“We expected as much,” Brown said.
“Front door and windows are secure, but my partner has driven around to the other side, in case anybody came out that way.” Cameron’s yard backed onto the end of another property on a parallel street.
Crackle came and went from the officer’s radio. The sound of glass shattering hit them, and they were running, weapons out, up the drive toward the garage.
Behind her, Madison heard Officer Mason calling into his radio.
The sound had come from the back of the yard. The only way there was following the side of the house, with trees and bushes in your face and getting darker as you went deeper. She had been there before, her heart was racing, but it was only a chemical reaction, and it didn’t worry her.
“I’ll go in first,” Madison said. “I’ve walked it in daylight—it’s pretty tight.”
“No, I’m on point,” Brown said. “You watch my back.” He went before she could say a word. She followed him quickly, the uniform a few steps behind her. In seconds, they had left the half-light from the street.
Madison held her left arm bent in front of her face to protect her eyes from the branches whipping back after Brown’s passage. Under her feet the ground was hard and dry. In a minute they would get to the fence, and there would be a little more room for movement—just another few steps. Madison heard Brown ahead of her, twigs snapping, and a rustle of clothes. Suddenly, behind her, loud radio crackle. Madison waited for Mason to appear.
“Turn your radio down,” she said, quietly but firmly.
“Sorry,” he whispered.
Madison turned to continue. Left arm up and right hand down, weapon pointed at the ground. She smelled the dead cat again—they were almost through. She had been listening carefully but had heard nothing out of place after the glass breaking. They’d see it soon enough—the door probably; there were glass panels there. She could get over the fence and to it in seconds.
She smelled the cat close by now and something faint under it. Chloroform. Madison started to turn, but it was too late. Her right hand, holding her Glock, was gripped tightly behind her. Someone was trying to get the gun off her. Chloroform, close to her face now. She felt him almost lifting her off the ground, knocking her head back against the wall, trying to get the cloth over her face.
No, this is not how it’s going to happen. Breathe, try to get some air. Yell. You gotta warn Brown, gotta warn him.
It was seconds, and the space between them was the longest of Madison’s life.
She kicked back hard. The cloth finding her face smashed against the wall, something warm spilling over her cheek. Her left elbow thrust sharply and high behind her, all her strength in it. He yelped. Her right arm hurt. He had the strength, but she had the anger. Chloroform meant one thing: four dead bodies on a bed.
If she got a shot off, Brown would know to take cover. She’d probably just get it into the wall. It would cost her an arm fracture. Fuck it. She pulled as far as she could and fired, and something snapped, the pain white hot and the cloth over her face. The man swore.
She fired again. The gun dropped to the ground. Don’t breathe, don’t breathe it in.
From far away she heard Brown coming toward them, thrashing through the bushes. His voice calling to her. Madison, blind in one eye, her eyebrow cut and blood all over her face, half drugged, on her knees, feeling the ground with her hands, looking for her weapon. “Get down!” Her voice burned in her lungs.
Three shots in rapid succession cut into the night. She saw the muzzle flashes six feet into the darkness ahead of her.
Brown, find Brown. Madison tried to stand up, but her legs gave way. She couldn’t hear well, ears still ringing from her own shots, but she sensed no movement around her. The man was gone.
She called out to Brown and heard nothing but silence. She put one hand on the wall, half standing, and kept calling. She found him lying by the fence, and even in the dim light she saw the blood, glossy on his chest.
No. She did what she was trained to do. She dropped to Brown’s side, saying his name, calling him back. She found his pulse with two fingers, faint as it was, her hand slick with her own blood. She bent to listen and heard him breathe, a thin sound that scared her more than anything else that night. And she kept talking, talking to him all the time, while she put pressure on the wound, and the sirens were already screaming in the distance, and she hoped to God there was an ambulance there and the paramedics would find them in the bushes.
Two patrolmen and a paramedic got to them in minutes. From a window a neighbor had seen a uniformed officer meeting the detectives. When she heard the shots, the woman called 911 and said she thought a police officer was under fire. She might have had the sequence wrong, but that got a rather snappy response.
“Are you shot?” someone asked Madison.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Can you walk?”
“He needs oxygen.”
“We know.”
The paramedic snapped a mask on Brown and tried to get Madison out and into the street, but she wouldn’t leave until they had strapped Brown to a stretcher, and then she followed as they carried him to the ambulance.
By the time they came out, there were two more patrol cars, lights blazing, and a crowd was gathering around them. Under the streetlights Madison looked at Brown, and he looked dead.
“Is he going to be all right?”
“Get in the car. You’ll see your partner in the hospital.”
“Is he breathing?”
“He’s breathing. Now get in the car.” The paramedics were fast, and she knew they wouldn’t stop for red lights. Her head was thumping, and judging from the faces of the cops around her, she knew she looked pretty bad herself. She turned to one of the two who had arrived first—she couldn’t remember his name, could hardly remember her own.
“Secure the scene and call for Sorensen from CSU, you understand? Amy Sorensen.”
At that point she leaned on the car, because standing up was getting difficult, and when she steadied herself with her right hand, the pain was so stunning, she almost passed out.
