The Dark

by Valentina Giambanco

  Madison closed her eyes and hoped sleep would come quickly.

  Under the bed, inside the safe, a neatly folded page from the Seattle Times rested under the off-duty piece.

  BLUE RIDGE KILLER CAUGHT

  In the early hours of December 24 the nightmare that had gripped Seattle for thirteen days finally came to an end. Harry Salinger, the prime suspect in the murder of James and Anne Sinclair and their two young sons, was apprehended by Seattle Police Department homicide detective Alice Madison in an undisclosed location in the Hoh River forest.

  John Cameron, who had initially been under investigation for the crime, and his attorney, Nathan Quinn, of Quinn, Locke & Associates, were also present. The former is being held without bail on a charge of attempted murder. Salinger, an Everett resident, sustained life-threatening injuries and is now under guard in a secure medical facility.

  Salinger has also been charged with the kidnapping and reckless endangerment of Thomas Abramowitz, age six, Detective Madison’s godson, and with the assault on Detective Sergeant Kevin Brown and Detective Madison earlier in December.

  SPD has not made public when Det. Sgt. Brown will return to active duty.

  Cameron and Sinclair were first connected by tragic circumstances as children twenty-five years ago, when three Seattle boys were abducted and abandoned in the Hoh River forest, Jefferson County.

  Chapter 2

  Nathan Quinn held up his left hand and flexed it. It was flawless. No scars, no pain. He stood in the clearing in the Hoh River forest; he felt he could see every twist in every branch, and there was nothing but woods and winding streams for miles. The air was soft on his skin, and sunlight slanted through the spruces. A warm, sunny August afternoon. All was well; all was peace.

  A whisper through the grass behind him made Quinn turn.

  A boy watched him from the edge of the trees. Twelve years old, fair, wavy hair and pale lips. So pale.

  “David?”

  The boy was barefoot.

  “David?”

  Nathan Quinn felt the jolt of awareness as the morphine wore off and he remembered that he was in a hospital and that his brother had been dead for twenty-five years.

  “Mr. Quinn.” The nurse’s voice found him through the dull pain that had welcomed his body back to reality. “There are some police officers here to speak with you. If you feel up to it.”

  Nathan Quinn held up his left hand: it was covered in bandages, and as he attempted to flex his fingers, pain ran up his arm. In the last four weeks he had seen no one except doctors, nurses, two detectives from the Seattle Police Department who took his statement, and Carl Doyle, his assistant at Quinn, Locke & Associates. Everyone else without exception had been turned away. After two weeks in a medically induced coma, he had barely the strength to breathe.

  “They’re from Jefferson County,” the nurse said.

  “Yes,” he replied. “I know.”

  It was Saturday, and Madison was off duty—a rare event. Her days off had acquired a routine of late: the call, the journey, the exchange of information, the second call. Madison checked her watch—her grandfather’s: 8:25 a.m. Enough time to do laundry; she picked up her sweats from the floor where she’d discarded them and added whatever was left in the hamper.

  She pulled on black jeans, a dark blue shirt, and short leather boots. Her cell rang as she was sliding the snub-nosed revolver into an ankle holster.

  She picked up the phone from the bedside table.

  “Madison,” Lieutenant Fynn said.

  “Sir.” Madison froze with her trouser hem stuck in her boot: her shift commander would not call her at home on her day off for chitchat and giggles.

  “Just had a call from Jefferson County. Four days ago park police found human remains about a mile from where you were. Took them this long to recover them.”

  Madison knew what was coming before she heard the words.

  “A child. The remains are quite old.”

  “David Quinn,” she whispered.

  “Could very well be. County police is getting a new DNA sample from Nathan Quinn as we speak. We’ll know soon enough.”

  “The kidnap happened in Seattle. It’s our investigation.”

  “I know. If it’s David Quinn, they’ll ship the remains to our ME, and we’ll pick it up from there.”

  “Thanks for letting me know.”

  “It’s worse than we thought.”

  “What do you mean, sir?”

  “The skull bears evidence of trauma.”

  Madison’s mind raced to recall the details she had learned from the newspapers.

  “No, David Quinn suffered from congenital arrhythmia. At the original inquest—”

  “Madison, if that child is David Quinn, it wasn’t accidental death. He was killed by blunt-force trauma to the head.”

  “It’s . . .” She struggled to find the words.

  “I thought you would want to tell him in person.”

  “Yes, I’ll be on my way in a minute.”

  “Way to spend your day off.”

  Fynn had just rung off when the cell beeped again.

  “It’s Doyle.”

  “Carl. How are you?”

  “I honestly don’t know, Detective. How are you?”

  “I’ve just heard; my boss called me.”

  “It will take a few days for confirmation, they said. Do you need to write this down?”

  “No, go ahead.”

  “Blood pressure normal; the swabs came back clear—no infection; physical therapy was hell this week, as they expected, but he’s progressing. Eye test—no difference from before the event. So far, so good. The antibiotics for the partial splenectomy are very strong; they hope to diminish the dose gradually and see how the remaining spleen will react. No temperature, no unusual numbers in the blood work.”

