The Dark (A Detective Alice Madison Novel)(15)

The elevator doors slid open, and Benny Craig from Quinn, Locke staggered out carrying two silver photography cases and a folded tripod stuck under one arm. Benny had been with the firm six months and looked thirteen. Something in Carl Doyle’s demeanor told him to keep quiet and just do as he was told.

“Everything?” Doyle asked.

“Everything,” Benny replied.

Carl started down the corridor, Benny following. Around them the life of the hospital took no notice as it hummed and bustled in its daily workings.


Alice Madison balanced the plate of chocolate cake on the edge of her desk and raised her paper cup. Detective Andrew Dunne’s birthday was an occasion to celebrate, and it had drawn officers from all over the precinct.

Dunne and his partner, Spencer, had been a joy to work with from the beginning. Looking around the busy room, Madison spotted Detective Chris Kelly and his partner, Tony Rosario, with paper cups in hand. Chris Kelly had not been a joy to work with—in fact, Madison believed that joy would flutter, wither, and drop dead if it came within six feet of Kelly. They had ignored each other from the beginning of the year, and she hoped it would last.

Spencer raised his cup—fizzy yellow soda under the fluorescent lights—and called for silence. He had known Dunne from the Academy, and his toasts were sure to touch on his friend’s unmarried status, his Irish red temper, and a large number of embarrassing events that had never made it into their official reports.

“My name is Nathan Quinn—”

The voice cut through the air, and Madison just about jumped out of her skin. Someone shushed the group and increased the television’s volume with the remote.

“It’s the news on KIRO,” someone else said. The room froze into silence.

For the longest moment Madison didn’t turn. She knew what they were all looking at: they were looking at the man who had endured the unthinkable and survived. Each and every one of them had wondered about his injuries. There had been no pictures and no tabloid exclusive.

Madison had not been allowed to see Nathan Quinn since the incident; now she would have to see him for the first time in a roomful of strangers, all of them curious and none of them with any idea about what that night had really been like.

“My name is Nathan Quinn—”

Madison turned. He’d lost weight, and his dark hair was longer: Nathan Quinn in a head-and-shoulders shot, a blue linen shirt open at the collar, no tie. A hospital room behind him, enough light to see him clearly. A red line slashed through his left eyebrow and ran into his hairline; another ran from the corner of his mouth to under his left ear; one started under his jaw and disappeared into the open collar; another smaller line over his cheekbone, his lips. The plastic surgeon had done an amazing job, the best anyone could hope for. Yet, for now, Nathan Quinn looked as if the devil himself had kicked him out of hell but not without some fun and games first.

“—a few days ago the remains of a child were found in the Hoh River forest. My brother, David, was thirteen years old when he was abducted together with two young friends twenty-five years ago. The men who took them killed my brother and left his friends tied up and defenseless in the woods; had they not been discovered quickly, they, too, would have perished. This is an appeal for any kind of information anyone might have that relates to the kidnapping or the murder.”

Madison had seen such appeals made before: for missing or dead children, parents, siblings, wives, and husbands. Something in Quinn’s tone kept a roomful of cops nailed to where they stood, and she sensed the storm coming, because she had seen Nathan Quinn in action before, and he was not a guy who simply appealed for anything.

Quinn raised four fingers of his right hand. “Four men took the boys and murdered my brother—I now put two hundred thousand dollars on the head of each one of those men.” He raised the index finger of his left hand. “One man, or a group of men, planned it—one million dollars.” Quinn paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was low, and it crackled with menace. “They didn’t demand a ransom; they didn’t ask for a reward. This is what they are going to get today: a bounty on their heads. Did any one of them tell a friend, a brother, a lover what happened? Can they trust that person with their life today?” Quinn paused. “Twenty years ago a man named Timothy Gilman fell into a hunter’s trapping pit and died; there is reason to think he was one of the four kidnappers.” Quinn folded one finger back. “One down, three to go. The others should know, wherever they are, that they are not safe, they are not out of harm’s way, and they will be found.”