“Then something definitely went wrong this time. If I were him I’d want the whole thing wrapped up as neatly and as swiftly as possible.”
They knocked on the open door of Sarah Klein’s office. It was a small room that managed to be smart while being crammed with files and documents and legal reference books.
“We’re in the conference room,” Klein said as a greeting. “We’ll be more comfortable there.”
Their steps clicked on the tiled floor. Only a few lights were still burning in the offices along the corridor. She showed them into a long, narrow room and someone was already there.
Madison froze for a beat.
“My boss told the Criminal Chief,” Klein said, “and she told the State Attorney, who asked Quinn to keep an eye on the case. Nathan called me earlier to talk about it and it made sense that he should be here since he was in the neighborhood.”
“Mr. Quinn,” Brown said.
The last time they had met they had been on different sides of the courtroom.
“Detective Brown.”
Both men carried the scars of a case that had changed their lives: meeting like this seemed oddly polite after the ugly war in which they had fought, even if ultimately they’d been on the same side.
“Detective Madison,” Nathan Quinn said as his gaze briefly met hers.
“Counselor,” she replied.
Civility was promptly dispatched before they sat around the table and Madison began to relate the briefing and their conclusions. Klein didn’t interrupt but scribbled notes on her pad. Nathan Quinn’s attention, though, was a subtle instrument and it felt uncomfortable against Madison’s skin.
“Are you going to contact Karasick’s attorney?” Quinn asked Klein after Madison had finished.
“Yes, I think I should. We need to head off any implication that we’re doing this under the radar. It will be confidential, of course. The last thing we want is for him to run to the press.”
“Are you ready for this to be completely transparent?” Quinn asked Brown.
Madison remembered that, among cops, when Quinn was still a criminal defense attorney, a moderate to serious bout of torture would have been far preferable to having to go on the witness stand and be cross-examined by him.
“Absolutely,” Brown replied without hesitation.
“We don’t want to find anything that is going to discredit the original investigation.”
“You mean, aside from the fact that we got it spectacularly wrong?”
“You were working with what you had—and what you had was a solid case that secured a conviction. I’m talking about anything from a missed search warrant to a dubious confession or an unreliable witness that the prosecution found a way to work into its case.”
“It was by the book,” Klein said without animosity. “No one is going to find police or prosecutorial misconduct.”
Madison had not seen or spoken to Nathan Quinn for over a year and unconsciously found herself searching for those eighteen months in his features. She caught herself and looked away.
“Is the Duncans’ housekeeper a good witness?” Quinn asked her. “She’s the only one who can put him on the scene, though not at the time of the murder.” His black eyes regarded her coolly.
“She is,” she replied. “She worked very well with the forensic artist. But I’d rather have a photo, of course.”
It was true. Having a sketch was great: however, a lot of people had trouble matching it to a real-life person.
“Wouldn’t we all,” Klein commented.
“And Karasick had not pleaded?” Quinn turned to Brown.
The detective shook his head. There had been no plea bargaining in Karasick’s case: even in the face of a certain conviction he had stuck to his “not guilty” plea.
“That might work in our favor,” Quinn said.
“How so?” Brown asked.
“You said you had an idea about how to find other potential murders that the killer might have been involved in,” Quinn said to Madison.
“Yes, I’d filter out any homicide where the murder weapon was a firearm or a blade and concentrate on those where the killer could have picked up something owned by the scapegoat, something that carried prints, or something that would have already been on the crime scene.”
“Sure, we can do it that way. But we can also search through pleas—or, better still, the absence of guilty pleas,” Quinn said.
Madison saw exactly where he was going. “Because Karasick never wavered.”
“Exactly,” Quinn continued. “We should look into any cases that looked strong in court and still the defendant pursued appeals through the Release Project in spite of the evidence against them. What does the FBI say?”
“Fred Kamen will get back to me as soon as he can,” Brown replied. “He’s using different filters, including the burying of the tin and the cigar case.”
“Will he give us a profile?” Klein asked him.
“If he can. He’s reluctant to come up with one if he doesn’t have enough to go on. I’ve given him all the details of both murders, though, and he should be able to triangulate something out of that.”
“Any connection between Peter Mitchell and Matthew Duncan?” Quinn asked Madison.
“Not that we know of.”
“How does he choose his victims?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“Is he on a cycle, time-wise? Monthly, yearly, whatever?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“You don’t know very much, do you?”
Madison bristled. “We know he exists—which is a hell of a lot more than we did twenty-four hours ago.”
“Well, it only took us seven years to figure it out. So, you know, good for us.” Quinn’s voice was low and sharp.
Seven years ago Nathan Quinn was still heading the most successful criminal defense firm in the Pacific Northwest and, if anything, at the time he would have been defending Karasick.
“Not even you could have gotten Karasick off, Nathan,” Klein said.
Quinn ignored her. “When are the Mitchell witnesses going to be re-interviewed?”
