The Dark

by Valentina Giambanco

  He had no intention of behaving in such a crass manner, and yet there were unavoidable choices in his near future that would affect how he would live the rest of his life.

  He saw the side door open and Miller step outside to take him back to his cell. That was the only thing that worked, ultimately: in a place like KCJC, the fastest way out was to let people unlock the door for you and then simply walk through.

  “Show’s over for tonight, boys.” TD-1’s voice came through the headsets, and the other men laid down their weapons for a moment, stretched their sore limbs, and then resumed the watch. Below them, housed in the sprawling buildings, over a thousand men slept on narrow cots and dreamt their dreams.

  Back in his cell, as his skin cooled down and he drifted into sleep, John Cameron thought he heard the trees that surrounded the prison shiver and murmur in the gloom. He might not have seen them behind the perimeter wall, but he knew they were there all the same.

  Vincent Foley wrapped the blanket tightly around his slim shoulders. He had curled up under the bed and peeked every so often to check if a sliver of dawn was traveling across the walls.

  The white day room of the Walters Institute was the only place that allowed him moments of brittle peace; he longed for the light that flooded in through the tall windows and hated the clouds that deprived him of his only protection.

  He tried with all his might not to fall asleep again, because dreadful creatures infected his dreams—men who spent the night whispering and hollering in a pit dug deeply into the earth. He knew their faces, but their names had crumbled away over the years. And yet, their words were always the same, and although Vincent couldn’t tell anymore what they meant, in his dreams they trailed like claws over his skin, and during the day they were the rustle of the trees around the brick building.

  Vincent saw the first light slide over his crayon drawings. As it reached them, they trembled and stilled, watching him and waiting for nightfall.

  Chapter 34

  Madison opened her eyes. There was enough light slipping in through the curtains that she knew it was early and little enough of it to tell her that sunshine would not be a part of her day. Her throat was still raw from the previous night, and she knew for a fact that she had drunk all the milk in the fridge. Cranberry juice would have to do.

  In the kitchen, she put on the stovetop coffeemaker and drank the juice. Her fridge was beginning to look desolate. She brought the cup of coffee back into the living room, saw the map unfolded on the table, and remembered her thoughts from the previous night—the significance of the vic’s chair’s position, the message it sent to anyone who knew the truth.

  She sank into the sofa and rested her feet on the low table, waiting for the caffeine to kick in and her brain to gear up and get going. Whatever direction her thoughts were heading in, they seemed to twist and turn and go back to Vincent Foley. She was sure he had been there on August 28; he had seen everything, and it was all rattling around in his ruined mind, beyond their reach.

  Madison had met a good numbers of cons on and off the street, and she knew that men like Vincent, who would be vulnerable in any area of human interaction and field of work, were utterly exposed in a world where predators made the rules.

  It was very doubtful that Vincent would have been entrusted with any information; he probably just turned up and did the job that was required of him, following Ronald and doing what he was told. And yet he might know something, anything, that might give them a little push in the right direction.

  Madison finished her coffee and stood up as the flat silver of the bay was becoming visible through the French doors: it was even possible that it was Vincent Foley who had murdered David Quinn. If that was the case, what measure of justice could be exacted from that wreck of a human being?

  The men who had slain Warren Lee and Ronald Gray were not interested in justice or how it was measured. They had tortured their victims to extract what they knew about the kidnapping and whether they’d told anyone about it—Madison was sure of it. She was fighting for all the dead, for all those whose voices had been silenced—the boy and the men who had killed him—and that knowledge rested heavily on her heart, because she had knelt by the pit in the forest and had seen with her own eyes the hole Vincent Foley had dug.

  They arrived at the Walters Institute with their unmarked cars and their badges, and Dr. Peterson showed them to a comfortable observation room. Spencer and Dunne, Madison and Kelly, together with the department consulting psychiatrist Dr. Jennifer Takemoto, crowded into the airy space with a view of the gardens. Eli Peterson looked as if he’d hardly slept, and Madison could imagine the long line of bleak thoughts that might have kept him awake.

  Dr. Takemoto was in her forties and dressed like a smart senior manager; Madison had met her a couple of times and was very glad they could count on her skills today. She had seen the psychiatrist help a traumatized hostage recollect a four-day ordeal and send the perpetrator to jail for life. If there was anything left of Vincent’s memories of his time before the Walters Institute, she’d be the one to find them.

  “This is where we’ll bring Vincent to sit and talk,” Eli Peterson said. “I was told he had a good night, or as good as his nights ever are. I’ll also be present during your interview. It will be a comfort for him to have someone he knows in the room, and I will stop the interview at any time should he become distressed.”

  Dr. Takemoto nodded.

  “He’s always distressed, isn’t he?” Kelly interjected. “I mean, how will you know when he is unusually distressed?”

  It was a good point.

  “You’ll have to trust my judgment. I’ve been his doctor for many years, and I’ll be able to tell when he’s had enough.”

