“John Cameron and Nathan Quinn.”
“Yes,” he replied, and the brown eyes traveled to the fading scar on Madison’s brow. “But I don’t really need to tell you anything about them, do I?”
“Do you have friends in the outside world, Mr. McMullen? Family, people who will help you when you’re out—should you get out—to restart your life?”
“My path was not one that encouraged friendships or the loving support of a family. I will do everything I can to make things right with my children, and I hope to join a volunteer group that creates gardens and positive environments in areas that need them.”
Madison felt Kelly practically combust next to her.
“Gardening sounds nice. Have you ever met a man named Timothy Gilman?”
McMullen narrowed his eyes in concentration, his mind evidently flipping through a mental Rolodex of names he’d rather forget.
“I’m afraid not.”
“Did you order the kidnapping?”
“No, Detective, I did not. And I don’t think I could live with myself if I had done so.”
“Now what do you think?” Kelly asked as they reached their car in the parking lot.
“That weasel could find whatever funds he needed to pay off Conway,” Madison said. “If we don’t get to the end of this in time, he will be out on parole breathing free air and potting azaleas in community centers for as long as his probation lasts. After that, he’s in the wind.”
“Azaleas?” Kelly snorted.
“Whatever,” Madison replied.
Chapter 47
August 29, 1985. Ronald Gray waited in the shade of the alley opposite Timothy Gilman’s front door. He had been there since 8:00 a.m., and it was almost midday. It was nearly impossible to get into the squalid block and into Gilman’s apartment to search it while he was out, and Ronald didn’t like his chances. With the kind of luck he’d had recently, Gilman would double back for whatever reason, find him in his rooms, and end his pathetic excuse for a life there and then.
In the last four hours Ronald had repeatedly cursed the first time they had ever met in his old neighborhood, and the first time Gilman had ever offered him fifty bucks to stand lookout on the street while he was having a “conversation” in a garage with a late payer.
Ronald had not been in the business of all-out lethal violence, but he knew enough about it to be sure that Gilman would have received a healthy slice of cash as a retainer before the kidnapping, and the rest of the payment would have to be settled soon. Men like Gilman don’t take checks: someone would have to meet him with a bag of cash at some point, and Ronald would be there to find out who it was.
The front door opened, and Ronald shrank even deeper into the shadows. Timothy Gilman stepped out into the late-August sun and started walking.
The first day brought him nothing but a lingering headache and a sense of frustration. Gilman had gone into a local bar, parked himself there for hours, and then returned home. The bar was dingy and seedy; however, many people had greeted him when he walked in, and it was clearly not the place for some private and discreet business.
The TV news anchors had not stopped talking about the case for an instant: the surviving boys had been found alive. Thank God for small mercies, Ronald had muttered to himself. The yearbook pictures had punctuated the reports on television, which repeated the little information available and did not come within a mile of the truth.
Now Ronald knew the boys’ names, the names of their parents, and the name of the restaurant the fathers owned. He knew that the scrap of paper he had salvaged from the fire was David Quinn’s middle-school yearbook photo and that the boy had suffered from congenital cardiac arrhythmia. And Gilman had known that, too.
The second and the third day brought nothing more from the media except for more footage of the rangers and local law enforcement spreading around the forest and looking for the missing child—or the body of the child. Gilman woke up late, went to the bar, and returned home. On the fourth day he drove to a local supermarket and bought TV dinners, and all the while Ronald followed him and kept a bag in the car with five threadbare baseball caps in different colors and three jackets that he would switch as often as he could. Since Gilman had seen his 1979 Toyota a few times, he had borrowed a car from a mechanic friend, saying he wanted to keep an eye on a girl who might be cheating on him; the friend had handed him the keys without question.
The boy’s memorial was on the fifth day. Gilman didn’t even leave the apartment, and Ronald began to believe that maybe his surveillance was pointless; this crazy idea he’d had would lead to nothing.
Every morning he would leave the house and come home late at night, and he would find Vincent curled up in his bed exactly as he had left him. He would try to feed him some of the foods he liked, and Vincent would take three forkfuls and then go back to bed; he had said maybe five words since the forest. Ronald had called the supermarket where Vincent had his part-time job and told them he was ill and would come back as soon as he could. Or never, he thought, looking at the shape under the bedcovers.
On the sixth day all the papers carried articles about the boy’s memorial service. Ronald couldn’t help himself: he bought every paper and watched every report. He read the words, he stared at the pictures, and every detail pulled a thick rope tighter around his chest.
Gilman stayed home sleeping, smoking, getting drunk, or watching soaps. Ronald didn’t know and didn’t care—he just wanted him to go out and get his darn money. He fell asleep at the kitchen table: the Seattle Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Washington Star, and the Elliott Bay News spread like a thin, ineffective pillow for a slumber that carried no peace and little comfort.
The seventh day began with as much blue sky as it had a week earlier. Human beings are trained to measure life in well-defined, prepackaged portions, and when Ronald opened his eyes, his first thought was that only a week ago his life had been an ordinary mix of dull, okay, and pathetic, and he would do anything to have it back as it was. A week ago.
