The Dark

by Valentina Giambanco

  This incident was only the last of a long list of must-do’s, have-to’s, can’t-get-out-of’s that had pushed and dragged him to a new level of complete misery.

  It had started weeks earlier, it relied on both determination and chance, and—one way or the other—it would surely end in disaster.

  The vial had been passed to him at breakfast time, small enough to be easily concealed in the brown bag that had contained his takeaway lunch. He had then eaten his dry eggs and hash from the molded tray as if the food was radioactive. Still, all he needed to do was carry the vial until the time was right, then use it quickly.

  Manny was already doing twenty-five to life; being part of this would be a ticket to make the rest of his life there a little easier, something to be proud of when he was old and frail and still incarcerated.

  The plan required a number of people to be in exactly the right positions at exactly the right time. Opportunity and readiness, they had told him. They had made it sound like a military operation, and yet Manny knew that betting money was involved, and a status hike for each participant—maybe up to a dozen inmates. Some of the guys couldn’t wait to get out there.

  The transfer had been made weeks earlier, and since then the two-inch glass vial had been burning a metaphorical hole in his mattress. Something, he reflected, the contents would have done if any had spilled on his skin.

  Manny shut his eyes and prayed for rain.

  Madison woke up in her bed and with sudden clarity remembered that she was due in court later that morning to be a witness for the prosecution in a six-month-old robbery/homicide case. She didn’t know precisely when she would be called, and she might very well be tied up for hours.

  She groaned out loud and made a mental note to call Carl Doyle as soon as courtesy allowed—and the precinct to remind the boss she’d be out of play. This could very well turn out to be a waste of a day, she thought, then promptly chastised herself, because her testimony was part of a case, and that was how the legal system worked.

  Holding a mug of coffee, she stood in front of her open wardrobe and picked pants and a blazer that would be acceptable in court. Nothing to write to Vogue about, but they’d do.

  Madison had spent an hour with the prosecuting attorney a couple of weeks earlier to prepare for today and go over the details. The defendants had been in the middle of a gas-station holdup when the victim walked in. The case was based on eyewitness testimony, ballistic evidence, and DNA from both defendants found on shards of broken glass. The defendants had hired separate defense attorneys, tried to cut separate deals, failed, and decided to claim coercion. Madison hoped Judge Hugo would be in a particularly foul mood and keep the proceedings as short as legally possible.

  As she sat on a bench outside courtroom E-207, Madison’s mind kept going back to Nathan Quinn’s televised appeal, to its barely veiled threat and the promise of a financial reward as dangerous as it was irresistible. Madison looked around at the ordered comings and goings of the courthouse: Quinn had set something in motion, and dark tides were already churning under the still waters of Elliott Bay. Those who knew something would be dragged to the surface or drown in the process, and the clock had started ticking last night as Quinn’s video had faded to black.

  After a restless morning, Madison grabbed a bagel for lunch, was sworn in, testified, and was released, and the sun had already set by the time she walked into the precinct to check her messages.

  Lieutenant Fynn waved her over.

  “How did it go?” he asked.

  “Okay, I think. The evidence is pretty overwhelming.”

  Something in Fynn’s manner told her that this wasn’t about her testimony.

  “Boss?”

  “Brown passed the physical but failed the firearms qualification test.”

  “But . . .”

  “I know. He’s going to take it again soon; clearly it’s a consequence of the head injury. His hand-eye coordination is out of whack—medical term—so he cannot carry a gun, so he cannot carry a badge.”

  It had never occurred to Madison that Brown could fail the test. It had never occurred to her that he could fail anything.

  “He told me he’d tried to reach you, and I explained you were in court. Look, let him be tonight. You know him—he sounded pretty calm, but I’m reasonably sure he wanted to put his fist through a window, which really wouldn’t help the situation.”

  “I’ll call him tomorrow.”

  “Fine.”

  Madison went back to her desk and sat down. Brown’s desk opposite hers was clear of papers, and suddenly that alien tidiness bothered her a great deal. The truth was that Brown had been on medical leave for as many weeks as they had actually worked together. Nevertheless, he was the job he had been teaching her; his questions had provoked her, irritated her, and ultimately advanced her critical thinking.

  She could very well imagine his frustration at this point and, worse, the bite of that voice that had told him he might never pass the test.

  Madison picked up her cell and speed-dialed. One ring. Two rings. Maybe Fynn was right, and he didn’t want to talk.

  “Hello,” Brown said.

  “Sarge.”

  “You heard?”

  He sounded all right. Contained, sure, but that was Brown.

  “Yes, I did.” She specifically did not say “I’m sorry,” because that was no help to anyone. He knew how she would feel. “Sarge, you passed the physical. That was the major hurdle. Shooting is technique; it can be relearned. The body and brain can adapt, the same way we correct the sight on a sniper’s rifle.”

  “Very well put.”

  “When you’re ready, let’s go down to the shooting range, take apart the technique, and build it up again.”

  “I heard you were a good shot before you joined the squad. Is that so?”

  “Yes,” Madison replied simply.

  She could feel Brown beginning to smile.