  “Doctor,” Madison said, “the likelihood is that he will be very upset, and enough might come pretty soon, but we need to find out what he knows, because—aside from everything else—that’s how we can best protect him.”

  “I understand.”

  Madison wondered if he did and—if it came to that—whether he would come between them and Foley. In the last twelve hours the doctor had had to adjust an assessment that had taken years to develop, and yet, in the swift tide of changes, the one immutable factor was Vincent. Their perception of the man might change with every piece of information they gathered; however, the man himself had not altered his behavior or the way he related to the world since he had set foot in the Institute. Whether they liked it or not, he was their constant, the beginning and the end of the nightmare, forever stuck in that awful day while time had flowed on around him.

  The detectives went into a side room with a two-way mirror while Peterson briefed Takemoto about the patient. A video camera had been set up to film the session from behind the glass. There was much to say, and Madison had had a chance to talk to Takemoto herself about what they needed from Vincent and the circumstances of the case.

  Then, flanked by the nurse they had met before, Vincent Foley shuffled into the room, and Madison’s every other thought faded away.

  The day was overcast, and although the light coming through the windows was barely more than timid, Foley was immediately drawn to it. He lifted a hand and touched the glass—the people in the room with him might very well not have existed at all.

  He wore scrubs that hung on his slight body as if he were a boy wearing a man’s shirt.

  “Hello, Vincent,” Dr. Peterson said.

  Foley turned, and his piercing blue gaze slid over the doctor and Jennifer Takemoto without apparent interest or recognition and went back to the view from the window. Every cell of his body seemed to shiver as his fingers traced the glass. His nails had been cut as short as they could be.

  “How old is he?” Dunne whispered. Their room was soundproofed, but that was just about as much voice as Dunne could muster. Spencer said nothing at all.

  “Forty-eight,” Madison replied quietly.

  They had all read the file and knew exactly how old he
was; however, to see Vincent in person was something entirely different. Kelly had been utterly silent, and yet Madison saw in the way he held himself that he was pleased Spencer and Dunne were as spooked by Foley as he had been.

  No one had ever asked Vincent the right questions, because no one had ever known what the right questions were.

  “Hello, Vincent,” Jennifer Takemoto said.

  The detectives watched as the psychiatrist began to interact with Foley, speaking to him in a series of short statements—friendly comments on the view that required no response from the patient but allowed him to become used to her presence. She now stood next to him by the window; framed against the dark sky, their silhouettes were only a foot apart. Eli Peterson watched every step and weighed every word.

  Madison’s cell vibrated in the inside pocket of her blazer. She reached for it, and when she saw the caller’s number, she pressed the Answer button and left the room.

  “Madison,” she said.

  “Detective, it’s Fred Kamen,” the man said. “From the FBI.”

  Madison allowed herself a small smile: as if there could be another Fred Kamen in her acquaintance. Weeks earlier, when she was deep in her war against Harry Salinger, Kamen—one of the best and brightest of Behavioral Analysis Unit 4 and the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program at the FBI—had given her invaluable support. He was also an old friend of Detective Sergeamt Brown, Madison’s partner, and that, more than anything else, made him a good man to know in Madison’s book. Was he calling about Kevin Brown? Had he heard that Brown had failed the firearms test?

  “Mr. Kamen, it’s been a while. How are you?”

  “It’s twenty degrees outside, Detective—that’s how I am.” The tone was still more East Coast academic than law enforcement.

  “I see.”

  Kamen was not the small-talk type. “I have something on my desk. It was flagged for our possible interest, and it came back to you.”

  “What is it?”

  “You were looking to match a latent handprint on a homicide case? The victim was a Ronald Gray.”

  The smudged handprint on the tiles of the bus station restroom.

  “Yes, I certainly am. How—”

  “Because the match is to someone I have known about for a number of years. Peter Conway. And he’s organized crime.”

  “Organized crime?” Madison’s mind started running through possibilities and scenarios.

  “Yes,” Kamen continued. “Your print has turned up twice in homicide investigations connected to racketeering, fraud, and extortion. Never enough points of similarity to do anything about it, mind you, but enough to get flagged.”

  “How many points do we have for my case?”

  “Seven.”

  Madison sighed: the courts handled anything between eight and sixteen points of similarity in their trials; a defense attorney would tear a hole right through a seven-point match.

  “How did you get the original prints?” she asked Kamen. “Was Conway ever charged with anything?”

  Kamen hesitated. “No, we have his prints courtesy of an undercover agent who gave us a glass Conway had drunk from. We have his DNA, too. That investigation is still open, and the agent died under suspicious circumstances three weeks later.”

  “Conway’s work?”

  “Very probably. His prints are not in the system, but should they ever turn up anywhere, we take an interest.”

  “I understand,” Madison replied. “Mr. Kamen, what we’re looking at here is a homicide that is connected to a twenty-five-year-old kidnap and murder. The kidnapping—three children—was in all probability tied up to threats of extortion related to a restaurant. It would fit the organized-crime model and explain why Conway turned up in Seattle and started a cleanup operation.”

