“There was an extreme use of violence not warranted by—”
“He was defending himself,” Quinn interrupted him. “Was any kind of weapon found on my client at all?”
“No.”
“Was there any weapon recovered at the crime scene?” the judge asked Newton.
Newton sighed. “A handgun with Mr. Salinger’s prints was found on the scene.” It was almost too painful to continue. “And a hunting knife with Mr. Salinger’s prints was also found nearby.”
Quinn turned to the judge. “Detective Madison’s testimony says that there were stains on Salinger’s shirt that appeared to be blood—the blood of the little boy who had been kidnapped. And all the weapons on the scene belonged to Mr. Salinger. What do you think was the state of mind of my client at that point? He was trying to stop a murderer from running away and ended up fighting for his life. That was the only intent.”
“What does Mr. Salinger say about all this, if anything?” Judge Martin asked Newton.
“He says he didn’t put up a fight at all.”
The statements had been taken; Quinn had read them. “What else, Scott?” he said.
“Counselor?” The judge was fast reaching the end of an already extremely short tether.
“In his statement my client says that he didn’t start fighting Mr. Cameron until he realized that Mr. Cameron did not intend to kill him as he had hoped he would.”
“He fought him so that Mr. Cameron would kill him in the fight?”
The prosecution attorney nodded.
Judge Martin looked from one to the other. She was angry about at least twelve different things going on with this case, and nothing was worse to her than the feeling of justice not being properly served in her court.
“Give me something, Mr. Newton. Right now. I’m begging you,” she said. “Anything.”
Time had stretched brittle and thin, and John Cameron waited in his seat. He waited because his desire to be away from these walls came up against his trust in Nathan Quinn, and the next step, once taken, was irreversible.
The door opened, and the judge and the attorneys returned to their places. Quinn looked blank and ashen; then again, so did Scott Newton.
Quinn turned to Cameron and nodded.
“This case is dismissed, and Mr. Cameron is free to go, Mr. Newton,” Judge Martin said. “Not a great day for the office of the King County’s Prosecutor, I’d say. This case should have never gotten this far with what you had. And what you didn’t have, you should have found by now. Mr. Quinn?”
“Your Honor.”
“I’d congratulate you on winning your case, but you didn’t win it—they lost it. It was a mess from start to finish, and you just turned up today and told me all about it. But I will congratulate you on still being alive. Today that’s all you get from me.” Judge Martin stood to leave. “Mr. Cameron, I’m not really sure what to say to you, except that I hope I’ll never see you in my court again.”
John Cameron and Nathan Quinn left the courthouse and went directly to the underground parking lot where Quinn had left his car. Neither one of them said a word.
When they stopped at the traffic lights on 5th Avenue, Cameron wound down his window and stretched his hand out into the freezing rain, so sharp against his skin and so welcome.
Chapter 53
Deputy Warden Will Thomas replaced the handset on the telephone. The call had been from the Inmate Transport Department, which had in turn received a call from the Seattle courthouse to say their van would be coming back minus its prisoner and they’d have one more empty cell tonight. The paperwork would follow.
Will Thomas sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. He was not a man who had ever looked for the easy ride in his life, for the paycheck with medical and the weekends off but, sweet Jesus, was he glad to be rid of that man.
That detective had been right: no one had really incarcerated or caged him; he had just stayed with them for as long as it pleased him. And now he was gone, and so was the infernal drumming. And even the violent incidents would go back to their usual numbers in a couple of days.
Thankyouthankyouthankyou, he whispered to the deity who watched over prisons and their harried staff. He clicked his pen and prepared to sign a number of requisition orders.
Officer B. Miller waited until the metal door to D Wing had slid open, and then he walked through. News had traveled at roughly the speed of light, and he knew that his 4:00 a.m. strolls with the inmate residing in Cell D-37 were over.
The door to Cameron’s former cell was locked; no one had been inside it since the inmate had. He had stripped the bed, disposed of his toiletries in a small wastebasket, and no personal items were in sight anywhere. Son-of-a-bitch had known he wouldn’t be coming back.
And a voice Miller didn’t like at all murmured in his ear, one way or the other.
In his cell, Manny Oretremos waited until he knew he would be alone for a few minutes, without a guard walking past and checking on him through the bars. His life, such as it was, had been over the minute he had not sent his vial of bleach flying toward John Cameron. It was just a question of when his destiny would catch up with him. And he’d had enough. Enough of everything and everyone. Most of all he couldn’t bear the constant fear any longer, fear that had rubbed against his skin for years and worn it paper-thin.
He was in solitary, and what he had in mind was not easy to accomplish. If he had a well of undiscovered determination, now it was the time to find it.
He prayed to the Virgin Mary and asked forgiveness for his sins.
Twelve minutes later a guard found Manny Oretremos on the floor of his cell: he had crammed toilet paper into his nostrils and stuffed the thin blanket on his cot into his mouth down to his throat. The medics tried to revive him, but he was pronounced dead at the scene. They notified the deputy warden of the situation. The paperwork would follow.
