The Gift of the Darkness

by Valentina Giambanco

  Madison pulled into the McCoy State Prison, also known as the Bones. It rose from a concrete parking lot into a combination of high chain-link fences, towers, and walls within walls. There were different levels of units, graded in degrees of security: some of the two thousand-odd inmates would get to work outdoors, grow something maybe or build something and go to classes. Others would have no meaningful contact with anybody but prison wardens for the length of their stay.

  Madison was used to jails—through the years she had certainly done her bit to increase their population. She stretched and breathed deeply, and her arm ached like a son of a bitch.

  Twenty-five minutes later, sitting in her car with the engine idling and the windows fogged up, she read the pages that Arnelle had copied for her. She scanned them, running her fingers along the lines, cursing the dim light above her and the faint ink. Her mouth was dry when she was done, and she laid ten inches of rubber as she sped out of the parking lot.

  Poulsbo, Kitsap County. On Sunday afternoon the shops close early: the weekend tourists had come and gone, and the pretty main street with its Norwegian-American bakeries and grocery stores was deserted. Strands of holiday lights carefully wound around the shop fronts and the naked branches of the trees by the marina. The seven piers were three-quarters full, and the boats, sails tightly secured, rose and fell.

  A Kitsap County Electricity Board van drove into the waterfront park and stopped by the Harbormaster’s office, and two men in regulation gray and red jumpsuits got out. One of them took a key from his pocket and opened a black metal box that hung on the back of the small brick building. Ten seconds later the whole marina and the street plunged into darkness. They locked the box and went back to the van, where a cell phone was ringing. After a brief conversation, one of the men swore loudly and slammed his side door shut; the other turned on the engine, and they drove off.

  Two streets away and around the corner the van pulled up to the curb, and the men got out. The taller one said, “A little overdone maybe.” His companion rolled his eyes, opened the back of the van, unzipped his jumpsuit, and stepped out of it. Under it, he wore a black uniform and a ballistic vest; on the back, in large yellow letters, it read SWAT.

  “Let’s go,” he said. From the carpeted floor he picked up two assault rifles and passed one to his colleague, also in SWAT uniform. The tall one adjusted his earpiece, and a steady stream of voices crackled into life. He clicked on his night-vision goggles, and the world glowed bright green. Snowflakes, like black specks, found their way to the ground.

  Madison flew south on I-5, her mind vaguely aware of a speed limit being broken. No wonder Quinn was interested in how Pathune had died: when a guard found his body, he had been blindfolded, hands tied at the front, and the sign of the cross drawn in blood above the blindfold, smudged on the skin but still perfectly visible. The Medical Examiner’s report said his neck had been broken, and a piece of ripped denim had been found in his right hand. The cloth was then matched to the shirt of an inmate called Edward Morgan Rabineau; he had been working in the laundry up until a few minutes earlier, and there was a window of time when he could have committed the murder.

  There had not been a trial, but the warden would have a quiet word with the board every time his parole came up, and Rabineau wasn’t going to come out anytime soon. He was still inside, within the walls of the aptly called Intensive Management Unit. On the other hand, the Sinclairs had been found blindfolded, hands tied at the front, each with a cross neatly drawn in their own blood.

  It would have been an impossible coincidence if the similar circumstances were the work of two different men. Of the two suspects, Rabineau was still in jail, and Cameron had never been in it, which meant neither of them could have committed both murders.

  Whoever had investigated Pathune’s death had no reason to doubt the evidence, even if it was no more than a scrap of cloth and no motive had ever been proved. Madison, though, had every reason to doubt. The murder gave her a time frame: the killer had been in prison at the time Pathune died, and she was willing to bet he had been released shortly after that; he would have wanted to get the hell away from Rabineau and his pals. Rabineau must have been going nuts, knowing someone had set him up, and jail retribution comes swift and sharp.

