Madison finished her drink and returned to the attic room.
The following morning Madison woke up and gazed at the daisies and the bluebells slowly coming into focus around her. The nip in the air confirmed where she was, and Madison dragged herself out from under the covers and shivered with her bare feet on the wooden floor. A peek behind the heavy drapes revealed a murky street with blurred edges.
She unplugged her phone from the charger. One voice mail. She remembered her awkward message from the previous night, cringed, and pressed PLAY. A pause after the beep and then only two words in a whisper. Goodnight, Madison. She could hear the smile in his voice. Twenty-four hours ago she had kissed him good-bye in her bed.
Madison dressed quickly and left a message for the others on the kitchen table. Outside, the air was frosty and the ground crunched underfoot.
She had spent more than ten years in the Seattle Police Department and she knew the city as a patrol officer knows it—square foot by square foot. There was no way around it: she needed to walk the length and breadth of Ludlow to get a feel of the place. The map on the wall of the senior center told her little more than the lay of the land, when what she needed was to make sense of its core.
Madison had not packed her running things—all too aware of Sorensen’s peremptory instructions—but a good, hard run would have been a perfect way to become familiar with the neighborhood. Of course, she considered, it was only a diversion from the fact that she felt far from her home ground, playing on a foreign field.
There was a fabric of relationships here—of acquaintances and friendships and loves and enmities—so much more powerful than any in a city the size of Seattle. And the three of them had been dumped right in the middle of it—blind and grasping at clues.
Madison emerged onto Main Street: at one end, in the distance, she could see the red glow of the diner’s sign, almost the only brightness in the half gloom. She began to walk in the opposite direction.
She passed Larsson’s Meat Market, Greg’s Pet Supply and Feed Store, Ludlow Sweets, and Garner’s Pharmacy. Paula’s Gift Shop doubled as an office supply store, and should Madison wish to go hunting or fishing, Mike’s Hunting World could outfit her in a minute. Somewhere nearby a bakery was already at work. The buildings had kept the style of western frontier commercial architecture and clearly had enough business to keep them going, if not busy, through the winter months. The flat, wood-lined fronts and sloped roofs had been well maintained and left in the timber’s natural colors.
It reminded Madison of Friday Harbor on San Juan Island, where she had lived briefly when she was a little girl. She had loved it there; she had learned to kayak and explored the little inlets with her friends. She had camped out in the fields under the buffer of a fragile happiness that had shattered when her mother became ill and Madison’s life changed.
The street was deserted, and Madison wondered whether the events of the previous days were keeping people in their homes.
Halfway up, Main Street opened on one side into a large square—a neat lawn made scruffy by the weather, with a gazebo at her end and benches all around the edges. A good place for a vigil, Madison thought, as she worked out where the best place to take pictures and a video of the crowd would be.
It was very likely that the whole town would turn up, which was good, but there were merely six of them to keep an eye on the event—and that was only if both deputies were on duty. She didn’t know what to expect, but it would be a useful way to feel the pulse of the community. It always was.
The mist was lifting and a pale-blue sky seemed to promise a better day for Sorensen and all the work to be done outside the tent. It would be cold but dry.
A thin stream bordered the opposite end of the square, with a footpath alongside it. The water ran fast between rocks and boulders; it felt icy just watching it rush past.
Madison was turning away when a voice called her back.
“Detective!”
A short man in a bright red mountain parka was half running on the footpath toward her, with an Alsatian on a leash. The dog could easily have outrun the man but politeness made it keep the pace.
“Sorry to startle you,” the man said, drawing level with Madison. “I believe you’re Detective Madison.”
“Yes, I believe I am.”
“I’m Randall Gibson,” he said as he caught his breath. “I’m the mayor of Ludlow.”
“Good to meet you, sir.”
“I wanted to be at the airport when you arrived yesterday but I had to spend all day in Sherman Falls. This is . . . this is a terrible, terrible business. I was the one who called the US Attorney’s Office, you know. I mean, it was the county sheriff who mentioned it, but I was the one who put in the call.”
“Yes, we were told.”
“I hope you can help,” he said. He had graying hair and large eyes, like a child’s, behind round glasses. Randall Gibson was a couple of inches shorter than Madison and spoke in quick bursts, as if he couldn’t help the words coming out.
“I hope you can work with Chief Sangster and get to the bottom of it. He’s a good man, he’s been great for the town.”
“He’s been very supportive, and we’ll do our best.”
Gibson patted the dog absentmindedly. “Good, good. If there’s anything you need, anything at all . . .”
“Thank you, sir, I’ll bear it in mind.”
“I’m not from around here, Detective. I moved to Ludlow a few years ago—like many others, like Chief Sangster himself. And this town has been good to me. It’s been hard, with the economy being what it is—people are spending less and don’t go on vacation so much—but Ludlow is pulling through. I want to do everything I can to make sure we catch whoever did this. For Robert Dennen’s family and for the town.”
