Cameron didn’t think about the night he had spent tied to a tree next to James Sinclair: Detective Madison was right, the boy he had been was long dead, and the man who lay in the basement today had made more enemies and ended more lives than that boy would have ever thought possible.
He heard the door open and footsteps coming down. His blindfold came off, and Peter Conway stood above him.
“I think you should know who you’re dealing with,” he said, and he injected Cameron in the arm.
The effect was immediate: a numbing of the body and the instant realization that he could not breathe, that his chest could not rise and his lungs would not take in air, that his body had turned to stone.
Conway clicked a stopwatch, then took out a knife and cut through the plastic cuffs that bound Cameron’s wrists, calves, and ankles. “It’s Suxamethonium chloride, and it’s a muscle relaxant used for anesthesia. It induces instant paralysis.”
Cameron knew exactly what it was and that his body was useless to him: he could not move, and he could not breathe.
“You see, when they give it to surgical patients, they have to provide a mechanism to breathe for them; otherwise, they suffocate.” Conway stood over him, and his eyes were a blank, empty nothing.
He must have injected him on the exhale, because Cameron’s lungs were empty, and every cell of his body was already slamming and crashing against a brick wall.
Cameron’s mind kept a calm vigil while his whole being fell into an inescapable panic. He was shutting down: this strange death traveled up his body, shutting down the systems as it went like the lights in a house. Soon, so soon, he wouldn’t be able to think anymore. How long had it been?
“Do you understand?” Conway asked, and he watched his prisoner.
Cameron’s body screamed for air while he lay on his back utterly still, his limbs unbound, his eyes open and tears streaming down his cheeks because he couldn’t blink.
“Do you understand who you’re dealing with?”
Conway wiped a lock of hair away from Cameron’s brow.
Thoughts came in blinding flashes. How long had it been? How long before permanent brain damage occurred? Cameron focused on a dark mark on the wooden ceiling straight above him. There was pain, excruciating pain—different from anything he had ever experienced—but there was no fear.
“They say it’s like being buried alive,” Conway said.
His body was burning, and his heart . . . Cameron grasped at one last thought and hung on to it in the thickening darkness: a stopwatch. Conway had a stopwatch. And my body lies on a distant shore . . . Cameron was drowning . . . at the end of the longest night. He wasn’t afraid, because he wasn’t anything anymore; he was out of that tomb of flesh.
Then something closed over his mouth, and Conway began to ventilate him with a bag-valve mask that pushed air back into lungs. It flowed in like water over scorched earth, and Conway kept the puffs steady and regular.
How many times has he done this?
After one minute, like some kind of miracle, Cameron blinked and twitched the fingers of his right hand.
“Easy come, easy go,” Conway said.
It took some time for Cameron to start breathing naturally; when he did, Conway pulled the mask away. There was no question of the prisoner even being able to sit up, let alone put up any kind of resistance. Conway stood back against a wall and studied Cameron as his body slowly came back to him.
After a while, when Cameron was able to stand, barely, Conway walked him to a bathroom in a corner of the basement. Cameron put his head under the cold tap and drank. He was too weak to take the opportunity to fight Conway, and the man knew it. He lay back on the stretcher, dizzy with the effort. Conway replaced the cuffs on his wrists and on his ankles, and this time Cameron’s hands rested on his front.
Conway left without a word.
How ridiculous, Cameron thought. How sad and pathetic and utterly ridiculous to die in a silly little cabin from the administration of a perfectly mundane drug used every day in every hospital by the hand of a complete stranger.
The death Cameron had dealt from his hand had been to men he had known well and who had known him. It was the only way it made sense to him. This, this was a bloodless death to satisfy the itch of a petty executioner.
Cameron turned his body to one side: his head pounded, and his eyes throbbed, but he was not in the least disoriented. He didn’t know how long he had before Conway came back or what would happen when he did: this was the basement of a hunter’s cabin, a place where men brought their prey to be gutted, bled, and skinned. Cameron sat up. Maybe this basement had been waiting for him for a long time, like the trapping pit had been waiting for Timothy Gilman.
It was dawn. Cameron heard it clearly now in the bird calls. He imagined it, seashell pale and freezing cold, unfolding over the cabin’s roof: the tips of the Douglas firs would be black against the glow, and the ground would crunch underfoot. The best time of day, his favorite.
Cameron stood up, his legs shaking a little. He raised his hands, tapped a bare bulb, and it swung its light into the darker half of the basement. Above him, heavy footsteps crossed the floor.
Chapter 61
Alice Madison stood in the observation box alone. Henry Sullivan spoke of what they had done and what Conway was about to do, and Madison was glad she was not in that room, glad she could not reach in through the glass, and sorry, so sorry, she had not shot Peter Conway through the window of the door in the Walters Institute. She could have lived with it if she had known what she knew now. At some point Dunne looked up and straight at Madison through the mirror; she nodded at him even if he couldn’t see her.
Madison met them in the corridor when they came out. Spencer and Dunne started on logistics; Klein and Bowen were quiet—attorneys had little to offer when it came to breaking down doors without warrants. There was never any question about what Madison would do.
