The Gift of the Darkness

by Valentina Giambanco

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. How did you know they found the boat?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Well . . .” Cameron smiled. “Your timing was impeccable.”

  “Jack, Detective Madison told me that—” Quinn paused for a second. “She confirmed that the inmate who was murdered in prison was very probably killed by the same man who killed Jimmy. She’s getting close to a name.”

  “How did she know about the prison murder?”

  “Someone in CSU told her Hollis was digging around. And, Jack—”

  “What?”

  “How did you get off the boat?”

  “I took a swim in the dark. I don’t recommend it.”

  “That’s not what I’m asking you.”

  “I know what you’re asking me, and the answer is no.”

  “Okay, where are you now?”

  “Are you sure you want to know?”

  Quinn’s voice is colder than the black sea. “Go to hell, Jack.”

  But Cameron had regretted the words as soon as they had left his lips.

  “Home. I’m going home.”

  Quinn stands in the kitchen, the cell phone in his hand. He hasn’t told Cameron that the killer worked at the restaurant, and he doesn’t know where Cameron’s home is anymore. In the other hand he holds the tape recorder that he has used since Billy Rain called him, on it Madison’s voice telling him his client is about to be taken down. He takes out the tape and turns it around in his fingers. It was entirely accidental, but there it was, her career and her future contained in a small piece of plastic.

  Rosario made his way back to the marina, his coat front soaked in red. By the time he got back, the spotlights had come on, flooding every corner of the waterfront park. SWAT officers crisscrossed, jumping from boat to boat, searching every inch with the flashlights clamped onto their rifles. Rosario, breathless and shaky, got through a group of local patrol officers who were sweeping the parking lot and headed for Lieutenant Fynn.

  Fynn was being briefed by the SWAT team sergeant, and they both turned as he approached them.

  “Medic!” Fynn shouted as Rosario crumpled to the ground.

  “I’m sorry,” he rasped.

  Within seconds Fynn and the County Sheriff were on the radio organizing roadblocks all over the peninsula. It was as if a great gust of wind had suddenly come upon the marina and dispersed the crowd: the Crime Scene Unit was on its way to work Cameron’s boat, but for everybody else, the fun was now elsewhere. Small SWAT teams went through downtown Poulsbo, each accompanied by a local officer familiar with the streets. In their hearts they all knew their prey was long gone.

  Kelly stood at a distance, watching, as a paramedic packed Rosario’s nose and tried to stem the bleeding. His partner had gotten his gun taken and couldn’t identify his assailant for sure. A voice ident in court was like pissing in the wind. Kelly was angry and hurt, as if Rosario had slighted him personally. What business did he have going out there on his own anyway? Their eyes met, and Rosario looked away. Kelly walked over and sat down heavily next to him.

  “Could be worse,” he said.

  “How?” Rosario replied.

  “I could be talking to a body bag.”

  Lieutenant Fynn questioned Officer Carey personally, the young trooper flustered and upset. This was not the story he would have wanted to tell.

  The cell phone rang, and Madison snatched it from the passenger seat.

  “It’s Andy,” he said.

  “What’s happening?”

  “He’s gone.”

  “How?”

  “By the time SWAT hit the boat, it was too late; he must have taken a dive. Don’t know when—we had people watching the boat for hours. Anyway, he must have made them at some point, because when they got in, they found the lights on and one of those little fans with a revolving head flapping the curtains about. We went through the boat, but we got nothing; now we’re just waiting for CSU.” He paused. “And Rosario was attacked from behind while he was taking a leak.”

  “What?”

  “SWAT was about to go in. Tony goes back to the alley where they had parked their car, because Poulsbo officers have locked up all the toilets in the marina, and just as he’s finishing his business, he gets smashed against a brick wall. He’s got a broken nose, and his eye doesn’t look too good. Worse than that, his weapon and badge were taken.”

  “Cameron.”

  “He couldn’t say. Thing is, they have, like, next to zero violent crimes here. What are the chances of somebody else walking around who doesn’t mind attacking cops?”

  “Is he okay?”

  “He was taking a leak, Madison. My guess is he feels pretty raw. And the next time Cameron takes a shot at somebody with his gun, his mood is not likely to improve.”

  “No, it’s not.” It was small consolation that Cameron had left the boat before she called Quinn; Rosario’s nose was still broken, and his piece still gone. “Can I talk to Fynn?” Madison asked Dunne.

  “He’s not here. He’s questioning the troopers who let Cameron through the roadblock, and he’s feeling real pissy, so unless you have something good to say to him, and I mean gold, I’d just leave him alone for a couple of hours.”

  Madison could sure use the time to make her point sharper and fill in the details; they hung up. She was sorry that Rosario had been hurt, no question there, but her heart knew things could have turned out much, much worse, and for that, if nothing else, she was grateful. She stopped for coffee on Mercer Street and dialed her next call.

  Nathan Quinn answered after the first ring.

  “Your client attacked a police officer,” she said.

  “Is the officer still alive?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it’s a good day for both of us.”

  She paused. “I want The Rock’s employment records. Do I need to get a warrant?”

