By Thursday morning, the news of Nathan Quinn’s reward was in all the major papers.
Chapter 24
It had been a hard winter. Michael and Harry Salinger had spent many afternoons at home, prisoners of the rain, the early dark, and their father’s moods. They endured the seventh grade and prayed for spring and the release of summer.
One Saturday afternoon, as they were coming back from the grocery store, they saw their father waiting for them in the kitchen. Michael noticed him first and took one step back, away from the window. He hadn’t seen them. He motioned to his brother to follow him to the back gate.
“He’s waiting,” he whispered.
“I didn’t do anything,” Harry said quickly.
“Let’s go,” Michael said. “We might as well get it over with.”
They walked into the kitchen and put the bags on the table.
Richard Salinger looked at them. “Do you guys want to see Back to the Future or what?”
They were speechless. The film had just opened, and no one was talking about anything else.
They queued for tickets and bought popcorn, the boys still stunned, finding their way in the crowd.
They watched the film and heard their father laugh, an exotic sound. He took them for pizza afterward; they split a large salami and cheese and drank Cherry Coke. The place was full of parents with kids. The last thing Harry thought that night as he was falling asleep: that must be what it’s like for everyone else.
Richard Salinger’s mood lasted about a week. Then, one day, Michael’s “Yes, sir” wasn’t quite as snappy as it should have been, and his brother got a quick smack on the back of the head.
One summer evening the twins were sitting on the back steps, the sky above them turning purple. Their yard was lined by tall trees, and once their father had gone to work, nobody could see them.
They shared a cigarette, passing it back and forth between them and knowing how much every drag would cost them if their father knew.
“We could run away,” Michael said. “It’s not impossible.”
They both knew that Richard Salinger would use every connection he still had at the police department to find them. They would last five minutes on the road.
They buried the cigarette pack and the matches in a small plastic bag under the roots of the farthest tree from the house, the stub next to it.
Two days later, Michael found the gun.
They were tossing a tennis ball as they were going down the stairs. Michael missed, and the ball rolled into their father’s room. The boys looked at each other: it wasn’t a good idea to go in there without an excellent reason, and a tennis ball didn’t even come close. But Richard Salinger was out, and Michael gently pushed the door open wider.
“It’s under the bed. Get it and get out,” Harry said.
Michael stood just inside the room and looked around. The bed, with the blankets hastily pulled up, was in the corner. A jacket and a shirt had been thrown on a chair. The room had not been aired in a long time and smelled of cough medicine.
“Come on,” Harry called out. The hairs were standing up on the back of his neck just knowing that Michael was in their father’s room.
“Okay.” Michael got onto his hands and knees, lifted the bedspread, and looked into the darkness.
Two pairs of old leather shoes lay at funny angles, covered with such a thick film of dust, it was impossible to see their color. A shoebox was tied with a piece of string, and, wedged between that and the wall, was the tennis ball.
Michael wasn’t all that happy about reaching into the dusty mess, but there wasn’t much he could do about it.
Suck it up, he thought.
He lay down flat on his stomach, trying to keep his face as much as possible off the floor, and reached for the shoebox. He felt it with the tips of his fingers and grasped it; he pulled it out and went for the ball. His eyes were squeezed shut; he could feel the dust going up his nose with every breath. He closed his fingers around the ball and straightened up. Still sitting on the floor, he wiped his hand on the front of his white T-shirt.
He started to push the shoebox back under with his foot. It was heavy.
“What’s taking you so long?”
“Have you seen this before?” Michael pointed at the box.
Harry peeked into the room and shook his head.
Michael picked it up and felt its weight in his hands.
In that house of secrets, none was more closely guarded by Richard Salinger than their mother’s death. The boys had no memories of her: he told them nothing, and they did not ask. Between themselves, however, they sometimes spoke of her and wondered.
Slowly, Michael began to untie the string. He did not know himself what he was hoping to find—maybe a scrap of paper, maybe a photograph.
Harry stood transfixed.
Michael laid the string aside and lifted the lid. His mouth dropped open. He looked up at Harry.
“What is it?”
“Come here,” Michael said, his voice dead serious.
“No.”
“Harry.”
Harry stepped into the room and saw it. The revolver was wrapped in a white handkerchief, next to it a small box of cartridges. Even concealed inside the fabric, there was no doubt about what it was.
Michael put the box on the ground between them, and they stared at it. Many times, when they were little and their father was still a police officer, he had shown them his duty piece, strapped in the holster and well out of the reach of their small hands.
Michael lifted the corners of the fabric one by one, his fingers barely brushing the gunmetal.
The weapon was polished to a shine.
After what seemed like forever, Michael picked it up by the butt. Harry was frozen on the spot. They had never thought for a second that their father might still keep a piece in the house. The cigarettes behind the tree were baby stuff. This was beyond trespassing; it was way beyond any rule they had ever broken.
Harry went cold. “Put it away,” he said.
Michael stood up; he held the weapon toward the window, his arm outstretched and one eye shut, taking aim. “In a second,” he replied.
