The Dark

by Valentina Giambanco

  “What about Conway’s possessions?”

  Madison sat back in her chair. Standing next to Peter Conway had been the closest she had ever been to a real-life link with the hidden man, and now Conway was dead.

  “The sheriff’s people collected three cell phones, five credits cards, four different fake IDs and driver’s licenses, and about $3,750 in cash. Most of it in a hiding place inside the van. We have already done the paperwork to work on the evidence from here, and I know they’ll cooperate. Jerome McMullen had motive and a way to pay for Conway’s services. Somewhere in there, there must be a phone call, a current account, some kind of link to his client. We’ll be getting some numbers later today.”

  Madison thought of Sorensen’s computer and imagined it working through its own set of numbers, night and day and night, as tick after tick the fingerprints were separated.

  “Did Jack say anything to you about Conway? About what happened in the cabin?”

  “No, there was no time. The medics just grabbed him and left. The drugs were a real concern until they found out what it was he had swimming in his system. Did he say anything to you?”

  “No, but he’ll be back in a couple of hours—we’ll speak then.” Quinn stood up. “I’m getting coffee, if you’d like some.”

  Madison nodded.

  Quinn stopped—awkward now, one hand on the cardboard box on the table. “You might want to look at this: before the field and the plane, before the Hoh River and the forest and everything else, there was a boy who was brilliant and funny and annoying and incredibly stubborn.”

  Quinn left the room. Madison studied the old box and carefully lifted the lid. David Quinn’s things. She had seen his photo, she had seen every piece of paperwork having to do with his death, but she had never seen him. She heard water running in the kitchen. Nathan Quinn was not going to thank her for saving John Cameron’s life, because words were a scant reward for what she’d done for him: instead, he was sharing with her all he had left of his brother. And just then Madison was glad he was out of the room.

  She held the baseball mitt: the smell of leather still so rich and deep. There was a lot of life in that box, of places he’d been and things he’d done.

  Madison picked up a small book of photographs: it was a summer party around a pool, the sun shone and the water caught the light with every swell. The day seen through David Quinn’s eyes. Madison turned the pages and saw a small dark-haired boy diving into the pool, and she knew who he was without asking. And a group of children kidding around for the camera while an older boy looked on—long hair and the beginnings of a beard. The flags and the cake for the Fourth of July. A squirrel in the garden. Life, after all those years, coming through stronger than all the death that had followed.

  Jerome McMullen looked around his cell: he owned so very little, he could pack everything he had in under ten minutes. Which was probably how long the parole board would take to decide whether to let him out or not. This puny cell would not house him much longer; his spiritual journey was bound to continue on the outside.

  He had not seen the news or spoken to anyone that day. He wanted to keep his mind entirely on one single thought: freedom. He had done so much to make sure it would become a reality.

  Chapter 67

  Carl Doyle, Nathan Quinn’s assistant, had received the call and done what he was asked, because he trusted there was a reason. There was always a reason. He took the elevator to the street level as its twin left for the ninth floor. He had also been asked to go home for the day, but he didn’t; instead, he sat down in one of the plush armchairs in the lobby. It was dark outside, and for the first time he felt afraid, in a way he only had as a little boy.

  Nathan Quinn opened the door of the library of Quinn, Locke & Associates, laid his coat on the long table, and leaned his walking stick against a chair. Funny that he should seek the comfort of books at this time when the law they contained had let him down so badly before. He felt as he had the day his father had called him to say that David had been kidnapped, the same anguish as if it had just happened. The strength he needed could not be bought by a law degree—he knew that much—and his thoughts turned to a time before all this, when he’d believed that it was possible for justice and the law to be the same thing. He stood there and sought that scrap of belief he had buried a very long time ago. He sought it in his father’s name; he sought it in his mother’s name.

  He heard the footsteps behind him and turned. Conrad Locke stood in the doorway, elegant charcoal gray suit and white hair.

  “Nathan, how’s John? Is he back?”

  Quinn was as pale as he had ever been in his life. “He’s back. I haven’t seen him yet.”

  “Thank God he’s all right.” Locke stepped into the library, his gaze holding Quinn.

  “He’s not—we’re not,” Quinn said. “We spoke on the phone, and he told me that the man who abducted him told him who his client was. He thought Jack was going to be killed, and he told him who had paid him to take him and to kill the men who had kidnapped him twenty-five years ago. It was his final taunt just before the plane arrived.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Jack said he should take care of it himself.”

  “Nathan—”

  “I couldn’t stop him.”

  “How can you be sure the man knew?”

  “He said he’d done his homework,” Quinn said. “He knew.”

  Conrad Locke stepped closer. “Where’s Jack?”

  Madison had not found the super at Ronald Gray’s apartment block. She ran up the stairs, and Ronald’s door was as she’d left it, the new lock shinier than the rest of it. When she’d realized she wouldn’t have a key, she’d gone back to her car and gotten the crowbar out of the trunk. A neighbor peeked out when she gave the first loud pry.

  “Seattle Police Department,” Madison said, briefly holding up the badge on the chain around her neck without turning.