  Madison hoped that the urgency of the situation would temporarily blur Quinn’s appreciation of the law.

  “With what you have, you wouldn’t even get in to see the judge.”

  Madison rolled her eyes.

  “I’ll meet you at the restaurant,” Quinn said. “How soon can you be there?”

  Thirteen minutes later they pulled into the empty parking lot at the same time.

  It felt strange to stand on the steps of the dark restaurant as he unlocked the door. Neither had said hello.

  Quinn disabled the alarm and flicked a switch. Madison came into the light, and he saw her face for the first time—the deep cut held together by the stitches, the bruises, and in her eyes something that hadn’t been there four days ago. He didn’t look away.

  Madison had disliked Quinn from the instant he had decided to protect Cameron; he had believed in his innocence against everything they had and was proven right. It didn’t make Madison like him any better; in his way he was just as dangerous as Cameron, and anything he offered was a gift to be treated with extreme caution. She was glad he regarded her with neither warmth nor sympathy. She returned his gaze; they were in uncharted territory.

  “Say we do get a name here tonight,” he said. “All due respect, but is anybody listening to you?”

  “If I can back it up, they will.”

  “What if they don’t?”

  He didn’t give her time to answer and walked off. Madison knew he was trying not to think of every single time he had shot the breeze with one of the waiters or a busboy or the kitchen help. If the killer had worked at The Rock, Quinn had met him, known him, talked to him.

  Their steps echoed in the gloom of the main room, the tables set and ready with their china and white linen napkins, eerie in the half-light coming through the vast windows.

  He was already unlocking the manager’s office door. “Why is he doing this?” He kept his tone neutral, as if this was nothing more than one of the cases on his desk.

  “I don’t know yet. We find who, we find why.”

>   Days ago, hours ago, she had been in that office with Brown, talking about poker nights and knives. The air smelled stale and cold, the air conditioning turned off since the early afternoon. Quinn pulled metal file cabinets open, and his fingers ran through index cards.

  “The last thirty months?” he asked her.

  “Yes.”

  Madison didn’t have the list of parolees in the weeks immediately after Pathune’s death, but she could get that tomorrow. The date of his murder was a good starting point.

  Quinn sighed. “They’re in alphabetical order. We have to check every single one.”

  “Thanks, but I’m going to make copies and get on with it by myself. I don’t need your help.”

  “No, you certainly look like you’re doing just fine. Let’s go into the kitchen.”

  Madison hesitated. “If I find what I’m looking for, what guarantee do I have you are not going to share that particular piece of information with your client?”

  “You have the word of an officer of the court,” Quinn replied without sarcasm. “Or you can come back whenever you can find a judge willing to sign a warrant.”

  They grabbed a bunch of cards each, moved into the kitchen, and spread them on the immaculate steel work surface in the middle of the room.

  They started by eliminating all the women; that cut the number down by about a third. He picked up a card and flipped it over; she did the same.

  “Have you told him about this?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Quinn knew exactly what she had meant.

  “Cameron.”

  “Are you asking me about my communications with my client?”

  “I’m asking whether before or after you told him to get his ass off the boat you happened to mention that the killer worked here.”

  “The subject didn’t come up.”

  “It didn’t?”

  “No.”

  Thirty months is a long time in the life of a busy restaurant with full-time and part-time staff; each card had references and contact details, not necessarily in the most useful order.

  They scanned them, found what they needed to know, and put them on the no-good pile; there wasn’t a second stack so far.

  “How did you know he didn’t do it?” Quinn kept his eyes on the paperwork.

  “I read about a photographer being beaten up, and I remembered a picture I saw of Cameron when he was a boy.” Too late Madison realized it was Quinn’s brother’s funeral she had just casually mentioned; she looked up. “I’m sorry,” she added quickly.

  Quinn ignored it. “Go on.”

  “I think that last Monday, sometime after he met with you, Cameron assaulted Andrew Riley because he had tried to photograph the bodies of James Sinclair and his family. It just reminded me of what had happened before.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s what turned you around?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not surprised you couldn’t sell it to your boss.”

  “Were you hoping I had some secret piece of evidence?”

  “I was hoping you would have had more than a hunch by now.”

  “You and me both.”

  “What was he like?”

  “Who?”

  “The man who shot your partner.”

  “He is strong and fast and determined to do his thing. He was comfortable impersonating a cop and had no problem shooting one.”

  Madison pushed a card toward Quinn. “Dicky Boyd,” she said. “In prison at the time of Pathune’s death. He started working in the kitchen here eight months later and resigned last June. Do you remember him?”

  “Boyd? Yes, vaguely. I don’t think we ever talked, though.”

  “What does he look like?” Madison’s memory flashed back to the man dressed as a police officer who had met them at Cameron’s house.

  “About six foot, dark hair, built like a heavyweight. What did he do time for?”

  “Fraud. And the man who shot Brown was much lighter.”

  “It’s a big step from fraud to murder.”

  “Do you remember any details about him?”

  “Nothing.”

  Madison put Boyd’s card to one side, and they went back to the pile on the table. An hour later they had two more names, Owen Burke and Paul Telling.

