The Dark (A Detective Alice Madison Novel)(21)

“Gilman was not on your radar for this?”

“Not for a second. I don’t know where Quinn got his information.”

“Did you say no informants came forward at the time?”

“None, zero. The case was poisoned. We ran out of leads in days, and after that it just got colder and colder. The brother was on the phone to me every day asking about it, and I had nothing to say to him.”

Madison heard the anger and the regret in Frakes’s voice, and she saw a younger Nathan Quinn fighting his grief.

“I retired from the force ten years ago,” he continued. “There’s never been a year since 1985 I don’t think about the boys on August 28. Did you find the gold chain with the remains?”

“The gold chain?”

“David Quinn wore a little gold chain with a medal around his neck. Saint Nicholas. His father’s relatives gave it to him.”

“I thought he was Jewish.”

“Well, the relatives didn’t care. Are you Catholic?”

“No.” Madison had no idea what she was.

“Well, Saint Nicholas is the patron saint of children, for what it’s worth.”

“No,” she said, “there wasn’t a gold chain there.”

“Kidnappers, murderers, and thieves,” he said.

Someone came into the room; she heard a woman’s voice speaking softly.

“Thank you for your time,” Madison said.

“Keep me posted, Detective.”

“I will.”

Madison jotted a few notes on her pad, Protection among them. She thought about the silence around the murder of the child spreading around Seattle and Elliott Bay as all the usual informants withdrew into their holes. One down, three to go.


Madison found Rachel’s voice mail as she was getting into her car. She must have called while Madison was talking to Brown. “Neal is taking Tommy to a sleepover at his cousins’, and I have the house all to myself. I feel like a movie, some chilled white wine, and whatever leftovers I have in the fridge. Wanna join me? Let me know. If you’re coming, you won’t need to go home and change.”

The last was their code for “no kid in the house, so you can come straight from work, with whatever piece of metal is in your shoulder holster.”

Still, Madison did go home and took off her Glock and her backup. She walked the few minutes to Rachel’s house, and when her friend opened the door, all Madison carried was a bottle of Sauvignon blanc and a family-size bag of sea salt and vinegar kettle chips.


“I just wish the students were not so obsessed with their grades.” Rachel taught psychology at UW. They were carrying their plates and glasses to the family room and catching up. “As if that was the only true mark of their education and learning. You won’t believe the times we have to explain to them that secondary education is not a service industry, and they are not clients.”

“Were we like that?” Madison asked her. They had studied together at the University of Chicago what felt like about two hundred years earlier.

“No way. We were bright, polite, engaged, and thoroughly perfect in every possible way.”

“That’s what I thought.”

They sank into the leather sofa and toed their shoes off, setting their plates and glasses on the coffee table in front of them.

“What’s going to happen if Brown doesn’t pass the test?” Rachel asked.

Madison shook her head. “If he can’t, he can’t carry a gun, and he won’t be able to be a cop. It’s as simple as that.”

“I’m sorry.” Rachel had never met Detective Sergeant Brown; she was sorry, because she knew her friend would be bereft if her partner was forced to leave the department. “How old is he?”

“Fifty-one.”

“Not a kid, but plenty of years left to drive you nuts.” Rachel took a sip of wine.

“I have to fix this. I know I can help him. He’s the kind of cop I want to be twenty years down the line, and I’m not going to let this happen to him.”

Neither had to say the name; they both knew what she meant. This was a win Madison would not let Harry Salinger claim.

“I saw Nathan Quinn on television,” Rachel said.

“Yes,” Madison replied. Of all the people in the world, Madison would not speak to Rachel of the small, pitiful hole where David Quinn had been buried.

“Bad dreams?” Rachel asked.

“No more than usual.”

“At least know you can talk about it with Dr. Robinson.”

“Sure.”

Rachel picked up the remote and pressed Play.

“Guess what? My cousin Aaron is in town.”

“Aaron Lever? How is he these days?”