He dressed quickly and made a couple of ham sandwiches for Vincent in case he got hungry. He left them on the kitchen table inside his lunchbox, next to a bag of Cheetos and half a packet of Oreo cookies, his favorite.
He sat on the side of Vincent’s bed.
“Hey, Vin.”
The younger man opened his eyes.
“I’m off. I’ve got some things I need to do,” Ronald said.
“It’s not safe.”
“It’s okay, honestly, man. So far, so good. I’ve left you some food in the kitchen. How are you feeling today?”
Vincent closed his eyes.
“Right. Good,” Ronald said. “You rest here, and I’ll be back later. Eat something, will ya?”
Ronald got up and left. He shut the door gently and managed to feel both guilty and resentful. He didn’t catch Vincent’s whisper in the empty house.
“It’s not personal; it’s business.”
He knew it the moment Gilman set foot out his front door. Ronald had had more than a good chance to become familiar with the man’s moods and how he carried himself. Timothy Gilman glanced left and right before he got into his black Camaro, and Ronald knew in his bones that the man was not going to the supermarket, and he was not going to his bar, and Ronald was afraid. To follow and be found out was suicide; to turn around and go home—well, he thought, it would just be another kind of death. Slower, maybe, but only marginally less painful.
Gilman took the I-90 and drove east, crossed Mercer Island and I-405, and continued through Eastgate first and then Issaquah. Five cars behind him, covered in a film of perspiration and wearing a pale green baseball cap, Ronald followed him.
Gilman kept a steady pace, just under the speed limit, and they soon went past Preston and North Bend. Ronald couldn’t even bear to keep the radio on: his eyes were fixed on the Camaro, and his hands gripped the steering wheel. When there were only three cars between them, he would slow down and
fall back; when he couldn’t see Gilman for more than a minute, he would pick up speed until he saw the black car again. There was enough traffic for camouflage; nonetheless, Ronald could not allow himself to relax even for a second as exits came and went—Gilman could leave the Interstate at any time.
Finally, Gilman turned off just before the Olallie State Park and took the SE Homestead Valley Road due east. The woods were thick on both sides, and Ronald slowed down as much as he could while still keeping Gilman in sight.
The Camaro turned left into a narrow lane, and Ronald had no choice but to drive on, slouch in the seat, and throw a quick glance as he drove past.
Shit. He had stopped. Gilman had stopped only fifty yards into the dirt road, and there was another car parked there. The canopy of trees made the area dark, and he had hardly been able to see clearly, and yet he was sure of one thing: the black Camaro had stopped, and there was another car there, too.
Ronald looked around: the Homestead Valley Road was empty in both directions. He braked as softly as he could and reversed until he was seventy yards from the mouth of the lane. He prayed no one was watching and did a U-turn, as he fully expected whoever he was going to follow would get back onto I-90 after the exchange.
Ronald left the car on the shoulder of the road and stepped into the forest. It was cooler under the shade of the firs; he went ten feet in and then proceeded to walk parallel to the road until he was near the lane Gilman had turned into. He dropped and crouched and crawled behind a bush that kept him covered but gave him a view of the two cars and the two men talking.
Ronald lay flat on the dusty ground and pulled out a pair of binoculars he had bought at REI three days earlier for $19.95. He wouldn’t be able to spy on eagles flying around Mount Rainier, but he could see this, and this was enough.
He brought the lenses up to his eyes and held his breath. There they were. The other car was a midnight blue BMW, and the hood was up. Good idea, Ronald thought; anyone driving past would just think engine trouble. Both men were facing away from him and looking at the engine; he could see Gilman gesticulating and the other man listening.
Ronald breathed, and a puff of dust from the ground rose and fell; a small cloud of insects had found his exposed skin and were taking full advantage of it. He didn’t care. His eyes stayed on the two men whose faces he could not see, and just then he understood something. That dreadful day a week earlier had not gone as he had expected; however, it had not gone as Gilman had expected, either. The kid was supposed to die of his condition; he was not supposed to wake up and see them and make it necessary for them to kill him. What was Gilman telling the man? Was he telling him the truth?
No way. Gilman was a nasty piece of work, and he wouldn’t give himself any extra grief when he didn’t need to.
Ronald shifted on the forest floor as his body began to ache. The men turned, and for an instant he really was afraid that his detective work had all been for nothing and this was an accidental meeting with someone whose BMW had blown a fuse.
The other man was wearing a smart, dark suit, and suddenly Ronald saw him clearly, as if he was standing right next to them. Clearly enough to recognize him. And when the man took out a leather satchel from the trunk and passed it to Gilman, Ronald couldn’t blink as his breath caught in his throat. All was lost; all was gone. His puny little binoculars could only show him a hell that had no end, because it was worse than he could have ever imagined.
He lowered the binoculars and rested his brow on his wrist. First one car engine and then the other came to life, and he heard the Camaro and the BMW leave.
In a haze Ronald drove back into Seattle and a beautiful September afternoon, and he knew without a doubt that his troubles were only starting.
