“We are trying to fit all the various pieces of the story together so that they tell us what happened,” she told him. “But, the way things look, Vincent Foley witnessed something awful, something his mind could not deal with. He was a witness because he was with the men who instigated a crime. He wasn’t a victim in the sense that something was done to him. And we still don’t know to what extent he participated in the crime that was perpetrated. However, the fact that Ronald Gray tried to protect him by destroying any evidence in his house that might lead to Vincent, and the things he told you when you last spoke, indicate that Vincent was as involved as he was.”
“What kind of crime are we talking about, Detective?”
“Kidnap of minors and murder.”
Madison saw Eli Peterson in his office, in the white day room where his patients came together, on the pretty grounds where they walked on a sunny day. It wasn’t a facility for the criminally insane.
“The men who killed Ronald,” Peterson said, “will they come after Vincent, too?”
“I think they will,” she replied, “once they know where he is.”
Fynn was already on the phone with the Chief of Ds to work out the kind of protection Vincent Foley could get. Madison could see him through the blinds of his office, standing and talking. Fynn always stood when he was displeased.
“I’ll need to speak with Vincent, Doctor. The sooner, the better. Tomorrow, if we can manage it.”
“I understand,” he replied.
After the call Madison wondered if the man really understood, and she knew that she would have to ask Vincent about his memories of burying a murdered child and the blood on his clothing. Her degrees in psychology and criminology seemed a rather slight tool to go panning for gold in Foley’s mind.
Dunne came over, grabbed a chair from an empty desk, and slid it close to Madison’s desk.
“We have a confirmation of address for Timothy Gilman from 1978 to 1983,” he said as he sank into the chair. “East Howell Street.”
“That sounds—”
“Same block as the couple who fostered Ronald Gray and Vincent Foley. They lived two doors away from each other.”
“He knew them,” Madison said. “He knew them since they were kids.”
“Yup.”
Dunne’s red hair was in a constant state of rebellion however short he had it cut; now it stuck out at the back, as if he had just woken up. He leaned against the chair’s upholstered back and closed his eyes.
“We’re going to order takeout,” he said. We was always understood to mean Spencer and himself. “Are you in?”
Madison realized she couldn’t even remember whether she had eaten that day.
“Definitely,” she replied.
“Pizza?”
“Extra anchovies.”
“Got it.”
By the time Madison left the precinct, the evening had settled into an uneasy chill that carried neither rain nor a clear sky. The low clouds reflected back the orange glow from the city, and the only patch of true black was the expanse of water before her on Alki Beach.
Madison had already changed into the sweats she kept in a gym bag in her trunk. She leaned on her car with one hand and stretched one leg behind her, shook the tightness off her shoulders, and repeated the process with the other leg.
Her first steps were stiff, and her muscles felt like heavy rope, cold and unyielding. She pressed on, running along the edge of the water and waiting for the running to trigger the memory of the forest. It first came to her as a change in the ground under her feet: the sand gave way to a slippery trail, rocky under the thin dirt. Then came the scent—resin and the layers of damp leaves. Here we go.
For an instant Madison felt the warmth of Harry Salinger’s flashlight on her cheek, and then she lunged forward, running through the empty darkness, her body existing on the beach and in the forest at the same time.
Her feet found purchase on the unsteady ground, and she pressed forward, and again she sensed the man running ahead of her, and she hastened her step. Now Madison could smell the forest around her and feel the low branches brushing her face. Her heart was punching its way out of her chest, and a coil of fear wrapped itself tightly around her gut. The chase was almost done, and she knew what would happen, because that was what always happened, and neither Stanley Robinson, PhD, nor anyone else could stop it.
She caught up with Harry Salinger, who had just told her that he’d killed Tommy Abramowicz, and she fell upon him, both of them rolling onto the pebbled bank of the Hoh River. John Cameron was nowhere to be seen, and Nathan Quinn was far away, back in the clearing, slowly dying inside a metal cage.
The knife was in her hand before she knew how it got there, and it fit her hand so well because it was meant to be there. There was nothing else to do and no one else to do it. With neither joy nor anger, Alice Madison ran the blade under Salinger’s throat and saw the dark line of blood widen, and the man become nothing but a blurred pool of red that covered her hands.
Madison woke up with a start and sat up in bed, tears streaking down her face. She choked as she ran to her bathroom and threw up whatever was left of the pizza dinner she had had hours earlier with Spencer and Dunne. She waited a few seconds to see if another heave was coming; then she went to the sink, filled it with cold water, and dunked her face into it.
Her heart was still racing, and yet she could already feel it going back to normal. Was this her normal? Was this what she should expect for all her time to come?
She thought about her conversations with Dr. Robinson. He was a good man, but he’d gotten things the wrong way around: her PTSD episodes were not about being a victim; they were about being the killer. And she was pretty sure they didn’t let you keep your detective badge once you told your shrink you had nightmares about killing suspects.
She looked up, water dripping off her face, and though her heart had slowed down, her eyes were still wide with fear.
