“Thank you, Detective.” He stood up and was almost at the door in one swift, silent movement.
“There’s something else.”
He turned.
They had never spoken about it, and as far as Madison knew, the boys had barely spoken about it at all themselves at the time.
“About a mile from the clearing . . .” There was no need to clarify where that was, not to this man. She continued. “Park police found human remains. A child. Male. Possibly buried over twenty years ago.”
Something came and went in Cameron’s eyes. A thought, maybe hope. Madison couldn’t tell yet; his focus on her was almost tangible.
For twenty-five years everyone, including the Hoh River boys themselves, had believed that the death had been accidental. They had been wearing blindfolds; they had heard him struggle for breath, then suffocate. As if that day hadn’t borne enough misery.
“There was blunt-force trauma to the head, enough for cause of death,” she continued.
John Cameron stood quite still. There were memories there—Madison was sure of it.
“They have just taken a fresh DNA sample from Nathan Quinn,” she finished.
There was no need to say anything else, and before she could draw breath, Cameron was at the door, and the lock was clanging open. Visiting hours were over.
Madison sat back in her chair and looked at the ceiling, steel mesh below many layers of concrete. Way to spend your day off.
Deputy Warden Thomas looked at his watch. Detective Madison’s visits were invariably brief, and he wanted to make sure that he had given the correction officers enough time to escort John Cameron back to his cell. And he’d give them some extra time, too, before he ventured to the secure wings for a routine walk-through.
There was something he had not told Detective Madison. It had started the third day Cameron was there. Another inmate in the same wing saw him walk past and started pounding on the bars of his cell, a quick pulse, like a cymbal’s. Others had joined in—a whole wing, two darned floors of it, hammering the bars with everything they could get their hands on in a steady, hypnotic march that increased in volume and spread like an ill wind from wing to wing.
Every day since, every time John Cameron had left his cell—to go to the yard, to see his lawyer, to the showers, to meet this cop—every single time the wall of sound would start, and the inmates would not stop until every shred of energy they had had been burned out. No voices, just the drumming.
The guards had been trading shifts among to avoid being on duty when Cameron was taken out of his cell, and Will Thomas would fuss over paperwork and look at his watch and dawdle.
Unlike the inmates, the sound would go where it pleased, finding the spot where a guard’s nerve was thinnest and piercing deep into the bone.
Chapter 4
Madison called Doyle from her car.
“How was he?” he asked her.
“Are you honestly asking me what the man thinks or feels?”
“No, my mistake.”
Madison wanted to ask him how Quinn had taken the news of the body’s discovery, but she didn’t. She only passed on the medical report. She had despised and been wary of Nathan Quinn in equal measure from the moment they had met. Still, Tommy would have a birthday soon.
Madison didn’t ask how Quinn had felt about the possibility that his brother might have been brutally murdered. He didn’t need her concern, and she didn’t know what else to do with it.
She checked her trunk for basics—latex gloves, flashlight, batteries, rain gear, and boots—and took off north on 509: it would take, maybe, three hours to get there. The body might not officially be David Quinn’s yet, but she had to see it for herself—the place where the piece of hell John Cameron carried with him had come from.
Somehow Madison managed to make the 12:05 Edmonds-to-Kingston ferry. She grabbed a cup of coffee and found a seat by a window for the thirty-minute journey. The boat was busy and loud with families, groups, and single travelers scattered in the booths and on the white chairs with navy blue trim, food and drinks spread on the wide armrests like spoils of war.
Madison was not in the mood for lunch; as she had done almost every day since December, she wished her partner, Detective Sergeant Kevin Brown, would hurry up and heal and get himself back to work. They spoke often and had met at least once a week, but it would have been invaluable to have his perspective today, stalking a twenty-five-year-old crime scene.
She had almost lost him to two gunshot wounds—something she tried not to think about. At the time they had been working together only a few weeks—her first in Homicide—but it felt like a lot longer now and her life before it further away. Brown had been one of the cardinal points as Madison navigated her course in her new department: she had decided she would learn from him whether he liked it or not. Then Harry Salinger had happened.
With any luck, one of the park rangers at the Hoh station would be able to give her the exact coordinates where the remains had been found, and her GPS would get her there. The fact that there had not been a formal identification yet, and, thus, the case still belonged to Jefferson County made her nothing more than a hiker with a badge. She hoped it would be enough.
Madison finished her coffee—the scent so much better than the taste—and ventured out onto the deck.
Did you think about the forest incident? I mean, longer than for a few seconds during your day.
No.
Madison zipped up her jacket, narrowing her eyes against the rush of the wind. It wasn’t the first time she had gone back into those woods, and one day, she knew, they would be just woods again—old-growth trees and a canopy so thick, even the light was green—but not yet.
She leaned against the rail, hands deep in her pockets, her gaze already past Kingston, past its pretty main street with the charming cafés, drawn to the line of shadow that marked the mountains of the Olympic Peninsula and their secrets.