Somehow she sat in the backseat of the patrol car, and they took off after the ambulance.
“You okay back there?” the uniformed officer asked her, turning fast and leaving rubber on concrete.
“Yeah,” she said, and it was all she could do to prevent herself from throwing up, wrapped in a blanket and sinking into shock. “Can you do something for me?”
“What do you need?” His eyes were in the rearview mirror.
“Get dispatch to call my boss, Lieutenant Fynn, Homicide. He ought to hear what happened.”
“No problem.” For a short while he spoke into the radio. “You guys got ambushed?” he then asked her.
Madison smelled the chloroform on her clothes.
“Something like that.”
Madison felt her holster, and miraculously the Glock was there, automatically retrieved, the safety on. She closed her eyes for a second, and the next thing she was aware of were the bright lights of Northwest Hospital’s ER and someone calling out.
“What’s your name?”
“Alice Madison. Where’s my partner? He was brought in minutes before me.”
She was sitting sideways on a gurney. A doctor in green scrubs was pointing a tiny flashlight into her eyes while a nurse was cleaning a cut on her left eyebrow. It was deep and stung like hell.
“Look up now. They’re looking after him—don’t worry.”
“All due respect, but you don’t tell me how he is, and I’m gonna go find out myself.”
Big words for someone too dizzy to put her feet on the ground, but she meant them, and he knew it.
“Adam, please,” the doctor said.
The nurse left to go check. On the table next to them, Madison’s X-rays. She had been given clean scrubs. Her clothes, her belt, and weapon had been put in a plastic bag. It had been collected a few minutes earlier by a C
SU officer who had dropped by to scrape under her nails for trace evidence. Things were moving fast.
The doctor stuck the X-rays on a viewer: Madison’s head from both sides and her right arm.
“Your head’s okay. It’s going to feel bad for a while, but that’s just the chloroform and the knock you got. No permanent damage there.” He gave her a little smile and pointed. “You have sprained your wrist and damaged the muscle that extends your elbow joint. Are you right-handed?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. Keep the splint on, and no lifting of anything heavier than a cup of coffee. Your shoulder will be sore for a few days. Driving will be difficult and seriously painful, and I don’t recommend you try it. A couple of stitches in your eyebrow will do it. The scar will go with time.” The doctor said that because patients aways asked. Then again, Madison didn’t look like the kind who’d ask.
“Bag of frozen peas,” he added. “It’ll help with the swelling.”
She nodded. The nurse came back. Madison turned her head too fast, and a jab of pain reminded her to be more careful. “They got him stabilized, and they’re taking him to the OR. Dr. Taylor is taking care of him.”
“Dr. Taylor is our top neurosurgeon; your partner is in good hands.”
“What do you mean, neurosurgeon? Brown was hit in the chest.”
“There was a second GSW,” the doctor said, and he gave her a moment to absorb the news. “One shot went clean through, somehow missed his lungs and heart, and the other, Dr. Taylor is going to deal with now.”
Madison was glad she was sitting down. She nodded.
“I’m going to give you a breather. A resident is going to be back for the stitches.”
They left her alone. Madison sipped water from a cup. She had been given a painkiller, and Fynn was on his way. But all that mattered was that Brown was in the OR.
The cubicle she was in was by the side of the triage area; it was small but private. Voices rose and fell somewhere nearby, and muted footsteps hurried past. Madison was grateful for those few moments alone and the soft glow from the X-ray viewer.
In that drab and functional room, where people had received news that would change their lives, Madison gathered herself and looked for the strength and the clarity to do what she knew she must. She didn’t have much time, and she only had one chance of getting it right. Lieutenant Fynn would be there soon, and he would want to see her.
This was not how it was meant to happen. It should have been tomorrow, catching him early and alone in his office, Brown leading the way and her backing him up. Instead, Brown was fighting for his life in a chilly room with neon lights, and she had to convince a sensible man, a good and steady cop, that black was white.
The resident, a young Chinese woman, put in two stitches. The cut fell straight across Madison’s left eyebrow.
“One inch south and it could have been much worse,” the resident said. “You were lucky.”
Madison took a sip from the cup. The resident got up to leave. “You should look outside,” she said.
After the door swung shut, Madison put her feet on the ground. She took a few steps and felt okay, weak but not so dizzy anymore. She got to the door and opened it a couple of inches. In the sudden brightness the waiting area was a sea of blue. Police officers in uniform, more than she could count, and plainclothes and detectives from her precinct and others, all there to make sure that two of their own were going to be all right.
Madison let the door fall back softly and took a couple of deep breaths. They were there for Brown, and in his fight she hoped he knew that.
Five minutes later Lieutenant Fynn knocked and came in. She saw him take in her injuries. He wore his dark coat over a turtleneck sweater—looked like he’d dressed in a hurry.
“Madison,” he said.
The splint on her wrist came down to the middle of her hand. He offered his left, and they shook once.
“Sir.”
“You okay?”
“I’m fine. You know about Brown.”
“They got their top guy working on him. He has a sister in Vancouver—I called her. Spencer is at the scene; he’s going to be the primary.”