  “Is that it?” Madison asked him as she pushed her last card onto the no-good side.

  “That’s it.”

  “Burke is Chinese-American, and Telling is five foot five. Both of them with drug-dealing offenses. Neither of them sounds anything like the guy I met.”

  Madison had been so convinced she would find the name in that kitchen that it hadn’t even occurred to her that she might be wrong. Nathan Quinn went to one of the fridges, took out two bottles of water, and handed one to her.

  “Thanks. I’m going to go through them again; we must have missed someone,” she said.

  “Maybe we didn’t.”

  He picked up the receiver on the wall phone and pressed one of the speed-dial keys.

  “Donny, it’s Quinn.”

  Donny O’Keefe, Madison thought. The chef of The Rock was one of the regulars at the poker nights. He had offered them clam chowder. Madison stood up and stretched and took a few steps into the long, narrow galley to get herself ready for the second pass.

  “Donny, I have some names in front of me. I’m looking for a guy who worked in your kitchen fresh out of jail. He would have started here about three and half years ago.” Quinn looked at Madison. “Six foot, slim build. I have Boyd, Burke, and Telling, but they don’t fit.”

  Quinn listened for a beat. “No, I can’t tell you why. Thank you. I’ll call you tomorrow.” He replaced the receiver.

  “What did he say?”

  Quinn stood there with one hand still on the phone.

  “What did he say?”

  “He said, ‘What about Salinger?’”

  Madison blinked. “Who’s Salinger? I haven’t seen a Salinger card.”

  “No,” Quinn replied. “Harry Salinger worked here until a few months ago, and when he left, he must have taken his employment records with him.”

  “Harry Salinger.”

  It felt good to be able to call the man by his name. Madison took a deep breath and flipped open her cell phone. “This is Detective Madison, Homicide. I need to run a check on a name. Salinger, Harry. I’ll hold.” Madison opened her notebook, clicked her pen, and silently prayed that she would have something to write down.

  Thirty seconds ticked by. Madison couldn’t sit or stand still. Quinn waited with his eyes closed.

  “I’m here,” Madison said into her phone. She straightened up and jotted something down.

  “Yes, dates please.” She looked up at Quinn and nodded once. “And the address. Great, thank you.” She hung up. “Salinger was released three days after Pathune was murdered; he was doing time for an assault charge.”

  She slapped her notebook shut.

  “There is a series of things that need to happen,” she said. “One, I need to put Salinger at the crime scene. Two, I need to convince Klein and the Prosecutor’s Office. Three, most important, you must get your client to sit tight for a few hours. You can tie him to a chair, right?”

  Madison started to gather her things. “And you cannot, must not, give him the name.”

  “How are you going to put Salinger at the crime scene?”

  “Cameron attacked a police officer, and that’s not going away—I’m just putting it aside for the moment. It’s the difference between being investigated for four counts of murder instead of eight. I wouldn’t want you to break open the champagne.”

  “Salinger,” Quinn said crisply.

  “I don’t know. Klein is not going to want to listen. He’s left us a bread-crumb trail, and he’s been very meticulous: all prints recovered and checked for matches were the victims’, aside from the glass, and that came from right here in this kitchen. The more I t
hink about it, the more I feel he must have visited the Sinclairs’ house before—he’s not the type to go in blind. Can you remember any occasion he might have been there?”

  “A few months ago there was a party at the house. I know James borrowed glasses from the restaurant. Maybe someone from the staff took the cases over; someone must have gone to pick them up. It’s a possibility.”

  Madison wrote down some telephone numbers from the employees list. People who worked together day in and day out had to know something.

  “Do you remember him?”

  He thought about it for a moment. “No,” he said, and Madison believed he was glad he didn’t; the memory of the killer standing close, talking to the children, would have been almost too much to bear.

  “Thank you for this,” Madison said, awkward and already halfway out the door. “It made a difference to—”

  “I have your voice on tape,” Quinn interrupted her.

  “What?”

  “I have your voice on tape warning me to get Cameron off the boat.”

  Madison turned to face him and hoped she would look and sound suitably unconcerned. “How?”

  “By chance. I’ve been recording calls as a matter of course. I wasn’t expecting you to call; I wasn’t expecting you to give me the perfect reason to go to Judge Martin and bury the case.”

  “Is that what you’re going to do?”

  “Isn’t that what any reasonable attorney would do?”

  “Probably.” Madison thought about it for a second. “But the tape changes nothing; they got ready to discredit me the second I told my boss. They’ll put it down to PTSD: I couldn’t handle my partner being shot. They can dress it however they want; what it means to you is that my words or my actions are not going to damage their case. They knew you’d try to use me to contest the warrant.”

  “They didn’t know you were going to call me and throw the arrest. Would they put that down to PTSD too? You’ve been with Homicide less than five weeks; you have a promising future. How do you think they’d like you now?”

  “What do you want from me, Quinn?”

  “Tell me why I shouldn’t go to the judge tonight.”

  “I’m not in the mood to ask you for special favors, Counselor.”