  “Thank you, Carl.”

  “Are you going for the 10:00 a.m. slot?”

  “I am.”

  “Are you going to tell him?”

  “Yes, he has a right to know before it hits the news.”

  “We’ll speak after.”

  Madison shrugged on a blazer and locked her front door. The drive would give her time to prepare herself. Whatever good that will do.

  It had taken them twenty-five years to find him, but at last David Quinn was coming home. Abducted with two friends and taken to the Hoh River forest, tied to a tree with a heavy rope, and left to fight for breath until he passed out. Then the men had taken his body and left the other children to the approaching night. No one was ever charged with the kidnap; no reason had ever been found for the abduction. With no body, no forensics, there was no chance of a prosecution.

  Three children were taken into the woods; two came out alive. One, James Sinclair, would grow up to be a good man, to have a family, and to perish one day last December at the hands of a madman. The other would grow up to be something quite different.

  Madison drove south on 509, took an exit west through Des Moines, and then crossed I-5, heading fast toward the King County Justice Complex and John Cameron, the last surviving Hoh River boy.

  The King County Justice Complex rose from a concrete parking lot, telling the world exactly what it was: an adult detention center for 1,157 inmates awaiting trial or sentenced as per the Washington State Guidelines Commission instructions.

  Madison made sure nothing had been left in view on her car seats, locked the Honda, and walked toward the Visitors’ Reception area.

  Family groups and single people were also making their way in for the 10:00 a.m. slot, the sun doing little to warm up the group in the shadow of the twenty-foot-high perimeter wall.

  Madison could have locked her off-duty piece in the safe at home and avoided the issue of checking it at the reception desk, but she was a cop. She carried a shield; she carried a piece.

  She filed in with the others, a quiet, serious group with a few somber children.

  A young woman in a delicately patterned dress m
ade a beeline for Madison as soon as she entered the reception area.

  “Detective Madison, if you have a moment, the deputy warden would like a word before your visit.”

  Mid-twenties, soft-spoken, blond hair up in bun: she looked as if she could have been handing out books and lollipops in a children’s library.

  “Sure,” Madison replied.

  “I’m Karen Hayes.” The young woman led her down a corridor. “I assist both the warden and the deputy warden.”

  Madison had never been in this part of the jail complex. It could have been any kind of corporate business: people typing in offices, carpeted floors, and water coolers. Still, about twenty-three locked metal doors away from the small geranium pot on Karen’s desk, men behind bars stood, paced, sat, and slept, men who had taken lives and even done things to their victims that made them wish for death.

  These clerks and secretaries organized these men’s days—their dental checkups, their meetings with parole boards, and their menus—all in these brightly lit rooms scented with sandalwood and apple.

  Madison, on the other hand, had reached into some of those men’s thoughts and followed them into dark alleys, and, in spite of the sandalwood, she felt their proximity like the touch of gunmetal between her shoulder blades.

  “Detective Madison.” The deputy warden held his office door open for her. He looked like a benign high school principal, wearing a white button-down with a burgundy tie, his jacket hung on a coatrack.

  “I’m Will Thomas, deputy warden at KCJC.”

  He shook her hand once and waved her to a chair in front of his desk. “I thought we should—how can I put it?—open the channels of communication.”

  Madison had no idea what he meant; she felt her own instant reaction to impending government-speak and hoped her natural courtesy would hold up.

  “You are here to visit John Cameron.”

  And there it was.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “You’re not family, and you’re not a friend.”

  “No.”

  “You’re not his attorney, and you’re not here on police business.”

  “No.”

  “Yet you have visited him regularly since he was brought here at the end of December. He is quite popular with law enforcement. Alleged murderer of nine, charged with assault, and denied bail. Since he was apprehended, FBI agents from LA have come to interview him, as well as assorted officers from the DEA and the ATF, and I don’t know how many media requests we’ve had. He’s turned down every one of them. A popular guy apart from one thing.” Deputy Warden Thomas sat back in his chair and regarded Madison.

  “He hasn’t spoken one word. Not to them, not to anybody. Except”—he smiled briefly— “to you.”

  Madison flashed back to a clearing in the Hoh River forest in the early hours of the morning: Tommy freezing cold in her arms, Nathan Quinn covered in blood at her feet, and John Cameron standing before her as if he was made of the very night around them.

  If you want to leave, leave now. If you stay, do not say anything to me or to anybody at all. Do you understand?

  “Because Nathan Quinn was badly injured at the time, John Cameron chose to stay and face arrest, even though he knew the police were on their way. Quinn was injured saving my godson’s life. That’s why I’m here.”

  “I see. How is Mr. Quinn?”

  “Progressing.” Madison replied. “Slowly.”

  “How is Harry Salinger?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Harry Salinger had torn through their lives and almost destroyed them all; Cameron had left him close to death on the riverbank that night. The judicial system might hold Cameron on a charge of attempted murder, but Madison could not put a name to what he had done to Salinger.