  If the killer had ever applied to the Police Academy, it would have had to be before he went to jail. Nobody was stupid enough to apply with a record, and this guy might have been crazy, but he wasn’t stupid. No, he wasn’t crazy; he just liked playing with cops.

  Madison remembered the night of the ambush—the man who called himself Officer Mason, dressed like a cop, using the right language. She was sure he had applied to the Academy, he wanted to be one so badly. Madison saw him looking at himself in the mirror as he buttoned up the uniform, thinking of her and Brown and how he was going to draw them into those trees and do whatever he did to please his long-dead heart.

  She rolled down the window and let the air brush her face. She suspected that it had pleased him to shoot Brown while he was himself a police officer; it had made things right, almost legal.

  George Pathune. The killer must have left some physical trace of himself on the body of his victim, but the investigators had followed only the ripped cloth back to Rabineau. She wondered if Sorensen would have looked further than that and remembered her skepticism in the diner.

  There was little Madison could do that would have shaken Amy’s confidence in physical evidence. Madison might as well have picked up Sorensen’s spoon, with her prints and DNA on it, and shown her how easy it would have been to—And in that instant Madison was lucky that the road was empty and lay straight in front of her, because for a moment she saw nothing but the killer picking up the glass that held Cameron’s prints, the glass the police had found in the Sinclairs’ kitchen, picking it up from the table where Cameron had put it down because the son of a bitch worked at the restaurant.

  One hand on the wheel, the other dug into her jacket pocket for her cell phone, Madison made a conscious effort to keep her eyes on the road. She dialed the precinct number by touch and got through to Jenner, the desk sergeant.

  “It’s Madison. Could you put me through to the lieutenant?”

  “He’s not in his office.”

  “Okay, I’ll try his cell.”

  “He’s out with the detectives. They’re all out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’d better patch you through.”

  “Jenner?” Madison held the phone close against her ear, but the static silence on the line lasted a lifetime. Brown. Something had happened to Brown, and they had all gone to the hospital. Brown was dead.

  Madison, driving like an arrow through the night, waited for the voice that would tell her he was gone. As long as she wasn’t told, Brown was still alive. As long as she wasn’t told . . .

  She waited alone in that awful silence, and seconds later Andrew Dunne’s voice came on the line. “Madison?” Voices all around him.

  “Andy? What’s going on?”

  “We got him.” His voice came and went in the static.

  “What?”

  “We found Cameron. The boat’s in Poulsbo marina. I’m looking at it.”

  Madison had to find her bearings, had to come back to herself quickly and think. Relief flooded through her.

  “Is he on the boat?” She wasn’t sure she was going to like any answer he was going to give her.

  “Yes. He was seen boarding it about an hour ago.”

  Talk fast.

  “Andy, is Fynn with you? I need to speak with him.”

  “He’s kind of busy.”

  “I need to talk to him right now.”

  “He’s with the Assistant Chief, the SWAT commander, the Kitsap County Sheriff, and the Poulsbo Chief. He’s got his hands full, and we’re about to go in. You tell me, and I’ll pass it on.”

  “You’ve got SWAT there?” she said.

  “We got everybody here. We locked down the ma
rina and two blocks around it.”

  “Put me through to Fynn.”

  Something in her voice reached Dunne.

  “What happened?”

  “Two years ago in the Bones someone was killed and the body left just like the Sinclairs. Put me through to Fynn now.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  Madison didn’t know if he meant the murder or Fynn. “Andy?”

  Silence.

  “Andy?”

  Radio crackle.

  “Madison, I’m going to call you back.”

  “No—”

  He was gone.

  They were about to go in. They were seconds away. Madison was gripping the wheel so tight, even her good hand hurt. She knew every single one of the officers on the SWAT team. Good people all of them, they were well trained and did their job carefully so that at the end of the day everybody on either side would go back home alive. And then there was John Cameron, and as far as they knew, he had shot one of their own. Madison rolled the window all the way down. In minutes someone was going to die—from either side, it didn’t matter, a life would be taken. They thought they were about to grab Brown’s shooter, and he would never let them take him alive.

