The Dark (A Detective Alice Madison Novel)(102)

“Unit 3 is a go,” the response came.

Voices tumbled through the earpiece: someone issuing commands, someone giving a count to three, quick, heavy steps, and the rustle of clothing against the mikes.

Madison was utterly still.

Silence. Five seconds. Ten seconds.

“He’s down,” the disembodied voice said. “The target is down. Tasered, breathing, and with healthy vital signs.”

Madison exhaled.

“Captain? We had to Taser him, but he managed to hit a panic button. It’s a wireless system connected to the hotel Wi-Fi, and he activated it before we took him down.”


A black van with darkened windows that had just come off Exit 10 signaled right, took a sharp turn, and rejoined the Interstate due west toward Seattle. Inside it, Peter Conway was not a happy man.


The prisoner lay facedown in the middle of the room: a wiry man in his late thirties wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt. He was barefoot and cuffed, and from the moment the Taser’s wires had been retrieved, he had not said a single word.

Technically speaking he was Bellevue PD’s prisoner, but the paperwork was already being sorted out, and a police van was on its way. He’d spend the night, and quite possibly longer, as a guest of the Seattle jail on 5th Avenue, where the signature colors were not oatmeal and maroon.





Chapter 45





The Silver Pines Motel was not inclined to have the normal flow of its life interrupted by something as mundane as the SWAT arrest of an—alleged—dangerous felon. The portion of the second floor that included the four rooms that the Conway crew had rented for the last three days had been cordoned off, and the SPD Crime Scene Unit had been called with the understanding that, even though the motel was in Bellevue, any findings would be shipped to Amy Sorensen and her team. Thus, it might be convenient for everyone if—with the blessing of the smaller though equally dedicated Bellevue CSU—Sorensen took a ride across the Memorial Bridge and came to collect her evidence herself.

As they were piling into their vans, Sorensen had warned her people: they would be inspecting four motel rooms of four men who were not keen on being identified or tracked down. Short of hospital appointments that included actual emergency surgery, they might want to cancel their private lives for the next few days.


Madison stood by the threshold of one the rooms and looked inside. Unfortunately, the motel’s cleaning service had already done their job for the day, which in this case included wiping away prints and Hoovering up hairs, epithelials, and other biological trace evidence.

Madison suspected that the room would have been tidy even without professional help: there were hardly any personal possessions that she could see—just a few leaflets on a desk for local attractions and a change of clothing in the wardrobe. Conway’s men traveled light. Arson and murder in the evening and breakfast in Pike Street Market in the morning.

She didn’t know which room was Conway’s; with luck, the cleaners had not entirely eradicated his presence. One Bellevue PD detective had been allowed into each of the three empty rooms to look for weapons that had been stashed or items that might require an immediate response, though she had found nothing of use.

“No itinerary found, then?” Dunne commented.

The detective had smiled politely and moved on.

On the other hand, in the room of the presently detained Henry Sullivan—no one believed for a second that it was his real name, but he had booked Room 237 under that name, and they had to call him something—the detectives had recovered the following: one Beretta 92FS 9mm with three spare magazines, one hunting knife with a seven-inch stainless-steel blade, one military-style boot knife with a rubberized aluminum handle and a 3.5 420HC blade with a fiberglass sheath, and, stripped down inside its modified leather briefcase, an M24 sniper rifle with ammunition in a separate case.

Madison looked at the hoard as an officer photographed it where it had been found. It was bad enough to have had firsthand experience of what Conway and his men could do up close and personal, and the thought that they had come prepared to do some long-distance target practice made everything even worse.


By the time Spencer pulled into the precinct, it was almost midnight, and Henry Sullivan was somewhere nearby on 5th Avenue getting his picture taken and his fingerprints detected by sensors. Lieutenant Fynn had been briefed, and the general consensus was that Sullivan should be interviewed as soon as possible. Spencer would do the honors with Dunne in the box and Madison observing behind the two-way mirror. She had no ego about this: Spencer was much more experienced than she was, and she was happy to observe the prisoner and draw her own conclusions.