  “Detective, I like to think of KCJC as a ship, a very large ship. Some people come and go, as you do today, but others, like Mr. Cameron, come to stay for a long time. A long journey, so to speak. I want to keep that journey as smooth as possible. For him and for everyone else here. You know he’s not in the general population, right?”

  “I know.”

  “Two days after he arrived, the incidence of violence among inmates went up ten percent. Just from knowing he was here.”

  Madison knew that if Cameron was kept in isolation, it wasn’t for his own protection.

  “There’s a long line of men who can’t wait to prove themselves against him, and that, I’m afraid, is not something we can have. So, since you’re the only person he speaks to, I just wanted to make sure that we were on the same page.”

  “We don’t exactly swap recipes, sir. I barely know the man.”

  “Still,” the deputy warden said carefully, “is there anything I should know?”

  Not a benign principal—more a science teacher about to dissect a frog.

  “John Cameron was not apprehended, Mr. Thomas,” Madison said. “He wasn’t caught. He’s here because he chooses to be. As long as everybody remembers that, you shouldn’t have any problem.”

  “Why would he choose imprisonment?”

  “Because he wouldn’t leave while Nathan Quinn was fighting for his life.”

  “Maybe you overestimate his personal involvement in the situation and underestimate the security systems of this institution. This is not a bed-and-breakfast in the San Juan Islands.”

  “You might want to ask Harry Salinger about how ‘personally involved’ Cameron felt when Salinger murdered James Sinclair and his family. As for the security systems here, nothing would make me happier than knowing they’re as good as you say they are.”

  They regarded each other for one long moment, and Madison saw a man with graying sandy hair and a desk bare of any family photos, a man trying to keep things running in a place where angry, caged men might do anything to anyone for any reason.

  “Look,” she said. “For what it’s worth, John Cameron doesn’t feel he has anything to prove to anybody. He’s not vain; he’s not going to go out of his way to make trouble. But if someone—if anyone—stands between him and whatever he wants, he will not be stopped, not without extreme consequences for both sides.”

  “What if he changes his mind about staying?”

  Madison stood up to leave. “We can only hope that he doesn’t.”

  Chapter 3

  The first time Madison had met John Cameron, she had followed him into a dark wood and waited, unarmed, just to speak with him. The second time, he had broken into her home, and she hadn’t even known he was there. The third time, they had chased Harry Salinger, the man who had killed his friend and kidnapped her godson, through the Hoh River forest.

  If John Cameron was out in the world, she would be one of the people who would hunt him down. If she was the one between Cameron and whatever it was he wanted, she knew he wouldn’t hesitate to remove the obstacle. If there were words for that kind of acquaintance, Madison didn’t know them.

  As always, they met in a separate cell away from the bustle of the visiting room and the brazen curiosity of inmates and strangers. Madison had checked her shield and her piece at reception, the female guard assessing her as one would an explosive device.

  She had been patted down and cleared and now stood in a bare room made of metal bars inside a larger room; a scratched table was bolted to the floor, and two chairs made in a prison workshop somewhere in the fifties completed the setup.

  The door opened, and two armed guards came in, escorting a tall man in orange overalls. The orange meant he was waiting for trial and had been denied bail; it meant a crime of violence.

  Madison turned to face him.

  His file told her that he was thirty-seven years old, six years older than she, and that the four scars that crossed and glistened on the back of his right hand were a grim reminder of hours spent tormented and tied to a tree with James Sinclair and David Quinn when he was twelve. The numbers he’d racked up in turn were unforgiving: five men dead on board the Nostromo, three drug dealers slaughtered in LA,
one dealer in Seattle. Nine alleged murders: not one of them had ever come anywhere near resulting in official charges against John Cameron.

  His file gave details and dates and times of death, but it couldn’t possible give a sense of what it was like to stand in the same room as this man. The fact that they were inside a jail was incidental. He was a predator, and when his amber eyes met hers, she felt the familiar chill in the pit of her stomach.

  “Detective.”

  “Mr. Cameron.”

  He wasn’t shackled. The two guards simply withdrew and locked the barred door of the cell with the sound of metal scraping against metal. Madison could see them in the low light, flanking the exit, their weapons—and their desire to be anywhere else—in plain sight.

  His dark hair had been cut jail short, but aside from that she couldn’t see any discernible changes. He looked as if he had just strolled in, as if he could just as easily stroll out. Only one thing was different, she realized—not that anyone else would notice: she had seen Cameron with Nathan Quinn, and there was an ember of humanity there, of warmth. This Cameron was completely shut down; the man who had drunk coffee at her grandmother’s table had packed up and gone.

  They sat. Madison gathered her thoughts. He waited. This visit was going to be different.

  “I just spoke with Carl Doyle.” She closed her eyes for a moment and recalled the details. “Blood pressure normal; the swabs were clear—no infection; PT is progressing, with difficulty. Eye test was positive—no sight loss. They want to reduce the antibiotics for the spleen gradually and see how it will behave. No temperature, blood work okay.”

  John Cameron held her eyes. His gaze was very direct, and Madison wondered what he had learned about her during these visits and how he might use it one day, out of this cell.