Harry didn’t know why he was sick with fear. They couldn’t possibly get caught; their father would be out for hours. He could see Michael working the loader and looking inside. It was empty. It was his brother’s ease with the gun—how he cradled the butt in the palm of his hand—that intrigued him most.
“Put it away.”
“In a second.” Michael held it out to him, the muzzle pointed at the floor. “Do you want to hold it?”
Harry Salinger took the .38 from his brother’s hand, surprised and delighted by the weight of it. It was the strangest thing. He stretched his arm out and took aim at the falling sun. It felt better than good; it felt right.
They knelt together and put it back in the box, carefully folding the kerchief around it. Michael pushed it back where he had found it, and they left the room. Without having to explain, they went to the tree and dug out the cigarettes. They took one each and sat on the kitchen steps smoking, as scared and thrilled as they had ever been in their lives.
“It’s not impossible,” Michael said quietly.
The rest of the summer was about nothing else but the gun: why their father had it, why he was hiding it, and how they could use that precious discovery. Around their father they were as quiet as mice, but at every occasion they would resume the same conversation.
“I think we should go before school starts,” Michael said one day while they were folding laundry. “I don’t think I can stand another winter here.”
Harry nodded. He was used to Michael doing most of the talking anyway. This time, though, Michael’s ramblings were different—they were specific. He listed dates and ways of getting out of town; he mentioned big cities where two kids could get lost and no one would find them. Somewhere warm, where they could do small jobs to keep them going. Most of all, they’d b
e traveling with the gun. They’d be as safe as they could be. Harry nodded.
He started to wake up more often during the night; he would lie in bed listening to the tiny creaks and clicks in the house, feeling squashed between his father’s oppression and his brother’s will to run.
The touch of the gunmetal against the palm of his hand had projected cool blue right in front of him, and the word itself, gun, being a rich, deep purple. Harry could see it with his eyes closed as it glowed against a black background. It came to him whether he liked it or not, ready or not.
One Sunday morning, their father was still asleep, and the day shone with all the sweetness of summer’s end. Michael turned to Harry at the kitchen table.
“Let’s go to Mount Baker Beach,” he said.
They took the bus, and the farther they got from the house, the better they felt. It was Labor Day weekend, and the beach was busy with families and kids splashing everywhere. The boys bought two bottles of Cherry Coke and sat at the water’s edge. After a while Harry got up.
“I’m going in.”
The sun had been hot on their shoulders, and Lake Washington was so cool, it made him almost dizzy. He went under headfirst and came out shaking water off his hair.
“It’s great! You’ve got to come in.” Harry splashed Michael hard with his hand.
They got into a water fight and then swam underwater until their feet could not touch the bottom anymore. They came out for air and dog-paddled, spitting jets of water at each other. They swam and they lay on their backs, letting the water take them where it would.
After an hour or so, Harry started to swim back to shore.
“I’m staying for a little while,” Michael said.
Harry found their clothes and lay down in the soft breeze. He fell asleep, and when he woke up, his hair was dry, and Michael was still gone. Harry got to his feet; the sun was lower in the sky, and most of the crowd had left. He looked around, all around. The lake was flat and still, and he stepped into the water, turning to look at the shore, turning back to the water.
“Are you all right?” The lifeguard put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, and Harry jumped. The sun had just set when they brought Michael’s body out of the water.
Harry couldn’t stop shivering. He sat in the back of the patrol car as they drove him home. The two officers spoke to him kindly, but their words did not get through. One second the police radio was crackling, a second later it was dead quiet and they were parked by his father’s car, the officers knocking on the door. His father appeared. One officer looked at his feet, and the other put his hand on Richard Salinger’s arm. His head moved back, and he turned slowly and stared at the car.
A month later Harry watched from the kitchen window as his father picked a fight with their neighbor. When the neighbor’s cat was found dead, its throat cut, no one noticed the scratches on Harry’s hands and arms. That day his father smiled briefly. “Sometimes the world is just, boy. Not often, mind you. Gotta enjoy it when it happens.”
In his basement, Harry Salinger wraps the metal wire twice around the glass fragment. It is a clear piece the shape of a water drop that wouldn’t look out of place on a chandelier; when the light is right, it throws colors onto his hands and onto a small wooden box on the table. Michael would have liked it.
The work is soothing. The television monitors are muted, and Salinger lifts his eyes from time to time to check if the news has started.
Detective Alice Madison’s voice, indigo, is still frozen at the crime scene: it has filled the silence in his house in a way he didn’t think possible.
. . . he came at them, and they never even knew it . . .
She was describing his work in such detail, with such understanding. It was almost intimate. Plans are made, and they can be unmade; it was time to improvise, to go with the flow. What a blessing she was.
Chapter 25
Alice Madison opened her eyes in the darkness. She was suddenly awake and aware; the time her clock projected onto the ceiling showed 5:43 a.m. The telephone by her bedside rang again, and she grabbed it.
“Hello.”
