Blood and Bone

by V. M. Giambanco

  He sat Brown and Madison around the table of his small, old-fashioned kitchen. A faint smell of vegetable soup and burnt toast still clung to the walls.

  “I remember you,” he said to Brown.

  Brown wanted to say I’m getting a lot of that these days, but he didn’t.

  “You knew Mr. Karasick from your support group?” Madison said.

  “Yes,” O’Reilly replied. “And you didn’t have to come all the way out here just to ask me what you already know. What is this about?” He spoke to Brown.

  Brown looked at Madison, who shrugged. This was his party.

  “What if I told you that we are looking into the Mitchell case again and that we need you to keep this to yourself, Father?”

  “I’d say it was high time you did. Henry was many things, and some of those things were difficult for him to handle, but I’ve never thought he killed that man.”

  “There are lives at stake,” Brown continued. “Here, now, today. And what we speak about around this table can go no further.”

  “I know what confidentiality is, Detective.”

  Brown told him only as much as he absolutely had to, but enough for the priest to understand the implications of finding out who knew that Karasick had a short trigger and a problem with his neighbor.

  “Are you saying it could have been someone who knew him from my group?”

  “Possibly, or it could have been someone in his circle of acquaintances. He had been fighting with a lot of people, and the temporary restraining order his ex-wife had taken out was a serious matter.”

  Madison brought out the forensic artist’s sketches, all adjusted for age and changes of appearance. “What we need,” she said, “is to have as complete a picture as possible of his social circle, because it was someone who knew him well who did this. Take a look at these.”

  Father O’Reilly scanned the pictures. “Seven years ago my group was starting out and some people—and I’m saying people, not exclusively men—only came a few times. Quite a number just came the once because it was too much for them to deal with, or maybe they weren’t ready for it. Or maybe they didn’t like my ugly mug and my cookies. Whatever the reasons, we had a steady stream of one-night specials. After seven years I don’t remember the ones who left, only the ones who stuck it out. And I don’t see any of them here.” He pointed at the pictures. “You have to understand, the idea of the group is not that I turn them magically into rosy-cheeked altar boys, but that I give them the tools with which they can help themselves when they feel overwhelmed. And because of that, they’re free to say whatever they need to say in the group and they can be completely honest with one another about the things they’ve done—and believe me, some of those things are ugly and messy.”

  “Father,” Madison said, “you testified in court as a character witness for Henry Karasick. Do you remember any friends he might have had in court, aside from his family? Did you meet any of them?”

  O’Reilly shook his head. “You should look into his other neighbors,” he said. “Everybody on the street knew about him and Mitchell. Five minutes with Henry and you knew he was a man with issues.”

  As Brown and Madison stood to leave, Father O’Reilly turned to her. “I heard about you on the news. I know which case you’re working on.”

  Madison met his eyes and did not confirm or deny.

  “Do you believe the work of the Devil can be done by human hands?” O’Reilly said.

  The words chilled her. Madison flashed to a memory of red and Gary Nolin and Eva Rudnyk on their bed.

  “I don’t believe in the Devil, Father,” she said.

  “We should talk about it one of these days, when you can spare the time. And you, Detective Brown,” the priest’s sharp eyes locked onto him. “Any burden you need to relieve? Anything you want to get off your chest in the confessional?”

  “I’m not Catholic, Father,” Brown replied.

  “Nobody’s perfect.”

  “Billy Wilder. Some Like It Hot,” Madison said automatically.

  “Good girl,” the priest said, and a smile cracked his face in half.

  “I wonder what he was like in the ring,” Madison said as they walked back to their car.

  “You can ask Sarah Klein. In court, he gave her as good as he got. And she had the advantage in the end only because he couldn’t say that he was with Karasick at the time of the murder.” Brown lifted up the collar of his raincoat against the chill. “I bet that in the ring Father O’Reilly was the kind of fighter who doesn’t know when the fight is done and keeps going until they carry him out on a stretcher.”

  I know the kind, Madison thought, looking at Brown.

  Madison’s cell pinged just as she got home. She dropped a shopping bag on the floor in the hallway and kicked off her boots as she answered.

  “Rachel,” she said, so glad to hear her friend’s voice after a day of madness.

  “Alice,” Rachel replied, and Madison could see her sprawled on the old leather sofa with her feet on her grandmother’s ottoman, a blanket over her legs and her husband, Neal, asleep next to her.

  “Been a while,” Rachel continued. “And I wanted to make sure I’m seeing you tomorrow.”

  Rachel was cooking Thanksgiving dinner for her extended family and, as always, Madison was invited. If she’d had the day off she would have gone early in the morning and helped Rachel cook, since there were so many guests coming that they needed two tables end-to-end to accommodate everybody. This year, though, Madison would only be able to make it there at some unspecified time of the day.

  “I’ll get there as soon as I can. Is Ruth making latkes?”

  Rachel’s mother was the kind of home cook people would cross the country for—barefoot—just for the sheer pleasure of sitting at her table.

  “She’s making a batch just for you.”

