“Do you have any ideas about how to look for other possible murders by the same subject?”
“I’m working on something,” Madison said, and she was glad she had thought of it three seconds before the meeting had started.
“And we need to find out how and why he picked these victims.”
Madison nodded.
The meeting broke up. The lines of investigation would be divided up among the detectives and the hunt would start for real.
Chris Kelly sidled up to Madison just as he was leaving the room. “Funny how the serial killers seem to find you every time, isn’t it? Going to make friends with this one too?”
His partner, Tony Rosario, who had not spoken a word in the meeting, opened his mouth, but Kelly nodded to him that they should just go.
Madison wanted to give him a dry, quick-witted reply. She wanted to give him Dorothy Parker at her sharpest, but he was already walking away from her.
“Fuck off, Kelly,” she murmured to herself.
Coffee was needed. Coffee was needed very badly. And if all they had was percolated mud, then that would have to suffice.
Spencer stood by the machine, mesmerized by the thick trickle that was slowly filling the pot.
“Have you written your speech yet?” Madison asked him.
It was a little surreal to be worrying about table settings, flower arrangements, and the best man’s speech.
“Yes and no. I’m hoping for some last-minute inspiration to put in the funny.”
“How was the fishing weekend?”
Spencer grinned. “I’m afraid not a lot of fishing was achieved.”
“Andy looked a little rough when you got him back to town.”
“I never thought it would happen.”
“What?”
“I’ve known Andy since the academy, we’ve been partners as long as I’ve been married to Cristina, and I always thought I’d end up building a shed in my backyard so that Andy wouldn’t have to grow old alone.”
“Your boy is growing up.” When Rachel and Neal had gotten together and then got married, the ground had shifted a little under Madison’s feet.
Andy Dunne had always embraced the role of wild bachelor brother; their working partnership had been shaped by Spencer’s quiet, steady ways and Dunne’s reckless energy. And now Andy was settling down and buying a house, and even talking about starting to invest in a microbrewery, and Spencer looked a little lost.
Madison and Spencer stared at the full pot of coffee. It smelled like a fire in a barn after a rainstorm.
“Maybe, just maybe, cream and sugar will help,” Spencer said, and they each grabbed some mugs.
Lieutenant Fynn replaced the receiver. The conversation with the Chief had gone as predicted: he was expected to call him with updates pretty much every hour on the hour, but that was nothing compared to the censuring the department would take if innocent people had been convicted for crimes they had not committed.
Washington State had recently passed a law whereby a wrongfully convicted person could file a claim against the state and, if successful, would receive $50,000 for each year spent in jail and a further $50,000 for each year on death row. It was a step forward in terms of compensation. Nevertheless, it did not begin to soften the impact of being incarcerated, of time lost that could never be reclaimed, of families broken up and children grown.
Fynn looked up the number of the Public Affairs office and picked up the receiver.
How many lives had really been taken by the killer?
Chapter 22
The best way to follow someone when they are on a run is to match their speed exactly, and it would be even better if you could run on the other side of the street. Better still, the man thought, to skip a block and meet the target at the other end and pick up the trail again.
He enjoyed watching her run. In fact, the project had almost been delayed because of it. Still, he was working on a deadline—amusing how odd words worked when you stuck them together—and in the end he had done what he had to do. He couldn’t have predicted the world of possibilities that she would open for him and while, yes, there was the inconvenience of improvisation, there was also the thrill of invention, and it had been a long time, such a long time, since he had felt challenged in the only way that mattered.
The man looked ahead and watched Kate Duncan wind in and out of the crowd as she ran along the Alaskan Way. She wore dark colors as usual and her gait was light and strong. He could have picked her out among dozens of runners. Light and strong. The man followed at a distance. He also wore dark clothes and ran easily, his long strides keeping up with hers.
The sun had set and the embankment was a jewel of colors and lights. Against the dusk the Ferris wheel was like a giant toy dropped and forgotten. He had so enjoyed getting to know her. In the empty evenings, in the silence of his house where the only footsteps were his and no one ever moved his things or called out to him, thinking about her was like a spot glowing warm in the middle of his chest.
Kate Duncan ran and felt the joy of running, moving, stretching after days of being cooped up in Annie’s house. She was so used to running in all weather conditions that the enforced stillness had been torture. Annie had dropped her off and would pick her up at the other end.
Wrapped as she was in her neck warmer and hat, her face was almost completely covered. She felt invisible, moving among the people and yet not one of them. She was safe and unseen. A number of runners used the Alaskan Way and no one was paying any attention to her.
Kate Duncan needed this time alone. She had hardly begun to process what had happened and when she was with Annie and her family—grateful as she was for their support—she could not be fully herself. The tiniest details of her day were examined as indicators of her state of mind. Did she eat anything for breakfast? Did she watch TV? Did she cry at all today? Her tears had dried up completely, as it happens. And even though she went to bed early, she wouldn’t fall asleep until very late. Her mind went back over and over again to Monday night and tried to make sense of what had happened. The pain in her chest was like an acid spill. Except for these moments when she was running, it felt as if she’d been holding her breath for days.