  “How good are you, exactly?”

  “National Championship good. Twice.” Madison paused. “With both hands.”

  He was definitely smiling now. “I’ll think about it.”

  “You do that.”

  “You sound eerily positive.”

  “You’d better believe it.”

  They hung up, and Madison let out her breath. Damn it.

  Her eyes fell on the round wall clock, and she realized that although it was pitch-black and evening in Washington State, it was much earlier in Maryland, and it wouldn’t be rude to call. She dug out a piece of paper from the back pocket of her jeans.

  “Detective Frakes? This is Detective Alice Madison, SPD Homicide.”

  “Glad you called. Let me just find a quiet spot.”

  Madison heard voices in the background.

  “I’m visiting my wife’s people in Bethesda,” he continued.

  “Shall I call at another time?”

  “No need. Her sister’s Italian, and we’re getting seven meals a day. They can start without me.”

  Now there was quiet on the line and the sound of a door being closed.

  “Who’s your shift commander?” Frakes asked.

  “Lieutenant Fynn.”

  “Your partner?”

  “Detective Sergeant Kevin Brown.”

  “Brown. Red hair, early fifties, as stubborn as a mule?”

  Madison closed her eyes for a moment. “The very same.”

  “I saw it in the Seattle Times,” Detective Frakes said finally. “I figured at some point I’d get a call. I’m glad you found him—been long enough out there, in the woods.”

  “Detective Frakes, you were the primary on David Quinn’s kidnap-murder case.”

  “It was just called the Hoh River case; you said that, and everybody knew what you meant.”

  “Yes, it’s still the same today.” Madison settled herself on the sofa. “I’m gathering all the information I can find for the Cold Case team; even having the remains might not be enough to kick-start the inv
estigation.”

  “No new evidence found at the scene?”

  “No.”

  “Was it close to where the boys had been tied up?”

  Madison realized in that moment that Frakes wasn’t just a name in the file: this man she was talking to on the phone had physically been there at the time, had seen the ropes still wound around the trees, and had spoken to the boy John Cameron.

  “They buried him about a mile from the clearing.”

  “You went to see it.”

  “Yes.”

  A beat of silence between them. Madison followed the pattern of light on the ceiling. She knew exactly how many dozen hours Detective Frakes had spent trawling the woods and looking for David Quinn. Not even the police dogs had managed to follow the trail.

  “Detective, I wanted to speak with you, because a file is a file, and that’s all well and good, but I realize you might have other thoughts, suspicions, inklings of possible links, ideas. Anything that might not have made it into the file at the time, that might have seemed superfluous or too unsubstantiated to note down. I’m saying, if you had even a passing thought about the case that didn’t make it into the final report, I’d like to know.”

  “I still think about it from time to time, you know. Any cop will tell you, in the long run it’s the ones you don’t solve that stay with you.”

  “Yes, I can see how that would be.” Madison had to let him get to it by himself. How long had he been waiting to talk about it?

  “This one was just as awful as they come,” he continued. “When I saw the boys—they had been taken to a local hospital—they looked nearly dead, white as sheets. The little one who had the serious cuts on his hands and arms—he could barely speak. It was sheer terror. I’d never seen anything quite like it before.”

  “Or since.”

  “That’s right. What happened there was a unique incident. A kidnapping where no ransom was asked and no money changed hands. A boy died of a heart condition, another was deliberately injured. It made no sense then, and now it turns out the dead boy was murdered.”

  Madison knew what he meant: it made no sense, because if the kidnappers had wanted money, why not ask for it in exchange for the boys? And if the object was the torture of three children, why leave the other two tied up and alive?

  “What did your gut say?” she asked Detective Frakes.

  She could almost see him thinking about it: it was the question you could never ask in court, where all that matters is what you can prove.

  “I thought the whole business was about the fathers’ restaurant. That was the only material link among the boys. The fathers had been doing well with the restaurant—The Rock, wasn’t it called? It’s still going, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  “Frankly, I thought protection. Seattle then was not New York or New Jersey: it wasn’t mobbed up in quite the same way. But there were certain groups of people in certain areas who would take an interest in your affairs if your business was doing well. Their names are in the file, but we looked hard and found nothing.”

  “What did the fathers say?”

  “They said no one had ever approached them about forking over protection money.”

  “Do you think they were lying?”

  “Absolutely. And I’m not saying I would have done differently in their shoes. They had one kid dead and two kids too terrified to speak.”

  “Did any names ever come up at all? People who might have executed the kidnap or who might have given the order?”

  “I know what you’re asking me, and the answer is no, I had never heard of Timothy Gilman until I saw Nathan Quinn’s appeal on television. We looked at some local bosses who might have been involved, but we didn’t have a shred of evidence. Even the usual informants kept their mouths shut.”

  “Gilman was not on your radar for this?”

  “Not for a second. I don’t know where Quinn got his information.”

  “Did you say no informants came forward at the time?”

  “None, zero. The case was poisoned. We ran out of leads in days, and after that it just got colder and colder. The brother was on the phone to me every day asking about it, and I had nothing to say to him.”