  Madison had grabbed the bag and made her way into the kitchen. “Thank you, Ruth,” she whispered.

  “You have a shift tomorrow, right?”

  “Yeah, I was on duty, anyway. And after what happened today—” Madison stopped herself—in all probability Rachel didn’t know about the murdered couple, and she certainly didn’t know it was part of Madison’s case. “Things are pretty grim right now,” she said finally.

  Madison had joined the Seattle Police Department right after college and Rachel was used to her “cop talk.” There were things her friend wouldn’t discuss directly. However, they had found a way to talk about most things and Rachel—a psychologist—would not balk on the occasions Madison tried to evade her questions.

  “On a scale of one to ten, how bad is it?” she said.

  Madison sighed. “Ten.”

  “Shoot, Alice, and you’re in the middle of it?”

  “Smack bang in the middle.”

  Rachel had read the news and she didn’t need to ask what case they were talking about.

  “He’s not some kind of nutjob with an ax, running around killing random people. The amount of detail, of preparation—you wouldn’t believe it,” Madison said.

  “Do you have a suspect?”

  “We’re building a profile. The FBI is helping, but it’s taking longer than . . .” Her voice faltered. It all sounded like excuses—excuses on top of pretexts on top of rationalizations. “I’m afraid we’re just grasping at air, Rach, and he keeps on killing innocents.”

  Rachel didn’t jump in with a reassuring cliché. Madison thanked her for it in her heart.

  “And there’s something else, some old trouble that’s come knocking again, and I might need a good lawyer soon. Do you know any?” she continued.

  “Alice Eleanor Madison,” Rachel said, “you have never done a single thing as a cop that was not above board and good and right.”

  “Rachel—”

  “Let me finish. Whatever you’re worried about, over and over you have put yourself between danger and the innocent.”

  “Rachel, it’s complicated.”

  “S
o is life, hon, and I don’t want you to get all tangled up in thoughts of lawyers when we both know you’re as straight as an arrow.”

  Madison started unpacking with one hand as the other held her cell to her ear. “’kay,” she muttered.

  “Bad dreams?” Rachel said. Madison had told her more than she had ever confessed to any other human being, and Rachel had switched into her therapist mode.

  “Loads.”

  “You’re going back to Stanley once the case is done.” It was not a suggestion.

  It was on Madison’s lips to tell her about the burglary, but she didn’t. “Probably,” she conceded. “I like the view from his office.”

  “How’s Aaron?” Rachel said out of the blue.

  “Great. He’ll be driving straight to you tomorrow and I’ll meet him there.”

  There had been a happy clamor in the family when it had become clear that Aaron and Alice were dating. Rachel had been cheerfully supportive, but she had kept her beady eye on her friend.

  “We went to a wedding on Sunday,” Madison said as she put cheese in the fridge. “Andy Dunne’s. And Aaron met everybody.”

  There was a moment of quiet on the line.

  “Rach . . .”

  “Alice,” her friend’s voice came back to her then, soft and warm in the empty house. “I’m only going to say this once, just so that you know for sure in case you’ve ever wondered. I have a brother, Mickey, and I have a sister, you. I love Aaron, but you don’t need to marry into this family to become a part of it. You already are and have been for years. You understand?”

  “Oh,” Madison said, because it was all she could manage through the knot in her throat.

  “Anyhoo,” Rachel continued, “I’ll see you when I see you tomorrow. And don’t forget to bring Tupperware for leftovers. It’s going to be epic.”

  Madison made herself a grilled cheese sandwich. And when she fell asleep, a little later, something—perhaps Rachel’s words, like embers in the hearth—kept the bad dreams away.

  At least for one night.

  Chapter 38

  Eighteen months earlier

  The wide sweep of deep blue sky above Madison’s house was becoming an orange streak as the first light crept onto her lawn. It had been three weeks since she had kissed Nathan Quinn for the first time and now she watched him sleep as he lay on her sofa.

  Twenty-one days. Three whole weeks. It had been odd, that sudden swell in her heart that had seemed to encompass everything in the world.

  “I don’t know as much about you as you know about me,” he had told her in that first week.

  Madison considered her reply. “I run,” she’d told him after a moment. “I love running. Whatever the weather, morning or evening. I often go to Alki Beach after my shift, and I run. I started doing track in high school and I sort of never stopped. I can still hear my coach, as a matter of fact, berating my stride and my—as she called it—lack of mustard.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Coach Lewis. I don’t think she had an actual first name. She was christened Coach by discerning parents.”

  “I loathe running,” Quinn said.

  Madison smiled.

  “But,” he continued, “I like rowing. I used to row in college.”

  “Where?”

  “Harvard, but I was only a reserve and I got dropped because I couldn’t bulk up.”

  Madison remembered the young man with the curly hair. “Their loss,” she said.

  After their first day and night together he had returned home. And then, the following night, she’d gotten back to the empty house late after her shift and he’d called her.

  “Would you like some company?”

  Somehow, every night they had planned to spend apart they still ended up together. Most nights they made it to her bedroom—but not always.