“We’re starting tomorrow,” Madison said, and suddenly remembered, quite clearly, how her early meetings with Quinn had been less than warm and fuzzy.
“Will you show them the picture?”
“No, I think I’ll describe the killer through the medium of music,” she replied.
Something flitted across Quinn’s face. “I’m glad we had a chance to go over things,” he said as he stood to leave and flicked invisible lint off the sleeve of his suit. “Sarah, if there’s anything I can help with to speed things up, please let me know. Detective Brown, good to see you again . . .” Quinn extended his hand across the table and Brown shook it. “Detective Madison,” Quinn said and he offered his hand.
She took it automatically and the next moment he was gone. His steps echoed in the corridor.
“Kind of makes you wish for the good old days when we were not on the same side, doesn’t he?” Klein said, after a moment.
Outside, the cold found Madison and she breathed it in and let it wash over her. They were walking back to the precinct and her thoughts stumbled and staggered in circles.
“What’s wrong?” Brown said.
“Nothing. Just thinking,” she replied and her voice was so unconvincing that she felt she had to add something. “I’m going to look into the Release Project tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow is Saturday. Most people have days off, occasionally.”
“I’m sure I can find a number to call in case of emergencies.”
“Well, it will be good news for us and bad news for anybody else.”
It was true: any case they might find would give them more details to add to the picture of the killer—more potential ways to seek him and find him—and one person behind bars who shouldn’t be there.
“Do you want to grab something to eat?” Brown said.
“No thanks.
I’m just going to go home and heat up some week-old leftovers.”
“Sounds delightful.”
Madison smiled, but Brown watched the smile fade when she thought he didn’t notice. He had seen that look before.
Chapter 25
Eighteen months earlier
Four people were playing Texas Hold’em through the night in an empty restaurant on Alki Beach and it was not a kids’ game. What Madison had learned from her father looked like a magic trick to her teenage friends, but these men were not so easily impressed.
Hold’em is war and strategy, guts and inspiration. They each held two hole cards, facedown on the table, and five community cards had been dealt face up for all to see. The first three were “the flop,” followed by “the turn” and “the river.”
Madison had watched them play and, she had to admit, it had been a pleasure. Quinn and Cameron were skilled and unsurprisingly lethal, but the chef, Donny O’Keefe, he was world class. He was Johnny Chan in 1988 to their Eric Seidel. They had bet on the flop, on the turn, and on the river. Madison knew by then that she ought to fold because her hole cards were the five of diamonds and the eight of spades—and nothing in this universe could prevent her from losing to either Quinn or O’Keefe who, she thought, were holding a flush and a full house. So she folded. Cameron folded too. Quinn won with a full house—kings and fours—over O’Keefe’s ace-high flush.
The chef, short and wiry, stood up. “More coffee, I think,” he said, and he went into the kitchen.
Cameron decided to get a breath of fresh air out on the deck, leaving Quinn and Madison alone. If, five months earlier, someone had told her that one day there she would be, in the company of these men, playing as she had not played for two decades, she would have thought it madness. Still, too much had happened: lives had been saved, secrets—some secrets, at least—had been unraveled. And when all was said and done Nathan Quinn had been able to put his brother to rest. Madison had been part of it; she had been one of those who had managed to bring his body truly home after the child had been lost in the woods for longer than he had been alive.
She watched Quinn. Once, before the night in the forest and before the blood, she had called him “a cheap used-car salesman in a good suit.” She still cringed at that. What did she see now? Why had she stayed and played? Quinn shuffled the deck. His hands moved easily on the cards and, out of the blue, she wondered what he had been like as a young man. She had seen him fleetingly in some old photograph and remembered the curly dark hair, the black eyes, and the beginning of what might someday become a beard.
There he was, she thought, as he shuffled the cards quietly, enjoying the fact that she was watching him and not speaking because it might be the last time they’d ever be in the same room. And that silence was too precious to break.
There he was, that boy.
Then the others came back and they played on until dawn.
There were only four cars in the parking lot. Cameron and O’Keefe left first. Madison approached hers—the old Honda Civic that would be sold in a few weeks—and in the half-light something caught her eye.
She crouched. “Damn,” she said.
Nathan Quinn stepped out of the misty gloom. “What is it?”
“Flat tire.”
“Do you have a spare?”
Madison thought about it for a moment. “No,” she replied. “I used it a month ago and didn’t replace it.” She could barely see his face.
“I’ll drive you home. It’s late,” he said.
It was so late that it was early and, after a long night of cards and food and drink, Madison was glad for the quiet as Quinn drove toward Three Oaks. The world was precariously balanced between night and day, and she knew why she had stayed and played.
The drive, with neither traffic nor anything else that might delay them, was all too quick and before long Quinn was pulling into her driveway.
The late-spring air still held the chill of the night as they stood by her front door.
“It’s been a long day, Detective,” he said, and he smiled. “And now it’s done.”