  Madison heard the anger and the regret in Frakes’s voice, and she saw a younger Nathan Quinn fighting his grief.

  “I retired from the force ten years ago,” he continued. “There’s never been a year since 1985 I don’t think about the boys on August 28. Did you find the gold chain with the remains?”

  “The gold chain?”

  “David Quinn wore a little gold chain with a medal around his neck. Saint Nicholas. His father’s relatives gave it to him.”

  “I thought he was Jewish.”

  “Well, the relatives didn’t care. Are you Catholic?”

  “No.” Madison had no idea what she was.

  “Well, Saint Nicholas is the patron saint of children, for what it’s worth.”

  “No,” she said, “there wasn’t a gold chain there.”

  “Kidnappers, murderers, and thieves,” he said.

  Someone came into the room; she heard a woman’s voice speaking softly.

  “Thank you for your time,” Madison said.

  “Keep me posted, Detective.”

  “I will.”

  Madison jotted a few notes on her pad, Protection among them. She thought about the silence around the murder of the child spreading around Seattle and Elliott Bay as all the usual informants withdrew into their holes. One down, three to go.

  Madison found Rachel’s voice mail as she was getting into her car. She must have called while Madison was talking to Brown. “Neal is taking Tommy to a sleepover at his cousins’, and I have the house all to myself. I feel like a movie, some chilled white wine, and whatever leftovers I have in the fridge. Wanna join me? Let me know. If you’re coming, you won’t need to go home and change.”

  The last was their code for “no kid in the house, so you can come straight from work, with whatever piece of metal is in your shoulder holster.”

  Still, Madison did go home and took off her Glock and her backup. She walked the few minutes to Rachel’s house, and when her friend opened the door, all Madison carried was a bottle of Sauvignon blanc and a family-size bag of sea salt and vinegar kettle chips.

  “I just wish the students were not so obsessed with their grades.” Rachel taught psychology at UW. They were carrying their plates and glasses to the family room and catching up. “As if that was the only true mark of their education and learning. You won’t believe the times we have to explain to them that secondary education is not a service industry, and they are not clients.”

  “Were we like that?” Madison asked her. They had studied together at the University of Chicago what felt like about two hundred years earlier.

  “No way. We were bright, polite, engaged, and thoroughly perfect in every possible way.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  They sank into the leather sofa and toed their shoes off, setting their plates and glasses on the coffee table in front of them.

  “What’s going to happen if Brown doesn’t pass the test?” Rachel asked.

  Madison shook her head. “If he can’t, he can’t carry a gun, and he won’t be able to be a cop. It’s as simple as that.”

  “I’m sorry.” Rachel had never met Detective Sergeant Brown; she was sorry, because she knew her friend would be bereft if her partner was forced to leave the department. “How old is he?”

  “Fifty-one.”

  “Not a kid, but plenty of years left to drive you nuts.” Rachel took a sip of wine.

  “I have to fix this. I know I can help him. He’s the kind of cop I want to be twenty years down the line, and I’m not going to let this happen to him.”

  Neither had to say the name; they both knew what she meant. This was a win Madison would not let Harry Salinger claim.

  “I saw Nathan Quinn on television,” Rachel said.

&n
bsp; “Yes,” Madison replied. Of all the people in the world, Madison would not speak to Rachel of the small, pitiful hole where David Quinn had been buried.

  “Bad dreams?” Rachel asked.

  “No more than usual.”

  “At least know you can talk about it with Dr. Robinson.”

  “Sure.”

  Rachel picked up the remote and pressed Play.

  “Guess what? My cousin Aaron is in town.”

  “Aaron Lever? How is he these days?”

  “Divorced, two kids, owns a software company in San Francisco. He asked me how you are, if you’re single.”

  “If I had married Aaron, we’d be cousins.”

  Rachel snorted into her wine.

  As Holly Golightly climbed out of a cab with her coffee and croissant, Madison felt the warmth and the comfort of the house slowly sink into her bones.

  Chapter 10

  Alice Madison, fourteen, ties her hair back in a ponytail with a pink elastic band and slips her kayak into the water from the rickety pier that juts out of the narrow beach. She raises her arm and waves at her grandmother, who’s watching her from the deck by the kitchen; her grandmother waves back. Sunday, 7:30 a.m.

  Alice paddles south for a few minutes; she sticks close to the shore, but that instant of freedom on the water is totally intoxicating. In a world of curfews, homework, and adult supervision—before any of her friends has even begun to fantasize about driving lessons and owning an actual car—sliding into the cool gray and feeling the paddle slice into the water is just as grown-up and independent as it gets. Never mind that she’s wearing a red life jacket with matching helmet.

  A couple of gulls float by. It feels “tranquil,” as Alice’s English teacher would say. She had felt her grandparents’ apprehension all week as the day had approached. Father’s Day. She wanted very badly to reassure them but didn’t know how.

  Alice trails the tips of her fingers in the water and lies back as far as the kayak will allow. The sky is like the inside of the shells she picked up last summer on Ruby Beach. Mother-of-pearl. The name made no sense, she had thought at the time.