Blood and Bone

by V. M. Giambanco

  Madison gently squeezed the tips of her fingers. “Did you sleep okay?” she asked her.

  The woman nodded. “I woke up once but they gave me a mild sedative and I was out like a light.”

  “Good,” Madison said.

  In a few hours the woman might feel strong enough to give her a statement about what had happened, but right now Kate Duncan looked as if she could fall asleep any moment and Madison did not want to push her.

  “Someone told me that you were the one who figured out where he had taken me,” Kate Duncan said.

  “Well, yes, but there was the license plate recognition technology too,” Madison replied.

  “And he’s dead, you’ve seen him?” The woman’s voice had dropped to a whisper.

  “I have. I saw him yesterday. He had a car accident shortly after he left you. Did he speak with you? Did he say anything that might help us to understand what he was doing?”

  “He only asked me about myself. Over and over. He asked me to tell him about me, my life, what I did, my family. Over and over. He wanted details, names, stories.”

  “He didn’t say why?”

  “No.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Yes, that’s all we talked about. And I was the only one talking.”

  “And you had never seen him before?”

  “Never.” The woman’s eyes filled with tears and she leaned back on her pillow. “I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

  What this woman had gone through in the last two weeks was horrific. Madison patted her feet and stood to leave.

  “It was all of us, Kate. Just get some rest. We’ll deal with your statement once you feel better.”

  In the corridor Madison stopped a nurse to ask what was wrong with the woman’s hands.

  “She wasn’t going to stay locked in that awful place if she could help it,” the nurse replied. “When she was done banging to get herself heard she just plain punched the walls. It’s only superficial lacerations; don’t you worry. She’ll be fine in a few days.”

  Madison left the hospital. She did not like at all the revelation about Burnette’s questions. This was a man you did not want in your life or knowing anything about you. See how well it had turned out for Peter Mitchell and Henry Karasick.

  Technically Madison should have had the day off, but she needed to spend more time in Burnette’s house. As yet she hadn’t even attempted to occupy herself with anything that was not connected to the case. Apparently, he had lived there for about five years: how much did the house know of what the man did to entertain himself?

  Jerry Lindquist listened to Saul Garner and then asked him to repeat everything. Occasionally his gaze strayed to Brown, who was sitting in the other chair next to his bed, though mostly he stared at Garner.

  Lindquist had a punctured lung from a stab wound to the chest, a broken arm, and a number of small defensive cuts on his hands. But he was alive—at least until the inmate who had attacked him was rereleased into the general population after a period of solitary confinement. The inmate had killed two women on the outside; a broken arm and a stab wound were not going to make a dent in his sentence, and a term of isolation was probably a welcome break.

  Brown showed Lindquist a few pictures of Joe Burnette—some with dark hair, one with a shaved scalp and no brows.

  Lindquist examined them without speaking for a long time and then slowly, reluctantly, he shook his head.

  Brown could see that he wanted to be able to recognize the man, to give a face and a body to the ghost who had destroyed his life. However, there wasn’t even the faintest glimmer of recognition.

  “I’ve never seen this man before. And his name means nothing to me.”

  “He had met one of his victims at a support group, many years ago,” Brown said. “Did you ever go to one, even to just one meeting?”

  “No, I’ve never been. Meetings—AA, holding hands and praying—were really not my kind of thing then.”

  “And now?”

  Lindquist shrugged. Everything was surreal today, starting with this cop who was telling him he knew someone else had killed his wife. “I’ve been clean and sober for two years,” he said. “If I ever get out of here, I’ll just have to figure out how to do it without the armed guards.”

  Alice Madison showed her badge to the uniformed officer at the door and walked into Joe Burnette’s house. The Crime Scene Unit had taken over and its officers—Sorensen, Madison noted, was not among them—were collecting, cataloging, and preserving. The computer was gone—the Cybercrime techie was continuing his offensive elsewhere—and even the telescope had a number stuck on its side ready to be packed up.

  Madison looked at the bookcase, at the pattern of dust at the bottom of each shelf. It took her ten minutes to find the first book whose pages had been sheared off. It was a star atlas. She put it to one side. A cheer went up an hour later when somewhere in the basement someone found a box of empty cigar cases, ready for Burnette to fill and deliver to the next recipients.

  It was odd how she felt completely justified about being there and possibly kicking a hole through the plaster and shining a flashlight into the space between the walls, and yet a part of her also felt as if they were picking a dead man’s pockets. Then again, maybe it was merely the uneasy knowledge that she was standing where he had stood, moving his books with her gloved hand, and breathing the air he had breathed.

  If only they had been a little bit faster in catching on. If only they had understood more—and earlier.

  After a while Madison left and went to the precinct to write reports until her eyes were ready to give up. She didn’t see Brown at all and wondered how he was doing after meeting Jerry Lindquist—the secondary victim.

  Madison picked up a slice of pizza from the box and bit into it. In terms of a quick, sharp fix of temporary bliss, tomatoes and anchovies did it just fine for her. Aaron had arrived with two large cartons of takeout and Madison had opened a bottle of white wine.