Chapter 54
Madison, back at her desk, flipped through a small pile of messages and picked out Dr. Takemoto’s. She called her back.
“I just wanted to let you know that I’ve e-mailed you some notes about my first session with Vincent Foley, and I’ll be seeing him again tomorrow, all being well,” the doctor said.
“Thank you,” Madison replied.
“You know, even when he’s not there, Ronald is very much a presence in Vincent’s life. His thoughts definitely spin around his foster brother.”
After they said good-bye, Madison opened her e-mail and read the transcript and everything Vincent Foley had said to the doctor. The words seemed to have a life of their own on the screen, suspended as they were between reality and Vincent’s own inner world.
Lieutenant Fynn came out of his office and spoke to the detectives’ room in general. “The Honorable Claire Martin has just dismissed the case against John Cameron. He’s out.” It was a statement of fact, and they could do with it what they wanted.
Madison felt Kelly’s eyes on her back. They were all aware she had given a statement, and that statement had said that she did not remember seeing the knife Cameron had allegedly use to attack the victim, or any other weapon, in his hand.
At that point, half-crazy with grief and anger as she was, she couldn’t be sure of what she had seen; she had not lied in the statement. Had there been a flash of gunmetal in the beams of the flashlights? Probably. Did she believe Cameron carried a knife? Definitely. Did she want to swear under oath to either of those facts? No, she did not. But there was a deeper truth, as well, and she might as well face it, because it wasn’t going to go away. Madison had never committed perjury, which was why she had told Cameron not to say a word to her before the police had arrived that night; however, something in her moral compass found it impossible to begrudge Cameron his freedom. She had experienced on her skin what it was like when Harry Salinger made you his personal project. If the prosecution had not been able to present a case, then she wasn’t unhappy about it. Not unhappy was not happy; it simply was what it wa
s.
Cameron was out, and Nathan Quinn could breathe a sigh of relief. Until his favorite client got busy again, that is.
Her cell started vibrating. It was Amy Sorensen.
“I thought I’d bring you good tidings,” the CSU investigator said. “Spencer already knows.”
“What is it?”
“We matched DNA from Mr. Sullivan to one hair on the bag over Warren Lee’s head.”
“That’s excellent news.”
“Spencer said the guy isn’t talking. Maybe that’ll give him a nudge.”
“Thanks, Amy.”
“Something else. There were prints on the scrap of paper from the yearbook.”
“David Quinn’s picture?”
“Yes. We recovered a thumbprint belonging to one Timothy Gilman, and the index finger on the back was matched to Ronald Gray’s.”
“Great. Anything else?”
She heard the hesitation in Sorensen’s voice. “There’s a smudge.”
“How big a smudge? What kind of smudge?”
“It’s a layered mess of more than one print. The original piece of paper is small. If more than one person held it, the likelihood is that their prints overlapped in most places, so it’s already pretty darn lucky we have one for Gilman and one for Gray.”
“Amy, somewhere in that mess could be the fingerprint of the man who copied the yearbook photo for Gilman.”
“You’re asking me to analyze, separate, and match, maybe, four or five overlapping prints on the chance that one of them might belong to someone else?”
“Is that something you can do?”
“No.”
“Oh.” Madison’s heart dropped to the floor.
“I mean, I can’t do it, but there is a particular software that uses a new algorithm to separate overlapped fingerprints, estimating the orientation field of each individual component.”
“Amy, you are the bright center of my universe.”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s what you say now. I’m making no promises, Madison. It’s an experimental technique.”
“If we had anything at all to match to our prime suspects, it would be a huge help.”
“I heard you’ve got one guy in California and one about to fly the coop.”
“Yes, that’s pretty much what we have.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
Locard, Madison said to herself. I believe in Locard. Every contact leaves a trace.
Fynn had rejected her idea of a blank recall of all the yearbooks as impractical, which she disagreed with but could understand. However, it was still a potential avenue to explore once they could narrow the pool of suspects down from the hundreds who had bought the book in the first place.
Madison chugged down some yogurt drink that she had remembered to bring in from home and read Kelly’s report: he had gone through most of Jerome McMullen’s previous associates, and it seemed unlikely that any of them had the contacts or the capital to get Conway on board. Still, where there’s a will, she thought . . . The problem with organizing anything from inside a prison is communication, and the bulk of McMullen’s seemed to be letters to and from volunteer groups and charities.
A television monitor was turned on with the sound muted in a corner of the detectives’ room. The news anchor started his next item, and John Cameron’s arrest picture flashed behind him. Madison read the title line on the bottom of the screen and did not need to hear his commentary. Then they played Nathan Quinn’s appeal to TV viewers from start to finish. One down, three to go. Except that now the count had changed. Madison knew those words well and what evil spirit they had conjured up: two nights ago she had looked straight into his dead eyes.
The sky had rolled out a blanket of heavy rain clouds, and wherever they were coming from, it looked as if they’d never run out. Madison turned up the collar of her jacket and felt fat raindrops splash over her hair before she could make it into her car.
