the options: Tommy was lost; he had gotten distracted and wandered away from his mother, then got tired and curled up somewhere under or behind something in the store. Possible but unlikely. The police had looked everywhere. All the other possibilities led into darkness.
Madison had felt before the random cruelty of the world flutter against the edge of her life; you can’t work law enforcement and not feel it brush past you every so often. Today, it had found her and woven its way inside.
Brown had asked her why she wanted to be in Homicide. The OPR detectives had asked her the same thing. In the end, it all came down to a dog barking twenty years ago.
She tried and failed to forget the long lines of shrubs and trees close to the store, the dense patches of green where it would be so easy to hide the body of a little boy. She tried and failed to forget that Burien, like anywhere else, likely had a long list of registered sex offenders. There were very good reasons justice was not left in the hands of a victim’s relatives. The cell kept its silence, and Madison drove on, mile after mile.
She rounded a corner, and there they were: a motley crowd and the sweeping beams of flashlights. Tommy was still missing, and even the thin comfort of daylight was gone.
Madison pulled into the parking lot of the Five Corners Shopping Center and quickly scanned the groups for Rachel and Neal. She spotted them talking to a police officer by Rachel’s car; their boy had been missing for over an hour now, and they looked as if they had not drawn breath since. Around them Christmas carols played softly from invisible speakers.
Rachel’s voice on the phone had broken Alice’s heart, but their faces, gray with shock and fear, were a fresh new hell. Neal had his arm around his wife, both listening to the officer as if he was the path to salvation. Others streamed around them like a river, searching and calling out, under cars and over hedges; some were checking inside the Dumpsters.
Madison strode up to them and took Rachel’s hand; her friend grasped it in both of hers. She hoped her eyes would tell her what words could not.
“Officer Clarke.” Madison read the name on the Burien PD tag. “We spoke on the phone.”
“Detective.”
Clarke was thickset and short, an army haircut and cheeks that would need to be shaved in another couple of hours. He registered who Madison was—there had been enough news reports in the last week—but he made no comment.
“Has the Amber Alert been broadcast yet?” she asked.
“We don’t know enough to be sure it was an abduction. If it doesn’t fit the criteria, we can’t send it out.”
“What about regular television and radio news?”
“We’re taking care of that. As well as the rest.”
“What’s the rest?” Neal’s voice cracked.
Madison and Clarke exchanged a look, and he left it to her to fill in the details. She tried to offer a possible scenario. Nothing she could say would sound reassuring. “Say that someone here saw Tommy, and he had tripped and fallen; however minor the injury, they might have taken him to a hospital. The police will check the hospitals for a boy who looks like Tommy and has just been brought in.”
“But I don’t understand. He didn’t leave the store—we looked at the film, and he never came out. He should still be here.” There was anger and pleading. Rachel was trying to keep calm in a world that made no sense.
“I’m going to watch the CCTV myself,” Madison said.
“Go ahead, but there’s nothing of value on it. Shame, though. An SPD uniformed officer was in the store at that time, and he might have seen something. We’ve called around but haven’t been able to raise him yet.”
“A Seattle Police Department officer?” Madison repeated.
“Yes.”
“Okay, I’ll be right back,” she said, and she squeezed Rachel’s hand. She didn’t want her friend to see her face and remember that it had been a man wearing an SPD uniform who had put her partner in the ICU. She didn’t want her friends to see her face at all.
The guy would probably turn out to be five foot six, heavy, and balding; he could have stopped to buy groceries for dinner and that was that. A uniform meant nothing.
Personal courtesy and a badge got Madison in front of the monitor in seconds.
The teenager who had shown her in smoothed her pink Old Navy sweatshirt, the same color as her nails. “Is it true you know the boy?”
“Yes,” Madison replied without turning.
The girl hovered as Madison ran the footage back to find the moment Rachel and Tommy had arrived. The teenager had finished her shift and changed out of the store Hawaiian shirt; in the back room Madison could smell her freshly applied perfume, something flowery named after someone famous, and wished the girl would leave.
“I have a little brother the same age.”
Madison didn’t reply: there they were, walking into the store, Rachel holding Tommy’s hand. Her heart thumped. Tommy. The man came in a few seconds afterward; he wore the uniform cap and looked down, away from the camera. He was tall and wiry, striding into the store with purpose and grabbing a basket almost as an afterthought. Madison froze the image; her world became that one single frame. She cou
ldn’t bring herself to say it even in the privacy of her mind, not when she had stood by an open grave proving the opposite only hours earlier.