Madison slipped on a pair of thick socks she had found on the floor by her sneakers and went to the kitchen, turning on lights as she went. The ice-cold milk in the fridge was as soothing as her throat was raw; she drank from the carton. Her gaze fell on the kitchen chairs by the nook, and with 4:00 a.m. clarity, when the thin, dark voice speaks too clearly to ignore, she knew why Warren Lee, tied as he was to a kitchen chair, had been left under the water towers between 35 Avenue SW and Myrtle Street, with his driver’s license taped to his chest.
She headed for the living room and the cupboard in the bookcase that her grandfather had stocked with all kinds of maps. Madison knew what she was looking for and found it easily. The dining table was large enough to accommodate it. She unfolded the map, and her fingertips found the intersection of the two roads. Warren Lee had been carefully positioned facing due northwest: she could still picture him clearly and had stood right there where he had been to see what he would have seen had he been alive. Now, she knew: had Warren Lee been alive, he would have been looking—from miles away—at the exact spot where, twenty-five years before, the Hoh River boys had met their destiny.
The message had been clear to anyone who knew anything about the event. Your silence or your life: don’t even think about Quinn’s reward money. However you’ve come to know about what happened, this is where it ends. This is where everything ends. And Ronald Gray had understood the message.
She left the map on the table and went back to bed. Wrapped in her comforter, lights off, she wondered what John Cameron dreamt about.
One person had nightmares for sure, and she’d get to spend more time with him soon. Somebody’s coming.
Chapter 33
All day the chaos of sounds shunted against the concrete walls of KCJC; at 4:00 a.m. the relative silence was almost eerie. In a densely populated wing it was never completely quiet, as the dozens of incarcerated men turned and twisted on their cots, coughed, and occasionally called out. Nevertheless, for a handful of hours—always too few and always too quickly
gone—a person could almost pretend to be somewhere else and sometimes believe it.
A guard was walking down the gangway, and his steps were unusually soft. John Cameron recognized the man before he reached his cell. Miller, B., doing his best to be stealthy as he approached at a time when no one else stirred in D Wing.
Miller reached Cameron’s door and looked inside. After their eyes met, and he was quite sure Cameron was awake, the lock-release clicked open.
Cameron’s interactions with the guards had been a marvel of nonverbal communication, polite distance on one side and watchful wariness on the other. All the same, a visit in the middle of the night was neither expected nor welcome, especially since Miller had done his darnedest to tiptoe around so that the whole wing wouldn’t start the ritual banging on the bars.
Cameron stood up and slipped on the regulation black leather sneakers with Velcro straps; he remained standing near the back of the rectangular cell, facing the door and watching Miller with neither hostility nor concern.
Miller was waiting for him to make a decision. They were going someplace. He either would go or he wouldn’t. Simple as that.
Miller stepped back, and Cameron joined him on the gangway; the lights were low and whoever saw them thought, quite rightly, that the best thing to do was to keep quiet and let the two men pass without fuss or bother. Should it then transpire that Cameron had been taken aside to be told what’s what by a friendly group of correction officers, well, that was just the way things went sometimes.
They reached the first set of doors that would lead them out of D Wing, and the locks clicked open for them. It was a pleasant surprise that the building would allow its entries and exits to operate in ticks and snaps at night while the daytime was all about clanging metal.
KCJC was deep into the night shift, and the corridors belonged to the wall-mounted cameras and the convex mirrors. Somewhere in the concrete structure careful eyes followed the men’s progress along the pale green corridor, so bright after the dim cells.
After a left turn and a third set of doors—two prison officers staring as they went past—they left behind the blueprint of KCJC, such as it was in Cameron’s mind, and stepped into uncharted territory.
Cameron and Miller walked companionably side by side as if a 4:00 a.m. stroll was part of the routine, but Cameron was well aware that the guard measured his every step and breath, and if he so much as sneezed, a squad of COs in riot gear would materialize in a nanosecond. Aside from the irritation of being physically bound by those walls, he found it sort of funny.
Cameron had no intention of giving them the opportunity to throw on their full-face corrections helmets and stampede out of their rec room. He was curious and unafraid, but if trouble was about to tap him on the shoulder, he would return it threefold and gold-plated. Weeks earlier, as he was becoming familiar with the lay of the land and the people who, at least temporarily, would be part of his daily life, Cameron had observed B. Miller and read him the way a doctor holds up an X-ray against the light. He was experienced and older than most of his colleagues, and what he lacked in fitness and strength, he made up for in common sense. He slightly favored his left foot, ate too much red meat on the weekends, and tonight his back was acting up.
Cameron would not start a fight, but he could end one, and he knew—as someone might know how to gift-wrap a present—that from where he stood, he could break Miller’s neck in two seconds, should it become necessary.
Many years ago, reflections on death and killing would have been noted down in a different color ink from the other thoughts that coursed through him. For a long time now, though, they were the same color and font as everything else, and John Cameron no more noticed them than he would a consideration on the weather.
The corridor opened into a hexagonal foyer with a door that looked different from the others. Another officer was waiting for them, and he gave Miller a dark bundle.