She reached the Ferris wheel and saw Annie, waiting by the car, and gave her a little wave.
Two hundred yards behind her a man clocked the two women getting into the car and continued his run right past and beyond them into the darkness under the viaduct.
Chapter 23
Madison was at her desk when her cell started vibrating. She recognized the ID and picked up.
“Madison,” she said.
“It’s Stanley Robinson.”
“Stanley, are you all right?”
During their acquaintance Dr. Stanley F. Robinson had never once called Madison on her cell; changes in appointment times were dealt with via text messages. Such a change in the routine—however trivial—seemed ominous.
“I am, but my office has been burglarized.”
“When was this?”
“Last night. The day was spent between police officers, carpenters, and insurance advisers.”
Madison flipped through her mental Rolodex of felonies. The sign in the hall did read Dr. Stanley F. Robinson, MD, PhD, and it was likely that the culprits thought they might find drugs and prescription pads.
“Madison, there was a prescription pad right there on my desk and they didn’t touch it, but they took my hard drive,” he said.
“That’s . . . unusual.”
“Yes, it is.”
He did not sound shaken and yet there was an unfamiliar edge to his voice. He made a living listening to other people’s issues and helping them resolve their problems. Madison had rarely met anyone calmer and more relaxed. Stanley could have talked a pack of hyenas out of their lunch. And yet today he sounded angry.
“I could be right over,” Madison said.
“Thank you,” he replied.
Madison told Brown she’
d be gone for half an hour or so and left the precinct. The dusk was clear and cold and it felt good to be outside. Beyond the orange city glow the stars were invisible but she knew they were there. A brisk walk downtown and she arrived at the familiar building.
Madison had first met Stanley Robinson after a disturbing case when he was assessing whether she was fit to return to regular duties. She told him as little as possible about how she felt and nothing at all about the nightmares that she had lived with since childhood. In return, the doctor had given her a surprisingly correct assessment of her state of mind, wished her a good life, and signed off on her psych evaluation.
After Madison had shot and killed a man—one of the cartel men who had kidnapped John Cameron—she needed to speak to someone about it, about what it felt like in her bones to have killed a human being, and she had found her way back to Stanley. It had been months since they had last met.
The elevator doors slid open. Madison was suddenly back eighteen months earlier and felt the dull pain that had seemingly nested in her chest. She heard her own words, spoken to Stanley, and realized they were still as sharp, still as painful to hold.
The door to the office was open and the small waiting room seemed untouched.
“Stanley?” she called.
“Come in,” he replied from inside.
The main door, she noticed as she went in, had been artfully jimmied.
Madison stood by the door and looked around: Stanley’s office was a mess. The burglars had taken out their fury on the soft furnishings and the books—and his computer was noticeably missing from his desk.
“Thank you for coming, Alice,” he said.
Few people called her Alice anymore. It was a touch of intimacy that she didn’t mind from this man who was so quick and kind and good.
“I’m sorry, Stanley. This looks horrendous.”
“Well, mostly the mess . . . it’s the filling from the sofa and the chair cushions. To be honest, it’s . . .” He hesitated. “Can I run something by you? Use your finely honed detective skills?”
“Go ahead.” Madison smiled.
“The men—or man—came in from the front door, obviously, as we can see. What happened here is this: they broke into one of my filing cabinets, they took my hard drive, they destroyed my sofa and chairs. The prescription pad I found under the desk must have been kicked there in all the commotion.”
Madison knew he was getting at something.
“See,” he continued. “This is the filing cabinet they forced open—except there’s nothing there, because I keep all my notes in digital form. And there was nothing on the hard drive either, by the way, because I keep my notes on a portable drive that I always carry with me.”
Stanley slid shut the metal filing cabinet drawer so that Madison could see it. The small tag in the slot read “K–O.”
“I have four patients with names that begin with those letters and I’m not breaking any confidentiality agreement if I tell you that one is a housewife, one a surgeon, one runs a company . . . and then,” his brown eyes searched her face, “there’s you.”
“None of the other drawers were forced?” Madison crouched to look.
“No.”
“And there was nothing in the drawer?”
“Nothing, the whole cabinet is empty, I was going to have it carted out next week.”
“And when they realized there was nothing there they took your computer.”
“It’s not going to do them much good. I’m careful, Alice,” he said. “Because people tell me private things and I have a duty of care, which I take very seriously.”
“I know you do.”
“If they were looking for incriminating material from my patients it doesn’t make sense that they would just ignore the first two drawers, which are closer to the door, and start on this one instead.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
Stanley was in his mid-fifties with salt-and-pepper hair in a short cut; he was the uncle you tell your troubles to because he’s not going to bullshit you or condescend to you, and his advice is invariably solid.