John Cameron lay on his bunk. Slowly, one inmate at a time desisting, the clanging sound had died away after he had returned to his cell, and the usual calls and shouts now bounced back and forth against the concrete walls.
He wrapped himself back in his own personal silence. The outside world represented no more than an occasional interruption; his eyes followed the faint crack on the ceiling above him, and he ran the tip of his index finger against the rough texture of the blanket. He fell into the memories as if into bottomless waters.
August 28, 1985. Fishing with David and James at Jackson Pond. The blue van and the dirty rags reeking of chloroform. Waking up blindfolded, tied up with rope. It’s not personal; it’s business. Then the awful choking and gasping, and the intruders had left, taking David’s body with them. David. His gasps had sounded like dying, and the men had believed he had; James, too, had believed it, and so had he.
He thought about a vicious man falling into a pit five years later, the spikes Cameron had sharpened going through his body. He thought that it wasn’t over, never had been, and Nathan had to go through it all over again, only this time it was even worse. He thought this cell would hold his rage only for so long.
He knew as if he could see her that Detective Madison would be going where David’s body had been found. He would be there, too; his eyes remained on the tiny crack until it was all he could see.
Shouts from the next cell no longer reached him; the guard looked in, looked away, and walked on.
Madison hit Highway 101 at the full legal speed. The weather was bright; the sun had retreated behind a veil of thin clouds. She looked ahead and asked the deity in charge of crime-scene analysis for as much light as could be spared. The local forensics unit would have already swept the area, but Madison needed her own sense of it, even if time had washed away everything except the boy’s name.
A time would come when she would, officially, ask John Cameron about that the events of that day in the Hoh River forest. Then she wondered whether that would actually ever happen, whether t
he remains that had been discovered, collected, examined, and tested would hold enough truth to launch a proper investigation. Madison’s background in forensics was strong, and her belief in evidence was sacrosanct. If this had been any other case, she would have said that the chances of a prosecution after twenty-five years of Pacific Northwest weather and wilderness were nil. Yet when she saw heavy clouds coming in from the west, she almost slammed her foot down on the accelerator, weaving around a slow-moving tourist RV with Idaho plates.
She was here because it was not any other case, and whatever trace evidence had been left, Madison suspected it could not be put in a bag and tagged but would be measured in ways she couldn’t even comprehend yet.
She pulled into the parking lot at the Hoh River park rangers station, mercifully close to empty at this time of year, and dug in the trunk for her walking boots and wet-weather gear. The forest was damp, and it breathed a shroud of moist air whether it was raining or not.
Madison adjusted her ankle holster and shoved her small camera and the rest of her kit into a light backpack. She adjusted the straps on her shoulders . . . and suddenly she was adjusting the straps on the ballistic vest Nathan Quinn had just pulled on, her hands trembling from cold and dread, Quinn looking away. She had practically forced him to wear it that night, when she still thought Harry Salinger would come after them with something as mundane as ammunition.
Madison shrugged her shoulders, settled her pack on her back, and headed inside. The park ranger she approached, a foot taller and two feet wider than Madison, looked her over.
“You understand the file is with the Jefferson County authorities, Detective,” he said.
“I know. What I need is the location, that’s all.”
It was a pleasant office, with a large window onto the forest and maps on every wall.
“You’re hiking to the spot?”
“I’m planning to, yes.”
“Why?”
“I want to make a few notes, for what it’s worth.”
“Jumping the gun a little?”
“Maybe.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s my day off.”
The ranger smiled. “Let me make a couple of calls.”
“Thank you.”
Madison gave him some space and wandered over to the wall of maps. She traced the network of hiking trails with the tip of an index finger: many she had walked, some she had seen in every weather, and most she knew at least a little.
The map told her one thing clearly: one of the men who had kidnapped the boys must have known the area very well. Someone had picked the clearing where the boys had been tied up; someone had picked the isolated spot where David Quinn had been buried, not to be discovered for over two decades. Late-August hikers had likely abounded at the time of the crime, and yet no one had seen them.
Madison followed the winding route of the Upper Hoh Road, almost parallel to the river. The kidnappers had known exactly where to go and how to avoid gate-crashers at their private party.
Rugged Ridge, Indian Pass, Owl Creek—the trail lines crossed and weaved across the terrain.
Madison was so absorbed by the topographical map, she barely heard the ranger approach her.
“I’ve spoken with my boss. I’ll take you,” he said.
For a moment Madison didn’t understand what he meant.
“Thank you, but I don’t want to take up your time. I’ll just—”
“I’m coming off my shift, and there’s a weather front closing in. If you want to get there before it, I’m taking you. It’s no bother.”
Madison didn’t quite believe that but accepted the offer with thanks.
The ranger—late thirties, fair hair, and blue eyes—led the way. They would drive a short while and hike the rest of the way into the woods. He introduced himself: Ryan Curtis. He sounded like California with ten years of Pacific Northwest on top. He drove a pickup truck that made Madison’s old Civic look city smart.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” he said as they drove west on the Upper Hoh Road.