“That’s good,” she said. Madison knew nothing of Brown’s family. Something else to feel ashamed about.
“Okay. Tell me what happened.”
“We’re in the precinct, going over the paperwork from the airport. I get a call on my cell phone. A man says he’s the son of Cameron’s neighbor, Clyde Phillips, a man I’d spoken to, and I had given him my card. He says they’ve just called 911 because someone is trying to break into Cameron’s house. He thought I might want to know. Anyway, Brown and I drive to Laurelhurst, and when we get there, there’s a uniformed officer in the middle of the street in front of the house.”
“You got a good look at him?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember enough for a sketch artist?”
“Yes. White male, at least six foot to six foot one, no distinguishing marks. He identified himself as Officer Mason from the North Precinct. Said his partner had driven around to the street parallel to Cameron’s, in case someone was running out that way. Doors and windows were secured, he said. Then we hear the sound of glass breaking, and we start running.”
Madison told him about Brown going first and the radio crackle that held her back long enough for the man to take them on separately. About the cloth soaked in chloroform.
Fynn nodded. He’d had little opportunity in the previous weeks to see what kind of detective Madison would make, and this was not how he had hoped to find out. Still, the scrubs had short sleeves, and there were reddish bruises from her shoulder to her wrist. She must have given as good as she got.
“Sir, it has to be said that if I had managed to warn Sergeant Brown earlier—”
“Let me put you straight on this, Madison. How did you mess up your arm?”
“I fired my weapon into the wall; the attacker was holding the arm behind my back.”
“You did that for Brown.”
Madison didn’t reply.
“Right. You said there were three shots. Brown was already taking cover when he was fired at. The first got him, the second got him, but the third missed him completely. If you hadn’t done what you did, he’d have been hit three times in the heart, and we’d be having a whole different conversation.”
Madison didn’t reply.
“Sir, the attacker used chloroform. That’s what was used to sedate James Sinclair. And I’m willing to bet Ballistics will match the casings from Laurelhurst to the ones on Blue Ridge. It will be a .22, the same that was used on Anne Sinclair and her children.”
“Cameron.”
Madison looked at Lieutenant Fynn. Black was white.
“No.”
“You don’t think he ambushed you?”
Madison held his eyes.
“I’m listening,” he said.
In a few sentences Madison summarized the investigation of the Sinclair murders as they had it. She put it in the context of the LA deaths and the Sanders homicide. Evidence, motives, opportunities.
“Now,” she said, “I want you to imagine that someone else broke into the Sinclairs’ house last Saturday, someone who wanted us to believe that John Cameron had slaughtered his friends and their children. And he had been close enough to him to obtain physical evidence, like the glass with prints on it, and the hairs he placed in the ligature knot after Sinclair had died. He untied him and tied him back up, which is consistent with the tissue recovered on the leather strip.”
Lieutenant Fynn’s head went back an inch or two, but he said nothing.
Madison proceeded to destroy their case, picking up every point that had damned John Cameron and turning it around. Just knowing that the conversation was taking place would give Nathan Quinn enough to contest the arrest warrant.
When she was done, they quietly measured each other.
“Are you out of your mind?” he asked her.
“That’s what I thought at first, but no, I don’t think so. I got there today, just by chance, really. Brown saw it days ago.”
“You said he was ‘working both ends.’”
“Yes. Fred Kamen at the Bureau can confirm that.”
“Whoa, there. I’m not talking to him or anybody else about this.”
“Sir—”
“Madison, you have just dumped the entire investigation into the trash. Brown was right not to come to me; you have nothing to support your theory—”
“Except that it is the only thing that makes sense.”
Fynn sat on the side of the gurney. He knew what kind of detective she’d make.
“I can’t talk to Kamen and hold up the rightfulness of the warrant at the same time.” He reached for a stick of gum in his pocket.
Madison sat next to him. She was running on fumes, her legs shaking. She wanted to say more, about Brown, about the day they’d had. Instead, they sat for a bit, and she let Fynn work things out in his mind.
It occurred to her then, she had no control over how he would decide to pursue the case. The only thing she could control was what she was going to do about it. She would call Fred Kamen’s direct number herself. It was a start.
“Are you in a lot of pain?” Fynn asked her.
“They gave me a couple of Tylenols. It’s not too bad.”
“Right-handed?” He looked at her gun hand, half covered by the splint.
“Yes, but I’ve shot competitively with my left, as well.”
Fynn smiled a little smile.
“He could have shot me, too, if he wanted to. I was right there.”
“But he didn’t. Still, you’re going to be off the streets for a while.”
“Sir—”
“Let me finish. This is what’s going to happen. I’m going to take over the Sinclair investigation from Brown, who’s one stubborn piece of work, and I’m gonna tell him in person tomorrow. Spencer is on Laurelhurst—he’s probably on his way here now. Kelly stays on Sanders.”
“What about me?”
“You’re out. I cannot put you back on rotation until you can pass a fitness test. You cannot handle a weapon; you cannot even type a report.”
The Gift of the Darkness Page 22