“Do you have enemies, Alice?” he said.
Madison was wrong-footed: she had never considered things from that angle. She worked cases and reached conclusions and sometimes some of those conclusions had consequences.
“I don’t know,” she replied honestly. “Maybe.”
“None of the other people whose confidences might have lived in that drawer has anything at all to do with people who might want to use them against them.”
“God, Stanley, if that’s true I’m so sorry, I mean . . . look at this place.”
“I don’t give a hoot about the chairs and the computer, that’s not why I wanted to see you.”
She nodded. This had been a safe place, a place where she could deal with things that had nowhere else to go.
“I wanted to see you,” he continued, “to make sure you knew there might be—I’m saying might here, because we can’t know for sure—there might be someone who is after you, after something that could be used against you. They forgot the pad, which would have been valuable. And the mess was make-believe anger.”
“You should have been a cop,” she said.
“I wouldn’t have passed the psych screening,” he replied and as he watched her his smile was a little sad. “Watch out,” he said and then added quickly, “just in case.”
Madison walked back to the precinct. Her feet found their way back while she was lost in the memories of all that she had told Stanley during their sessions.
He knew that she had struggled with the notion that she had killed a person, that she felt keenly the moat between what she, as a cop, did every day and how other people lived their lives. He knew that after chasing Salinger in the forest her nightmares had been more horrifying than anything that had ever been done to her.
Stanley knew that Alice Madison had run away from home when she was twelve because her father—a professional poker player—had stolen all that was left of her mother’s things to play a losing hand. And he knew that Alice had destroyed her room with a baseball bat before she’d caught a ferry to the mainland, before she’d cut her hair off to look like a boy and then lived completely alone for a week. He knew that Alice, before she’d left, had stuck the blade of her father’s switchblade knife two inches deep into his bedside table so that he’d know that she knew what he’d done and how she felt about it. And for a brief, shocking moment she had considered whether her father should live at all; then a dog barking had brought her back to reality and she had run.
The only other person who knew was Rachel: Alice had felt that she needed to tell her if they were going to be best friends—a kind of full disclosure clause that works when you’re fourteen.
Yes, there were definitely things there that could be used against her. And yet she had no idea who might want to do that—and why.
Madison took one last big lungful of the chilly air and walked into the precinct.
“Point is,” Brown said, watching her above his glasses. “How did they know that Robinson was the one who did the psych assessment?”
“True,” Madison replied. “If that’s the case, it means there really was a degree of preparation involved and someone got into police records.”
“Was he okay?”
“He was fine. Just sort of worried for me, I guess. And pissed off that they trashed his office for nothing.”
“Does he keep the portable drive at home?”
“Yes, in a safe, inside a house that is alarmed anytime he’s not there. I asked him to be careful for the next few weeks because they will figure out there’s nothing on the hard drive and that he carries the notes on his person.”
“He agreed?”
“Yes, reluctantly.”
Brown checked his watch. They had arranged a late meeting with Prosecutor Sarah Klein to update her on the case and, since she had been in court all day, this would be their first chance to get together
and consider the potential legal onslaught the case could become.
“It’s time,” Brown said.
Chapter 24
Brown and Madison walked to the building that housed the offices of the King County Prosecuting Attorney. One of the many reasons Madison loved Seattle was that it had been built on hills and you were never far from water. As they crossed the road briskly, she spotted a glint of Puget Sound between two buildings reflecting the city lights and throwing them back for anyone who might be watching.
There had been a tacit agreement with Brown since they had left the briefing earlier in the day: they would work the hell out of the case—wherever it might lead them—and any other consideration that had to do with guilt, blame, or what those things meant for their relationship would be shoved onto the back burner while they tried to catch a killer.
After the day’s rush, the building was hushed. Most of the staff had left for the weekend and the great marble hall was empty.
“Did Fynn say when Public Affairs are going to put out the likeness?” Madison asked while they were in the elevator.
“Evening news and again on the morning news. They’re going to try for breakfast TV as well. Spread it as wide as they can.”
Madison was glad they were alone in the car. “He let the housekeeper see his face,” she said. “That’s risky—and it’s so arrogant that it’s dangerous.”
“You know what that means, right?”
“That he’s going to trip over his ego and fall on his face?”
“That too, but mostly it means he thought we wouldn’t even get to the housekeeper because the company would confirm an engineer had indeed visited the Duncans’ house last Thursday. Something must have gone wrong: by now we should have already gotten to the scapegoat, but we haven’t.”
Madison took it in and asked the question. “How long before you found the trail that led you to Karasick?”
“Less than twenty-four hours,” Brown replied. “The neighbors told us about their feud, we asked for his alibi—he didn’t have one—we searched the house and found the rag. We even had the hammer within two days of the murder.”
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