He nodded and extended his arm toward Cameron: he was holding out a heavily lined denim winter coat, Department of Corrections issue. Cameron’s previous coat had been left on the pitted floor of the outdoor cage on the day of the bleach attack, and he had not received another: he had not needed one, because he had not been outside since it had rained bleach.
Cameron stepped forward and took the jacket. Miller shrugged on his coat and nodded to the camera whose single eye was trained on them. A click told Cameron the lock had been released. Miller put his hand on the handle, and—just like that—they were outside.
The space between the wall and the chain-link fence was narrow, six feet at the most, and they followed it to the entrance into the main yard. Miller unlocked it with a key from a bunch at his belt and with an old-fashioned arm gesture invited Cameron to go ahead.
Cameron stayed where he was.
“One hour or less should you get frostbite,” Miller said, and he pointed at each of the four towers, one at every corner of the yard. “They have their rifles scopes trained on you and will follow your every skip and every step. Aside from that, knock yourself out—it’s all yours.”
Cameron stepped into the yard, and the chain-link door was locked behind him. He turned to the guard. “Why?” he asked.
“It’s easier to do this than screw up the schedule for hundreds of people. Apparently you don’t have many friends here, and most inmates want to either kill you or help you sustain a very serious injury. Enjoy the fresh air.”
Miller stepped away and reentered the building; no doubt the guards in the towers would keep in radio contact.
Cameron walked to the middle of the yard—it was large enough for a couple of football fields—and bathed in the glow of the four-hundred-watt HPS lights mounted on thirty-foot steel poles. Since December 26, when he had transferred into KCJC, he had never had that much space, that much emptiness around him, and the silence, with no other human being intruding on his perceptions, was blissful.
The cold air was sharp on his cheeks, and he filled his lungs with it in ragged breaths. The damp chill found him quickly enough and crept under the layers of clothing. He could see the white puffs as he exhaled and felt his chest shudder. None of it mattered as John Cameron looked up. A person who has never spent time inside a prison cannot possibly understand what the sudden and unexpected exposure to the wide night sky can do to a man who has.
“TD-4 to TD-3: you there, TD-3? What’s he doing, Billy?” The voice came strong and clear though his headset, and in the darkened tower William G. White blinked as he adjusted the rifle’s butt against his shoulder and peered through the scope.
“I’m seeing what you’re seeing, TD-4. He’s just standing there looking up.”
“It’s been a while, TD-3.”
“What do you want me to do about it?”
“He’s going to have to move soon, or he’ll freeze on that spot.”
“How about a little wager, TD-4?”
The scope was powerful, and the crosshairs traveled up Cameron’s back to his raised collar and his bare head.
“How about—”
“TD-1 here. Would you gentlemen care to keep your eyes open, your mouths shut, and your scopes where they should be?”
“Copy, TD-1,” both men replied, and alone in their tower each man thought that this shift they had volunteered for out of curiosity was turning out to be a mighty big yawn.
“He’s on the move,” a voice, maybe TD-3, said in the gloom, and the others shifted their feet and adjusted their positions.
John Cameron started a gentle jog along the chain-link fence. He waited until his body had responded to the rhythm of the run and warmth was slowly coming back to his limbs before he allowed himself to start thinking about this odd and unforeseen opportunity.
If he had been in the general population, just one inmate among the many hundreds who used the yard every day, he wouldn’t have had the chance to look around properly and take measure of the place. His attention would have been focused on potential threats rather than the f
ine points of correctional architecture.
The glow of the powerful sodium lights kept him easily in the sights of those charged with babysitting him, but it also illuminated the structure around the yard: the twenty-foot-high perimeter wall beyond the chain-link fence, the roofs of the various wings rippling off the round central section.
John Cameron saw everything, and as he picked up a little speed, he adjusted the blueprint in his mind. The one thing that the Department of Corrections had proven beyond reasonable doubt was that they could not protect him, and Cameron was not about to let them fall asleep on their watch again. He had pretty much volunteered for this ridiculous confinement because it suited his needs; however, things were changing fast, and once Nathan was well enough to go home, Cameron would be ready to leave.
They hadn’t spoken since that night in the forest, but he knew what Nathan would say: he’d talk about plea bargaining and reversing the bail decision.
Cameron’s feet hit the dirt hard as he sprinted and slowed down, sprinted and slowed down, his body reveling in the expense of energy.
Nathan’s reasoning would always follow the lawful path, Cameron reflected, while his own might just have to go right through that perimeter wall to get to the other side. In his loop, he passed the yard’s locked door, and in one smooth movement he took off the coat, dropped it to the ground, and kept running.
If he took another man’s life to get out of KCJC—which was more than likely to happen—he would never be able to stand in the same room as Nathan again. He would be a fugitive with his prints and his DNA in the system, and while none of that worried him unduly—most of his properties and assets had been set up under different identities—he would have to shed this name he carried and all of his life and past in Seattle, because it would be a felony for Nathan to merely speak on the phone with him and not report it to the authorities.
Cameron felt the scopes following his movements as if he could see them. He imagined those men standing in the murky observation decks in the middle of the night and wondered what he would have to do for them to take aim and shoot, how far up the chain-link fence they would let him reach before they stopped him.
The Dark Page 20