The man carried a bulky parka on his arm, and he never looked up; his gaze was glued to the floor tiles. A few minutes later he came into frame again—no shopping basket, the coat thrown over his shoulder now—and he just walked out. He hadn’t bought a thing.
Madison played the same few seconds over and over again.
“What are you looking at?” The girl was still there.
Madison did not reply.
“You’re looking at the police officer.”
“Yes.”
“I saw him.”
Madison turned. “You remember him?”
“Yes.” The girl looked embarrassed.
“What is it?”
The girl looked away, then back at Madison. She hesitated for a moment and then stepped closer. When her voice came, it was whisper-low. “He smelled. It was really bad, like an animal smell. I saw a goat once, and that’s what he smelled like. That, mixed with some kind of chemical. He walked right past me, and he smelled something awful.”
“What kind of chemical? Cleaning fluid? Soap? Bleach?”
“No, he smelled of goats and hospital. You know what I mean?”
Madison knew what she meant and ran the footage again. “Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure?”
The girl nodded. “Yes. I broke my arm last year, and I went to Harborview.”
Madison watched the man leave, the bulky parka thrown over his shoulder, and Rachel running to the checkout counters seconds later, calling out for her son.
“It’s Hayley, right? Hayley, tell me everything you remember. Where were you when you first saw him?”
Madison pulled out the other chair from the monitor table, and the girl sat down, their knees touching in the close space. Her eyes were baby-blue and made up with much more care than Madison had ever been capable of when she was seventeen, or even now.
“I was standing by the coffees and checking on the stock, because it was getting low. I guess people buy more coffee at Christmastime. I had been back and forth all day.”
“Go on.”
“I looked up, because he was walking fast—I mean, faster than most customers walk around the store, you know? And he just walked right past me. That’s when I smelled him.” The memory was enough to make her scrunch up her nose.
“And then?”
“Nothing. He got to the exit and left. I thought he forgot something and was in a hurry, that’s all. He hadn’t bought anything.”
“Did you see him on his way in? As he came into the shop, maybe walked around?”
“No, I didn’t. I only saw him on his way out.”
“How clearly did you see his face? Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”
Hayley bit her lip; she wanted so badly to say yes. Madison saw that, and it was obvious that the answer was no.
“Maybe.” The girl drew out the word. “He walked real fast. I don’t know.”
Madison looked at the image on the screen: the checkout counters, Rachel in frozen panic.
“Hayley, think back for me if you can. After the police officer left, what did you do?”
When Hayley thought with any degree of intensity, a little crease appeared in her perfectly smooth brow. It appeared now.
“I finished with the coffees?”
“After that?”
“Well, there was the lady looking for her boy, and we all went to the front of the shop and then back into the aisles to see if he was there, but he wasn’t.”
“Did you call out to him?”
“Sure. We all did.”
“Did you go where his mom had seen him last?”
“Yes. It’s like he was there and then he was gone. I went all around that aisle, like, four times.”
“Give me as many details as you can remember.” Madison was dreading what the girl would say next.
“Someone had left a basket in the next aisle. I picked it up.”
“An empty basket?”
“Yup. Someone just dropped it on the floor in the middle of the aisle. People, you know.” Hayley shrugged.
Goats and hospital. The air had gone out of the room, and the world made no sense.
Madison sat back in the plastic chair. After a minute or so of her silence, the girl started to squirm in her seat.
“Was that the wrong thing to do?” she asked.
“No, you did great,” Madison replied, her mouth full of ash, and checked her wristwatch.
The girl smiled wide.
Madison splashed water on her face in the staff restroom. She had taken Hayley to Officer Clarke, and he had taken her statement, even though he did not fully understand why that would be of any use in finding the SPD officer.
Madison found out there were no working CCTV cameras that covered anything beyond the entrance of Farmer Joe’s, not even the closest parking spaces. The moment the man in uniform had left the store, he had turned to smoke. The footage from local traffic cameras on 509 and 160 Street could be pulled, but if you didn’t know what car you were looking for, you were pretty much wearing a blindfold and spinning in circles.