“Brown told me to call him as soon as. I tried him, but I couldn’t get through. You’re the next best thing.”
“Sorensen.”
“Good morning.”
“Give me a second.” Madison turned on the table lamp and swung her legs out of the bed. She was wearing only a T-shirt, and the instant chill woke her up a little—the heating had not clicked on yet. She took a couple of deep breaths, trying to oxygenate her brain into action.
“I’m here,” she said.
Amy Sorensen didn’t believe in chitchat.
“The fibers are cashmere, the blood is human, and we have a five-point match for the fingerprint, which doesn’t hold up in court, but, hey, it’s the thought that counts.”
Madison was trying to keep up.
“Are you still there?” Sorensen didn’t sound like she had just pulled a double shift with a fresh appendectomy scar under her coveralls.
“I think so.”
“Because this is where it gets good. The five-point match is to John Cameron.”
Madison wanted to write it down. Her notebook was in her coat pocket; the coat was on a chair in the living room. She walked fast.
“We’re still waiting for the DNA results. Five points is way too few to mean squat in court—”
“I know, but it’s still something.”
“Gee, you’re an upbeat kind of gal, aren’t you?”
Madison smiled as she scribbled in her book. “Cashmere?” she said.
“Black. At least he has good taste. Find me something I can match it to—a sweater or maybe a scarf.”
“I will. Thank you, Sorensen.”
“Okay, you pass it on to Brown. I’m off home now for a nap. I’ll be back before lunchtime.”
There was no point in trying to go back to sleep. Madison put the coffee on; while she waited, she pulled on sweatpants and a heavy top. She took her mug out onto the patio, braving the early-morning frost and warming her hands around the coffee.
Without even a hint of daylight there was little to see, but Madison knew every tree and every bush, and she had missed being out there. It was so quiet. She hoped a little of that peace would last her through the day.
The human traffic of the main terminal of the Seattle-Tacoma airport flowed undisturbed around them. Madison and Brown were going over payments and ticket purchase dates when Brown’s phone started beeping: a young patrol officer, Jerez, all of six months out of the Academy, had been canvassing cab drivers at King County Airport and had something they might want to hear. Madison felt a drop of adrenaline coming loose.
There was no scheduled passenger traffic at Boeing Field, but they still clocked an average of 833 aircraft operations per day between corporate and private planes and flying clubs.
“His right hand,” taxi driver George Malden had told Officer Jerez. “I remember the scars.”
Late Tuesday afternoon the cab driver had picked up a single man with one small piece of luggage. The photograph Officer Jerez had shown him didn’t exactly ring a bell, but when he had mentioned the scars on the man’s right hand, that was something Malden could swear to.
During the fast drive to King County Airport, Brown had called the precinct to get a sketch artist on standby.
Again, they showed Malden the photograph. Malden looked up. “If I tell you that the guy I saw is like this guy but different, you’re going to think I’m a flake, aren’t you?”
Brown shook his head with a brief smile. “We had this picture doctored with a computer; what we had was twenty years old.”
“Well, you got the eyes right. But the guy’s leaner, his jaw a little different, and he had one of those little beards—a goatee. And the hair was kinda blond, but like peroxide, you know?”
“Let’s go inside and sit down for a minute,” Brown said, and Madison felt her body tense. They had picked up the scen
t again.
Malden had dropped Cameron off at the Marriott Residence Inn on Fairview. A hotel.
Two things bothered Madison: why would Cameron need to go to a hotel, given that he had the house in Laurelhurst and probably another somewhere in King County? And the hand—it bothered her that, after seven dead bodies in four days, with all his caution and care for details, Cameron would not make sure the driver didn’t see his one identifying characteristic.
He was coming back for Erroll Sanders, to finish off the work he’d started with the Sinclairs in the early hours of Sunday morning. He should have been wearing gloves. Maybe he didn’t pack them; maybe the sun in LA was too warm and sweet, and he forgot.
Sure. Madison filed those thoughts with another couple of unanswered questions that needled her from time to time.
The Marriott Residence Inn stands on the edge of Lake Union and does well with business travelers and the tourist trade. It has all the amenities one is accustomed to in hotel chains, with identical rooms in muted pastels, but John Cameron did not avail himself of any of them. It took Brown and Madison just under an hour to establish beyond any reasonable doubt that Cameron had not checked in on Tuesday evening. Not under his own name or Roger Kay’s. In fact, no one at all of his description had checked in between Tuesday and Wednesday. Madison went through the computer printouts, and Brown handled the staff.
Cameron might have had a drink at the bar—the bartender couldn’t swear either way—but that was that. Madison couldn’t honestly say she was surprised. Disappointed, sure, but not exactly shocked.
They walked out of the hotel, just as Cameron must have done four days earlier. So, he arrives at the airport with his chartered plane, grabs a cab, and gets dropped off there. He doesn’t register; he walks right back out. What next? Madison sniffed the breeze coming from the water, Lake Union, just across the road, dark and still. Damn. She turned to Brown. She knew it in her bones.
The Gift of the Darkness Page 20