Lieutenant Fynn had given her his blessing, Kelly had given her his customary sour look, and Spencer and Dunne had wished her good luck with it.
The downtown traffic faded around her as she hit I-5 due south and picked up speed toward Seward Park.
Nathan Quinn opened his front door. He was still wearing the suit he’d worn in court, and the result of the hearing seemed to have done little to lighten his mood.
Madison walked in and took stock of the brand-new alarm system that had been installed since she had been there last. She had called him from the precinct parking lot. “Now that Cameron is out, he and I need to talk: no guards, no visiting-room regulations. I have news you want to hear, and I need his help. I’m on my way.”
When she’d arrived, Quinn had his hands full with carrier bags packed with plastic containers that had just been delivered from The Rock.
“Mr. O’Keefe’s good work?” Madison asked.
“Yes. He got food delivered to me in the hospital every day without fail. Would have done the same for Jack in KCJC, but apparently it’s not allowed.”
Donny O’Keefe was the head chef at The Rock; Madison had met him weeks earlier. He was fiercely loyal and had been a player in the regular poker nights at the restaurant. They had played their last game in December, late at night after closing time, and James Sinclair had been there—only days before his murder.
For a moment Madison asked herself what it would be like to play poker with these men who hid so much and risked so much. Probably not very different from what she was about to do.
Although the rain made it impossible to see across Lake Washington, John Cameron was standing by the floor-to-ceiling window and looking out. He’d do a lot of that for a while, Madison thought. Even one afternoon inside a jail made her feel claustrophobic.
When he turned toward her, he was the man she had first met in her home, who had looked over the books on her shelves while she made coffee, before they’d talked about death and madness and how it had crept into their lives. Any trace of the convict was gone.
“Detective,” Cameron said. “Nathan had not told me about the break-in before we came back here today. What did you make of it?”
“They were looking for any evidence he might have that connected Timothy Gilman to the 1985 kidnapping. They wanted to find out if Lee or Gray had spoken to him and what they’d said. They didn’t find what they were looking for, and they left.”
Cameron nodded: it was a puzzle that he turned around in his hands, seeing how the different pieces fit together. By now she had seen him in her home, in the forest, and in jail, and still she was not used to his presence.
Good. Don’t get used to it. Never get used to it. One day down the line you’ll be glad you didn’t.
“What is your news, Detective?” Quinn said.
They sat around the table.
“We recovered a fingerprint from an item found with your brother’s medal. The print is Timothy Gilman’s,” Madison said. “If you ever questioned the validity of your original source, Mr. Quinn, or the legitimacy of that accusation, now you know it was valid.”
She managed to keep her tone flat. There was a beat of silence.
“I’ve never questioned the validity of my source,” Quinn said quietly, “but I’m glad you found the print.”
If something passed between the men, it was too subtle for Madison to notice.
“What other item?” Cameron asked her.
The question was always the same: how much can you give John Cameron and still keep the investigation safe and the suspects alive?
“I will tell you about the other item if you answer a question I have for you. And I can be as exhaustive about it as you wish, but I will expect the same in return.”
“That depends on your question.”
Madison was sure that the boy Cameron had once been had never told anyone the answer to what she was about to ask him, and by the time he was a young man, it would have been too late. “I need you to tell me exactly what happened the day of the kidnapping.”
“Why?”
“Because we have one of the kidnappers in custody, and I can’t tell whether what he’s saying is a result of the years in a psychiatric institution or if there’s something there—a thread I can grasp that will get me to the truth.”
Cameron didn’t look away; his gaze was as direct as always. “You’re asking a lot of me, Detective.”
“Yes, I am.”
Quinn, sitting between them, seemed to be barely breathing. If Madison was right, he had never heard the story of that day near the river, either.
Madison wouldn’t even guess what could sway John Cameron one way or the other: maybe that here they were, sitting pleasantly in Nathan Quinn’s living room, maybe because she had signed a statement that said she’d never seen the handgun he had pointed at Salinger’s head or the knife he had held against his brow. Maybe it was something else she couldn’t even begin to fathom.
“Okay,” Cameron said. And, minute by minute, he told them exactly what had happened on August 28, 1985. He began from the moment the blue van had turned up at Jackson Pond and continued up until his run onto the Upper Hoh Road at dawn, when a passing trucker saw him and stopped.
Madison listened, absorbing the story and creating a space for it inside herself almost as if it had been her own, although she knew that Cameron wasn’t really telling her; he was telling Nathan Quinn. After twenty-five years he was finally telling his friend the only story that had ever mattered to them.
Cameron had not held back any details, and Madison didn’t need to ask him any more questions. She had heard what she needed to hear.
“The other item recovered with the medal was a fragment of a photocopied yearbook photo,” she said. “The top corner of the page of a yearbook with David Quinn’s school picture. It was circled in pencil, and it had Timothy Gilman’s and Ronald Gray’s fingerprints on it.”
“For the kidnappers to identify him,” Quinn said.
Cameron nodded.
The Dark Page 31