He didn’t seem to require a response, and looked beyond the stream and toward the woods.
“I don’t know if you know, but it was the first murder in Colville County,” he said.
“We were told, yes.”
“This is a special place, a beautiful place, and it’s worth protecting.”
His eyes came to rest on Madison.
“Did you know the victim, Mr. Gibson?” she said.
“Yes, Robert was my doctor.”
“Would you mind if I asked you a couple of questions? We’re trying to get a picture of the kind of person he was, the kind of life he led.”
“Sure, ask away, Detective.”
“How long have you known Mr. Dennen?”
“Since I moved to Ludlow, about ten years ago.”
“Did you know him socially as well?”
“It’s hard not to around here. We were on some of the same committees together, had a beer in the Tavern after a meeting every so often.”
“When was the last time you saw him alive?”
“Will Sangster called me when they found him . . . I . . . I saw him in the car.” Gibson had paled and two pink spots had appeared high on his cheeks. “Before then, I don’t know, a couple of weeks ago in the grocery store, I think.”
“Did you have a sense that anything was different? That anything was troubling him?”
The long eyelashes blinked a couple of times. “No, nothing. He was with Betty, they were shopping. There was nothing odd, nothing out of place.”
Madison nodded, and somewhere in her mind she made a note of the man’s every word.
“As the mayor you must hear about everybody’s business,” she said. “Has there ever been any trouble? Maybe a professional complaint against Mr. Dennen? Maybe someone who was upset because he wouldn’t prescribe the medication someone wanted?”
“No, never.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. You’ve seen this place. If someone—” Gibson caught himself, “sneezes in the morning, the whole town has a cold by lunchtime.”
“What about the medical practice?”
“What about it?”
“How many doctors does it empl
oy?”
Madison knew it only employed two doctors but would rather Gibson gave her a complete picture in his own words.
“There are two doctors . . . there were two. One was Robert and the other is Eric Lynch. We managed to hire Dr. Lynch four years ago, after Dr. Foster retired. It’s not always easy to find someone willing to move their family to Ludlow.” His smile came and went. “Lord knows why.”
“Was there ever any trouble between them? Between Dennen and Lynch?”
“No, of course not. What kind of trouble could there be?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Gibson. It’s what we’re here to find out.”
The Alsatian had begun to pull his owner toward Main Street, and Madison walked back with him.
“Have you . . . have you found any evidence?” Gibson said.
“What kind of evidence?”
“Any kind of evidence. I mean, the fire was awful but I thought maybe you would find something. I hope you’ll keep me posted on what you discover.”
“We’re still looking.”
“That’s why I had hoped you could get here as soon as possible. That’s why I made the call. I’ve heard that the first two days are the most important in an investigation.”
“Yes, they are.” Madison would not say more than that.
Gibson had to content himself with walking quietly through the empty square. His eyes went to the gazebo: in a few hours they would be back there.
They parted on Main Street. Gibson went into the bakery and Madison continued her reconnaissance, glad to be by herself. Her first impression of the mayor of Ludlow was that he was well meaning—a little pompous, but well meaning.
At the end of Main Street a stone bridge crossed a river—the Bow, Madison remembered, from the map in their makeshift office. It was fifty, maybe sixty yards wide and flowed, freezing and fast, from the mountains above. Just on the other side stood a three-story log building in the rustic style of the early 1900s. Madison could just about read the sign: LUDLOW & COLVILLE COUNTY NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM.
Maybe another day, she thought, and her cell phone rang.
Chapter 14
“I met the mayor,” Madison said, and took a sip of blessedly strong coffee.
They had taken a booth in the corner—Brown and Sorensen on one of the red leather banquettes and Madison on the other. The diner was busy and agreeably warm after Madison’s long walk.
The Magpie was the kind of diner Norman Rockwell would design, Madison thought—if he had been alive and inclined to design diners. A long chrome-topped counter with stools on one side and a line of booths on the other. The black-and-white floor tiles were spotless; ketchup and mustard came in immaculate red and yellow plastic bottles.
Nothing would have mattered, though, if the coffee was less than nuclear strength, since Madison had left the Miller house with nothing more than a glass of milk in her system.
She had ordered French toast and bacon, and it came with a cinnamon smiley on the top. Sorensen was steadily demolishing a “Farmhand’s Favorite,” which seemed to include every item on the menu piled high on a single plate. She had told Brown that he was letting the side down when he ordered his oatmeal and toast, and he had replied that he would very much like to live to see sixty.
“What’s the mayor like?” Sorensen said.
“A little pompous, a little annoying, means well,” Madison said quietly, even though no one was close enough to overhear them. “He’s very interested in the details of the case. Wanted to know about any evidence we recovered.”
Brown was quick to spot the signs that something troubled Madison. “What’s on your mind?”
“You know how every single person we met here, the first thing they told us when we asked them about the victim was what a good guy he was?”
“Yes.”
