The Dark (A Detective Alice Madison Novel)(108)

He lowered the binoculars and rested his brow on his wrist. First one car engine and then the other came to life, and he heard the Camaro and the BMW leave.

In a haze Ronald drove back into Seattle and a beautiful September afternoon, and he knew without a doubt that his troubles were only starting.





Chapter 48





Spencer called her cell as Madison and Kelly were crossing the city limits: there had been a break-in at Ronald Gray’s apartment, and the place had been ransacked.

When they arrived, the super was still on the fourth-floor landing, waiting for the emergency locksmith to finish his job on Gray’s front door. A patrol officer stood by.

“What happened?” Madison asked the super.

“I went in an hour ago because I wanted to check that his gas was turned off—there’s a tap by the stove, and I couldn’t remember if I’d turned it off. Anyway, I found what I found . . .” He gestured, and Madison stepped inside.

“Any of the neighbors tell you they heard anything?” she asked the police officer over her shoulder.

“No. Most of the people on this floor are still at work, but the lady next door is home with the flu, and she said she heard nothing all day.”

The whole place had been gutted, quietly and systematically gutted. A sharp blade had shred the sofa cushions, the padding on each chair, and the mattress. The filling was spread all over the place like ugly snow. Every single item that had been on the bookshelves was on the floor. The kitchen cupboards were open and empty, their contents spilled out into the sink. Floorboards here and there had been ripped up and laid askew against the walls. Drawers had been pulled out and emptied onto the ripped-up mattress.

“When were you here last?” Madison asked the super, her eyes still taking in the devastation.

“Early yesterday afternoon. I came in with the guy from the insurance company.”

“And everything was normal?”

“Yes. Well, creepy because of the murder, but normal. I guess the insurance guy will have to come back. We rent the property furnished and decorated, you know.”

Madison nodded. She could see Peter Conway stealing into the building and into the apartment, seeking and destroying without making a sound, until all that was left of Ronald Gray’s life had been torn inside out.

Seeking and destroying. He wants the Gilman link; that’s what he’s been searching for: the proof that Gilman was involved and how that information somehow ended up in Quinn’s hands. He couldn’t get to Foley, and he came back here.

The cold, measured violence of what was before her was beginning to seep into her bones when Madison turned and left. Conway was getting angry: they had taken one of his men away from him, Vincent Foley was still alive, and still he had not found what he was looking for.

The sky was wide and purple above them as Madison and Kelly got back into the car and drove to the precinct without a word.


Henry Sullivan, lawyered up and rested, had stuck to his vow of silence, and neither Spencer nor Dunne had been able to engage him in any kind of conversation. A few hours earlier Ballistics had confirmed that the bullet that had killed Thomas Reed had not come from Sullivan’s Beretta. Thus the prisoner sat in Buddha-like repose in his cell, calmly waiting for what the legal system might throw at him next.





Chapter 49





Nathan Quinn had waited until he was sure his firm’s offices on the ninth floor of Stern Tower would be empty. He needed to check some legal-reference tomes he did not have at home, and he could not yet face the well-meaning kindness of his colleagues. He felt jagged: as if just as the scars on his body were healing, the cracks in his life were getting deeper and sharper. The photographs of Harry Salinger’s injuries came back to his mind from time to time. There he was—Jack Cameron, his brother in all but blood—comprised and contained within the twist of that blade. Did it matter that Salinger had done much, much worse? How did you measure those acts? Were there scales that could weigh one against the other?

Quinn had arrived in the underground parking lot, driving himself for the first time, and had ridden the elevator to the ninth floor; he had waved to the camera and to the security guard monitoring his progress from somewhere else in the building and had put the key in the lock of this place that had seen all his battles and all his victories in the last decade.

He had hoped for relief, or maybe just the comfort of familiarity, but none had come. The smart offices and elegant furnishings felt alien, and he didn’t know whether he would ever feel at home here again.

Quinn made himself coffee and brought his cup and saucer into the library. He had felt so proud when Quinn, Locke & Associates had first opened its doors to the world. His eyes scanned the shelves for the books he needed; he found them and laid them open on the massive table. He wondered what Rabbi Stien would make of this, whether there was anything in the Torah that explained to a man how to take the Law and shape it like clay with his own hands and still keep his soul.