  They hadn’t bothered with propriety either. Instead, they’d slumped on the sofa and grasped each slice from the cardboard box, holding it over a plate. Madison poked a log in the fire and it hissed back at her.

  “Is it over?” Aaron said.

  “Yes and no,” she replied. “Yes, in the sense that the man is dead. No, because there is so much we don’t know about how he operated, how he chose his victims, how he got so good at what he was doing.”

  “Good?”

  “Well, yes, we didn’t catch up with him for seven years, and we’re not completely sure that Mitchell was the first. We think that he was, but there might have been something else that escalated Burnette’s behavior and it’s important that we know.”

  “Why? If he’s dead . . .”

  Madison turned the question around in her mind. “The more we know, the faster we can help the other victims and the better we can make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

  “I’m glad he’s dead. The things he’s done, they’re . . . unspeakable.”

  “I’m not glad. An elk through the windshield isn’t justice.”

  “I’m glad he’s dead. Because now you don’t have to go after him.”

  Madison took a sip of wine.

  “And you’re not glad,” Aaron continued. “Because you wanted to—and now you can’t.”

  “All in all, the elk did a better job than we’d done.”

  “How many people did he . . . ?”

  “Killed—fifteen. Convicted for his crimes—twelve, one of whom took his own life in prison.”

  “Doesn’t it bother you—?”

  “Of course it bothers me.”

  “No, I mean, doesn’t it bother you to be surrounded by that . . . that . . . awfulness every day?”

  Madison turned to him. In the glow of the fire he was golden and beautiful and so badly wanted her to say that, yes, the horror was too much.

  “Sometimes it is—but that’s when I’m not careful, when I brin
g it home with me. You have to deal with it like it’s radioactive.”

  Aaron nodded. He put down his plate and put his arm around Madison and held her.

  “He had locked her in a hut near a place where he goes with his telescope to look at the stars,” she said. It was as if she was blundering forward but had to speak, whatever the cost. “He put her there so that he could think of her when he was looking up at the heavens in all their beauty. And I knew where she was because that’s what I would have done, if I were him.”

  For a moment there was only the crackle of the fire. Then she felt Aaron’s arm fall away from her shoulders as he stood and bent to pick up the empty boxes. “Would you like some hot chocolate?” He smiled a little. “I make great hot chocolate.”

  “That would be lovely,” she replied, and tried not to see how sad he looked, how lost.

  They went to bed soon after and Madison wondered how many weeks and how many words it would take to say what they needed to say to each other—whether five years would not be long enough, and if it was already over.

  As they lay in the dark he turned to her. “You know how when people stop seeing each other somebody always loses friends or the other person’s family?”

  Only Aaron’s gentle heart could make those words sound consoling.

  “Yes,” Madison replied.

  “Well, in our case my family will keep you and chuck me out to the wolves. On top of which they’ll tell me every day for the rest of my life that I’m an idiot.”

  “I don’t think you’re an idiot.”

  “I just . . .”

  “I know.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “I know.”

  They fell asleep with her hand on his cheek.

  Chapter 49

  Madison’s cell pinged in the half-gloom of the very early morning and she automatically reached for it.

  “Madison,” she said, her voice still rough with sleep.

  “Good morning, Detective, the informant is meeting the OPA investigator in a couple of hours. I know where and when.”

  John Cameron. Madison’s brain staggered and lurched forward. “Are you sure?”

  “Would I be calling you if I wasn’t?”

  “Tell me where.”

  “I don’t think so. I’ll pick you up from home in one hour.”

  The line went dead.

  She was going to catch him. She was going to catch Chris Kelly being the two-faced asshole that she had always known he was.

  And then?

  The truth was that she couldn’t let him know that she had seen him—otherwise OPA would know that she was aware of their investigation.

  Fuck it.

  She needed to see Kelly in play. The rest she would work out later.

  She showered, made coffee, and brought a mug to Aaron in bed. He had watched her quietly. Madison leaned forward and kissed him on the brow, then she reached under the bed for her shoulder holster with the Glock and the smaller one for her ankle.

  John Cameron was waiting for her in a Black Chevrolet Suburban with tinted windows at the top of her driveway.

  “I thought you were a Ford Explorer kind of guy,” she said.

  “The meeting has been moved up, Detective. Let’s skip the wry.”

  Madison hadn’t seen John Cameron in daylight for a while. He looked drawn and had the kind of tan you don’t pick up in Seattle in late November. The familiar knot of ice was in its place in the pit of her stomach, as it always was when she was anywhere near him.

  “Thank you for what you did in LA,” she said as they sped through her neighborhood.

  The words tasted odd on her lips. Cameron did not reply.

  It didn’t escape her sense of the absurd that she was on her way to spy on a cop while being driven by a criminal. “What do you know about this meeting?” she said.

  “I know where and when.”

  “Are you going to share that, or is it a secret?”

  “OPA has been cultivating their informant for months,” Cameron said, ignoring her question, “and they’re handling the whole thing like it’s made of spun glass. Do you know Lieutenant Richards?”

  “Pit Bull Richards? Yes, I know him. We met years ago.”

  “He’s in charge of it.”