Madison turned. She was sure they had never met before.
“I was on duty that night, led the SWAT team to where you guys were.” Ranger Curtis turned sharply into a side road, the paving ending almost immediately. He didn’t give her time to reply. “A lot of things will have changed in the last twenty-five years—trees, shrubs, terrain shifted by rain, roots, water runoff, what have you.”
He engaged the hand brake with a sound like crunching metal and looked at Madison. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you this, but this is not a garden; this is not as if they found the remains in someone’s backyard. You don’t get bears and cougars in your backyard. It’s a miracle they were found in the first place.”
The air was clammy and surprisingly warm for January. In spite of his size Curtis moved lightly and quickly through the undergrowth. Any semblance of a trail had disappeared half an hour earlier, and Madison had realized why he had offered to take her: where they were going, there was no friendly path and pretty views over a stream, no photo opportunities for weekend hikers. This forest did not want to be visited, and it did not want to be photographed.
Curtis did not make allowances for Madison: he said at the start that she should follow his steps exactly and then had just pressed on. He was probably part elk, Madison mused, because she needed the joke to distract herself from the coppery scent she knew wasn’t really there.
They proceeded under the spruces and the multilayered tree canopy, changing direction often to go around boulders and ravines. Low branches snagged her pack, and the ground grew more uneven; jagged rocks protruded through the dirt and tested her footing as the light changed and the silence deepened.
Madison kept herself three feet behind Curtis, glad for her running stamina and the lack of conversation.
“Not far now,” he said without turning ten minutes later.
When the rain started falling, it was so light that Madison didn’t notice until she felt a single drop on her brow. She looked up: patches of sky through the branches, some pale blue, mostly clouds.
“We’re here.” Curtis moved to one side and pointed.
They were in a narrow valley; under a western hemlock, tall shrubs around it, a perimeter of yellow crime-scene tape flapped in the breeze.
Curtis had been right to say what he had said in the truck: Madison reminded herself that what had happened here had happened twenty-five years ago. She had been in elementary school, her mother had been alive, and she had never been to Seattle. Everything here at the time had changed, grown, or died off, and what was before her was only in part what the kidnappers—the killers, Madison corrected herself—had seen.
She approached the yellow tape slowly: the hole revealed itself, smooth edges and only a few feet deep.
“It was almost on the surface; rain must have washed the soil away over the years,” Curtis said behind her.
The pit was so small. The impact of what she was seeing hit Madison almost physically: the little boy had been buried curled up and lying on one side. The killers had been in a hurry; they wanted out of the woods quickly, and they had no time to waste. They dug a hole just about big enough and deep enough to lay the child inside it; they covered it up; they left.
Madison took off her pack and reached for the camera inside. She started taking pictures—the flash working hard in the growing shadows—to do something tangible against the flutter of anger in her chest. That pitiful hole told her something else: they had killed a child, and they didn’t care; it wasn’t a burial, it was a dump site.
She shoved her feelings aside, took out her notepad, and went over the paltry facts.
“Where in relation to here is the clearing where the boys were tied up? The place you led the SWAT team to that night?”
Curtis pointed west. “About a mile that way.”
“Terrain similar to what we crossed?”
“Pretty much. Tricky ground to cov
er fast if you’re not familiar with it.”
Madison took notes on her standard-issue police notepad.
“It was August,” she said. “August 28, 1985. No rain that day—I checked. Is there a chance they could have driven their van part of the way in?”
“There used to be a narrow paved road to a weather station up that way, but when we stopped using the station, the road got pretty rough, and now it’s almost covered over. If they knew about it, it could have taken them almost to the clearing.”
“When was the weather station abandoned?”
“Early 1980s, I think.”
“That’s not the way we went in. We left the car and hiked a while.”
“It was an old service track that led nowhere. It wasn’t on the maps. No reason you would have known about it.”
Madison felt the frayed end of a thought slipping away, and she grabbed at it.
“They did,” she said. “The killers did. Do any hiking trails cross the service track or the route from there to here?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Which means that the children they had left behind would not be found quickly. And if they buried David Quinn far enough from the children, he wouldn’t be found at all.”
Madison looked around. No footprints, no tire tracks, no tool marks, no shirt fabric snagged on a branch. It was a long list of things they did not have and would never have.
She laid her measuring tape on the long side of the impromptu grave, took a picture, and wrote down the dimensions. The Crime Scene Unit would have already done all that; she did it, anyway. Roots pushed out of the pit’s side walls, and insect life had already begun to reclaim the grave.
She stood on the edge of the pit. How had its earth changed because it covered a murdered child? How could that change be measured? Madison crouched on the ground and touched the soil. Cold and damp. The child had become a body, and the body had become human remains. Rain and earth had passed through the flesh as it disintegrated. Something, Madison thought—the killers must have left something behind, something that had stayed with David Quinn and waited for them to find him.
The Dark Page 3