  It took her five minutes of loud and unsubtle work, but in the end the door gave up, and Madison was inside.

  Dr. Peterson’s call had found her at Nathan Quinn’s, and the news of Vincent Foley’s death had been a moment of shock and sadness in a day that seemed already full to the brim with both. Afterward, Madison had spoken to Dr. Takemoto, and now there she was, with a crowbar in her hand, looking over the apartment.

  Ronald Gray had lived there: a quiet life spent in a drab office job, filing paperwork for the Walters Institute, and visiting his foster brother. Visiting and talking to Vincent. Talking to Vincent.

  Madison stood by the threshold; she could see almost the whole apartment from there. When Ronald had left his home for the last time, he knew that he was, in all probability, going to die; he had delayed his escape to make sure all traces of Vincent’s existence were destroyed, and he had made sure that, should the worst happen, someone who was looking in the right places would find David Quinn’s medal and the scrap with the yearbook picture.

  Madison scanned the room: the furniture, the floors, the walls. Peter Conway had been here, and she knew he had not found what he was looking for. But Ronald, who had done so much to give them a head start in the investigation, had done more than Conway could ever imagine.

  The little broom closet was intact—a few domestic cleaning products, a can of white paint, a paintbrush, a roll of plain wallpaper.

  We rent the property furnished and decorated, you know. The super had been quite clear about that. Madison walked through the bedroom and the kitchen and found herself back in the living room. Ronald had left them a message. Her eyes traveled over each nook of the simple room, and she went to stand in front of the IKEA rip-off bookcase.

  Vincent had never been inside this apartment. If he had, Madison would have expected to see something that was not there: the walls were pristine. Vincent would have drawn his long, twisty lines because the wall was the trail. Madison ran her fingertips along the surface; once she arrived at the bookcase, she lifted the crowbar and wedge
d it behind the shelves.

  With a silent apology to the super, she applied the right amount of pressure, and a loud crack told her that the spackle and the screws had surrendered their hold, and she pushed the bookcase until it was at a right angle to the wall.

  Behind the shelving it had been invisible: Madison pulled on a pair of evidence gloves and took out the knife from her back pocket. She felt the change in the thickness of the wallpaper and cut along the edge. The square was three feet by three feet. Madison cut the top off as if it were a flap, pulled it down, and stood back: legal-size sheets of notebook paper covered in small, neat writing had been taped to the wall and protected by a layer of wallpaper that had not been glued down. In the bottom corner, a thin, flat memory stick. Ronald had left them a message, and Vincent had delivered it: the trail.

  The writing jumped out at her. If you are reading this . . . my name is . . . on August 28, 1985 . . .

  A photograph from a newspaper had been taped to a page. Madison knew it well: it was the picture taken right after David Quinn’s memorial service: the family and their friends walking away, frozen in the worst moment of their lives, and young John Cameron with his arm still in a sling attacking the photographer for his intrusion. By now Madison was familiar with all those faces: they had become part of her life, like distant relatives. Ronald had drawn a circle around one of them, and Madison knew why.

  “You knew Timothy Gilman,” Nathan Quinn said to Conrad Locke.

  “Who?”

  “You were Timothy Gilman’s attorney when he was up for an assault charge with Leon Kendrick. You represented both of them, and you managed to get the charge dropped, because you’re the best litigator I’ve ever met.”

  “Maybe I did—I don’t know. Who remembers every case from thirty years ago? Why does this matter now?”

  “I’d remember Gilman. He was the one who hired the others to kidnap the boys. You met him when he was just a young, mean, violent bully.”

  “I don’t remember him, Nathan, and I’m terribly sorry for this connection, but we didn’t know this at the time. You yourself didn’t know he had been involved until much later.”

  “My father always said you had a mind like a shark in water: it never stops, and it eats everything that crosses its path. If you had defended him, you’d remember everything about him—like the fact that he had no problem hurting children.”

  “What did Jack tell you?”

  Quinn took a folded piece of paper from his inside pocket and spread it on the table. It was a yellowed page from the Seattle Times. He took a photograph from the same pocket and laid it next to it. Locke edged closer.

  “Where is everyone?” he asked, looking around—the corridor and the offices were empty.

  “I told Carl to get everybody out. I thought we shouldn’t be disturbed.”

  A line had been crossed: neither could back down, and each recognized the other.

  “I want to talk to Jack,” Locke said.

  “Jack asked me if Bobby still worked at Harborview.”

  “My son, Robert?”

  “Yes. They haven’t spoken for years, and Jack asked me if Bobby still worked there. He’s a cardiologist, right?”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I said yes, as far as I know, Robert was still at Harborview.”

  Conrad Locke took out his cell and dialed a number on speed-dial. It went to voice mail.

  “Robert, call me as soon as you hear this.”

  Nathan Quinn stared at his old friend.

  Locke tried another number and found voice mail again. He left the same message.

  “Where’s Robert?” he asked Quinn.

  Quinn’s voice was quiet in the large room, and it carried with it the hell of years of rage and grief. “You won’t find him,” he said. “You might never find him. Jack has Robert.”

  “This is madness!”