  Wonderful, Madison thought. The last time they’d met she was still a probie in uniform; he’s asked her to keep an eye on her training officer and she’d told him to stick it.

  “Discovery Park,” Cameron said and pointed at a bag in the back. Inside Madison found a couple of pairs of binoculars. “I hope you can lip read.”

  The Sunday morning traffic was light and they made good time toward the promontory that stretched out toward Bainbridge Island and was cut off from Ballard by the locks and Salmon Bay.

  “What happened to Agent Parker in LA?” Madison asked, and she wasn’t sure whether she’d get an answer or not.

  “Greed, for the most part,” Cameron replied. Then he added, “He walked in on the wrong people and got shot for his troubles. I hear they want to give him a medal.”

  Madison didn’t know how to feel about his death.

  “It’s up to you what you do with this,” Cameron said as he drove into the park. “And if your inclination is toward facing the informant, I wouldn’t hold it against you. However, you might pause for a moment and reflect on how valuable it would be for you to hold this knowledge and do nothing about it.”

  Madison bristled. She was getting a strategy lecture from John Cameron.

  “I haven’t decided yet,” she conceded. “There’s a lot of history here. Chris Kelly has been difficult from the start. Difficult I can live with, but this . . . this is something else.”

  Cameron found a parking spot in a corner of the large lot, behind a number of minivans. On the far side Madison spotted a metallic gray Lexus, and even without binoculars she could see Pit Bull Richards inside it. He’d gotten older, sure, but it was him all right. He had parked in the middle of an empty stretch and was reading a newspaper.

  Cameron checked his watch. Something prickled Madison’s scalp and suddenly she just wanted out of the car.

  “Stay where you are,” Cameron said.

  A burgundy Honda arrived and slid into the space next to the Lexus. Madison stiffened. Behind the tinted windows, and at that distance, she knew they were practically invisible. She leaned back into her seat, her eyes fixed on the new car, and she tried to see beyond the windshield reflection. There was no need for it: as the engine and the lights cut off, the driver got out, opened the passenger door of the Lexus, and sat down next to Richards.

  It was not Chris Kelly.

  Madison turned to Cameron. “You knew?”

  He nodded. “Some things you have to see for yourself.”

  Stacey Roberts was tanned—a week in Hawaii would do that—and her name, Madison corrected herself, was Stacey Dunne now.

  “Last Sunday she got married to Andy Dunne from my unit. He’s a friend,” she said. “I’ve known Stacey for years.” Madison wanted to say that she’d even gone to her bachelorette party, but the words dried up.

  “I know,” Cameron replied.

  Had Stacey asked Andy about her, about the Salinger case, about the things Madison had told Andy and Spencer that had never made it into the official reports? What had he told her?

  “Is there any question that she might be meeting Richards for another reason? Quite frankly, if they were having an affair it would be tough for Andy, but it would work out a hell of a lot better for me.” It was a bad joke and she knew that Cameron wouldn’t have brought her here unless his information was solid.

  Madison watched in silence as Stacey spent twenty minutes with Richards and then left. He followed her out of the park one minute later.

  “I know what they’ve talked about,” Cameron said to Madison as she stared at the spaces where the cars had been. When she didn’t reply, he continued. “He just told her that they’re shutting down the investigation
because they see no obvious reason to continue it.”

  Madison snapped. “Why did you bring me here? What did you—?”

  “Whatcom County, Detective.”

  She had saved his life in a field in Whatcom County almost two years earlier. Madison remembered a conversation with Agent Parker.

  “Is he the kind of person who would consider that a debt?”

  “I have no idea what kind of person John Cameron is.”

  Cameron drove her back downtown and dropped her off on the corner of Stewart and First Avenue. Between the buildings Puget Sound looked like a sheer slate and Madison hurried toward Pike Place Market, where she had arranged to meet Brown. She had to tell him—if nothing else, because she had absolutely no idea what to do. And, given that the investigation had been shut down, he was out of danger.

  Madison walked into the Athenian Inn and saw Brown sitting at the bar, listening on his cell phone.

  He stood when he saw her. “Cybercrime has just cracked the encryption system.”

  His car was parked nearby and as the engine came to life he passed Madison the tabloid newspaper he had folded neatly in his pocket. Kate Duncan had made the cover in a smallish square picture under the headline.

  Most of the page was taken up by an image of the inside of the hut where she had been imprisoned. Madison had never seen it. The photograph must have been taken immediately after the woman had been rescued. Bright lights were shining into what looked like a brick pit nearly overrun by foliage and moss. Shards of wood on the dirt floor were broken into dozens of pieces and deep grooves had been carved out of the bricks.

  Madison remembered Kate Duncan’s bandaged hands and realized that some of the dark shadows on the walls must be her blood.

  Alice Madison walked into the Harborview Medical Center at 10:00 p.m., well after the bustle of visiting hours had ended. She waited until the nurses at the station were busy with something, then she headed for Kate Duncan’s room and walked in without knocking. The lights were low and the woman was resting with her eyes closed.

  Madison sat in the chair next to her. It creaked slightly and Kate Duncan opened her eyes.