“You should take my car,” Dunne said.
“Thanks, Andy,” she replied.
Spencer would brief Fynn and inform the state troopers and the sheriff’s office.
Dawn found Madison driving fast due north on I-5. Dunne’s car was a red four-wheel-drive Chevy S10 pickup truck—where Madison was going, her Honda Civic wouldn’t be much good. They had swapped keys in the parking lot after she had grabbed her emergency kit in its gym bag from the trunk.
Madison’s eyes were glued to the road, and yet she saw nothing. Her cell was on the passenger seat, and she forced herself to pick it up when Nathan Quinn called. She had to keep her voice neutral and calm: she should tell him about plans and contingencies and search groups. She should tell him about what they were doing, what they could do, and hope that he wouldn’t hear the shrill voice inside her that kept repeating that it was already too late, much too late.
“Where is he?” Quinn’s voice sounded scratchy.
“Sullivan doesn’t know for sure, but Conway had been setting up a safe house somewhere northwest of Seattle, a cabin in the woods, to take Cameron to. Sullivan didn’t know where, but he knew which rental agency Conway was using, because he glimpsed the name on Conway’s laptop.”
“Somewhere in the northwest?”
“I know it sounds feeble, but we’re tracing the payments on Conway’s credit card to tell us where he traveled, where he pumped gas and bought groceries.”
“How are you going to find him?”
“They’re sending me the details of the agency’s rentals, and we’re going to be working with local law enforcement and checking each cabin. I’m on my way there now. Spencer’s waking up the agency’s booker and getting what information he can out of him.”
Quinn might have been exhausted, but his mind worked as well as it always did. “I don’t understand. Why is he going to all this trouble? Why is he taking Jack to a cabin hours away from Seattle when he took care of the other men quickly and locally?”
Madison held the phone close to her. “Conway wanted
a cabin that would be close to an abandoned airstrip—there’s a whole bunch of them from the 1940s and 1950s dotted all over the state. He didn’t kidnap Cameron to get information out of him and eliminate a witness—that was only the starting point.” Madison didn’t know how to say the words. “Peter Conway is going to sell Cameron to the gang of drug dealers Cameron cheated and some of whom he murdered in California. Last December Cameron killed three of them in LA from the same cartel and Errol Saunders here, and years ago there was the Nostromo.”
Quinn didn’t say anything.
“When Conway got the details of the Seattle job,” she continued, “he realized that Cameron was much more valuable to him alive than dead, and he made a deal with the gang. They’re coming to fly him out. That’s why they used a Taser gun: he needs to deliver Cameron in one piece.” Madison regretted her words immediately, because she knew what Quinn would think. So they can rip him apart.
For a beat there was no sound at the other end of the line. Madison kept the cell close and drove on.
“I’m coming with you,” Quinn said finally.
“No, you’re not. I need you in Seattle going over everything you have, because McMullen could be getting paroled very soon. I’ll keep in touch.”
“Are you alone?”
“I won’t be. The locals will be involved, too, but I’m the only one who has seen Conway.”
“I’m coming. I’ll help with the search.”
“Quinn, listen to me. I need you to stay put. I need you to be where I know you’re safe.” As far from Conway as humanly possible, she wanted to add.
Quinn didn’t reply. Madison hoped his common sense would kick in: the man walked with a cane, for Chrissakes.
“Keep in touch,” he said.
And then it was just Madison alone in the car flying through the gray early morning toward Bellingham, the mountains, and a promise of death.
If Madison had noticed the landscape, she would have seen flat fields leading to water on her right, the beginning of rolling hills on her left, and a lot of pallid sky—a huge dome pressing down on everything within sight. Small knots of housing developments and warehouses streaked past, neither urban nor rural, suspended in a charmless land-planning limbo.
She crossed the Skagit River at Mount Vernon, and the hills on the left were a bluish smudge in the distance as if in training to become real mountains. She took Exit 255 and East Sunset Drive to get to the 542; after Deming and the turn into the Truck Road she pulled into a small rest area with a pretty diner. The woods were thick on both sides of the road, and the air felt sharper. A handful of cars were parked by the wooden building, including a white Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office unit. A deputy climbed out when he saw the red pickup. It was midmorning, and the last hours had passed in a blur.
The deputy carried a thick wad of papers and a plastic bag. He was tall and skinny with a short blond buzz cut under the hat, and he didn’t look a day over nineteen. Madison would have preferred someone with more than a couple of weeks’ experience and possibly the ability to grow a beard.
“We were sent these by one of your people,” he said after introductions were dealt with.
Madison spread the printed sheets on the hood of the patrol car: a list of addresses for the cabins and pages of maps with the location of those cabins and of local airstrips and the stores where Conway’s card had been used.
The deputy followed the line of Highway 542 with one gloved finger. “Far as we can see, we have addresses spread out in three counties: some are here in Whatcom County, but then you have a bundle in Skagit, which is south, and even a handful in Okanogan all the way west. And we have the border with Canada just a stone’s throw from here.”
“How many in total?” Madison looked through the list.
“Twenty-five, but we’re also looking at the ones that were not booked—just in case.”
