The Dark (A Detective Alice Madison Novel)(141)

She ran on the beach, cleaned the house, and cooked dinners from scratch. The gunshot wounds and the face of the bodyguard in the field came back to her every so often, and she let them. Sometimes she woke up in the middle of night; sometimes she slept through. She didn’t speak to Nathan Quinn or John Cameron, but they were never far from her thoughts.

It was a bright February afternoon, and the sky was a clear sheet of silver. Madison walked down the rickety pier at the end of the pebble beach at the bottom of her garden and dropped her kayak into the water. She wore her yellow REI life jacket and was not armed.

She paddled toward Three Tree Point and almost expected to see a fourteen-year-old Rachel Lever paddle toward her in her kayak. After a while she stopped and leaned as far back as she could. A few gulls were busy on the afternoon shift, but for the rest it was quiet. After the initial numbness, feelings were coming back like blood to her limbs. Some she could live with, some confused her, and some she had to find a permanent way of dealing with; otherwise, they would damage her like a broken bone left unset. Good friends, good food, and Billy Wilder could only get her so far, and Madison made her decision. She paddled for three hours and felt blissfully tired by the time she was done.

The call came as she was drying herself after the shower.

“They’ll never want me for Special Weapons and Tactics, but for Homicide I’ll do.”

Brown.

“Sarge, that’s just . . .”

“I know, same here. I’ll be back in the precinct as soon as the paperwork is through.”

“As long as I’m on leave, you’re going to have Kelly.”

“Every cloud has a silver lining . . .”


The following morning, Stanley F. Robinson, PhD, took the elevator to go up to his office. When the doors slid open, Alice Madison got up from the carpeted corridor floor where she had been sitting with her back against a wall, waiting for him. She felt as if she was about to ask him to prom. “You said I could come up and look at the view.”

“So I did,” he replied, hardly breaking stride. “How was your week?”


Later on that day Madison drove home, took off her backup piece and her holster, and walked to Rachel’s house. The door was festooned with balloons with the number 7.

“He’s in the garden,” Rachel said, and she hugged Alice tightly. “I’m so happy you could make it.”

The house was crammed with children and adults, most of whom Madison knew already.

“I’ll call him in,” Rachel said.

“No, don’t. I’ll see him when he comes.”

Tommy was seven. He was seven today because one man’s courage had prevailed over another man’s insanity. She watched the boy run around and play and squeal with delight. When he saw her, he waved at her, and she waved back.

That night Madison slept through.





Chapter 70





Conrad Locke never made bail; he was too much of a flight risk and had the means to disappear. Every single law enforcement agency in the land wanted to speak with him, and Madison trusted they wouldn’t give him immunity even for his testimony against his many clients. There were lots of out there, people with skill sets similar to John Cameron’s, who would be following very closely the progression of the case.

Henry Sullivan—arrested in the Silver Pines Motel—and Conway’s accomplice, who had survived Cameron’s attack, would be charged with a number of Class A felonies and would never in their life be free again.

Jerome McMullen was given parole and spent his probationary period volunteering for good causes in King County. He went on to start his own support group for ex-convicts.


Nathan Quinn adjusted the knot in his tie. He had shaved off the stubble, and his hair was almost as short as it had been in December. He didn’t notice the scars anymore—other people might, but that was not his problem.

It had been a few weeks since Conrad Locke had been arrested—and Quinn’s slow recognition that nothing would ever be the same. Jack had spent quite a bit of time on his boat, which had been moored in Poulsbo while he was in jail. And they had spoken about some things, even though others they would probably never discuss. It was enough. It was a start.

Quinn didn’t know what had stayed with Cameron of those hours when death had come so close. Jack seemed to absorb everything and somehow compute and deal with it the way a rock deals with the weather. And yet his time spent on the boat, sailing around the San Juan Islands, had to be a pause for reflection, for finding his balance after some disorienting moments of vulnerability. Taking such a pause was what someone else would have done, and Quinn realized yet again that the inner workings of his friend’s mind were an unknown country, and it was one of life’s twisted pleasures that this man, practically a brother to him, should be so very hard to read.