She nodded.
For them the day had been measured in weeks and years. Madison could barely remember a time when work had not meant this case—this man—even if it had been only five months, even if they’d fought more than they’d agreed and concealed more than they’d revealed. Still, they had never lied to each other.
Madison raised her hand and laid it against his cheek. Quinn was frozen. She caressed the dark hair by his temple. There was the tiniest amount of gray that she hadn’t noticed before; she sighed and her fingers trailed through it. In the faint light he was pale and utterly still, and as she leaned in he did not move.
His voice was close to her ear. “Don’t . . . toy with me.” His eyelashes brushed her cheekbone.
Madison shook her head and kissed him, and for the longest time there was nothing but the kiss. Her arms reached around him and the sudden warmth of his skin through the shirt was almost too much. He slowly bent forward and now they were leaning against the door, pressed against it, and his mouth tasted so very sweet. At some point in the far and distant future they might have to breathe, but for now, Madison thought briefly, all she needed was this kiss.
“Maybe we could . . .” Quinn whispered after a while.
“Yes, definitely,” Madison replied and fumbled to find her house keys.
They walked in together. Quinn closed the door behind them and they were in the cool semidarkness of the house. She reached for his hand and he followed her into her bedroom. For a split second Madison considered the unmade bed and the clothes on the floor that she hadn’t had a chance to put in her hamper and she stopped, grateful that the lights were still off.
She turned to him. “I wasn’t exactly expecting guests.”
Quinn chuckled, a low rumbling sound that she had never heard before. “I didn’t think you’d be the messy type.”
“I’m not. Usually.”
“I couldn’t care less if we had to burrow our way through laundry to get to your bed,” he said.
“I’m glad.”
Quinn dropped his jacket on the floor on top of her running things from the previous day.
“You’re going to feel right at home here,” Madison said, looking at the small pile, and she wanted to giggle because all of a sudden she had realized that she really was in her bedroom with tall, dark Nathan Quinn and the reality of it was unreservedly bizarre and yet completely fitting.
He stepped closer and took her hand. “I have scars,” he said. It wasn’t an apology; it was more of a warning in case she’d forgotten. How could she? The ones on his fine face were healing, but his body had been through hell.
“I know,” she replied quietly.
He unbuttoned his shirt and gently placed her hand against his bare chest. His skin was soft and she felt his heart pounding. He guided her hand and there it was: the long, thin scar that snaked around his flat belly. Her hands trailed under his shirt, helped him to take it off and her eyes welled up. She had never felt as fiercely protective of another human being as she did in that moment.
She kissed his chest lightly and reached for his belt, but he suddenly pulled back, holding her hands away from him.
“I don’t have any condoms,” he said in dismay.
Madison blinked. “Neither do I.” And of all the moments to think back to her grandmother’s “talk” when she was fifteen this was surely the least and the most appropriate. “I don’t care,” she said.
He hesitated and then his hands were on her clothes and he helped Madison yank her top off as she toed off first one boot then the other, lost her balance, and only then remembered the familiar weight on her right ankle.
“My piece.” She bent down and unstrapped the holster with the snub-nosed .38.
Quinn watched her wrap it in the leather straps and shove it under the bed. “You are a strange creature, Detective Madison.”
“You have no
idea, Counselor.”
He smiled and there was wickedness there that her grandmother would have most definitely disapproved of.
“Show me,” Nathan Quinn said.
Hours later the shapes of light on the ceiling told Madison that it was late morning or even early afternoon. It felt like a dream after a long night that had been a kind of dream anyway.
Quinn’s arm around her tightened.
She realized that he was awake too and turned to him. His hair was messy and he looked like a man who had had two hours’ sleep. He cupped her cheek and kissed her brow. There was awkward, crooked happiness there. He was not handsome—no, he was so much more than that—and Madison fought the need to speak. Because all the words could wait when holding him in her arms, in her bed, surrounded by unruly laundry, was sweeter than she could ever have imagined.
Chapter 26
After the meeting at the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office Madison drove straight home. She had so much to think about, so much work that they needed to get through to have at least half a chance against the killer.
Yet all she could think about was that, in all the time she had known him, she couldn’t remember Nathan Quinn ever shaking hands with people. Nevertheless, in the conference room he had leaned across the table and shaken Brown’s. And when he’d turned toward her it had been a reflex she couldn’t help: before she knew it he had clasped her hand for a moment, and then he was gone.
Nathan Quinn arrived home in Seward Park and saw the lights blazing in the windows. It had to happen, he considered, sooner or later, and offering to keep an eye on Brown’s old case had ensured that he would meet Detective Madison again. After eighteen months it had been just as difficult as he had predicted. How had she looked? He didn’t want to think about that.
He had been sitting in the car for a couple of minutes, staring into nothingness, when he grabbed his briefcase and got out. Inside, he knew, Erica Lowell, the woman he was going to marry next spring, was waiting for him to have dinner.
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