Madison swore under her breath.
The information sheet had been filtered by the day the booking had been made and whether it was a repeat customer.
“We’ve eliminated some, but there’s still fourteen on the list, depending how close to the airstrip your man wanted to be. We’ve got Kendall and Riverside—they’re privately owned and open for business.”
“I think our man wants something more discreet.”
“Well, we had a number of them, but some pretty much died out and were reclaimed by the woods. Sumas—up toward the border, though no one has caught a glimpse of it for years—and Pasayten, Marblemount, and Blankenship, but I can’t tell you whether they’re still in working order, and they’re well spread out.”
Madison looked at the map. An airstrip in the mountains, a turf airstrip, was little more than a ribbon of grass wide enough for a small plane to land and take off: no control tower, no air traffic controllers, and, most important, no lights. Whoever was flying in had to rely on natural light, and that could cut the day pretty short if the weather didn’t cooperate.
“Here,” Deputy Andrews said, and he passed Madison the plastic bag.
Inside was a thermos, a few sandwiches, a bottle of water, and candy bars—the kindness of law enforcement officers working a 2,500-square-mile “precinct.”
“Your people said you’ve been driving since before dawn, and, I quote, you wouldn’t have stopped for red lights, let alone food and drink.”
“Thank you—that’s very kind.”
The deputy blushed crimson. “This guy you’re looking for, he’s the real deal, isn’t he?” he said, changing the subject.
Which guy are we talking about?
“Yes, Peter Conway is a paid assassin—he kills people for a living. At least four in King County that we know of in the last weeks, and he has one accomplice with him.”
“We don’t get many of those types around here.”
“I guess not. Have you . . .” Madison didn’t want to be discourteous, but this was not a learn-on-the-job day, and she had to know just how green he was. “Have you dealt with this kind of situation before?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
Better to know in advance and plan for it, she thought.
“I mean, not here. But I have done a couple of tours in Afghanistan. Infantry sniper. Seen plenty of stuff there to last me a while. Some hostage situations, too—that’s why they sent me to meet you.”
“Right.” Madison said, feeling like a very old fool.
They went back to their respective cars and headed northwest. Behind the cloud cover the sky was light and bright. A good day to fly.
Miles and miles away, in a small room without natural light, Dr. Takemoto watched as Vincent Foley patted the wall after drawing the latest of his lines. Vincent had not spoken to her today; he had ignored her. It looked as if soon there would be no bare wall left at all. The nurses looking after him had confirmed it: Vincent had stopped speaking almost completely. His main interaction with the world was through the worn green crayon in his hand.
Dr. Peterson studied him from the open door—Vincent’s hand was shaking a little, but was still capable of drawing a line. No one had said anything to him, and he had not even asked about the night of the fire, and yet, somewhere in the folds of his consciousness, the doctor was sure, Vincent had realized that Ronald was never coming back.
“What are you drawing, Vincent?” Dr. Peterson asked.
Vincent turned: fear had lived with him for so long, it had been the measure of the hours and the minutes of his days, and Vincent looked exhausted by it. In spite of the constant vibration within his body, he tapped the wall gently with the crayon. “The trail,” he said.
Chapter 62
The man smoothed the bandage on his injured side: it hurt every time he breathed, but at least it had stopped bleeding. Shouldn’t have gotten that close had been Conway’s only comment. It was the fifth time Conway had hired him for a job and the first time he had been wounded by a target during the pickup. This hostage did not behave like hostages do, and t
hat fact bothered the man a great deal.
He slid open the lock on the basement door—a simple bolt that Conway had installed days earlier—and went in. From the top of the stairs he could see the prisoner clearly: he lay on his side on the stretcher, wrists and ankles bound with plastic cuffs. The hostage’s eyes were open and tracked him as he walked down the stairs, suddenly conscious of his uneven gait.
Conway had left his hands tied at the front, because, after the Sux injection, he didn’t want muscle spasms or a choking fit to spoil his wares.
Shouldn’t have gotten that close. The man lifted the .22 caliber handgun and pointed it at the hostage’s head as he approached him. The prisoner didn’t even blink: his pale brown eyes followed the man’s movements and spotted his limp and the awkward lump under his shirt where the bandage was. It was like being watched by a predatory animal.
The man came close, placed the muzzle of the gun against the prisoner’s brow, and felt his carotid pulse with two fingers of the left hand. At that distance he wasn’t going to miss the shot. The prisoner’s heartbeat was steady, not even a little jolt for the inconvenience of having a gun to his head.
“Feeling better?” the man asked him.
John Cameron didn’t reply.
“Any breathing problems? Muscle spasms?”
He took Cameron’s silence as a negative reply, straightened up, and backed away. Everybody’s life would take a turn for the better as soon as this package was delivered.
The lock slid back into place.
Madison glanced at the map on the passenger seat. The cabins had been split among the teams: they had three on their list. She followed Deputy Andrews’s unit along the Mt. Baker Highway. He had picked up his partner on the way and had given her a radio to keep in touch and listen to the calls from the other officers, and their voices crackled and sputtered through the speaker.
The Dark Page 34
