The Dark (A Detective Alice Madison Novel)(136)

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—”