  “Yes, most of his work has been on the East Coast. It’s a very specialized crew. I joined the early investigations because they needed a behavioral-analysis angle: the killings are always different; there is no identical pattern that makes them stand out in the ViCAP database. Except for one thing, and once you know it, that’s how you keep track of them: they use what they find at the crime scene against the victim.”

  Madison closed her eyes and saw Warren Lee’s body on the autopsy table. “I know what you mean. I have seen their work here in Seattle in the last week. And I don’t think they’re done yet.”

  “Madison, sometimes the victims just disappear. No bodies, no trail, and no evidence.”

  Jerry Wallace.

  “Witnesses and informants have not fared well. I’m going to send you everything I can on Conway and his crew,” Kamen said.

  “Any other names? Biometric information for any of them?”

  “They don’t have records. What we have is what our agent had managed to collect before he was killed.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “A hit-and-run in Vegas. The car had been stolen two days earlier and was found at the bottom of a lake.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “These men have not done the work they do for this long without being extremely good at it. If they’re in Seattle to clean up somebody’s mess, that’s exactly what they’ll do until they are stopped irrevocably and conclusively. They are motivated by money and money alone. They charge a very high fee but get the job done—whatever the job happens to be.”

  “Thank you for this, Mr. Kamen. I’ll wait for the file.”

  Kamen paused for a moment. “You speaking to Brown much?” he said.

  “Some. Saw him, too.”

  She didn’t know whether Kamen was aware of the failed test, and it wasn’t Madison’s truth to give.

  “Keep an eye on him,” Kamen said.

  “I will,” she replied.

  Madison walked back into the small room. The detectives were silent. Through the glass, they watched Jennifer Takemoto sitting on the gray carpeted floor opposite Vincent, who stared straight at the detectives as if he could see them.

  “Anything?” Madison whispered to Spencer.

  He shook his head.

  “We just got a break,” she said, and she motioned for them to join her in the corridor.

  Chapter 35

  Nathan Quinn sat on the edge of the bed in his hospital room and waited. The results would be ready soon: blood tests, MRSA swabs, what have you. In the last few hours he had been checked every which way—the partial splenectomy scar had been examined by the surgeon and judged “satisfactory within the parameters,” whatever that meant in the real world. And now, all being well, he would finally be discharged and allowed to go home. Dr. Toyne would have preferred to keep him in for another few days, but as long as he continued a steady increase of physical activity, there was no reason he could not finish his recovery at home.

  He looked around the room. He wouldn’t miss being here; he wouldn’t miss the weeks spent attached to monitors and IV fluids. The only thing he would miss, among the depths of pain, was that the morphine had temporarily given David back to him in brief hallucinations had been as real to him as the soft satin bedspread under his fingers.

  His bags were packed, and Carl Doyle would arrive anytime now. Soon Dr. Toyne would give him his blessing, and he would get to breathe fresh air for the first time since December. He was almost out of there; next it would be Jack’s turn.

  Nathan Quinn left the hospital with very little fuss compared to his arrival there. He thanked the doctors and nurses who had managed to save his life every day for the first two weeks and was taken to the exit in a standard wheelchair. Outside, he stood up, and his skin tingled in the sudden chill: he felt weak and insubstantial in the February cold but also exhilarated—dangerously so. Given what he had survived, anything now seemed possible, and as the truth gradually revealed itself, Nathan Quinn felt he could almost reach into the past and wrap his hand around the throat of the man who had ordered the abduction of the boys.

  All in good time, he thought, reminding himself that the doctor had said his ene
rgy and his moods would be “up and down like the tide” for the next few weeks and had suggested he speak to a counselor about the trauma of his injuries. They both knew that wasn’t going to happen, but the poor man had felt obliged to say it.

  The chauffeur-driven Lexus pulled up to Quinn and Doyle, and Quinn was soon on his way home to Seward Park. He leaned back with his head against the seat and watched the city go past. A part of him hoped that the dangerous clarity he was experiencing was simply a consequence of all that his body and his mind had endured; a part of him knew that it might not be.

  The ride home had been pleasant, because any time spent out of a hospital room would be, even a dreary car ride under overcast skies.

  The house was a beautifully kept wood and stone building with a deck in the style common in the Pacific Northwest. The exterior paint had started as flinty gray, but rain and salt air had weathered it into washed-out pewter.

  The driver brought his bags to the door as Quinn turned the key in the lock, and the alarm beeps told him he was finally home.

  Doyle had been coming in once a week or so to keep an eye on things and check his mail; he had even stocked the fridge the last time he was there; nevertheless, when Quinn reached for the alarm box in the half gloom to punch in the code, the familiar gesture felt alien, and a gust of icy wind swept into the darkened house.

  The driver left, and Doyle closed the door.

  Quinn leaned on the walking stick in his right hand and took in the space he knew so well. He had expected to feel relief, and yet there was something not quite right. A long time in a space awash with chemical scents had left him very sensitive to the delicate balance of smells in his own home. There was something rancid and sour in the stale air, something that did not belong.