The Dark (A Detective Alice Madison Novel)(14)

“That’s what I thought. Did you go to the site?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“The killers dug it fast and just deep enough that an animal wouldn’t dig him out overnight.”

“Well, here’s how it’s going to go: we wait for the DNA result—which nobody’s in a big hurry to do in the first place, since we have hundreds of fresh cases—and if it’s Quinn, it’s yours; if it isn’t, it stays with Jefferson County, because we won’t know where the child started out from, and the forensic anthropologist will have to get to work on an ID before anything else.”

By the time Madison got back to her desk, the squad room was full and buzzing with activity, and for the first time she wondered whether she should hope the dead child was Nathan Quinn’s brother. It was a child, and that was all that mattered.


It took nine days for an infinitesimal sliver of mitochondrial DNA to confirm beyond a doubt that the human remains found in the Hoh River forest were, in fact, David Quinn’s. As soon as it was official, Madison collected the Hoh River kidnap file from Records: she wasn’t going to interview Cameron without knowing every detail of the original investigation.

He hadn’t spoken about it in twenty-five years, as far as she knew, and the chances of him talking now were less than zero. Then again, the chances of Cameron talking to anyone about anything were generally less than zero. The kidnap was merely one more entry on the extremely long list of no-go subjects. Nevertheless, they now had a body and cause of death, and there would be an investigation, there would be questions, and, somewhere inside the mind of John Cameron, was the truth.

Thus it was that two days after her last visit, Alice Madison found herself back in the King County Justice Complex meeting cell, without her piece and without much hope for meaningful conversation, either.

She thought of John Cameron as a twelve-year-old boy, terrified in the woods, and she hoped that boy would want to help her after she told him that the child they’d found was David Quinn.

The cell was warm, unpleasantly so, and it smelled of vending-machine coffee from previous visitors. Whatever the day might be like on the outside, in this room the natural light fell milky pale and ineffective on the sparse furnishings. Madison had gone over her conversation strategy three times when she heard the metal lock of the prisoners’ door clank open.

A single guard came in—she had seen him a couple of times before. He looked as if he’d seen a few decades of working for the Department of Corrections and was there to stay. His name tag read: MILLER, B.

“He’s not coming, Detective,” he said.

Madison stood up abruptly, her pushed-back chair scraping the floor. That she hadn’t planned for.

“He’s not coming?”

She realized that she sounded almost personally offended, but—honest to God—she didn’t think she could help it.

“He said he knows the DNA was a match,” the guard continued, “and to come back when you know something he doesn’t.”

Madison kept her face blank; she nodded, put her notepad into her jeans back pocket, and pushed the chair under the table, leaving the room tidy and ready for the next visitor. The guard’s sharp blue eyes followed her every move.

“Okay, then,” she said.

“Don’t feel bad. It’s more than anyone else ever got out of him.”

“I know.”

“Unless you want us to haul him in here . . .”

“No, thanks. No need for that today,” she said to the guard’s obvious relief. “I’ll just have to survive without the witty repartee.”

“Won’t we all.”

Back in her car, in the jail’s parking lot, with the windows fogged up and the engine running, Madison allowed herself a good full minute of unrestricted swearing. Once she got that out of her system, she put the Civic into gear and drove back to the precinct. It is what it is, her grandmother used to say.





Chapter 8





Carl Doyle waited by the elevator doors, checking his reflection in the brushed steel. He looked immaculate in his gray pinstripe, white shirt, and burgundy tie. He had been running Quinn, Locke from a bench outside Quinn’s hospital room—gatekeeper and executive assistant.

Todd Hollis, Quinn, Locke’s chief investigator, had spent an hour with Quinn and left a few minutes earlier, his mood much bleaker than when he had arrived. Doyle had done what Quinn had asked and now waited by the elevator. He didn’t know what this was about, only that Hollis had disagreed with the decision, and Quinn was going ahead, anyway. Doyle was uneasy. Hollis knew his stuff; if he had had objections, they would have been to the point and well considered. Doyle straightened his tie, fussed with his cuffs, and looked at his watch.