Madison ran cold water over her wrists. The officers had gone through the storeroom inch by inch. Madison knew they would find nothing, just as she knew the hospital checks and television and radio alerts would not help. There had been no witnesses; in fact, apparently there had been no crime at all.
Back outside, the sky was clear, and stars lurked beyond the orange glow of the city. It had been hours—long past the time for harmless misunderstandings, long past Tommy’s bedtime. Rachel and Neal were searching on foot beyond First Avenue South; it seemed more likely that Tommy could have walked in that direction than crossing 509.
Madison checked her watch. She was glad they were not there, glad they would not see her leave. If she went too early, it would upset the plan, and the consequences would be unthinkable; too late, and what brittle hope she held would simply crumble away.
Logic had no place here; she had nothing more to go on than the fleeting impression of a girl who couldn’t even identify the man. It was less than nothing, and yet it was everything. It was the trail that would lead to Tommy. Madison had held the ransom note in her very hands and not known; it had been sent and received days ago, when Tommy slept safely in his bed. It had not looked like a ransom note; then again, the world had tilted, and nothing was quite right anymore.
The memory of Tommy in Rachel’s arms was like a blade being drawn out of her flesh. Nathan Quinn had returned Tommy’s baseball with one hand; in the other he was holding the last card from Salinger, the promise of a hell none of them had foreseen. The last piece of the ransom note.
Madison left the girl with Burien PD; it would have taken too long to explain to them something that was more instinct than reason. Instead, she looked around for the best potential place to park if she wanted to hit 509 as fast as possible after the snatch. The spaces were empty now, and the ground held nothing for her; her breath puffed out white close to the concrete as she searched for evidence.
It was almost time to go. She looked in the direction where she knew Rachel and Neal had gone and hoped to God that they were right and she was wrong. She hoped that it would be someone else who would find Tommy, safe and unharmed, and that she would not find him where she was going. She hoped.
Madison turned back toward her car just as a black Ford Explorer pulled in next to it. She stopped suddenly where she was, and a volunteer with thermoses in her arms bumped into her, apologized, and kept going.
Nathan Quinn stepped out of the Explorer and looked around the lot. Their eyes met, and Madison let out the breath she was holding. She would not need to explain. They already knew. John Cameron got out of the vehicle and crossed his arms, watching her.
Quinn wasn’t wearing a tie. The pale, smooth skin in the open collar made him look oddly vulnerable. He came halfw
ay toward her, and Madison closed the distance.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I knew you’d be on your way soon. We have to make the ferry at Edmonds.”
“You shouldn’t be involved in this. Neither one of you.”
“It’s the other way round, Detective. You shouldn’t have been involved in this, neither you nor the boy. But it’s time, and our ride is faster.”
Police all around, and her ride was a murderer and his best friend. Madison held Quinn’s eyes for a moment and then started walking toward her Civic. She gathered a few things quickly from the backseat and the trunk and shoved them into a gym bag. Cameron climbed into the back of the Explorer—Quinn would drive. Madison got into the front passenger seat without looking back: her car would remain in the parking lot of the Five Corners Shopping Center, together with all of her life up to that point, and if she was lucky, she might be able to get back to pick up one or both.
The Explorer had been on 509 for a few miles when Quinn broke the silence.
“How did he do it?”
Madison stared straight ahead. “He wore the SPD uniform he has, walked into the store, chloroformed and wrapped Tommy up in his coat in the nanosecond his mother wasn’t looking, and walked right out.”
“Did you tell anyone?”
Madison shook her head. “Couldn’t tell them. The CCTV was not conclusive, but a witness smelled chloroform. That’s all I have. If I’m wrong—I couldn’t let the parents think he has him. How did you know?”
“SPD released the news that Harry Salinger had been confirmed dead in a fire at his house. The item after that was the missing boy in Burien—they showed a picture.” Quinn turned to Madison. “He’s fooled the cops before.”
The landscape was a streak of orange lights and concrete. Madison counted the miles on the street signs that blurred past. She made an inventory of what was in the gym bag at her feet, how much ammunition she had, the last time she had cleaned and dry-fired her piece. As if any of that mattered. Something actually relevant struck her out of the blue.
“We need to stop at a drugstore. I need to get—I need to have things in case Tommy’s hurt. First aid, bandages, hypothermia blanket.”
The Gift of the Darkness Page 42