  One day soon, Madison thought, they would get Cameron for Sanders and for the LA dealers, but not like this. Because like this, the Sinclairs’ killer would win.

  Madison picked up her cell. She remembered the number from all the times she had dialed it days before.

  “Hello.”

  His voice was soft and close, and Madison asked herself what in the name of everything holy she was doing.

  “Mr. Quinn, it’s Detective Madison.”

  “Detective.”

  “Quinn, Tod Hollis works for you. You told him to call Amy Sorensen, knowing it would get back to me somehow. Cameron called you, he told you we met last night, he told you what I said, and Hollis must have known it wasn’t Sorensen’s jurisdiction.” She took a breath. “You gave me Pathune, didn’t you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You were right: I think it was the same man, and we are going to find him. But we need time, and that we do not have. Does Cameron trust you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If he does this right, he’ll live. If he harms even one of them, nothing you or I can do will save him.”

  Madison imagined the boat, the SWAT team ready to storm the pier, unmarked cars with officers crouched behind them, and snipers on the roofs of the pretty houses.

  “Detective—”

  “You can get him out of there alive, but you must tell Cameron to give himself up.”

  “What?”

  “If he harms any one of them, I’ll take him down myself, I swear to you.” Madison hoped that what she was about to say would save lives. “The killer worked at The Rock. Now, tell Cameron to give himself up and get off the boat.”

  The line went dead, and Madison dropped the phone on the passenger seat. She drove past Everett and the Snohomish, a ribbon of black water barely visible through the snow. It must be snowing in Poulsbo, too. She could drive there, catch a ferry to Winslow, and make it in under two hours. It would all be done by then; whatever was going to happen would have happened. What are you prepared to do? Brown had asked her once. Madison felt the tear spilling onto her cheek and wiped it off with her sleeve.

  “What are we waiting for?” Detective Tony Rosario asked no one in particular. He stood behind a Kitsap County Electricity van parked in the Poulsbo marina parking lot and rubbed his gloved hands against each other. Rosario wore a navy windbreaker with SPD on the back on top of his coat; underneath it the Kevlar dug into his armpits.

  “Marine Control is not in place yet; they had an emergency they needed to deal with first,” Dunne said. He was next to him, his night-vision binoculars trained on the E Pier, the second one in from the right, opposite the Harbormaster’s office. Kelly was edging close to Dunne, trying to see through the windshield, ticked off that SWAT was going in first. He looked up: on the roof of the Scandinavian Grocery Store a sniper would be keeping his sight on the third boat in, the one with the cabin lights on. Kelly couldn’t see him, but he knew he was there.

  Everybody was in place: a dozen SWAT officers were covering the ground between the pier and solid land, ready to go on the signal. The chief had decided against a negotiator—it was better to get in fast and grab him before he managed to shoot another cop. Lieutenant Fynn stood with the other chiefs at the end of Pier D, behind a small brick building that matched the Harbormaster’s office. It was his operation, but technically speaking the Poulsbo Chief of Police ran things: they had all gotten into position when the agents cut the power to the block and had said little since then, four somber, middle-aged men stomping their feet to keep warm.

  The seventeen commissioned officers of the Poulsbo police force had looked on as the Special Weapons and Tactics Unit had taken charge. A couple of them had grumbled halfheartedly about territory and jurisdiction, but everybody remembered the bodies on the Nostromo that had set sail from their very own harbor, and they quickly shut up.

  The SWAT commander, Marty Karlsson, had briefed his team.

  “Cameron’s boat is the third from the end of the pier. We have something like twenty-four vessels, left and right, to pass before we get to his. I know we got him eyeballed in the cabin, but if I see you cross a boat you haven’t checked first, I’m going to dunk your ass in the freezing water myself.” There were nods and yessirs all around. “This guy’s an eel, slippery and fast; you give him half a chance, and you’ll get yourself shot. No special privileges here—if he doesn’t want to end the day in one piece, he doesn’t have to.”