“Not the mayor. Also, he used certain words when he was talking about the last time he saw him alive. He said ‘nothing odd, nothing out of place.’ He didn’t say the doc was fine, the words meant the situation appeared fine.”
Sorensen was used to playing devil’s advocate. “You don’t think you’re being picky about language?”
“Possibly. But he asked me to keep him posted about what we discover not about what we find.”
“He knows there is something for us to discover as opposed to the eventuality of us finding something?” Brown said.
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Madison said.
“Be careful,” Sorensen said, and when she knew she had the others’ full attention she leaned forward. “We have nothing to go on: no motive, no suspects, and barely a clear cause of death. If we start to weigh people by their casual words, without any evidence, we’re going to be left flapping in the wind—and it won’t look pretty.”
“All I’m saying is that the guy used some peculiar turns of phrase, and I’m going to keep an eye on him—”
“He doesn’t have a record, this much we know,” Brown interjected.
“How . . . ?”
“I put in a request yesterday to find out if there were any warrants out or any felony arrests for the whole town.” When Madison blinked, he continued, “It’s not like I asked them to run the New York City phone book. Anyway, unfortunately for us—though kudos to Ludlow—there isn’t one citizen with a felony arrest of any kind. The closest we got was a record for assault in Sherman Falls—and anyway the guy was drunk when he hit his brother-in-law. This town is mercifully free of ex-cons and felons.”
“Good to hear,” Madison said, and she did not want to consider that something as dark as murder with a side of arson could be the first fledgling step of an offender. If it was, what could possibly follow?
“Do you need me at the vigil?” Sorensen said.
“Yes,” Brown and Madison replied in unison.
“We’ll be stretched as it is,” Brown continued.
“Thought so.” Sorensen finished her last bite of egg. “Do you have your own camera?” she asked Madison in a tone that implied that Madison was in fact one of the investigators in her unit and only temporarily seconded to Homicide.
“Yup, ready and waiting.”
“If the killer is coming to the vigil,” Brown said, “he might want to have a real front seat for the show.”
“Be close to the family,” Madison agreed.
“Yes,” Brown said. “There might be a few hundred people there, and he’s going to be in a place where he can see and hear well.”
“There will be speeches?” Sorensen said.
“I’m reasonably sure Mayor Gibson will want to say something,” Madison replied.
“One of us should speak,” Brown said, tactful as always about his seniority in a situation where he was not the primary detective.
“You have fun with that,” Madison said. “I’m going to be eyes on the crowd.”
“We should update the boss and Nathan Quinn. We’ll need warrants in the near future,” Brown said. “Okay if I take Fynn?”
“Sure,” Madison replied. “I’ll call Quinn on my way to KCVW.”
They paid and left for their separate tasks: Brown to interview the Jacobsens—the last known people to see the victim alive—Madison to record an appeal for information at the local radio station—after the bakery, before the bank—and Sorensen back to the car crime scene—taking advantage of the clear, dry morning.
The woman behind the counter gave them a smile as they left, and Madison was grateful that she had let them get on with their business without joining them for a chat. Then she instantly felt guilty about that notion. You have a cold, big-city heart, she told herself.
She hadn’t failed to notice, however, that the woman’s smile had been mostly directed at Brown.
Joyce Cartwell watched the detectives as they left her diner. Every customer in the place had been staring. Stare they might, but the investigators had specifically chosen the last booth against the wall, the one without neighbors, and she didn’t think they wanted to chitchat
. She wondered what kind of person they were looking for, what kind of trial had befallen her town. Had it been the end of a terrible sequence of chance events? Or was it the beginning of a different kind of darkness?
Under the diner’s uniform, under her garments, a three-inch scar traveled over her ribs. Not all crimes in Ludlow ended up in a report.
Unheard by Joyce, or by the detectives, one of the customers told her elderly mother that she must have imagined the face she had glimpsed outside the kitchen window in the middle of the night. They didn’t have those kinds of perverts in Ludlow.
Chapter 15
Alice Madison strode toward the building that housed KCVW, fished out her cell from her bag, and dialed the number for Nathan Quinn, the senior counsel to the US Attorney for the Western District of Washington State.
“It’s Detective Madison,” she said when he picked up.
“Detective,” he replied, and there was another voice in the background. Quinn disappeared for a moment and then came back. “The US attorney is in my office. I assume you wanted to brief me about Ludlow. I’ll put you on speaker.”
Madison had not expected to speak to the US attorney. She had never met her, and it felt somewhat uncouth to start their acquaintance while she was rushing down the street. Nevertheless, that’s how it was going to be. Use five words where you would use ten, and don’t leave too many pauses, she told herself. Pauses make you sound dumb on a speaker.
Madison briefed Nathan Quinn and Judy Campbell: she was to the point and left no pauses. As they both soon realized, Madison had more of a status report than a progress report. The detectives had been on the ground for just about twenty-four hours. Progress would come. So they all hoped.
Quinn took Madison off speaker. “Thank you for calling, Detective. Keep me posted.”
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