  It had been an awkward, breathtaking, miraculous process as they went about discovering the small things about each other—the important ones they had known for a long time already.

  Quinn didn’t like Thai food; they both loved Japanese. Madison watched classic movies before going to sleep; Quinn read Henry James and George Eliot.

  They had a weekend in Vancouver: drove up in three hours, stayed at the Rosewood, and had the best sushi Madison had ever tasted. Day by day she had learned the turns of all the fine scars on his body and he had gladly let her.

  One evening, after her shift, they had met at his place. He had grilled steaks and she told him about the case she was working on: a gang-related murder that had started with a teenager wanting to join a group of older boys and ended with the waste of two young lives. They had talked about it, about what it was like interviewing the fifteen-year-old killer, and they’d gone over the possible legal strategy the defense might use. Later, on the deck overlooking Lake Washington, Madison realized that she had left the case inside—those words full of ache and sorrow—and that night she slept soundly and without dreams.

  Madison sat in her armchair with her feet under her and watched Nathan Quinn sleep. The previous night when they came in, she had looked at the hearth and wondered just how good it would feel to be on that sofa with Quinn and with the first autumn fire crackling in the dark room. In the end, the sofa had been enough—it had been plenty. They fell asleep and stayed there, wrapped in her blanket, until she woke up before dawn.

  It all started that morning with a simple thing. But in truth it had been there from the beginning: it was the small cloud behind every instant they had spent together, as if her joy was delivered with a bullet that was flying toward them from a very great distance.

  Madison had gotten up to get a glass of water and Quinn’s cell phone had started vibrating on the floor where he had dropped his jacket. She had picked it up because it rested against the leg of a chair and she didn’t want the noise to wake him, and she had seen it: on the screen that displayed the caller ID the name Jack had flashed up followed by a ten-digit number. And just like that she had John Cameron’s private cell phone number. The number his best friend—no, his brother—had. The number that could be used to triangulate his location, that could be used to find him anywhere at any time. And Homicide Detective Alice Madison had it. How much more information about him would she be able to gather simply by spending time with Quinn? How much would she be able to understand about the alleged murderer of nine just by being close to his best friend? And what would happen on that day—and it was sure to come—when she would have to go after him, just as she had known she would from the very first time her eyes had met Cameron’s on his arrest sheet?

  She thought of Nathan Quinn—torn between them but unswervingly loyal—and how he would be forced to conceal things from her, to lie about meeting Cameron some night because she was pursuing him for the crimes that he was bound to commit.

  Madison had dropped the cell as if it was poison, but the numbers had already stuck.

  She had seen this coming from a long way off and she had refused to see it for what it was. Madison drank a glass of water and then sat in the armchair and watched Quinn sleep for maybe half an hour. She knew every shadow and every line of his face and still she watched him because it would have to last her a lifetime. How foolish of her not to think, not to realize, that this was going to happen sooner or later, ready or not. The idea that he would feel he had to turn away from her in order to keep his friend safe was unbearable. Madison took a breath. If it was unbearable today—three weeks in—how much worse would it get with each day they were together?

  Quinn shifted and opened his eyes. He saw her in the chair and his hand reached out for hers, and she took it.

  “What is it?” he said.

  Madison could not speak.

  “What is it?”

  Quinn straightened up and they were sitting with their knees touching.

  If she was going to do it, Madison thought, she had to do it now and she could not waver, she could not falter.

  “When you were asleep,” sh
e said, “a little while ago, your cell phone rang and I picked it up and I saw Cameron’s number. I didn’t mean to, but I saw it, and now I know it.”

  Quinn had barely woken up and his brain was trying to compute what she was telling him.

  Madison plowed on. “The last time we spoke he said to me that he would be traveling and it would be both business and pleasure. God knows what he meant, but he could have meant California. He could have meant that he was going down there to pay back the cartel, right?”

  Quinn nodded, still not sure of where she was going with this.

  “Do you remember,” Madison continued, “months ago, when I needed to meet Cameron face to face for the Sinclair case and you didn’t want me to? You didn’t want me anywhere near him. Because even if, that day, I wasn’t looking to put him behind bars, one day it was very likely that I would be.”

  An idea began to take shape, an understanding, a notion with edges so sharp that Quinn didn’t want to get any closer to it.

  “You were right,” she said. “The truth is that every single moment we spend together I become more of a danger to him. The more I know, the more I can use against him.”

  “You’re talking about a day that might never come.”

  Madison didn’t reply, she didn’t need to. Quinn was reaching the same conclusions she had, whether he liked it or not.

  “What’s going to happen when I have to bring him in for something that he might or might not have done? We both know Cameron’s not the type who’s going to come easy. You’re not his lawyer anymore, so how are you going to protect him from me? If there’s a warrant out for his arrest and he calls you, would you tell me? If he’s hurt and he needs you, would you tell me?”

  “We can talk about this if and when we have to.”

  “If he’s hurt and he calls you and I’m one of the people who have to bring him in, what then?”

  “We can talk about it if—”