The Dark (A Detective Alice Madison Novel)(20)

Now there was quiet on the line and the sound of a door being closed.

“Who’s your shift commander?” Frakes asked.

“Lieutenant Fynn.”

“Your partner?”

“Detective Sergeant Kevin Brown.”

“Brown. Red hair, early fifties, as stubborn as a mule?”

Madison closed her eyes for a moment. “The very same.”

“I saw it in the Seattle Times,” Detective Frakes said finally. “I figured at some point I’d get a call. I’m glad you found him—been long enough out there, in the woods.”

“Detective Frakes, you were the primary on David Quinn’s kidnap-murder case.”

“It was just called the Hoh River case; you said that, and everybody knew what you meant.”

“Yes, it’s still the same today.” Madison settled herself on the sofa. “I’m gathering all the information I can find for the Cold Case team; even having the remains might not be enough to kick-start the investigation.”

“No new evidence found at the scene?”

“No.”

“Was it close to where the boys had been tied up?”

Madison realized in that moment that Frakes wasn’t just a name in the file: this man she was talking to on the phone had physically been there at the time, had seen the ropes still wound around the trees, and had spoken to the boy John Cameron.

“They buried him about a mile from the clearing.”

“You went to see it.”

“Yes.”

A beat of silence between them. Madison followed the pattern of light on the ceiling. She knew exactly how many dozen hours Detective Frakes had spent trawling the woods and looking for David Quinn. Not even the police dogs had managed to follow the trail.

“Detective, I wanted to speak with you, because a file is a file, and that’s all well and good, but I realize you might have other thoughts, suspicions, inklings of possible links, ideas. Anything that might not have made it into the file at the time, that might have seemed superfluous or too unsubstantiated to note down. I’m saying, if you had even a passing thought about the case that didn’t make it into the final report, I’d like to know.”

“I still think about it from time to time, you know. Any cop will tell you, in the long run it’s the ones you don’t solve that stay with you.”

“Yes, I can see how that would be.” Madison had to let him get to it by himself. How long had he been waiting to talk about it?

“This one was just as awful as they come,” he continued. “When I saw the boys—they had been taken to a local hospital—they looked nearly dead, white as sheets. The little one who had the serious cuts on his hands and arms—he could barely speak. It was sheer terror. I’d never seen anything quite like it before.”

“Or since.”

“That’s right. What happened there was a unique incident. A kidnapping where no ransom was asked and no money changed hands. A boy died of a heart condition, another was deliberately injured. It made no sense then, and now it turns out the dead boy was murdered.”

Madison knew what he meant: it made no sense, because if the kidnappers had wanted money, why not ask for it in exchange for the boys? And if the object was the torture of three children, why leave the other two tied up and alive?

“What did your gut say?” she asked Detective Frakes.

She could almost see him thinking about it: it was the question you could never ask in court, where all that matters is what you can prove.

“I thought the whole business was about the fathers’ restaurant. That was the only material link among the boys. The fathers had been doing well with the restaurant—The Rock, wasn’t it called? It’s still going, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“Frankly, I thought protection. Seattle then was not New York or New Jersey: it wasn’t mobbed up in quite the same way. But there were certain groups of people in certain areas who would take an interest in your affairs if your business was doing well. Their names are in the file, but we looked hard and found nothing.”

“What did the fathers say?”

“They said no one had ever approached them about forking over protection money.”

“Do you think they were lying?”

“Absolutely. And I’m not saying I would have done differently in their shoes. They had one kid dead and two kids too terrified to speak.”

“Did any names ever come up at all? People who might have executed the kidnap or who might have given the order?”

“I know what you’re asking me, and the answer is no, I had never heard of Timothy Gilman until I saw Nathan Quinn’s appeal on television. We looked at some local bosses who might have been involved, but we didn’t have a shred of evidence. Even the usual informants kept their mouths shut.”