  “Jack is not in the mood for sanity today, and neither am I. Have you seen the pictures of what he did to Harry Salinger?”

  “Whatever you think happened, you can’t believe the word of a killer.”

  “Who are you talking about now?” This was the closest they would ever be to arguing in court against each other.

  “This,” Quinn continued, “is an article about the investigation of David’s death. It’s from the beginning of September. And this photograph”—Quinn lifted it for Locke to see—“was taken by David on the Fourth of July. You’re in the picture. It must be somewhere in the woods of the estate . . .”

  “What . . .”

  “. . . and this man next to you is Senator James Newberry. They found his body the second week of August. And his photo is in the Seattle Times right next to David’s.”

  “Who have you spoken to about this?”

  “Except that the senator had been missing since the end of June. He was about to testify in a corruption and racketeering trial against defendants you represented, and by the Fourth of July he had been missing for over a week. You knew him from before, because you knew everybody, and he must have come to you that day because he knew you’d be at the estate. At the inquiry about his death, you swore under oath that you had not seen him since the end of June. That’s perjury, Counselor. Did he come to you asking for help, for assurances? Had you introduced him to your clients in the first place?”

  “Who have you spoken to about this?” he asked again.

  “Did you tell him that everything would be all right? That he could lie on the stand? And that night, after the cake by the pool and the fireworks, did you call your clients—all good family men—and tell them where they could find him? How much have you helped them over the years? You sit on committees, you broker deals, you make connections between interested parties. What was your fee for giving them Newberry?”

  “Who have you—”

  “Spoken to? You think I’m going to go to the police with this?” Quinn felt a reckless energy that burned through his common sense. “Me? The attorney who represents John Cameron, alleged murderer of nine? Jack has Robert, Conrad. How the hell do you think this is going to end?”

  “It was war,” Locke said. “You have no idea, with your corporate law, your civilized cases, your intellectual-property disputes. You have no idea what I had to do to win at least some of the time against those animals, and the only way I could do it was with the help of other animals just like them. You don’t like to think about that when you sit in this library with the mahogany table and the pretty books. Your brother was an innocent victim in an awful war, and I wish he had not been there with his damn camera, but he was. As soon as I got back to the house, I managed to get Bobby and the other kids all hyped up, and they pushed David into the water with the camera as a joke. I thought that was the end of it, and I bought him an identical one the next day. He was really upset, though, because his camera was a present from you. You had already left, and they never told you. I thought that was the end of it.”

  Quinn held the photo; it was all he could see. “I had already changed the film by then.”

  “Where’s my son?”

  “Did you call Gilman after Newberry’s body was found?”

  Locke did not reply. There was nothing left there of the person Quinn had known.

  “Did you think that David might recognize him from the pictures in the paper?” Quinn asked.

  Locke stepped forward. “You have no idea what you’re dealing with.”

  “People like Peter Conway?”

  Locke didn’t look away. “I want my son back.”

  “And I want my brother back, but apparently neither of us is going to get what we want today.”

  “Nathan, you will call Jack, and he will release Robert, and you will both live through this. If you don’t, everything and everyone you care for in this world will be burned to the ground.”

  “It’s a short list,” Quinn said. “Shouldn’t take your people too long.”

  “Conway is not the worst of them by far.” />
  Quinn looked around, taking in everything he had built in the last twenty years. “Is that why you agreed to join practices with me?”

  “You are a brilliant and dangerous attorney, my boy. Much better for you to be where I could see you. Now, call Jack.”

  “Your son will die knowing what kind of man his father is. And if that is the only measure of justice we can have, then so be it. Do you know what Jack is capable of? I thought I did, but it wasn’t until I saw those pictures that I really understood. You’ll get pictures, too, in the end, I’m sure. Something to remember us by when Robert has a closed-casket funeral, which is more than David ever had. Tell me to my face, you son-of-a-bitch; you told Gilman to make sure my brother’s death looked like an accident, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

  “Of course I did! There was no other way: Newberry’s picture was everywhere. They couldn’t even get rid of his body properly. David was a very bright boy. And so are you. You don’t want it to end this way.”

  “Yes,” Quinn said, “yes, I do.” He took the cell phone out of his coat’s pocket and laid it on the table.

  Conrad Locke turned, and standing in the doorway was a younger version of himself—the eyes of the younger man were wide with shock.

  “I asked Detective Madison to pick up Robert at the medical center,” Quinn said. “They went back to his house, and he dug out his old school yearbook from the seventh grade. You’d circled my brother’s picture. You told Gilman to torture Jack or Jimmy Sinclair so that David would get agitated and it would bring on an episode of arrhythmia. You had to make sure that it would be bad enough to kill him. When it didn’t, Gilman forced one of the other men to finish the job. After that, their silence would be certain. It’s not personal; it’s business.”

  “Robert . . .” Conrad Locke said.

  Madison had stood next to Robert Locke in Nathan Quinn’s darkened office for the last half hour and thought the man wouldn’t manage to go through with it. They had given him a choice after the yearbook page had been a match: be there and support his father—whom he still believed to be completely innocent—or stay at work and let them get on with it.