Chapter 48
Spencer called her cell as Madison and Kelly were crossing the city limits: there had been a break-in at Ronald Gray’s apartment, and the place had been ransacked.
When they arrived, the super was still on the fourth-floor landing, waiting for the emergency locksmith to finish his job on Gray’s front door. A patrol officer stood by.
“What happened?” Madison asked the super.
“I went in an hour ago because I wanted to check that his gas was turned off—there’s a tap by the stove, and I couldn’t remember if I’d turned it off. Anyway, I found what I found . . .” He gestured, and Madison stepped inside.
“Any of the neighbors tell you they heard anything?” she asked the police officer over her shoulder.
“No. Most of the people on this floor are still at work, but the lady next door is home with the flu, and she said she heard nothing all day.”
The whole place had been gutted, quietly and systematically gutted. A sharp blade had shred the sofa cushions, the padding on each chair, and the mattress. The filling was spread all over the place like ugly snow. Every single item that had been on the bookshelves was on the floor. The kitchen cupboards were open and empty, their contents spilled out into the sink. Floorboards here and there had been ripped up and laid askew against the walls. Drawers had been pulled out and emptied onto the ripped-up mattress.
“When were you here last?” Madison asked the super, her eyes still taking in the devastation.
“Early yesterday afternoon. I came in with the guy from the insurance company.”
“And everything was normal?”
“Yes. Well, creepy because of the murder, but normal. I guess the insurance guy will have to come back. We rent the property furnished and decorated, you know.”
Madison nodded. She could see Peter Conway stealing into the building and into the apartment, seeking and destroying without making a sound, until all that was left of Ronald Gray’s life had been torn inside out.
Seeking and destroying. He wants the Gilman link; that’s what he’s been searching for: the proof that Gilman was involved and how that information somehow ended up in Quinn’s hands. He couldn’t get to Foley, and he came back here.
The cold, measured violence of what was before her was beginning to seep into her bones when Madison turned and left. Conway was getting angry: they had taken one of his men away from him, Vincent Foley was still alive, and still he had not found what he was looking for.
The sky was wide and purple above them as Madison and Kelly got back into the car and drove to the precinct without a word.
Henry Sullivan, lawyered up and rested, had stuck to his vow of silence, and neither Spencer nor Dunne had been able to engage him in any kind of conversation. A few hours earlier Ballistics had confirmed that the bullet that had killed Thomas Reed had not come from Sullivan’s Beretta. Thus the prisoner sat in Buddha-like repose in his cell, calmly waiting for what the legal system might throw at him next.
Chapter 49
Nathan Quinn had waited until he was sure his firm’s offices on the ninth floor of Stern Tower would be empty. He needed to check some legal-reference tomes he did not have at home, and he could not yet face the well-meaning kindness of his colleagues. He felt jagged: as if just as the scars on his body were healing, the cracks in his life were getting deeper and sharper. The photographs of Harry Salinger’s injuries came back to his mind from time to time. There he was—Jack Cameron, his brother in all but blood—comprised and contained within the twist of that blade. Did it matter that Salinger had done much, much worse? How did you measure those acts? Were there scales that could weigh one against the other?
Quinn had arrived in the underground parking lot, driving himself for the first time, and had ridden the elevator to the ninth floor; he had waved to the camera and to the security guard monitoring his progress from somewhere else in the building and had put the key in the lock of this place that had seen all his battles and all his victories in the last decade.
He had hoped for relief, or maybe just the comfort of familiarity, but none had come. The smart offices and elegant furnishings felt alien, and he didn’t know whether he would ever feel at home here again.
Quinn made h
imself coffee and brought his cup and saucer into the library. He had felt so proud when Quinn, Locke & Associates had first opened its doors to the world. His eyes scanned the shelves for the books he needed; he found them and laid them open on the massive table. He wondered what Rabbi Stien would make of this, whether there was anything in the Torah that explained to a man how to take the Law and shape it like clay with his own hands and still keep his soul.
Quinn decided to put the existential questions aside and got back to the issue at hand. Self-defense was all very well if you had an intruder in your own home, but Jack Cameron had been in the middle of a forest, and the requirement to evade or the duty to retreat played no part.
He was deep into a Supreme Court opinion from 1989 when a gentle knock on the library door startled him out of it.
“I thought I just imagined you sitting there,” the man said. “I honestly thought it was my imagination playing tricks after all these weeks.”
“Conrad,” Quinn said, and he stood up.
Conrad Locke.
“Nathan.” Locke grabbed him in a quick hug. “It’s good to see you—it’s so good to see you.”
“Thank you for your note when I was in the hospital, for your support. For your kind words.”
“Please, don’t mention it. We respected your wishes not to have visitors, and writing was the very least we could do.”
Locke was nearly seventy years old and carried his age easily and with grace. His hair was now completely white, and his eyes had more lines around them than they once had, but he was the same man who had known Quinn since he was a boy, who had stood by him without giving platitudes on the day of David’s memorial service.
“Let me look at you,” Locke said, his hands on the taller man’s shoulders. Quinn didn’t look away; the older man’s eyes sparkled with affection.
The Dark Page 29
