“I couldn’t stop him.”
“How can you be sure the man knew?”
“He said he’d done his homework,” Quinn said. “He knew.”
Conrad Locke stepped closer. “Where’s Jack?”
Madison had not found the super at Ronald Gray’s apartment block. She ran up the stairs, and Ronald’s door was as she’d left it, the new lock shinier than the rest of it. When she’d realized she wouldn’t have a key, she’d gone back to her car and gotten the crowbar out of the trunk. A neighbor peeked out when she gave the first loud pry.
“Seattle Police Department,” Madison said, briefly holding up the badge on the chain around her neck without turning.
It took her five minutes of loud and unsubtle work, but in the end the door gave up, and Madison was inside.
Dr. Peterson’s call had found her at Nathan Quinn’s, and the news of Vincent Foley’s death had been a moment of shock and sadness in a day that seemed already full to the brim with both. Afterward, Madison had spoken to Dr. Takemoto, and now there she was, with a crowbar in her hand, looking over the apartment.
Ronald Gray had lived there: a quiet life spent in a drab office job, filing paperwork for the Walters Institute, and visiting his foster brother. Visiting and talking to Vincent. Talking to Vincent.
Madison stood by the threshold; she could see almost the whole apartment from there. When Ronald had left his home for the last time, he knew that he was, in all probability, going to die; he had delayed his escape to make sure all traces of Vincent’s existence were destroyed, and he had made sure that, should the worst happen, someone who was looking in the right places would find David Quinn’s medal and the scrap with the yearbook picture.
Madison scanned the room: the furniture, the floors, the walls. Peter Conway had been here, and she knew he had not found what he was looking for. But Ronald, who had done so much to give them a head start in the investigation, had done more than Conway could ever imagine.
The little broom closet was intact—a few domestic cleaning products, a can of white paint, a paintbrush, a roll of plain wallpaper.
We rent the property furnished and decorated, you know. The super had been quite clear about that. Madison walked through the bedroom and the kitchen and found herself back in the living room. Ronald had left them a message. Her eyes traveled over each nook of the simple room, and she went to stand in front of the IKEA rip-off bookcase.
Vincent had never been inside this apartment. If he had, Madison would have expected to see something that was not there: the walls were pristine. Vincent would have drawn his long, twisty lines because the wall was the trail. Madison ran her fingertips along the surface; once she arrived at the bookcase, she lifted the crowbar and wedged it behind the shelves.
With a silent apology to the super, she applied the right amount of pressure, and a loud crack told her that the spackle and the screws had surrendered their hold, and she pushed the bookcase until it was at a right angle to the wall.
Behind the shelving it had been invisible: Madison pulled on a pair of evidence gloves and took out the knife from her back pocket. She felt the change in the thickness of the wallpaper and cut along the edge. The square was three feet by three feet. Madison cut the top off as if it were a flap, pulled it down, and stood back: legal-size sheets of notebook paper covered in small, neat writing had been taped to the wall and protected by a layer of wallpaper that had not been glued down. In the bottom corner, a thin, flat memory stick. Ronald had left them a message, and Vincent had delivered it: the trail.
The writing jumped out at her. If you are reading this . . . my name is . . . on August 28, 1985 . . .
A photograph from a newspaper had been taped to a page. Madison knew it well: it was the picture taken right after David Quinn’s memorial service: the family and their friends walking away, frozen in the worst moment of their lives, and young John Cameron with his arm still in a sling attacking the photographer for his intrusion. By now Madison was familiar with all those faces: they had become part of her life, like distant relatives. Ronald had drawn a circle around one of them, and Madison knew why.
“You knew Timothy Gilman,” Nathan Quinn said to Conrad Locke.
“Who?”
“You were Timothy Gilman’s attorney when he was up for an assault charge with Leon Kendrick. You represented both of them, and you managed to get the charge dropped, because you’re the best litigator I’ve ever met.”
“Maybe I did—I don’t know. Who remembers every case from thirty years ago? Why does this matter now?”
“I’d remember Gilman. He was the one who hired the others to kidnap the boys. You met him when he was just a young, mean, violent bully.”