  A few times the curtains in the cabin of the sleek thirty-footer fluttered as if someone was brushing past them, and every time it happened, thirty-five men and women with heavy artillery held their breath.

  “How long?” Fynn asked Chief Rogers.

  Rogers raised three fingers. Voices came through his headset—the patrol boat was almost in place.

  Yards away, Dunne turned to Spencer, radio in hand. “That was Madison just now,” he said. “She wanted to talk to Fynn.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s found something.”

  “Did you tell her it’s happening?”

  Dunne nodded.

  “Where the hell’s my partner?” Kelly turned around.

  “He had to go,” Dunne said.

  “Go where?”

  “He had to go.”

  Shadows moved fast on E Pier. There was a burst of crackle and voices in Spencer’s earpiece. “They’re going in,” he said.

  Tony Rosario was annoyed that the public lavatories had been locked for the duration of the operation. It was too damn cold to stand around with three large coffees kicking around in his system, and Kelly was getting on his nerves.

  They had parked their car out of sight by a Dumpster in a back alley behind the front street. It was still within the block that had been plunged into darkness, and he figured he could take care of business without going too far. He smiled to himself. It was so dark, he ought to be careful not to pee on their own car by mistake.

  He found his way more easily than he’d thought he would, and after a couple of minutes he was standing between their unmarked Ford and the Dumpster, taking his gloves off and unzipping his pants—and, Lord Almighty, was it cold out there.

  When he heard the bumblebee, at first it didn’t register, and he was zipping himself up when it buzzed again: with sudden clarity, Rosario knew that you don’t get bumblebees in December, and it was a beeper that had just gone off three feet behind him.

  He half turned, and someone grabbed him by the hair, smashing his head against the brick wall in front of him. His nose broke on impact, a pain so sharp, he almost lost consciousness. Things moved awfully slowly: the ground came up to meet him, and he tried to reach for his weapon, but his brain couldn’t quite get the hand to move fast enough. Not like this, sweet Jes
us, not like a fool. He felt the butt under his fingers.

  The voice spoke low, close to his ear: “Stay down.”

  Someone patted his pockets. Rosario tried to breathe through the warm flood, his eyes filled with tears.

  “Stay down now.” A man’s soft whisper and an open hand pushing lightly against his back.

  Then the pressure was gone, and Rosario found enough balance to stand up with the help of the wall. He leaned his back against it and looked around—he was alone. He felt for his gun and the police radio that was in the pocket of his overcoat and then the ground around his feet.

  At a roadblock three streets away, Kitsap County troopers flagged down the deep green Jeep Cherokee. The passenger flashed his Seattle Police Department badge.

  “How’s it going back there?” Officer Carey asks the man, nodding toward the marina; he wishes he was close enough to the action to have a story to tell—any story.

  “We got him locked down,” John Cameron replies. “He’s not going anywhere tonight.” He waves at the officers as he drives on. The heating in the car is turned up full blast, and he’s glad his clothes are dark over the rubber diving suit, glad that Officer Carey didn’t notice they were soaked, and glad for that first instant when the SWAT officers had cut the power and he had lowered himself into the black water, the chill taking his breath away. Cameron’s hand shakes as he adjusts the air vent and picks up the beeper from his belt: it’s Quinn’s number. Cameron drives with one hand; with the other he undoes the straps on the waterproof backpack on the passenger seat. He dials the number with difficulty, his fingers aching and stiff as the blood comes back into them.

  “Nathan?”

  “Jack. Where are you?” Quinn’s voice is controlled, but Cameron hears the steel in it.

  “Driving.”

  “The police have the boat under surveillance. You can’t go back there.”

  “I’m coming from the boat.”

  A long pause as Quinn considers the implications of what Cameron has just said.