“I think a drink would be appropriate. May I do the honors?” Cameron glanced at Quinn and, at his nod, stood up. “Coffee or bourbon, Detective?”
“Coffee, thank you.”
Quinn opened the door to the deck and went outside. Madison let him be. All those years ago he had probably begged that little boy to tell him what had happened; it didn’t make it any easier to hear it today, even knowing that this time something might come of it.
She busied herself studying the telescope until Cameron came back with their drinks and Quinn returned indoors—the rain had spattered his suit, his hair was damp, and he looked ready to walk barefoot to hell.
“What can you tell us about the fire the other night at the Walters Institute?” he asked Madison.
She gave them what details she could, which excluded her conversation with Vincent Foley in the gardens and the fact that they had Henry Sullivan—or whatever his name was—in custody.
“This man from the clinic,” Cameron said. “How sure are you that he was involved?”
“He’s too damaged to be of any use to you, Mr. Cameron. Either as a witness or a source of whatever retribution you might seek.”
“How sure are you?”
“I’m sure,” Madison replied. “All his mind has kept are the scraps of memories. He barely knows his own name at this point.”
“And yet you mean to use him, do you not? To wring what you can out of this poor soul?”
“We’re interviewing him, yes.”
“And after you’re done with your questions? What will happen then? Will he get a pass back to a life of soft foods and plastic cutlery?”
“I honestly don’t know. And I can’t begin to imagine what your feelings on that matter might be, either of you. But if you saw him, if you saw that strange, eerie creature, you would get no joy from killing him—if that’s what you have in mind. I think vengeance is trickier than that, and if you are going to go for it, the subject should at least be aware of the reason he’s about to die. Killing this man would give you nothing. He’s defenseless and so slight, you’d break him with a harsh look.”
She had their full attention, and she continued. “On the other hand, take someone like Timothy Gilman, someone who spent his life dispensing evil. Maybe finally someone caught up with him, someone who had knowledge of his crimes but nothing that would stand up in court. So he dealt with him. Alone, quietly, and in a very tidy manner.”
“He dealt with him?” Cameron said.
Madison took a sip of her coffee. “Yes. Alone, quietly, and in a very tidy manner. Because to do it any other way would bring more damage and pain than he could bear to inflict on Gilman’s surviving victims.”
Madison looked from one man to the other. Quinn’s scars looked livid against his skin, his eyes darker than she had ever seen them.
“That’s my theory,” she said. “I have no proof, and in all likelihood I never will. My feeling is, whoever caught up with Gilman is long dead, too. Maybe he’s Gilman’s last true victim.”
“Maybe,” Cameron said, the truth balancing on a single word.
Madison finished her coffee and left. Even though there had been an exchange of information, she wasn’t sure which side had gained the most. She arrived home and changed into her running gear, her backup piece fitting easily under the cotton sweatpants. The rain was seeping through the hood of her sweatshirt, and her hands were freezing. There are no sides, she thought—not about this. Not anymore.
Her feet bounced on the wet concrete of her neighborhood sidewalks, and in minutes she was drenched. She kept running, because it was easier to think about Cameron’s story while she was moving. The streets were empty, and she followed the road parallel to the water. The black pavement was strewn with leaves and twigs, slippery and snapping underfoot.
Madison ran and let John Cameron’s words come back to her as they wished, because pieces of some stories take you and change you and will not let you get hold of them whole. Some stories splinter, and the shards dig themselves deeply under your skin.
What she’d heard stayed with her while she showered and put on clean, dry clothes; while she cooked herself a steak and ate it at the table, adding to her notes and sipping from a longneck; it stayed with every breath she took until she slipped at last into a broken sleep.
In his bedroom Nathan Quinn listened to the wind rattling the windows as the rain gushed against the glass. He had drunk a measure of bourbon with Jack tonight, as he had promised himself only twenty-four hours earlier, and another glass after that.
He hadn’t known when he’d woken up that morning that by the time he went to bed, many of the questions he’d been asking himself for years would be answered. It had been nearly impossible to listen to the story. Detective Madison’s steady calm had helped him: she hadn’t interrupted, she hadn’t asked questions, and she had listened with focus and compassion.